Falling Through the Climate Gap: Poor Americans will suffer most from global warming

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Falling Through the Climate Gap
Poor Americans will suffer most from global warming.

By Michelle Chen


In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans and laid bare the city’s shame: Deep racial segregation, intertwined with abysmal gaps between rich and poor, had left whole communities to drown in the storm’s grasp. The following summer, nature’s fury struck the opposite side of the country: California neighborhoods were pummeled with a tide of hot air. Continuing a long-term pattern of intensifying regional heat waves, the swelter coincided with a more than ten-fold increase in heat-related hospitalizations and a spike in emergency room visits. Like Katrina, the event was shadowed by class and color. According to a recent state-sponsored study on the public health impacts of climate change in California, the increased risk of death associated with rising temperatures is twice as high for blacks as it is for whites.

From floods to droughts, recent extreme weather events not only reveal the intensifying threat of climate change but also expose underlying social crises.

The intersection of climate and social inequity is often framed in an international context: Pacific Islands sinking into the ocean or ruined farmlands in Eastern Africa. But global warming is also afflicting American society along familiar fault lines of race and income. The poor and people of color—particularly those who have long borne the burden of industrial pollution in their neighborhoods—are on the front lines of global warming.

“The reality is, poor people always lived in the most environmentally vulnerable places—places that were vulnerable before the climate change problem made them worse,” says Elliott Sclar, director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University. “The real problem in this country is we haven’t had a real serious discussion about the social equity issues connected to climate and environment. Sadly, too many people aren’t inclined to engage in that discussion.” ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4553/falling_through_the_climate_gap

[NNadir]

1. Well, it's a good thing that we subsidized the hell out of the Tesla Car Company..

...and not clinics offering pediatric health care in Yuma.

We're sure to make a huge, huge, huge, huge profit on the Tesla car company, because rich people are the only people who matter.

No matter how bad off they get, no matter how high their mortality, we're sure to have lots of minimum wage "Solar Thermal Glass washer" people to help keep our $150,000 ($50,000 subsidized) swell Tesla motor cars running in a guilt free way.

[kristopher]

2. Poor feller...

Just can't accept what nuclear has shown itself to be.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[NNadir]

3. Um, I'm a "poor fellah?"

Which one of us is engaging in just one more day of more than 20,000 days of solar sun worshipping soothsaying, while advancing the proposition that, um, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html">0.080 = 86.253?

People wonder why atheists get so pissed off when confronting cultists.

It's because the cults, all of which thrive on ignorance and denial (when they're not relying on soothsaying) actually cause deaths.

In a given year, more than a million people die from particulates alone, never mind the climate change that the anti-nukes always address with still more soothsaying.

Have a nice happy face day, Kiddie. Don't trouble yourself with opening say, a 5th grade math texts in which equality and inequality are discussed. Clearly you are not interested at all in inequality.

[kristopher]

4. Poor, poor feller...

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[excess_3]

5. the US is not the whole world

these ideas should be tried out on a small scale, first.

how about Germany, or Iceland, or Sudan

[kristopher]

6. What are you talking about?

[excess_3]

7. what are you advocating?

you post some shovelware,
without adding anything of your own.

[kristopher]

8. Another nonsense post?

[Nihil]

9. Psst!

That (a variant of "the US is not the whole world") is one of his
standard cut & paste posts along with
- "Tax on international jet fuel is zero" (one gripe I happen to agree with),
- "just BS from the carbon-offset lobby" (or similar) and
- "cold --> obvious proof of warming" (and associated denier piffle).

:shrug:

[glitch]

10. Meanwhile, back on topic. Thanks for posting K

Eco-justice doesn't get much press but it is a crucial topic, and should become more "mainstream" as more of us find our options limited by poverty.

Maybe as that happens more people will become more familiar with the topic.

One very ambiguous bright side to a dire situation, admittedly.

edit: damn, too late to R.