"Equitable Climate Resilience" - What?

 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency is teaming up with cities in 11 states to map "heat equity."


Extreme heat kills more Americans than any other weather event, but not everyone’s risk is the same. Within the same city, some neighborhoods can be up to 20°F hotter than others and, due largely to the practice of historic redlining — discriminatory, race-based lending and housing policies in the 1930s — these hot spots are often home to poorer communities of color.

To learn where action is needed to protect vulnerable populations now and in the future, NOAA’s National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) and partners are launching new community-led campaigns that will map the hottest parts of cities in 11 states across the country this summer. The communities include Albuquerque, New Mexico; Atlanta; New York City; Charleston, South Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Raleigh & Durham, North Carolina; San Diego; San Francisco; and parts of New Jersey, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Virginia.

A heat study conducted in Los Angeles a few years ago recorded the heat disparity between affluent, heavily-treed neighbourhoods and the poorer neighbourhoods of East L.A. where trees and foliage were sparse to non-existent.

On top of climate change, cityscapes worsen extreme heat’s heavy toll. Known as the “urban heat island effect,” paved, dark surfaces, like roads and buildings, absorb and radiate more heat than natural landscapes with trees and grass, driving up local temperatures.

According to a recent nationwide studyoffsite link spurred by past NOAA and partner heat island campaign efforts, neighborhoods subjected to historical redlining typically lack green space and suffer most from urban heat islands. The study found that 94% of formerly redlined areas, which remain mostly lower income communities of color, are exposed to higher temperatures than non-redlined, affluent areas.

This is a universal problem. Impoverished communities, already beset by a host of social and health problems are now reeling from the effects of severe heating.

Comments

  1. At the risk of sounding like a broken record....

    Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry of the Future" is chock full of creative approaches (both state and popular based) for tackling climate change over the next three decades.

    It begins however, with a massive heatwave in 2025. The consequences are so in-equitable, it sparks a take-no-prisoners resistance movement.

    "The Ministry for the Future
    by Kim Stanley Robinson

    Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organization was simple: To advocate for the world's future generations and to protect all living creatures, present and future. It soon became known as the Ministry for the Future, and this is its story.

    From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a vision of climate change unlike any ever imagined.

    Told entirely through fictional eye-witness accounts, The Ministry For The Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, the story of how climate change will affect us all over the decades to come.

    Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.

    It is a novel both immediate and impactful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written. "

    And available at your local library!! ;-)



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It may take an apocalyptic-grade heat wave to spur any real action, NPoV. Governments today have little appetite for pro-active measures.

      Delete
  2. Off-topic:

    Got my first shot today. Got told I have to wait four months for the next one.

    "The fuck?" I wondered. I was pissed.

    Four months. That means another half year of this disaster. Couldn't have Trudeau and Freeland done a little bit more to get all the vaccines Canada ordered a little sooner? Fucking incompetence is what it is. American bootlicking. As they were kissing Biden's feet, maybe they chickened out of asking for more vaccines, and just suggested that maybe he could, y'know, maybe think about Canada in the US' next shipment out?

    The hell's the point of Canada being a sovereign nation if we've got to beg the Americans for needed supplies?

    Shit, if I were PM, I've would've just ordered a pharmacy company to break the patent, and then just in case, sourced any and all necessary components internally.

    The more I learn about why and how vaccines have been done as they have been done, the more incensed I get. Fucking Bill Gates. An evil, evil man. I lay the lives of the millions of victims of this disease at his feet. Countries would have already been producing in-house the AZ vaccine if not for his intervention. It's a crime against humanity!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree with you on Bill Gates but differ on

      * Canada breaking patent laws unilaterally. That's a good way to get cut off from our vaccine supply. Better to fund Cuba's efforts. Canada's sovereignty was last seen at the dawn of the Mulroney era.

      * the timing of dose #2.

      "For many vaccines, a longer interval to the second dose results in higher antibody levels. High antibody levels are associated with longer duration of protection.


      What we know about vaccines in general:
       It generally takes at least 2 weeks to mount an immune response to a vaccine dose.
       For most vaccines, the first dose contributes the most towards short-term protection. Additional
      doses extend protection over the long-termand are often given months or even years apart.
       For most vaccines, antibody levels decline gradually over time and do not suddenly fall below
      protective levels. Even months or years later, another vaccine dose can boost antibodies to higher
      levels.
       For many vaccines, a longer interval to the second dose results in higher antibody levels. High antibody levels are associated with longer duration of protection.
       Generally, vaccine manufacturing companies and national vaccine advisory bodies specify a
      minimum interval between vaccine doses but do not specify maximum intervals. Delay in receipt
      of a scheduled dose does not require restarting a series."

      per BCCDC

      Delete
    2. "Canada breaking patent laws unilaterally. That's a good way to get cut off from our vaccine supply. "

      Ah, yes. Appeasement. It worked so well in the lead-up to WWII. Let's try it again and appease the American neo-liberals and neo-conservatives. Let's, in fact, kiss their feet, and beg them for help instead of building independence from them!

      And it's ridiculous that Cuba has somehow managed to create and produce its own vaccine, and somehow this is something Canada is incapable of doing...? The fuck? Cuba's suffering under American sanctions, and can still better protect its population better than the sycophantic Canadian government can its own society?

      Hell! Canada developed its own vaccine a year ago, but the government ignored this and turned toward the Americans.

      Well, I think it's god damned time to start thumbing our noses at the Americans. We don't need them! Everything Canada needs can be sourced in Canada. If they stop shipments to us, then we in turn stop sending them shit. A little trade war never hurt anyone, and it's good for self-respect.

      The approach Canada has taken in allowing its sovereignty to wane and whither under undue American influence needs to end, and Canada needs to softly reassert its sovereignty in a world of sovereign nations.

      "the timing of dose #2."

      Bullshit! The fuck are you on about! I already know this shit! But the fact of the matter is, until Canada's population of 35 million plus is fully vaccinated, there is no returning to normal!

      And that normal is four fucking months away, at least, due in no small part to Trudeau and Freeland's American fuckery and ass kissing! Half a god damned year away!

      There's no work to be had right now! There's no money! I'm two fucking months away from being homeless, and that's because I've had to beg and scrimp from family who themselves are suffering from less work and pay from the governments of Canada not doing a god-damned thing to help us Canadians! Oh! they're so fucking happy to help American pharmaceutical multinationals but helping ordinary Canadians is beyond the fucking pale for Trudeau and Horgan and the rest!

      Well, they can kiss my fat fucking ass! Fuck them, and fuck you for sticking up for them! They're scum! and so are you for standing up for them. Fuck off!

      Delete
    3. Troy, there's no question that Ottawa, in the form of the current Liberal government, has not served our people well. Trudeau loyalists are ready to cut him some slack - again - but their excuses are hollow.

      I go back to Churchill's observations on emergencies. "Sometimes it is not enough that we do our best. Sometimes we must do what is required." When it comes to the hard issues this prime minister is weak kneed and all too willing to appease. What do we expect? The guy was a drama teacher. He's a pale shadow of his father.

      Yes, four months is too long and yet, on this issue, it seems we're all in the same boat. Yet four months is an admission of failure to maintain Canada's resilience to predictable crises. This goes all the way back to Mulroney. Every prime minister, from Mulroney to Trudeau, has let Canada and Canadians down. I expect we would have been in the same mess had this happened on Chretien's watch or Harper's. It didn't. It happened on Justin Trudeau's watch but the neglect of his predecessors does not absolve him of full responsibility for this fiasco. "The buck stops here" and this time it stops at Justin Trudeau's office.

      Delete
  3. That many vaccines have been produced through public funded research that was passed on to private enterprise who then claim intellectual property rights to the product, is sick!
    As for Bill Gates and his ilk( Jim Patterson comes to mind); those that avoid paying taxes that could have, should have financed research that would benefit mankind offer breadcrumbs from their tables to achieve public adoration of their grandness.
    Yet we fall for these billionaire self promoting ass holes as we once fell for the similar as holes depicted in TV's Lifestyles of the rich and famous..

    TB

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    1. I question how the public mood may evolve as this global emergency drags on, perhaps even worsening. Prime Minister Hesitant has not distinguished himself, especially in the case of the Indian variant. His dithering allowed the virus to reach our shores and spread into our population.

      I wasn't the only one who saw the videos in February, after Modi declared Covid vanquished and lifted restrictions, of massive attendances at Modi rallies and, especially, at religious festivals across India. Crowds, in their tens and hundreds of thousands abandoned masks, distancing and other precautions to create what must have been the biggest super-spreader events in the world.

      Why wasn't Ottawa paying attention? This was a slow-motion train wreck. They saw or ought to have seen what was coming and prepared to act promptly when it did. Theirs was an inexcusable failure - except in the minds of Trudeau's fan boys.

      This government has demonstrated the very real limits of its competence. Sadly, the alternatives are just as miserable or worse. Canada is at peril from what must be the worst leadership vacuum, certainly of the postwar era.

      Delete
  4. With Trudeau it's the ethnic vote.
    Worldwide most politicians are playing politics with the virus.
    Like the Americans Canadians are becoming partisan political animals.

    TB

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    1. If there's a silver lining in this global fiasco, TB, it might be that populists such as Modi and Bolsonaro are turning the public against themselves.

      Delete
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