ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses a key distinction between regional and local environmental/climate impacts and policies. Climate Gap report relates the unequivocal finding that low-income people of color already experience, and will continue to experience, the greatest harm from climate change impacts. Focusing on California, the authors discuss the disproportionate health and economic consequences faced by African American and Latino communities from climate and environmental hazards like heat waves and air pollution. This disparate impact is what they term the "climate gap." The Climate Gap report is a publication of the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) at the University of Southern California (USC). This report analyzes available data on the disparate impacts of climate change and climate change mitigation policies on low socio-economic status (SES) groups in the United States that is relevant to the California context. Climate change will dramatically reduce job opportunities or cause major employment shifts in sectors that predominately employ low-income people of color.
