Biden Climate Watch: The EPA Acknowledges the Disproportionate Impact of Climate Change

It’s been just four years since President Trump chucked paper towels at survivors of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, but the act left an enduring image of the president’s callousness to people suffering in the storm’s aftermath.

With more than 100 environmental rollbacks during his tenure, Trump proved his antipathy toward the planet. With his marked indifference to the people most affected by these regulations — people of color, the elderly, and the poor — he proved himself to be unaffected by the misery of anyone who didn’t resemble him. Both stand as unusually bereft positions, but together, Trump’s ill-will struck at the crucial intersection of the climate crisis and the lack of protection for the world’s most vulnerable people.

Just after President Biden was sworn into office, he signed an executive order that put climate change at the front and center of American priorities. Now underscoring that effort is a conclusive new report from the Environmental Protection Agency that tackles the reality of who suffers most in our environmental mess.

The peer-reviewed paper looked at climate change and social vulnerability in the United States. It found that people of color, low-income workers, and people 65 and over are statistically most affected by heat waves, poor air quality, flooding, and other disasters caused by global warming. Long known to environmental activists, the findings in this official government report amounts to what may be the first real federal acknowledgement of the fact that we are not all equal in the fight for our future.

Among the findings:

• When looking at 49 cities across the country, Black people are 40 to 59 percent more likely to live in places where people are projected to die because of poor air quality caused by climate change.
• Black children are 34 to 40 percent more likely to live in areas riddled with the highest rates of asthma due to air pollution.
• Latinos are 50 percent more likely to live in coastal areas with the highest projected increases in traffic delays from high-tide flooding caused by climate change. Aka, they are the most likely to get caught in traffic snarls while fleeing a hurricane or other disaster. Asians are 23 percent more likely.
• Latinos are 43 percent more likely to lose work because of how the climate-affects “weather-exposed” jobs. Native Americans are 37 percent more likely to lose paid hours.
• Native Americans are 48 percent more likely to live in areas where the highest percentage of land is projected to be flooded because of sea-level rise.

While begun while Trump was in office, the study was elevated by the new administration, which “took ownership of this report,” according to Joe Goffman, the acting head of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. Also, at the end of August, the Department of Health and Human Services established a new office for climate change and health equity.

Still, it remains to be seen what kind of action will follow the findings, although the head of the EPA sounds encouraged.

“This report punctuates the urgency of equitable action on climate change,” Michael S. Regan, the EPA’s administrator, said in a statement. “With this level of science and data, we can more effectively center EPA’s mission on achieving environmental justice for all.”

Read more about how climate disasters kill the most vulnerable.