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Show Panelist Dr. Laureen Husband and Dr. Cheryl Holder
EPA just detailed all the ways climate change will hit U.S. racial minorities the hardest. It’s a long list.
Special Guest – Dr. Laureen Husban And Dr. Cheryl Holder
If the planet warms 2 degrees Celsius, new report warns, Black people are 40 percent more likely than other groups to live in places where extreme temperatures will cause more deaths.
By Darryl Fears and Dino Grandoni September 2, 2021 at 5:50 p.m. EDT
Racial minorities in the United States will bear a disproportionate burden of the negative health and environmental impacts from a warming planet, the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday, including more deaths from extreme heat and property loss from flooding in the wake of sea-level rise.
The new analysis, which comes four days after Hurricane Ida destroyed homes of low-income and Black residents in Louisiana and Mississippi, examined the effects of the global temperature rising 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels. Itfound that American Indians and Alaska Natives are 48 percent more likely than other groups to live in areas that will be inundated by flooding from sea-level rise under that scenario, Latinos are 43 percent more likely to live in communities that will lose work hours because of intense heat, and Black people will suffer significantly higher mortality rates.
The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution began, and is on track to warm by more than 1.5 degrees by the early 2030s.
Joe Goffman, acting head of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said the comprehensive review was a “first of its kind.” It amounts to a federal acknowledgment of the broad and disproportionate effect that global warming is having on some of America’s most socially vulnerable groups. Just this week, the Department of Health and Human Services established the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, the first federal program aimed at specifically examining how the burning of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas emissions affect human health.
The impact of Hurricane Ida, whose remnants Wednesday wreaked havoc in New Jersey and New York City, is still being calculated. But Goffman said many Black and low-income residents in Louisiana and Mississippi are faced with the challenge of mustering the resourcesto replace living rooms drowned in floodwaters and rooftops ripped apart by powerful winds.
“But one of the underlying lessons of this report is that so many communities that are heavily Black and African American find themselves in the way of some of the worst impacts of climate change,” he said, “as was the case with Katrina and, we may find, turns out to be the case with Ida.”
Officials in New Orleans have warned that parts of the city could be without power for up to three weeks after Ida. Community groups have stepped up to help. (Video: Zoeann Murphy, Alice Li, Drea Cornejo/The Washington Post)
Climate and global warming informational links
September 2, 2021 at 5:50 p.m. EDT
If the planet warms 2 degrees Celsius, new report warns, Black people are 40 percent more likely than other groups to live in places where extreme temperatures will cause more deaths.
Racial minorities in the United States will bear a disproportionate burden of the negative health and environmental impacts from a warming planet, the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday, including more deaths from extreme heat and property loss from flooding in the wake of sea-level rise.
The new analysis, which comes four days after Hurricane Ida destroyed homes of low-income and Black residents in Louisiana and Mississippi, examined the effects of the global temperature rising 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels. Itfound that American Indians and Alaska Natives are 48 percent more likely than other groups to live in areas that will be inundated by flooding from sea-level rise under that scenario, Latinos are 43 percent more likely to live in communities that will lose work hours because of intense heat, and Black people will suffer significantly higher mortality rates.
The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution began, and is on track to warm by more than 1.5 degrees by the early 2030s.
A new report says it is still possible to hold global warming to relatively safe levels, but doing so will require global cooperation, billions of dollars and big changes. Earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade, and nations will need to make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from overheating dangerously beyond that level, according to a major new report released on Monday.
