Are rising temperatures dramatically effect people of color?

Environmental racism is a concept that often gets overlooked however it’s a big issue that is connected to many aspects of society. One way that you can look at this is through climate change and the demographics of where people live. According to NPR, in a study of 108 urban areas nationwide, the formerly redlined neighborhoods in nearly every city studied were hotter than those not subjected to redlining. The temperature difference in some areas was nearly 13 degrees. There has been a systematic disparity on who is getting affected by climate change the most. If you look at a global level “counties with large African American populations are exposed to extreme temperatures 2 to 3 more days per year than those counties with smaller African American populations.” In the next decades, this trend is only going to increase. If you look at the graph below it shows the different emission paths and the number of unlivable months out of a year a place will experience because of heat. This graph shows the many places that will become unlivable, with the ones most affected being around the equator which in many places has a high percentage of people of color. With temperature increase and the creation of unlivable zones will trigger a series of mass migrations which is both a social and humanitarian crisis that should be important to everyone.

 

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