ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Copenhagen Conference of 2009 to foreground Africa at the center of the global environmental crisis. The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference of 2009 offered an opportunity to explore why the world is divided on this issue and to address discursive practices around climate science. If China is to remain competitive, it must retain the right to pollute, and China resents the idea of putting limits on its own economic growth. Vincent Courtillot understands the role that power and ideology play in the climate change puzzle. It raises the question of nationalism, foundational narration, identity, and uniformity and the role that university plays in that project. The chapter concerns the place of Africa in world politics in terms global governance versus national interests, the role of scientists, their communication practices, and ideology in arguing that, in the larger scheme, it is about Africa’s place in modernity.
