Racial Disparities Amongst Youth in the US Prison Systems

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There is a huge disparity in the disproportionate amount of African Americans that are incarcerated each year in the United States. This has been a long withstanding issue in America, but the issue itself has gained a lot of media attention, especially in recent years, due to current events that have taken place within the past five years or so. The staggering gap between racial identities that face imprisonment is alarming, and when applied with qualitative data, it becomes even more appalling.

This post is from the Census Bureau, and is as recent as 2019. It is a comparison between the percent that youth under that age of 18 from different racial demographics make up in the larger population compared with their respective incarceration rates. White youth make up approximately 72% of the population living in the United States (under the age of 18), and are 62% of juvenile imprisonments. There is a 10% buffer there. Hispanic youth/youth of other races account for around a quarter of the population under the age of 18, and make up 23% of juvenile imprisonments. Comparatively, black youth make up just 15% of their age pool, but are a whopping 35% percent of underage imprisonments/arrests. They account for 20% more of imprisonments than they do in comparison to their percentage of the populationThis is a staggering statistic, and speaks to the immense issue that is present with respect to racial disparities and the prison system. And this is just in regards to kids under the age of 18.

Sources cited:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/

Hospitalizations among different socioeconomic classes

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Hospitalization has a solid connection to one’s socioeconomic status. Typically lower-class individuals are hospitalized more since preventative treatments are less available. This also translates to healthcare. Many non-salary jobs do not provide benefits such as healthcare which means one is on their own. Not having healthcare severely limits medical treatments. The attached collum graph shows the “number of potentially preventable hospitalizations” (CDC). The dark blue indicates the expected hosl[pitalizations which are equal amongst all classes. However, the excess hospitalizations (light blue) increase amongst the lower classes. This would suggest that the lack of healthcare and preventative treatments results in excess hospitalizations.

ESG Scores

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I had never heard of an ESG score in my life. An ESG score stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance score. These are ratings that measure a company’s exposure to environmental, social, and governance risks. These risks include worker safety, energy efficiency, and board independence and all of these have financial implications. ESG scores/ratings can influence investors and may sway them for or against a specific company. What is interesting is that recent studies are showing that a 10 percent increase in corporate disclosure is associated with a 1.3 to 2 percent increase in ESG score variation among major ratings providers, which all interpret and process disclosures differently. More importantly, they are showing that the more information a company discloses about its ESG practices, the more rating agencies disagree on how well that company is performing along these dimensions. By being transparent about their ESG scores, companies are actually disadvantaging themselves! This seems contradictory but that is why the latest research is shocking. These companies have a lot to lose with more than $30 trillion in sustainable investment capital on the line…Investors are dumping massive savings into companies they believe will help provide sustainable futures, so if their transparency is allowing the rating agencies to hurt the company, then the investors will hurt financially as well. If these investors pull out on their investments, many promising companies looking to change the world by preaching sustainability may go out of existence. This newest research raises questions on the effectiveness of the rating system and if the rating agencies need further regulation. I think most people would agree that all companies and corporations in the United States need some oversight to make sure they are not harming the environment, but maybe the rating agencies need additional oversight as well.

Electric Vehicles; a deeper look!

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The man that we all know, who just recently bought Twitter, Elon Musk, has paved a positive progression of sustainable growth with the success Tesla has found and its push for others to drive sustainable with electric vehicles. There is a lot more to electric vehicles than what many may assume. Yes, of course you are not using gas which we all know comes at a great expense and produces negative exhaust into our atmosphere but there are tons of trickle down effects too that EV cars are preventing. The carbon footprint of EV cars is much smaller than gas powered and this also applies to buses and other forms of transportation that are going electric. As we see in many charts and graphs, the largest carbon footprints come from transportation. With EV trucks, as well as cars, it is not just individual human transportation that can create a smaller carbon footprint. The transportation of goods in larger trucks is a huge beneficiary of promoting shrinkage of our carbon footprint. There are currently 14 states that have adapted California’s zero emission vehicle standards which is to make the pledge of gaining a certain percentage of residents to be driving EV in the following years. Today, less than 1% of cars on the road today are electric but with the following of these standards the goal is to reach 13% by 2035. By 2050, roughly 60% of new care sales are projected to be electric which is an unreal trend for shrinking our carbon footprint!

 

https://earthjustice.org/features/electric-vehicles-explainer?gclid=Cj0KCQjw06OTBhC_ARIsAAU1yOXrUfiOw95G56jAX46vwnxy1EZH959AqxzRxyVtKFjtaTtx0TlxPJYaAsllEALw_wcB

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/10/climate/electric-vehicle-fleet-turnover.html

U.S. Health Care Affordability in 2020

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This article looks at health insurance coverage for adults in America during the first half of 2020. This article presents results from the Commonwealth Fund’s latest Biennial Health Insurance Survey, which assesses the extent and quality of coverage for U.S. working-age adults. The survey began in 2001 and has three measures to gauge the adequacy of insurance coverage. The first is whether or not people have insurance. The second is if they have insurance and whether they experienced a gap in coverage in the prior year. The third is whether high out-of-pocket costs and deductibles are causing them to be underinsured, despite having continuous coverage throughout the year.

The survey for this article began in January of 2020. A nationally representative sample of 4,272 adults ages 19 to 64 was interviewed about their health insurance coverage through June 5.

The article gives important highlights of the survey, explains who is underinsured, and gives a graph that shows the percentage change of people that are underinsured over ten years.

The article goes on to present many graphs that present the percentage of ethnic groups who are uninsured, the change over time of adults in employer plans that are underinsured, change over time of the percentage of adults with a share of private insurance with deductibles of $1,000 or more, the percentage of people with inadequate insurance coverage that have more problems paying medical bills, the percentage of medical debt that leaves people with lingering financial problems, the percentage of uninsured or underinsured adults who often avoid or delay getting needed health care and medications, the percentage of people with higher deductibles who report financial problems more frequently because of medical bills or delaying care because of cost, then finally the percentage of adults who look for but do not buy plans in the individual market or marketplaces cite because of affordability.

The article concludes by explaining how the study was conducted.

This article and information relate to Social Injustice by showing the high uninsured rates of ethnic groups. The uninsured rates of black and Latino people are much higher than the uninsured rate of white people.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/aug/looming-crisis-health-coverage-2020-biennial

 

 

Giant Iceberg Floats by Newfoundland

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In 2017, a massive iceberg drifted past a town in Newfoundland at a whopping 15 stories above the water. This number is especially large when taking into consideration that the tip of the iceberg is only 10% of the entire mass of the iceberg. It’s not uncommon for icebergs to float by Canadian shores, but lately more and bigger icebergs have made their way south, calving off of Greenland. This is concerning, as a rise in temperatures (in part due to rising green house gas emissions) means that glaciers are shrinking. With glaciers melting and calving off more and more icebergs, the sea level is set to rise as well, meaning that icebergs won’t be floating past Canadian shores, they’ll be floating over them. Also concerning is the inconsistencies in how many icebergs calve annually, with 1,546 icebergs clogging shipping lanes in 2014 (one of the top 6 most severe cases in over 100 years), and only 687 icebergs 2 years later in 2016. GHG have real effects, and more needs to be done to reduce them.

 

https://www.livescience.com/58783-huge-icebergs-drift-by-canadian-village.html

Sustainable Energy creating JOBS!

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Sustainable/renewable energy is a fairly new infrastructure and is still being implemented on small scale. However, renewable energy is the industry of the future. Within New York State alone they are planning on using “Clean Energy and Offshore Wind, Projects Are Expected to Reduce the City’s Fossil Fuel Use for Electricity by More Than 80 Percent in 2030”. Through these many projects, there is a demand for labor where it is proposed that these projects are expected to directly create more jobs. According to the 2019 Clean Energy Report (2019), New York State has already created 160,000 clean energy jobs and has been increasing since. With a 10% growth in the industry from 2016 to 2019. This shows the opportunity that installing clean energy in our communities will have on improving job growth and together improving our communities economically and environmentally.

 

                                                

 

https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/About/Newsroom/2021-Announcements/2021-11-30-Clean-Path-NY-Champlain-Hudson-Power-Express-Renewable-Energy

 

 

LEDS to save Electricity!

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Something I have never really taken into consideration before was how often I personally don’t think about light usage.  My dorm room has almost all LED lights, but I personally bought them for convenience in college, I didn’t really think about it in environmentally friendly terms.  With doing some research I found that about 5% of LED light’s energy is converted into heat while 95% is converted into light.  They also use a LOT less power than a typical fluorescent light, using a 36 watt vs a fluorescent’s 84 watt light.  By replacing fluorescent lights in your house, that brings down the emission of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere as well as reduces the demand of power plants.  Since it is unlikely that everyone will transition to LED lights within the next 5 years, a smaller goal when it comes to energy consumption is to turn off the lights when exiting a room or not having them on at all when it is not needed, for instance in the broad daylight.  A lot of the time fluorescent lights will also have toxic substances within the light bulb such as mercury.  When it comes to LED lights, they contain no toxic substances, have fewer lights needed to achieve the same level of brightness as fluorescent and incandescent lights, and have a longer lifespan, which leads to less carbon emissions (and the less likely you’ll have to replace the lights, so you’ll spend less money.  As someone who likes to decorate, and have those twinkly lights in my dorm room that many other college students my age have, it’s a lot more cost efficient and better for the environment to have compared to other options when it comes to light.  Go out and buy yourself a strip of those color changing LED lights to “spice up” your room!

resources:

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/study-environmental-benefits-leds-greater-cfls

https://www.sepco-solarlighting.com/blog/the-advantages-of-led-lights-for-the-environment

 

Fast Fashion and It’s Consequences

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Many companies involved in fast fashion and unsustainable practices use outdated and less eco-friendly processes to produce their goods. A a result of these outdated manufacturing practices, the carbon footprint of many clothing brands are alarmingly high. Fast fashion caters to increasingly high levels of supply and demand, so the products are over produced, and then retailers buy them at exceedingly high prices. Whatever is left over are usually disposed of unethically, rather than being donated or up-cycled. Brands like Aerie, She-in, and the like are some of the biggest contributors to this issue. However, there are viable, and fun alternative solutions to this issue that not only are sustainable, they’re also very much within current fashion trends and practices. As mentioned earlier, up cycling is not only an alternative option, it’s also affordable. Thrifting is also a popular alternative, and it’s also way more affordable than buying at full price in-store. Savers, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army are all large and fairly well known companies that utilize thrifting practices. There are several benefits to thrifting and buying clothes which include, but are not limited too, lesser levels of air pollution, less waste production, and healthier oceans. It turns out that polyester, which is used in many fabrics, doesn’t decompose in water, and instead just adds to the pollution of our oceans. Strikingly enough, people throw away 60-80 pounds, on average, of unwanted clothing over the course of their lifetimes. The fashion industry also contributes to ~10% of global carbon emissions. So, it is not unfair to state that thrifting is, in fact, good for the environment, and it’s also wicked fun.

 

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/01/31/sustainability-in-fast-fashion-how-tech-can-minimize-waste/?sh=2f5be76331e6

https://www.swiftfit.net/blog/sustainable-thrift-shopping

Food Waste: A Major Problem

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Often when we throw out leftovers, or walk through a grocery store with many unsold items set to expire the next day, we don’t think anything of it.  To many people, food waste is just another part of life; however, it is actually a major problem which is growing every year.  Wasted food is defined as food not used for its intended purpose; common examples include uneaten prepared food and plate waste.  While some uneaten food is donated to feed people, much of it ends up in landfills.  The amount of food wasted each year is great, as according to the EPA, “ about 63 million tons of wasted food were generated in the commercial, institutional, and residential sectors, with about 32 percent being managed by animal feed, bio-based materials/biochemical processing, codigestion/anaerobic digestion, composting, donation, land application, and sewer/wastewater treatment” in 2018.  So, just how much food is 63 million tons? According to an estimate from The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2011, about ⅓ of all food produced for human consumption is wasted.  Food waste is a large global issue and continues to be pervasive to today.

In order to combat the issue of food waste, there are some methods that can be employed in our day-to-day lives.  For instance, to help quell food waste at home, you can pay extra attention to what you buy in the grocery store; do not buy in bulk unless you know you can consume all of the items before they go bad.  Learn how to store produce correctly, so it lasts longer and less food has to be thrown away. Plan what you are going to eat during the week before you go shopping, so none of your food goes to waste.  If we all try to employ these habits in our daily lives and are a little more conscious when it comes to food waste, we can help to minimize a major sustainability issue.

 

https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/sustainable-management-food-basics

https://www.epa.gov/recycle/preventing-wasted-food-home