Most scientists agree, and most Americans now concur, that climate change is real and could pose devastating consequences for our nation and our children's future. Last week, our research team released a report revealing an equally real and urgent problem: the "Climate Gap" -- the often hidden and unequal harm climate change will cause people of color and the poor in the United States. Extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts and floods as well as increased air pollution and higher prices for basic necessities will disproportionately impact people of color and the poor. For example, African Americans in Los Angeles are twice as likely to die from a heat wave as other residents, and the additional costs for air conditioning during heat waves are challenging, or unattainable for the poor.
To close the Climate Gap, our research says climate policy must establish a way to identify Climate Gap neighborhoods that are likely to be hardest hit by our deteriorating atmosphere. Once we know where the most vulnerable Americans live, we need to invest a portion of any revenue generated from a pollution auction or fee to provide them with help meeting higher costs, job training for the new economy and strategies to help cope with extreme weather.
Because climate change will also increase air pollution, and people of color and the poor already breathe dirtier air than the rest of us, we need to focus reduction of greenhouse gases from sources that also emit toxic air pollution in the most polluted neighborhoods. For example, we should choose reductions from facilities in densely populated neighborhoods over those located in sparsely populated areas, because these are opportunities to both address climate change and reduce air pollution locally -- a clean-up that will save lives and reduce health care costs.
As Congress takes steps to address climate change with the American Clean Energy and Security Act, we have put the legislation under a microscope to find out whether it mandates the smart choices necessary to close the Climate Gap.
While there is a lot of chatter about how modest the bill is, there are pieces we like. First and foremost, it's an important starting point to finally address climate change. If we don't solve the climate change problem, it's impossible to narrow the Climate Gap. Second, the bill creates several cushions against higher energy prices, although accomplishing this by giving free permits to the energy sector wrongly assumes that state regulatory agencies will be equally effective at protecting consumers from unjustified cost increases.
Still, this legislation is an important step forward -- and there are three big opportunities we would love to see recovered as the bill moves towards President Obama's desk.
First, while the bill does include assistance to help communities prepare for extreme weather events such as heat waves, the domestic budget isn't targeted to those who are least able to cope. However, there is an extensive program established to focus on natural resource adaptation that could be a model for a similar program focused on community adaptation in Climate Gap neighborhoods, including the establishment of a Science Advisory Board to recommend research priorities, surveillance strategies, early warning systems and educational outreach efforts for the most vulnerable communities.
Second, while the legislation includes language on green jobs and worker transition, it is not targeted to people of color and the poor, who research says will suffer from reduced or shifting job opportunities as a result of climate change. Such targeting is entirely in line with the emerging notion of using the green economy to create pathways out of poverty, thus combining both environmental and social sustainability. Increasing the percent of allowances that will be auctioned rather than given away could also help by raising more funds for training and other purposes.
The biggest lost opportunity to address climate change and close the Climate Gap is the absence of any incentives or requirements to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and toxic air pollution by focusing greenhouse gas reductions in the neighborhoods with the dirtiest air, and the exemption of greenhouse gases from the Clean Air Act.
Some would argue that it makes little difference where we reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- an offset (in which emissions are reduced in, say, another country) or a trade (in which emissions are reduced in another region of the U.S.) has the same effect on the planet. That's true for global warming -- but these sorts of reductions have very different consequences for the communities where the associated co-pollutants, such as particulates and air toxics, accrue. Research has shown that these health risks are very unevenly distributed by race and income -- and cleaning dirty air remains a top concern for voters, even in this tough economy.
So there are political, as well as public health reasons to explicitly consider how to get the immediate benefits of cleaner air while we're protecting our future. Tweaking the legislation in order to do a better job closing the Climate Gap is an issue of human rights, public health and basic fairness. But it's more than that. If we protect those who are most vulnerable, we will effectively protect all of us.
If we had made the smart choice to properly maintain the levees prior to Hurricane Katrina, the Lower Ninth Ward would have been protected and all of New Orleans would have avoided devastating flooding. Similarly, by choosing policies that close the Climate Gap by reducing the very real dangers facing low-income neighborhoods and people of color, we will ensure that climate policy will be effective for the entire nation.
To read more about the Climate Gap or for a full analysis of the American Clean Energy Security Act, visit this site.
Rachel Morello-Frosch is an Associate Professor of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the School of Public Health at the University of California - Berkeley. Manuel Pastor is Professor of Geography at the University of Southern California.
What we really need is to bridge the gap or lack of morals and ethics in our society. I understand the need to be les wasteful, but this global warming scare tactics, disparities in people of color are nothing more than self-regulated schemes to rip off the public.
Such race-baiting harms our country - and harms the authors chances of getting their ideas across effectively to those who are not fooled or swayed by race-baiting rhetoric. We will never move past racial tensions if people keep stuffing it in other people's faces when it is both completely unnecessary and nothing more than an attempt to rile emotions.
There are other problems with this piece of more technical nature, but perhaps not more-so than the problems with the legislation itself on these same points. (Note my bio.)
However, I am outraged by the insertion of New Orleans and Katrina into this discussion, especially when the authors exhibit such profound ignorance. For example, the levee failures were NOT problems with maintenance but construction. Even more glaringly, the lower 9th ward was flooded when a flood-wall failed - it wasn't even a levee at all. Such ignorance and hubris is profoundly insulting as it's not even a thinly veiled attempt to use our tragedy to push their race-baiting agenda.
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Besides, the construction levees and flood walls were not maintained properly. Also, government did little as a response. Would Bush have waited so long to be disturbed at his ranch if Connecticut was inundated with floods. I doubt it!
1400 years ago their where no glaciers in Norway they got snow regularly through the winters.
Polar bears and penguins survived the warming.
The problem we have now is Ocean and bay dead spots caused by chemical fertilizer(GMO CORN& CHEMICAL FERTLIZER=TOMVILSACK!) and animal waste runoff.
Hemp seeds are the best chicken and turkey feed on the planet!
we copuld use manure with no chemicals to grow the hemp.
We could use the leftovers to make bio-diesel.
HEMP 8x MORE BTUS THAN CORN
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It is very true that the flooding caused by subpar federal levees was color blind. Swimming had very little to do with the deaths. And thanks again for telling us all it was the victims fault. Sheesh! I use to believe in this country with my whole heart. Now I know the truth. You are on your own. Each year when I send my taxes to the US government I want to put a note on it that says "For what?".
As it is, the good people of New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina appear to have learned a lesson, and have voted with their feet.
The city of New Orleans' population has decreased by about half since Katrina. People have decided that living in neighborhoods that are below sea level in New Orleans is too risky for them. After all, the city is slowing sinking in the Mississippi mud, the Federal government has blocked the normal settlement of river sediment in the delta, and the city is threatened not only by hurricanes but also by possible 100-year or 500-yr floods from the Mississippi River.
W.T.F??? CLEARLY you have never been to New Orleans, my home-town. It's about as flat as it gets. Total elevation varriation in the city is measured in a couple of ten feet. There are NO hills - no natural ones anyway. It was often said that "Monkey Hill" was the highest point in the city at about ten to twelve feet above grade...
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