Citizen Cartwright

AP: Racial health disparities harming African Americans

"From birth to death, Black Americans fare worse in measures of health compared to their white counterparts. They have higher rates of infant and maternal mortality, higher incidence of asthma during childhood, more difficulty treating mental illness as teens, and higher rates of high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease and other illness as adults,” says The Associated Press, which spent a year examining the issue.

 

Key takeaways:

 

— African American women have the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States, almost three times the rate for white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And African American babies are more likely to die, and far more likely to be born prematurely, setting the stage for health issues that can follow them throughout their lives.

 

Multiple factors contribute to these disparities, according to the CDC and advocacy groups, such as underlying health conditions. But more doctors and experts point to the role of structural racism that's created inequitable access to health care, implicit bias and discriminatory care.

 

— More than 12 percent of African American children nationwide have asthma, compared with 5 percent of white children.

 

With asthma, especially for children, where you live makes all the difference, says AP. And where you live often depends on your race. 

 

Across America, nearly 4 in 10 African American children live in areas with poor environmental and health conditions compared to 1 in 10 white children, AP says.

 

– The United States has a shortage of mental health providers who understand the roles that racial identity and racism play in shaping young African Americans' mental health. Between 1991 and 2019, African American adolescents had the highest increase of any group in suicide attempts, at nearly 80 percent.

 

— About 56 percent of African American adults have high blood pressure, compared to 48 percent of white adults. 

 

Only 32 percent of white adults with high blood pressure have their condition under control with medication, but the level for African Americans is even lower, at 25 percent.

 

Among white people, the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and disease is projected to decrease over time, says AP. Yet significant increases are projected among people of color, especially African Americans and Latinos.

 

— About 14 percent of African Americans over the age of 65 have Alzheimer’s, compared with 10 percent of white Americans, according to the CDC. The trauma of experiencing racism is believed to be a contributing factor, AP says.

On Bike to Work Day, celebrating personal, eco health

Friday is Bike to Work Day, a part of National Bike Month promoting the benefits of cycling for our personal health and the global environment.

 

The Associated Press is highlighting what cities are doing to promote cycling.

 

In Washington, D.C., for example, in 2001, cyclists had three miles of (unprotected) bicycle lanes. By 2019, the network exceeded 100 miles, and cycling as a share of all travel in the city increased fivefold. In 2020 and 2021, the city built nearly 20 miles of protected lanes to be safer than merely marked lanes on streets shared with cars.

 

A study of 20 cities that expanded cycling infrastructure in the Americas, Europe and Australia in recent decades shows that ridership surged while cyclist fatalities and serious injuries dropped.

 

In D.C., cycling increased 435 percent between 2000 and 2017, and cyclists’ fatalities and serious injuries dropped 54 percent, according to global urban planning researchers Ralph Buehler of Virginia Tech and John Bucher of Rutgers University.

Biden administration seeks to speed transition to electric vehicles

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed "the nation’s most ambitious climate regulations to date," two plans designed to ensure two-thirds of new passenger cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States are all-electric by 2032, says The New York Times.

"The new rules would require nothing short of a revolution in the U.S. auto industry, a moment in some ways as significant as the June morning in 1896 when Henry Ford took his 'horseless carriage' for a test run and changed American life and industry,” the Times says.

If the two rules are finalized as proposed, "they would put the world’s largest economy on track to slash its planet-warming emissions at the pace that scientists say is required of all nations in order to avert the most devastating impacts of climate change,” the Times says.

"The government’s challenge to automakers is monumental,” says the Times. "Last year, all-electric vehicles accounted for just 5.8 percent of new cars sold in the United States. All-electric trucks were even more rare, making up fewer than 2 percent of new heavy trucks sold.”

 

EPA’s proposal follows even more aggressive moves by California regulators, who last year banned new gasoline-powered car sales by 2035, and Japan, which has said it plans to stop the sale of such vehicles in the middle of next decade, says The Wall Street Journal. The European Union also is debating a measure to effectively prohibit sales of vehicles with internal combustion engines at about that time.

 

The proposed tailpipe pollution limits don’t require that a specific number of electric vehicles be sold every year but instead mandate limits on greenhouse gas emissions, says The Associated Press. Depending on how automakers comply, EPA projects that at least 60 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the United States would be electric by 2030 and up to 67 percent by 2032.

 

For slightly larger, medium-duty trucks, EPA projects that 46 percent of new vehicle sales would be EVs in 2032.

 

EPA Administrator Michael Regan says the proposal has “the strongest-ever federal pollution standards for both cars and trucks.″ 

 

The proposed standards for light-duty cars and trucks are projected to result in a 56 percent reduction in projected greenhouse gas emissions compared with existing standards for model year 2026, EPA says. The proposals would improve air quality for communities across the country, avoiding nearly 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2055, more than twice the total U.S. CO2 emissions last year, EPA says.

 

Transportation is the biggest source of carbon emissions in the United States, accounting for about 27 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, according to EPA. Electric power generates the second biggest share of greenhouse gas emissions, at 25 percent.

 

Automakers and environmentalists say the administration is moving quickly to finalize new rules by early 2024 to make it much harder for a future Congress or president to reverse them, Reuters reports. President Trump rolled back tough emissions limits through 2025 set under President Obama, but the Biden administration reversed the rollback.

 

To help spur the transition, the federal government is planning to spend $7.5 billion to expand the EV charging network as part of the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed in 2021. And next week, it plans to issue criteria for tax credits of up to $7,500 for consumers who buy qualified EVs, funded by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

 

EPA estimates that net benefits through 2055 from the proposal range from $850 billion to $1.6 trillion. By 2032, the proposal would cost about $1,200 per vehicle per manufacturer but save an owner more than $9,000 on average on fuel, maintenance, and repair costs over an eight-year period.

 

John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation representing General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota and others, says, "Factors outside the vehicle, like charging infrastructure, supply chains, grid resiliency, the availability of low carbon fuels and critical minerals will determine whether EPA standards at these levels are achievable.”

 

Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign, says EPA's proposal should have been tougher.

 

The proposed regulations surely will face legal challenges from those who see them as government overreach, says the Times.

Good news on global population, health, climate solutions

Let’s end the week with good news from Future Crunch.

— The nonprofit Club of Rome has published a follow-up to its seminal 1972 Limits to Growth study, saying its long-feared "population bomb" may never go off. 

Global population will peak at 8.6 billion in 2050 and decline to 7 billion by 2100 if current trends continue, the group estimates. 

— Tuberculosis deaths in Africa dropped 26 percent between 2015 and 2021, the World Health Organization says. 

“African countries have made remarkable progress against TB. The question is no longer about whether we can end TB, but how fast we must act to reduce the disease burden, save lives and maintain a high momentum towards a TB-free world,” says Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.

— "Bangladesh isn't just ground zero for climate disaster,” says Future Crunch. "It's also a hotspot for solutions, where a mix of technology and community have resulted in cyclone-related mortality declining more than 1,000-fold in the past 40 years.”

"I tell my American friends, 'You should send your skeptics to Bangladesh! The awareness of climate change here is the highest in the world,'“ says Saleemul Huq, director of the Bangladesh-based International Center for Climate Change and Development. "But we have gone through the doom and gloom phase. That's yesterday's news in Bangladesh."

Cleaning up our 'space junk'

More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris, or “space junk,” were being tracked by the Defense Department as of 2021, NASA says. 

And much more debris — too small to be tracked, but big enough to threaten human spaceflight and robotic missions — exists in the near-Earth space environment, according to NASA.  Since both the debris and spacecraft are traveling at about 15,700 miles an hour in low Earth orbit, an impact of even a tiny piece of orbital debris with a spacecraft could create big problems.

And the United States granted Amazon authorization in early February to launch more than 3,000 satellites, says The Christian Science Monitor.

Starlink, a satellite-based broadband service rolled out by SpaceX, already has put about 3,500 satellites into orbit, CSM says.

The International Space Station has had to take evasive action more than 30 times in its 24-year history, says CSM. And falling debris has the potential to affect us humans on Earth. But right now, the most frequent risks are to satellites.

To address the threats, there are companies seeking to remove objects in orbit that are no longer functional – a process known as active debris removal. Concepts include the space equivalent of a net, magnet or harpoon.

And the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, an international forum of space agencies, has put together guidelines that all satellites in low Earth orbit should be removed from that orbit within 25 years of end of mission – a number the United States recently unilaterally reduced to five years. 

How the climate movement has matured, gotten action

Last, year, the United States enacted its biggest-ever investment to combat climate change: $369 billion.

And since last summer when the legislation's tax incentives became law, companies have invested nearly $200 billion in 126 clean energy projects in 33 states, says a Politico special report. 

But getting to this point took a change in public attitudes spurred by an equally dramatic change in strategy from the environmental movement; a mobilization of green groups, their donors, activists and elected officials; better policy; and a firmer grasp of what it would take to win in Washington, Politico says.

Doomsday warnings and punitive aspects of taxing carbon had choked off public support for action, Politico says.

Thus the current focus on the benefits of a climate program centered around green industrial policy: “Lowering utility bills, creating American jobs, leading the world to a clean energy future,” as President Biden puts it.

Mother Nature also has been an effective lobbyist, focusing policymakers’ minds on extreme weather events.

Speaking of which, an Associated Press article cites experts saying America’s geography means it gets hit by stronger, costlier, more varied and frequent extreme weather than anywhere else on the planet. Two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream combine to naturally create the nastiest weather.

‘Epic’ win for climate justice at UN

The countries of the United Nations led by the island nation of Vanuatu adopted on Wednesday what they say is a historic resolution calling for the U.N.’s highest court to strengthen countries’ obligations to curb climate change.

Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau says the consensus vote at the General Assembly, co-sponsored by about 130 nations, is “a win for climate justice of epic proportions.” 

The United States did not support the resolution. "We believe that diplomacy – not an international judicial process – is the most effective path forward for advancing global efforts to tackle the climate crisis," says a senior Biden administration official.

Vanuatu, in the south Pacific, has been slammed by powerful climate-fueled cyclones, including two this month that have left 10 percent of its population in evacuation centers.

Pacific island law students are celebrating the vote, four years after they suggested the resolution to Vanuatu officials.

Bangladesh's foreign secretary calls the resolution's passage a "defining moment" that can help bridge the gap between climate finance promises made to vulnerable countries and what's delivered.

It could take the International Court of Justice about 18 months to issue an advisory opinion that could clarify financial obligations countries have on climate change; help them revise and enhance national climate plans submitted to the Paris Agreement; and strengthen domestic policies and legislation, Reuters says.

Amid 'boom times for doom times,' what the latest climate report actually says

The Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its latest report on Monday.

Also on Monday, Vox ran “Against doomerism.” 

“Pessimism is understandable given the chaotic state of the world as we see it presented to us,” says Vox. "But it badly understates both the amazing material and political progress humanity has made over the past couple of centuries, and especially in the last few decades; and the realistic hope we should have for a future that won’t simply continue, but continue to get better.”

Let’s look at what the IPCC itself says in its latest report on what we humans need to do about climate change. 

The IPCC press release headline is "Urgent climate action can secure a liveable future for all.”

It begins: "There are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human-caused climate change, and they are available now, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released today.
 
“'Mainstreaming effective and equitable climate action will not only reduce losses and damages for nature and people, it will also provide wider benefits,'” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. 'This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.”’

"In 2018, IPCC highlighted the unprecedented scale of the challenge required to keep warming to 1.5°C. Five years later, that challenge has become even greater due to a continued increase in greenhouse gas emissions.  The pace and scale of what has been done so far, and current plans, are insufficient to tackle climate change. 

"More than a century of burning fossil fuels as well as unequal and unsustainable energy and land use has led to global warming of 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels. This has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world. 

"Every increment of warming results in rapidly escalating hazards. More intense heatwaves, heavier rainfall and other weather extremes further increase risks for human health and ecosystems. In every region, people are dying from extreme heat. Climate-driven food and water insecurity is expected to increase with increased warming. When the risks combine with other adverse events, such as pandemics or conflicts, they become even more difficult to manage.

"In this decade, accelerated action to adapt to climate change is essential to close the gap between existing adaptation and what is needed. Meanwhile, keeping warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels requires deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors. Emissions should be decreasing by now and will need to be cut by almost half by 2030, if warming is to be limited to 1.5°C. 

"The solution lies in climate resilient development. This involves integrating measures to adapt to climate change with actions to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in ways that provide wider benefits.

"For example: access to clean energy and technologies improves health, especially for women and children; low-carbon electrification, walking, cycling and public transport enhance air quality, improve health, employment opportunities and deliver equity. The economic benefits for people’s health from air quality improvements alone would be roughly the same, or possibly even larger than the costs of reducing or avoiding emissions.

"Climate resilient development becomes progressively more challenging with every increment of warming. This is why the choices made in the next few years will play a critical role in deciding our future and that of generations to come.

"There is sufficient global capital to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions if existing barriers are reduced. Increasing finance to climate investments is important to achieve global climate goals. Governments, through public funding and clear signals to investors, are key in reducing these barriers. Investors, central banks and financial regulators can also play their part.

"There are tried and tested policy measures that can work to achieve deep emissions reductions and climate resilience if they are scaled up and applied more widely. Political commitment, coordinated policies, international cooperation, ecosystem stewardship and inclusive governance are all important for effective and equitable climate action.”

We can do it. Let’s.

Agreement reached on treaty to protect the oceans

For the first time and after discussions over 20 years, United Nations member countries agreed Saturday on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas.

 

The U.N. Law of the Sea treaty has been in place since 1994, but it was put together before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept, says The Associated Press.

 

An updated framework to protect marine life in the high seas — regions outside national boundary waters — applies to nearly half the planet’s surface.

 

The next major step is for countries to formally adopt the language that was agreed to on Saturday. Then nations need to ratify the treaty itself, which often requires legislative approval.

 

The high seas have “probably the largest reserve of undiscovered biodiversity left on Earth,” says Lisa Speer, director of the international oceans program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

 

Human well-being is at stake, too, scientists say, because the health of the high seas is essential to the health of the overall ocean. Billions of people around the world depend on the oceans for food and jobs, according to the World Bank.

The oceans, which regulate climate across the planet, have blunted the effects of climate change on land by absorbing carbon dioxide and excess heat caused by burning fossil fuels. But that’s taking its toll on the oceans, making them hotter and more acidic, with less oxygen, says The New York Times.

 

If ratified, the new treaty would create an international framework able to, among other things, designate marine protected areas, places where fishing and other activities that harm marine life are restricted or prohibited.

More good news, from Future Crunch

The Australian group’s latest roundup of good news around the world includes:

 

— Increased funding for India’s free health care program serving 500 million people

 

— A study finding that fears during the pandemic that a drop in U.S. cancer screenings would lead to a rise in diagnoses aren’t being realized.

 

— UN negotiators are meeting in New York this week to create a treaty to conserve marine life in international waters. If adopted, the legally binding treaty would outline measures to protect global ocean health, promote climate resilience as well as safeguard food security for people around the world, Future Crunch says.