How do we prepare for a just future when faced with a threat multiplier?
By Elgie Holstein and Felice Stadler
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How do you evacuate from the path of a hurricane when public health officials warn against leaving home? How do you afford high electricity bills during a deadly heatwave when you’ve lost your job? If your home sustains storm damage, how do you afford repairs when facing financial insecurity? With mounting fear and anxiety, these conversations are taking place now in homes across the country. The challenges are greatest for Blacks and Latinos and those who live in low-income and vulnerable communities that disproportionately face the worst impacts of the pandemic and the climate crisis.
This is the threat multiplier scientists have warned us about with climate change; it exacerbates existing socioeconomic conditions and increases their risk.
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By 2050, scientific models project that without action to address climate change, we could see up to 70 more extreme heat days annually in the Southwest, up to six times more acreage burned by wildfires in the West and at least a 45 per cent increase in the frequency of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic basin.
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First and foremost, our leaders must take steps to protect communities — particularly low-income communities and communities of colour that are often on the front lines of the worst climate change impacts — from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the extreme weather events that are happening now. We need to put people to work by investing in pre-disaster mitigation and other projects that will shore up natural infrastructure along our coasts and rivers to lessen costly impacts. And we need to invest in shovel-ready, job-generating projects that will modernize and decarbonize our transportation and power sectors, the largest contributors to climate pollution.
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