The Climate Gap and the Color Line — Racial Health Inequities and Climate Change

Abstract

Driven primarily by fossil-fuel use and associated carbon emissions, climate change poses an exis-tential threat to planetary life by transforming physical and social environments through rising sea levels, drought, heat waves, more intense hurricanes and flooding, and disruptions to energy and food production. 1 Current and projected health, environmental, and socioeconomic effects of climate change are well-documented and central to environmental justice because of their disparate effects on marginalized populations. Debates about disparities in the effects of climate change have traditionally focused on their global dimensions-in particular, how formerly colonized countries that are least responsible for greenhouse-gas emissions are the most threatened by the multiple risks of global warming and lack the resources to resist the forces of climate change and survive. 2