Read more. If those effects are to be prevented or at least contained, then international cooperation will be required. I think about people who got the worst food, the worst health care, the worst treatment, and then when freed, were given lands that were eventually surrounded by things like petrochemical industries. Carbon Sequestration; Climate Change and Climate Science; Ecosystem Science; Soil … How can we best use our resources and our skills to support the work that you’re doing?” And, we’ve been like, “You know what? More about Beth Gardiner →, Never miss a feature! Read more. We were fighting for racial justice. Discover how climate change is felt through water, the attitudes and politics surrounding climate change, health ramifications, religious and ethical responses, the effects of climate change on the economy, and more. The country has been hit hard by the coronavirus. Climate Change: An Ethical and Equitable Approach Valedictory Remarks by Ernesto Zedillo Yale University, former President of Mexico.Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2009 Excellencies, Dear Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very honored to again be part of this unique forum which has become a guidepost for the analysis and debate of some of the crucial challenges faced by humanity … A just transition looks at the process of how we get there, and so it looks at not just the outcomes, which is something that the environmentalists look at, but it looks at the process — workers’ rights, land use, how people are treated, whether the process of creating materials that take us to a carbon-neutral environment is toxic and whether it affects the host community where it’s being built. In New York, for example, we passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which is aggressive legislation that looks at how you move resources to frontline communities and how you invest in those communities. The report notes that while climate change affects everyone, it does not affect everyone equally. The truth is that the climate justice movement, people of color, indigenous people, have always worked multi-dimensionally because we have to be able to fight on so many different planes. Rejoin the Paris Agreement on Climate Change The president-elect will sign the instrument to rejoin the Paris Agreement. It’s all related. It is as present in matters of the environment as in other aspects of life: Both historical and present-day injustices have left people of color exposed to far greater environmental health hazards than whites. Yale Environment 360 Published at the Yale School of the Environment. Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images. were among the coldest years of the recent millennia in the Northern Hemisphere at the start of one of the coldest decades. In our communities, people are suffering from asthma and upper respiratory disease, and we’ve been fighting for the right to breathe for generations. On U.S. Public Lands, Can Biden Undo What Trump Has Wrought? Now these ships operate by diesel, and so what happens is they park themselves on the waterfront of an environmental justice community and the climate solution becomes an environmental justice problem. But a climate justice activist will be like, “Okay, let’s look at it a little closer and let’s figure out what the process looks like and how we can engage in remediation to make sure we are not only reducing carbon but we’re also reducing co-pollutants, and let’s make sure that the people that are hired are hired locally.” So there are all of these other pieces that are involved in a just transition. In every community there are different things people are doing, everything from putting solar in public housing to community-owned solar cooperatives. Throughout the university, there are faculty, students, and staff fully engaged in analyzing the geophysical forces at play in global warming, developing and testing economic policies and behavioral tools that might reduce carbon emissions, exploring innovative technologies in energy production, carbon dioxide removal and … As co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance, she leads a coalition of more than 70 organizations focused on addressing racial and economic inequities together with climate change. In fact, the American Lung Association gave all eight Connecticut counties an F grade for ozone pollution in its 2019, Monitor current conditions and project trends for Connecticut, Invest in the social determinants of health, Tackle the upstream drivers of climate change and health disparities, Pursue actions that integrate mitigation, adaptation and immediate health benefits, Build the capacity of health professionals and other decision makers to address climate and health, Incorporate climate change into decision making across sectors, Incorporate public health into climate change decision making. Professor Robert Dubrow, M.D., Ph.D., faculty director of the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health, was the report’s co-author. Additionally, ecosystems are so complex that it is difficult for models to include every unforeseen process that is occurring. By Amy Brady | Friday, January 15, 2021. Those are different economies of scale that include not just renewable energy but healthy food and all of the things that people need in order to thrive. When it comes to setting climate change policy, science can only tell us so much. On March 20, 2019, the Rule of Law Clinic filed an amicus brief on behalf of former U.S. diplomats and government officials in City of Oakland v.BP p.l.c., a case currently pending before the Ninth Circuit.The cities of Oakland and San Francisco sued a group of Carbon Majors for the climate change harms caused by their deceptive marketing and promotion of fossil fuels. We hadn’t anticipated the disruption would be something like Covid. The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans have cast stark new light on the racism that remains deeply embedded in U.S. society. We need to start focusing on regenerative economies, creating community cooperatives and different kinds of economic systems that make it possible for people to thrive economically while at the same time taking us off the grid. Who’s doing this and how can we support them?” We’ve had groups of white young people who have contacted us and have said to us, “How can we support you? To achieve these goals requires rapid deployment of zero-carbon electricity—especially solar and wind—and energy efficiency solutions, as well as the electrification of the transportation and building sectors. mark.bradford@yale.edu 203-436-9148. All of that is connected, and I don’t know how people don’t see the connection between the extraction and how black and indigenous people suffered as a result of that and continue to suffer, because all of those decisions were made along that historical continuum, all those decisions also came with Jim Crow. The Yale Climate Change and Health Initiative was created at the Yale School of Public Health in 2015 in response to growing concerns about how climate change was affecting the health of populations in developed and developing countries around the world. These things, to me, are connected. One of the things that we learned is that in order for that to happen, the pieces have to come from Europe and be assembled in New York and they would be coming in these huge container ships. June 9, 2020. There has to be a fundamental change in the culture of these institutions. Interview dates: April 7 – 17, 2020. e360: So how do you have a fight for climate action that is intertwined with a fight for racial justice? People of color. Yeampierre: With the arrival of slavery comes a repurposing of the land, chopping down of trees, disrupting water systems and other ecological systems that comes with supporting the effort to build a capitalist society and to provide resources for the privileged, using the bodies of black people to facilitate that. During 2001 to 2019, of 28 mosquito species found in Connecticut to carry viruses that cause human disease, 10 showed trends of increasing abundance, while three showed trends of decreasing abundance. “Although we are seeing certain climate impacts now, and some future effects are already unavoidable, preventing catastrophic future impacts will require urgent and comprehensive action from local to global to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, which cause climate change,” the report says. Coronavirus Holds Key Lessons on How to Fight Climate Change. Further research suggested that this high-latitude eruption led to pronounced changes in hydroclimate, including colder seasonal temperatures in specific Mediterranean regions during the two-year period following the … Board of Permanent Officers Mark Bradford Professor, Soils and Ecosystem Ecology. Elizabeth Yeampierre: Climate change is the result of a legacy of extraction, of colonialism, of slavery. As co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance, she leads a coalition of more than 70 organizations focused on addressing racial and economic inequities together with climate change. Mosquito abundance is a key factor that influences the capacity of a mosquito to transmit a virus and the rate at which infections spread. Climate proxy records show that 43 and 42 B.C.E. When Eric Garner died [in 2014 from a New York City police officer’s chokehold], and we heard he had asthma, the first thing we said in my house was, “This is an environmental justice issue.”. The communities that are most impacted by Covid, or by pollution, it’s not surprising that they’re the ones that are going to be most impacted by extreme weather events. If you understand that, then you know that climate change is the child of all that destruction, of all of that extraction, of all of those decisions that were made and how those ended up, not just in terms of our freedom and taking away freedom from black people, but hurting us along the way. Demonstrators march in Sunset Park, Brooklyn last September in support of community-led climate justice initiatives. Yale Environment 360: You’ve spoken about the big-picture idea that climate change and racial injustice share the same roots and have to be addressed together, and that there is no climate action that is not also about racial justice. It’s comfortable for people to separate them, because remember that the environmental movement, the conservation movement, a lot of those institutions were built by people who cared about conservation, who cared about wildlife, who cared about trees and open space and wanted those privileges while also living in the city, but didn’t care about black people. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences); Faculty Director, Yale Center on Climate Change and Health, Environmental Health Sciences, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health). “And then I started in my career as a broadcast meteorologist and I started to see things in the data,” he says. Read more. Ultimately, a lead report author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change writes, it comes down to making judgments about what is fair, equitable, and just. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Yeampierre draws a direct line from slavery and the rapacious exploitation of natural resources to current issues of environmental justice. And in turn, climate change can make health problems like asthma and heart disease worse. A residential street alongside a major oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, a city that is more than two-thirds African American and Latino. ALSO ON YALE E360. Yale School of Public Health Climate Change and Health A Public Health Response to a Changing Climate The Yale Center on Climate Change and Health (CCCH) utilizes Yale's multidisciplinary expertise and global reach to train future leaders, provide a comprehensive educational program, and catalyze innovative research, all to address one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century. Energy Equity: Bringing solar power to low-income communities. What are the steps, the policies, that we should be thinking about looking forward? These are the kinds of things that we think about when we’re thinking about a just transition. The report concludes that to protect human health now and in the future, Connecticut decision makers and residents alike must undertake strong action to confront the challenges identified in the report. A climate activist will be like, “Okay, we need offshore wind” — right, that’s it. Let’s do this together.”. The loss of life comes out of a legacy of neglect and racism. Okay, we want renewable energy. In the survey, published Friday by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, 53 … From extinction risk to ocean acidification, from the future of the Amazon to changes in ecosystem services, and from geoengineering to the power of ecosystem restoration, this book captures the … What would you hope the climate movement and the environmental justice movement take away from this moment and apply going forward? With the cooperative, the community actually owns the utility, owns the energy source. Climate Change Science and Solutions; Ecosystem Management and Conservation Specialization; Energy and the Environment Specialization; Environmental Policy Analysis Specialization; Industrial Ecology and Green Chemistry Specialization; People, Equity, and the Environment; Urban Specialization; Water Resource Science and Management Specialization And that’s evident even in the rebuilding. The climate solution is we reduce carbon, but the environmental justice problem is we dump tons of nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides and PM2.5 [particles] into the lungs of the host community. For us, there is no distinction between one and the other. Climate change is not just an environmental issue: it is an ‘everything’ issue. It was only a few years after that I realized that if we couldn’t breathe, we couldn’t fight for justice and that’s how I got into the environmental justice movement. Courses . Seven of Connecticut’s 16 Superfund sites are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including flooding and hurricane storm surge. Climate activists talk about moving at a big, grand scale, and we talk about moving at a local scale, and then replicating those efforts. Climate change also affects many threatened species dependent on tropical forests. Climate change is making coastal storms more intense and extreme precipitation events and coastal and inland flooding more frequent, which may further damage Superfund sites and potentially release contaminants into ground or surface water, the air or the soil. That is the right question. “Importantly, doing so also brings about major public health benefits—or “co-benefits”—in the short term.”. Together, these actions also provide the opportunity to create clean energy jobs and to prioritize investment in environmental justice communities. 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