October 26th and 28th
Session Ten: Climate Justice 

We will focus on the questions below:  

1. What do we mean by the term “climate gap”?
   • The climate gap means that communities of color and the poor will suffer more during extreme heat waves.
   • The climate gap means that communities of color and the poor will breathe even dirtier air
   • The climate gap means that communities of color and the poor will pay more for basic necessities
   • The climate gap is likely to mean fewer job opportunities for communities of color and the poor.
2. What are the key ideas in the Climate Gap Report?
   • There is a climate gap
     • Definitions and examples given above
   • Recommendations given below
3. What are the key findings in the Climate Gap Report?
   • Extreme Heat Leads to Increased Illnesses and Deaths—Particularly Among the Elderly, Infants and African Americans
   • Risk Factors for Heat-Related Illness and Death Are Higher for Low-Income Neighborhoods and People of Color
   • African Americans in Los Angeles Nearly Twice as Likely to Die from a Heat Wave
   • Agricultural and Construction Workers also at Increased Risk of Death
   • Air Conditioning a Critical Coping Tool for Heat-Waves—but Not Everyone Has Access
   • Transportation Is also a Critical Coping Tool During a Heat Wave—but African Americans, Latinos and Asians Less Likely to have Access to a Car
   • a recent study found that for each 1 degree Celsius (1°C) rise in temperature in the United States, there are an estimated 20–30 excess cancer cases, as well as approximately 1000 (CI: 350–1800) excess air-pollution-associated deaths (Jacobson 2008). About 40 percent of the additional deaths may be due to ozone and the rest to particulate matter annually (Jacobson 2008; Bailey et al. 2008).
   • Prices for Basic Necessities Expected to Skyrocket as a Result of Climate Change
   • Low-Income Families Already Spend a Bigger Proportion of Their Income on Food, Energy and Other Household Needs Than Higher-Income Families. With Climate Change, That Spending Gap Will Grow.
   • Climate Change Will Dramatically Reduce Job Opportunities or Cause Major Employment Shifts in Sectors that Predominately Employ Low-Income People of Color.
   • Fewer Jobs in Tourism, an Industry Employing a High Number of Low-Income People of Color
4. What are the key recommendations in the Climate Gap Report?
   • Maximizing Reductions in Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Toxic Air Pollution in Neighborhoods with the Dirtiest Air.
   • Ensuring New Fuels Don’t Increase Pollution in Low-Income and Minority Communities
   • Close the Health Impacts Gap Between People of Color and the Poor, and the Rest of the Population.
     • Focus Planning and Intervention in Poor and Minority Neighborhoods.
     • Use New Mapping Technologies to Identify Vulnerable Neighborhoods
     • Research the Potential Benefits and Harms of New Fuels
     • Measure the Success of Mitigation Strategies by Whether They Protect Everyone
     • Design Research That Identifies Opportunities for Targeting Greenhouse Gas Reductions to Reduce Toxic Air Emissions in Highly Polluted Neighborhoods
   • Class Discussion
     • Close the climate gap by auctioning permits or establishing a fee and invest revenue in communities that will be hardest hit
     • Close the climate gap by coordinating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions with opportunities to reduce toxic pollutants in neighborhoods with the dirtiest air
     • Close the climate gap by adopting policies that will lessen the climate related health impacts faced by people of color and the poor
     • Close the climate gap by closing the conversation gap
5. What can we learn from a case study of Malawi? (Sovacool’s article)
   • as a result of historical greenhouse gas emissions, people in rich countries impose 200–300 times more climate-related health damage on others than they experience themselves
   • Malawi, arguably “the most climate vulnerable mainland country in Africa” with a history of flooding, drought, land degradation, poverty and food insecurity. Barrett essentially maintains that rich nations should help a country like Malawi adapt to the impacts of climate change, but he takes the issue further to ask: which adaptation mechanisms, funded by international donors but implemented by community groups and stakeholders, would work the best?
     • no single adaptation measure will be sufficient to bolster Malawi’s adaptive capacity and resilience. Instead, much like the nature of the climate change threat, the country will need a suite of measures that cut across sectors. These include enhanced irrigation, drought cropping, flood protection, early warning systems, tree planting, conservation farming and fertilizer distribution. Also, specific cost–benefit ratios for individual adaptation instruments will change on the basis of their location as well as their timing
   • rich nations should help a country like Malawi adapt to the impacts of climate change, but he takes the issue further to ask: which adaptation mechanisms, funded by international donors but implemented by community groups and stakeholders, would work the best?
     1. villagers identified hunger, poverty and flooding as primary concerns, in contrast with the country’s National Adaptation Plan of Action, which prioritizes strategies such as early warning systems, afforestation and aquaculture
     2. no single adaptation measure will be sufficient to bolster Malawi’s adaptive capacity and resilience. Instead, much like the nature of the climate change threat, the country will need a suite of measures that cut across sectors. These include enhanced irrigation, drought cropping, flood protection, early warning systems, tree planting, conservation farming and fertilizer distribution. Also, specific cost–benefit ratios for individual adaptation instruments will change on the basis of their location as well as their timing
     3. adaptation approaches must be multiscalar — they cannot be implemented only by global actors. Much climate research has focused on the global or national level, given that climate change is a global phenomenon, and sovereign nations are deemed responsible for their emissions under the Kyoto Protocol
     4. most important, Barrett shows that the difference between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ adaptation can concern whether it involved communities and respected their livelihoods or whether it was implemented by experts and failed to contribute to a reduction in community vulnerability. A similar line of research distinguishes between ‘soft’ adaptation pathways, which place the needs of a community equal to or above the priorities of adaptation, and the ‘hard’ pathways that place adaptation priorities first and require community sacrifices

ASSIGNED READING FOR SESSION TWELVE 

(click on session 12 on left to access reading) 

1. Five Ways to make the Climate Movement Less White
   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/21/five-ways-to-make-the-climate-movement-less-white
   1. build intergenerational power
   2. require white organizers to confront their internalized white supremacy
   3. conversation, understanding and acknowledgement of those peoples who are doing the work that don’t look like the cookie cutter activist
   4. acknowledge the history, practices and policies that created the inequality
   5. provide accessible environmental education that comes from nonacademic ways of learning
2. The Climate Gap: Inequalities in How Climate Change Hurts Americans — Morrello-Frosch, Pastor, et al
   • Extreme Heat Leads to Increased Illnesses and Deaths—Particularly Among the Elderly, Infants and African Americans
   • Risk Factors for Heat-Related Illness and Death Are Higher for Low-Income Neighborhoods and People of Color
   • African Americans in Los Angeles Nearly Twice as Likely to Die from a Heat Wave
   • Agricultural and Construction Workers also at Increased Risk of Death
   • Air Conditioning a Critical Coping Tool for Heat-Waves—but Not Everyone Has Access
   • Transportation Is also a Critical Coping Tool During a Heat Wave—but African Americans, Latinos and Asians Less Likely to have Access to a Car
   • a recent study found that for each 1 degree Celsius (1°C) rise in temperature in the United States, there are an estimated 20–30 excess cancer cases, as well as approximately 1000 (CI: 350–1800) excess air-pollution-associated deaths (Jacobson 2008). About 40 percent of the additional deaths may be due to ozone and the rest to particulate matter annually (Jacobson 2008; Bailey et al. 2008).
   • Prices for Basic Necessities Expected to Skyrocket as a Result of Climate Change
   • Low-Income Families Already Spend a Bigger Proportion of Their Income on Food, Energy and Other Household Needs Than Higher-Income Families. With Climate Change, That Spending Gap Will Grow.
   • Climate Change Will Dramatically Reduce Job Opportunities or Cause Major Employment Shifts in Sectors that Predominately Employ Low-Income People of Color.
   • Fewer Jobs in Tourism, an Industry Employing a High Number of Low-Income People of Color
   • Key Recommendations to Close the Climate Gap
     • Maximizing Reductions in Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Toxic Air Pollution in Neighborhoods with the Dirtiest Air.
     • Ensuring New Fuels Don’t Increase Pollution in Low-Income and Minority Communities
     • Close the Health Impacts Gap Between People of Color and the Poor, and the Rest of the Population.
       • Focus Planning and Intervention in Poor and Minority Neighborhoods.
       • Use New Mapping Technologies to Identify Vulnerable Neighborhoods
       • Research the Potential Benefits and Harms of New Fuels
       • Measure the Success of Mitigation Strategies by Whether They Protect Everyone
       • Design Research That Identifies Opportunities for Targeting Greenhouse Gas Reductions to Reduce Toxic Air Emissions in Highly Polluted Neighborhoods
     • Develop Policies that Close the Gap Between the Economic Disparities Faced by People of Color and the Poor, and the Rest of the Population
     • Close the Conversation Gap
3. The complexity of Climate Justice — Sovacool
   • as a result of historical greenhouse gas emissions, people in rich countries impose 200–300 times more climate-related health damage on others than they experience themselves
   • Malawi, arguably “the most climate vulnerable mainland country in Africa” with a history of flooding, drought, land degradation, poverty and food insecurity. Barrett essentially maintains that rich nations should help a country like Malawi adapt to the impacts of climate change, but he takes the issue further to ask: which adaptation mechanisms, funded by international donors but implemented by community groups and stakeholders, would work the best?
     • no single adaptation measure will be sufficient to bolster Malawi’s adaptive capacity and resilience. Instead, much like the nature of the climate change threat, the country will need a suite of measures that cut across sectors. These include enhanced irrigation, drought cropping, flood protection, early warning systems, tree planting, conservation farming and fertilizer distribution. Also, specific cost–benefit ratios for individual adaptation instruments will change on the basis of their location as well as their timing

Videos 

• Causes and Effects of Climate Change ( 3 min)
  • Greenhouse effect is the main cause by trapping heat in the atmosphere
  • Human activities have dramatically increased the levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere
  • Ice sheets are melting
    • Sea levels rise
  • Weather is more extreme
  • Urban areas trap and increase smog
    • This causes asthma, heart disease, lung cancer, and other diseases
  • Switching to renewable energy sources would slow down this process and decrease the most severe side effects of climate change
• Climate and Environmental Justice (2 min)
  • Movements around the world are rising up to oppose harms to their communities being perpetrated by businesses and capitalism
• Climate Change is a Social Justice Issue | Adriana Laurent | TEDxUBC (15 min)
  • Climate justice is the intersection between social justice and climate change
  • Marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by climate change
  • Wealthy, privileged, low-risk countries are the ones most responsible for the damage to the climate
  • Countries who bear the biggest burden of climate change are those countries least responsible for climate change