Global Warming

Global Warming’s Unequal Impacts

Global warming will not affect everyone equally. As the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the United Nations has stated, “[i]t is the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit.”1 The adverse impacts often will fall hardest on people of color and poor people because they are concentrated in areas that will bear the brunt of climate change, and because they are often the least able financially to deal with its impacts. They are also the ones who are least responsible for climate change.

While industrialized countries account for about 80% of the world’s historic carbon dioxide emissions,2 the poorest nations will suffer the most severe consequences of climate change. Africa will suffer decreases in agricultural production and increased water stress that could impact between 70 to 250 million people by 2020. 3 Asia will see increased flooding due to glacier melt, followed by decreased river flows as glaciers recede. As a result, freshwater availability will decrease for Central, South, East, and South-East Asia, potentially affecting more than a billion people by the 2050's. 4 Those living in Latin America will likely see the productivity of important crops decrease, leading to increased risk of hunger. 5 The native peoples of the polar regions will likely continue to see their traditional ways of life disappear as the ice thins and the permafrost melts. 6 And the world’s thousands of small island dwellers may see their homes destroyed by rising oceans, flooding, storm surges, and coastal erosion.7 [See The Facts About Global Warming.]

Domestically, the adverse impacts of climate change will also hit the poor and people of color harder. Global warming is likely to result in a significant increase in the frequency and severity of heat waves. It will also lead to more unhealthy air and associated asthma and respiratory illnesses, since hotter days lead to more smog. In this country, African-Americans are twice as likely to die in a heat wave 8 and three times more likely to die from asthma than whites. 9 African-American children and low-income children have the highest incidence of asthma in the United States. 10

These disproportionate effects will be experienced in California as well. The state already has the worst smog in the country, 11 and the highest number of people with asthma, an estimated 3.9 million people. 12 Global warming’s impacts also will pose major threats to sectors of the California economy employing large numbers of poor people and people of color -- such as agriculture and tourism– due to crop losses, drought and flooding. 13

The impacts of global warming experienced by minority and poor communities will be exacerbated because these groups are often the least able to adapt. They typically have less access to health care and medical, home, and renter’s insurance; less money to purchase air conditioning or to move away from droughts, floods, and fires caused by global warming; and spend a higher percentage of their income on necessities such as gasoline, water, and electricity, 14 which will become scarcer and more expensive with climate change.

Reducing our global warming emissions will not only reduce the risk of dangerous climate change, but also will provide important co-benefits. For example, actions such as limiting flaring from oil refineries, capturing methane emissions from landfills, reducing unnecessary truck idling, using cleaner burning cars and trucks, building homes near jobs and public transit, and using roofing and pavement materials that reflect more of the sun’s energy back to the atmosphere will also reduce conventional air pollution. Likewise, investments in renewable, clean energy sources and energy efficiency will mean not only reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but also reduced air pollution, fewer worker deaths (the oil, gas and coal industries are among the riskiest of all occupations), lower energy prices, and the creation of millions of new jobs (renewable energy is more labor-intensive than coal and oil production).

  1. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2007/2007-04-06-01.asp (quoting Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.)
  2. http://www.wri.org/climate/project_content_text.cfm?ContentID=1284
  3. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC 4th) (2007), Working Group (WG) II, Summary for Policymakers at 13, http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-spm.pdf#page=13
  4. Id.
  5. IPCC 4th, Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers, at 10-11 (Table SPM.2), http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf#page=10.
  6. Id.
  7. Id.
  8. Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Inc., African Americans and Climate Change: An Unequal Burden (2004) at 21.
  9. Id. at 39
  10. Id.
  11. Redefining Progress, Climate Change in California: Health, Economic and Equity Impacts (2006) at 27.
  12. Id. at 33.
  13. Id. at 84
  14. Congressional Black Caucus supra note 8, at 84.