User:Cameronlg/sandbox

The climate gap refers to a body of data indicating disparities in how climate change impacts various racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups in the United States. The data show that low socioeconomic status groups as well as racial and ethnic minorities will experience more negative health and economic impacts from the results of climate change than other populations in the United States. The term, climate gap, was first used in the May 2009 report, “The Climate Gap: Inequalities in How Climate Change Hurts Americans & How to Close the Gap”, as well as in a concurrent paper published in the journal, Environmental Justice, by Seth B. Shonkoff, Rachel Morello-Frosch and colleagues entitled, "Minding the Climate Gap: Implications of Environmental Health Inequities for Mitigation Policies in California". Climate change effects will create a climate gap by hurting more vulnerable communities through health related complications, job loss, an increase in the cost of basic necessities and an increase in natural disasters that will be difficult if not impossible for low income families to recover from. Modern researchers argue that in order to truly correct for the impacts of climate change, policy makers will need to take regional and local issues into account when drafting policy. It will be necessary to gain information on how climate change will interact with other modern issues, especially regarding economic issues and financial inequity.

Overview
Disparate health impacts of climate change

Extreme weather events, such as heat waves, droughts and floods, are expected to increase in their frequency and intensity in the next hundred years due to climate change. Low socioeconomic status groups and racial and ethnic minorities, especially those living in urban areas, are affected by heat-related illness at greater rates due to factors such as lack of access to air conditioning during heat waves and heavy air pollution days, lack of transportation to get to a hospital or government funded cooling facilities, occupations that require outdoor work such as construction and agricultural jobs. One of the most detrimental effects, though, is the heat-island effect in urban neighborhoods. Heat-islands (LINK) occur when a community has a lot of concrete/asphalt and very little trees to absorb the heat. Without trees and parks, there is little to no dissipation of the heat retained in the concrete. Research has shown that there is a positive correlation between racial and ethnic minorities living in a neighborhood and the proportion of concrete in that area.

Higher temperatures resulting from climate change will also increase chemical interactions between nitrogen oxide, volatile organic gases and sunlight, leading to increased concentrations of ambient ozone in urban areas. Along with particulate matter, ozone is a primary cause of air pollution-related health effects. Low socioeconomic status groups and racial and ethnic minorities in the United States are more likely to live in areas with dangerous levels of air pollution. This pollution will be exacerbated by climate change, and low socioeconomic status groups and racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to lack health insurance, making them increasingly vulnerable to these elevated levels of air pollutants.

One of the largest issues when it comes to the intersection of climate change issues and health issues will be access to care. There are many barriers faced by minorities and low-SES groups when it comes to access to health care, including medical costs, transportation, availability of hospitals, inability to pay for health insurance, and lack of education/information on what to do in certain situations. Populations in rural areas are specifically disadvantaged when it comes to access, as they have significantly less healthcare providers in their area. This is due to the disincentive of healthcare professionals to work in locations that offer lower salaries, less educational and recreational opportunities and significant social isolation from their peers.

Disparate economic impacts of climate change

The proportion of income that low socioeconomic status groups spend on basic necessities such as food, water and energy is already greater than the proportion spent by other populations and is expected to increase as the cost of these necessities increases due to climate change. This effectively places a higher economic burden of rising costs on those least able to pay for it.

Additionally, job sectors that employ predominantly low socioeconomic status groups and racial and ethnic minorities such as the agriculture and tourism industries are projected to experience the most dramatic shifts due to climate change, reducing employment opportunities for these populations.

The rise in temperature and change in precipitation will directly impact tourism and recreation. As rises in temperature begins to shift natural habitats, wildlife tourism and hunting tourism will begin to shift. When end of season snowpack decreases at higher rates, ski seasons will be significantly shortened, directly impacting the rural communities where ski resorts are located. Perhaps the largest change in wildlife tourism will occur with a shift in the health of our forests. The expected impact of climate change is expected to disincentivize investment in forestry management. If this happens, there will be a substantial rise in wildfires, losses in forest recreation and increased costs of wildfire abatement and clean up. Counties living near forests also tend to be rural, and often rely on the funds generated from wildlife tourism to stimulate the economy, making them extremely vulnerable to the effects of wildfires. Finally, if animals and habitats are not able to evolve as quickly as the rise in temperature, it will result in the extinction of local habitats and animals.

While the impact of climate change on tourism will differ greatly dependent on the region, agricultural jobs will be lost across the board. This is because increases in precipitation in some areas and long seasons of drought in others (along with higher temperatures and CO2 concentrations overall) will result in a lower yield, leading to less profit and resulting in layoffs. Moreover, higher temperatures and CO2 levels will benefit weeds over crops, allowing for invasive weed species to expand. To make matters worse, high levels of CO2 render the most widely used herbicide ineffective. When it comes to ranching and farming, there will be higher production costs as a result of lower yields for crops that feed the animals and higher costs in keeping them healthy in higher temperatures. Without proper adaptation or relocation measures, experts argue that the job loss resulting from changes in the agricultural sector will be extremely detrimental.

Also, due to the lack of access to insurance and emergency credit, less savings, fewer personal resources and disproportionate hardships from previous economic stress, low socioeconomic status groups and racial and ethnic minorities are likely to suffer the most pronounced and long-lasting economic impacts from climate change-related extreme weather events such as hurricanes. Unfortunately, the destruction of property will only become more prevalent as extreme weather events increase in severity and frequency. This will directly result in a rise in the cost of disaster insurance, making it prohibitively expensive for low-income families. Moreover, without insurance, it will become difficult if not impossible to recover, forcing many low income families into homelessness. Finally, in order to cover the rising costs of disasters, the government will likely pull funding from education, public transportation and health and social programs.

Rural America and the climate gap

Rural America is more vulnerable than urban communities due to lower income on average, limited professional opportunities, dependency on the government for transfer payments, lack of a robust education system and higher poverty incidence. It is important to note that just as effects will be different among urban/rural communities and low/high income families, effects will differ by region as well. Consequently, experts recommend that policy makers focus on regions and communities instead of abatement as a whole country in order to truly prepare for the impact of climate change.

As mentioned previously, the rural Americans have significantly less access to healthcare than urban Americans. On top of the issue of low numbers of healthcare providers, rural communities also have to pay higher transportation costs and deal with an emergency system that is not as effective thanks to geographic distance. Due to these issues, rural Americans are more likely to experience more severe health issues resulting from climate change.

As climate vulnerability is highly influenced by income level, places like rural America that have low shared of high skilled jobs and low returns on college degrees in the labor market are more susceptible to the effects of climate change. As opposed to their urban counter parts, whose share of transfer payments amounts to 1/8th of income, 1/5th of rural income is dependent on transfer payments. This is important, because if the government can’t keep up with the costs of damage resulting from climate change related disasters, rural locations will be more vulnerable than urban areas as a higher share of their income comes from outside the region.

Experts agree that rural America will need to be considered on a case by case basis, as rise in temperature, precipitation, CO2 levels and natural disasters will have ranging effects depending on location and sector.