Policy Basics: Advancing Racial, Economic, and Health Justice Through Climate Action

What is climate change?

Human activities — primarily the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas — are increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, creating long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts in our climate are causing floods, droughts, heat waves, and severe storms, among other impacts.

We are all experiencing the effects of climate change, but we are not all experiencing them equally.

How are the effects of climate change unequally distributed in the U.S.?

In the U.S., people of color (particularly Black, Latine, and Native American people) and people with low incomes or low wealth are highly exposed to climate risks because of where they live, work, and play and because they have minimal resources, capacity, safety nets, or political power to respond to those risks. Other populations likely to be highly exposed to climate risks with fewer resources to respond include people who are immigrants, those at risk of housing displacement, children and older adults, people experiencing homelessness, outdoor workers, incarcerated people, renters, people with disabilities, and chronically ill or hospitalized people.

These conditions of risk exposure and lack of capacity to respond are due to interlocking discriminatory systems, including racist housing policies, government disinvestment, and economic exploitation. In addition, fossil fuel companies are more likely to locate polluting facilities, such as oil refineries, in low-income communities and communities of color. In the U.S., Cancer Alley — the region between New Orleans and Baton Rouge — is the site of over 200 petrochemical facilities and resulting severe health impacts, including elevated cancer risks, for its predominantly Black residents. The cumulative impacts of pollution and climate hazards lead to significant impairment of people’s health, safety, and quality of life.

As we design and implement our response to climate change, we must center the needs, experiences, and expertise of the people and communities most vulnerable to its impacts. This framework is known as climate justice.

What is climate justice?

Climate justice recognizes that the impacts from fossil fuel infrastructure and climate change disproportionately affect the people and communities that have contributed the least to them; exacerbate existing racial, economic, gender, and other inequities; and inhibit communities from thriving. Climate justice centers the people and communities who are most impacted by the adverse effects of climate change and have the fewest resources to respond by prioritizing meaningful participation of those communities in climate planning and action.

Climate justice provides a framework for connecting actions to mitigate climate change — and to adapt to and recover from climate change impacts ­­­— to racial, economic, and health justice, ensuring that benefits and burdens are equitably distributed. Climate justice also centers the knowledge and lived experience of people and communities most impacted by climate change to design and implement equitable and effective climate action measures, repairing harm and shifting decision-making power to them.

  

What is climate action?

Individuals, communities, businesses, and governments — at the local, state, regional, territorial, national, tribal, and international scale — are taking action to address climate change. The three elements of climate action are:

• Climate change mitigation. Reducing the pollution that causes climate change.
• Climate change adaptation and climate resilience. Adjusting to changing conditions.
• Loss and damage. Mourning and rebuilding in the wake of climate change-fueled disasters.

All elements of climate action require policies and programs at the federal, state, and local level to create and deploy the necessary financial, physical, and social supports.

Three main federal policies support climate action. TheBipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 authorize hundreds of billions of dollars for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience at the federal, tribal, state, and local levels. Federal disaster policy, governed by the Stafford Act, and FEMA funding programs are the primary tool we have for addressing loss and damage needs.

Governments and other actors at all levels of society can design their climate actions with climate justice at their core.

  

The Three Elements of Climate Action

“Climate action” refers to three categories of actions governments, businesses, and individuals can take right now to reduce climate change and its effects on people and the planet.

Climate change mitigation. This refers to slowing down or reversing climate change by reducing climate pollution (i.e., greenhouse gas emissions).

Climate change mitigation actions:

• Increase energy efficiency by replacing the technologies and processes that heat, cool, and run appliances and electronics in homes and buildings, manufacture goods, and power vehicles with those that use less energy.
• Electrify by replacing technologies or processes that use fossil fuels, like internal combustion engines in cars and gas furnaces in homes, with technologies that use electricity as a source of energy, such as electric vehicles and heat pumps.
• Transition to clean energy by replacing technologies or processes that use fossil fuels, like coal- and gas-fired power plants and gas boilers, with technologies that use energy sources that do not produce carbon pollution, such as wind turbines and solar arrays for producing electricity and solar hot water heaters in homes.

Climate change adaption and climate resilience. Despite mitigation efforts, we are experiencing ­— and will continue to experience — unavoidable climate change impacts such as sea level rise, more frequent, stronger storms and floods, and longer, more intense heat waves. Therefore, it is necessary to make changes — such as fortifying and relocating critical assets like water treatment plants and hospitals — in our communities, ecosystems, and economies to reduce harms from climate change.

Adaptation and resilience actions:

• Increase adaptive capacity by ensuring people have the resources — such as knowledge, money, and power — they need to adapt. For example, a state government may offer cash assistance to families with low incomes, or a faith community may organize neighbors to check in on one another when extreme weather strikes.
• Reduce exposure by moving people and things out of harm’s way. For example, a developer may choose to build in areas with less wildfire risk, or the federal government may purchase homes in floodplains and convert the land to open space, like parks.
• Reduce sensitivity by designing neighborhoods and infrastructure so climate impacts are less damaging. For example, a local government may plant more trees in a neighborhood that has little tree cover, so that it doesn’t get as hot during high heat days, or homeowners may install wind-resistant roofs in places with strong coastal storms.

Loss and damage. Despite adaptation and resilience efforts, climate change-fueled disasters are becoming more frequent and severe. Therefore, it is necessary to create systems at the national, state, and local levels that enable people to recover, remember, and rebuild their lives and livelihoods after disaster.

Loss and damage actions:

• Recover and rebuild by ensuring people have the resources they need to recover their mental, emotional, and physical health and rebuild or relocate homes, communities, infrastructure, and economic activities after a disaster.
• Remember by creating time and space for people to grieve and memorialize the people and places they have lost. For example, a community that moves to a safer location may construct a physical memorial to their previous home, or a state government may designate a specific day to remember victims of a particular disaster.
• Redefine by enabling processes for personal and cultural rediscovery and redefinition as people’s homes, livelihoods, and families evolve after loss. For example, the federal government may fund cultural development and expression activities, or a local social services agency may run programs to welcome and integrate migrants into new communities.

How can we advance racial, economic, and health justice through climate action?

Entities — including governments at any level, businesses, and organizations — can advance racial, economic, and health justice through climate action. These entities should:

Address loss and damage from climate change-fueled disasters by ensuring existing economic and health security programs are robust and accessible, and by increasing the size, speed, and racial equity of disaster payments. For example, Medicaid builds in flexibility during disasters and emergencies for states, such as extending federal reporting and submission deadlines, and allowing them to revise their eligibility requirements, enrollment processes, and cost-sharing requirements.

Center those who are most impacted by climate change and have the fewest resources to respond by establishing locally relevant definitions for these populations; creating and applying priorities for climate action policies and programs; and measuring and communicating their impact. For example, Rhode Island has produced health equity metrics and statewide data that agencies and other stakeholders can use to evaluate health outcomes of various programs in communities across the state.

Equitably and sustainably invest in climate action by raising revenue using progressive tax policies from the companies responsible for climate change and wealthy residents, and investing that revenue in communities that are most impacted by climate change and have the fewest resources to respond. For example, Washington’s Climate Commitment Act requires improved air quality in communities disproportionately burdened by pollution. The law directs a minimum of 35 percent of the revenues it collects from auctioning carbon emissions allowances to participating companies to state projects that improve pollution in such communities.

Prioritize climate change mitigation policies and programs that advance energy democracy and economic justice by shifting the corporate, centralized fossil fuel energy system to one that is governed by communities, doesn’t harm the environment, supports local economies, and contributes to health and well-being for all peoples. For example, Virginia’s utility commission sets annual energy efficiency savings targets for Dominion Energy, the private utility company that provides electricity to 2.7 million households, to meet for customers who have low incomes, or are elderly, disabled, or veterans.

Prioritize climate change adaptation and climate resilience actions that protect the health, safety, and well-being of those most vulnerable to climate impacts by ensuring adaptation-specific programs center the needs of vulnerable populations; upgrading and building new climate-resilient infrastructure in places with high concentrations of vulnerable populations; and integrating climate change considerations into policy decisions for the economic and health security programs on which vulnerable populations rely. For example, Colorado is supporting the development of several resilience hubs — trusted, community-managed facilities that provide resources and services during emergency events and year-round — through its Climate Resilience Challenge, which is funded by the state’s Energy and Mineral Impact Assistance Fund Program.