Skeletons, dragons and the ‘climate war’: Geography's colonial legacy and the uneven landscape of environmental knowledge

Abstract As climate change becomes more central to geographers' thinking, climate geography as a field is developing a greater sense of self‐awareness. Whilst welcome, the historical legacy of geographic engagement with the climate brings both challenges and opportunities. As a discipline whose founding principle was to interrogate the nexus of the environmental – as well as a field with both appetite and aptitude for a radical interdisciplinarity – climate geographers are well positioned to interpret a world in which nature and human activity are increasingly inseparable. Yet what climate geographers bring in particular is a recognition of how the present landscape of knowledge reflects often contentious historical politics. By reflexively engaging with the history of the discipline and connecting this to present gaps in the landscape of environmental knowledge, climate geography as a field offers the opportunity for substantial innovation, not only as a means to interpret climate change, but as a site of action to address it.