***Scroll down for updates***
Have you heard about this? In a 59-page report titled, A Climate of Change: African Americans, Global Warming, and a Just Climate Policy in the U.S. (PDF), the left-leaning Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies tries to make the case that global warming disproportionately impacts black people.
What they ought to say is that climate changes disproportionately impact poor people of all colors, but focusing on blacks, who are more likely to be poor than whites, will generate more attention, not to mention indignation.
I grabbed the bait, and now I’m stuck on the hook. Help!
On Tuesday, liberal Congressman James Clyburn spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to kick off the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, sponsored by the Joint Center. Read all about it and watch the clip. There’s a campaign afoot to encourage blacks to join the global warming debate. And what better way to do it than compile a list of racial disparities supposedly correlated with the changing climate?
From the report (emphasis added):
“African Americans are thirteen percent of the U.S. population and on average emit nearly twenty percent less greenhouse gases than non-Hispanic whites per capita. Though far less responsible for climate change, African Americans are significantly more vulnerable to its effects than non-Hispanic whites. Health, housing, economic well-being, culture, and social stability are harmed from such manifestations of climate change as storms, floods, and climate variability. African Americans are also more vulnerable to higher energy bills, unemployment, recessions caused by global energy price shocks, and a greater economic burden from military operations designed to protect the flow of oil to the U.S.”
Military operations designed to protect the flow of oil to the U.S.? I never heard that before. I have more to say; in fact, 700 words worth. But I want to check your pulse first.
What say you?
Update (8/1): Is summer over yet? Geez! Hate it, hate it, hate it.
I implore the powers that be to stop racializing everything. Says a writer I know: “In the name of ‘climate justice’ and all that is windy, I hope we shall overcome the storm someday.”
Read the rest of Is Climate Change…Racist?, and rest easy this weekend, everybody!
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 28 comments }
James Clyburn?, these are the people that would be advisers to a Barak Obama admin. The american people need a jolt. If by God’s providence BHO is president it will only be for america’s good. The people’s eyes need to be opened to what true evil is. This type of mindset needs to be exposed to all the people. The best way is to give them their 15 mins (4 years) of fame. I have confidence that the american people will reject this ideology and we will be rid of the socialist liberal ideology for a very long time.
Iam sorry I have one thing more to say, This man is supposed to be the 3rd ranking member of the HofR in congress, notice in the video that he is only directing his comments and focus on one and only one group of americans.
These people (one like Clyburn) are so racist or race focused that it defies description. If any member of leadership in congress from any other party had gave a news conference on a issue that is supposed to impact all americans but that member only narrowly focus’ on one group there would be calls for his or her head.
I have real problems with McCain but this ideology that is about to accend to the head of american political leadership is scary. After GWB and then BHO…I don’t know, I just don’t know. The outlook in the near term is bleak but the long term as I said will be for our good if it is the Lord’s will.
BREAKING NEWS!!
SUN HOT!!
BLACKS AND WOMEN HARDEST HIT!!
That’s what I think. Or one thing I think.
“There’s a campaign afoot to encourage blacks to join the global warming debate. And what better way to do it than compile a list of racial disparities supposedly correlated with the changing climate?”
The good news is that non-whites are not really thinking about it all that much, as they shouldn’t. Everything some paternalist (white OR non-white) liberal says doesn’t always result in non-whites mobilizing in one way or another.
And this topic is really only going to result in the typical group of funky people flailing against non-whites on this blog, saying that because of Global Warning now “blacks” are going to be looking for ANOTHER handout because they are VICTIMS of Global Warming and deserve something they didn’t earn, because after all, that’s ALL non-whites do is ask for things they didn’t earn.
This man (Clyburn) can kick rocks, and so can anyone else who would seek to spin this into something about entitlement minded “blacks”. I can promise you that most “blacks” could not care less about Global Warming, much less trying to get a “freebie” out of it.
Looks like a couple of those links are broken..
In a nutshell, the Harper Family is a “black” family that had a $450 house built on Extreme Makeover and they foreclosed on it within a couple of years and no one knows where the money went.
Just Google “Extreme Foreclosure Harper”..
If global warming…. ahh, climate change is bad for the poor, then China has a wonderful opportunity to help its poor by cleaning itself up, that is if we are of the mind that the leaders in China care about their poor. And since everyone is equal there (except the enlightend leaders of course) then they *must* care, don’t you think?
The reality is however that *fighting* so called climate change is what really hurts the poor, not the supposed change itself. That is unless one is of the same mindset as China’s despots and the American left, which is that it is not fair and just for any subject or pesant to escape equal suffering. In which case the fighting of the now evasive warming trend would serve its purpose; a purpose that has nothing to do with the climate, but does have a whole lot to do with their ultimate goal for America.
You want to check my pulse? It’s skyrocketing, and so is my blood pressure!
Three things. No, make that four:
1. Why are Hispanics specifically excluded from this discussion? Would they be worse off than blacks? Would including them take the focus away from “helping” blacks?
2. I learned something new today: “African Americans are thirteen percent of the U.S. population and on average emit nearly twenty percent less greenhouse gases than non-Hispanic whites per capita.”
I had no idea blacks exhale less CO2 than whites. Whaddya know?!?
3. In the video, Clyburn mentioned “new economies.” That’s a frightening term. Considering we have a free-market economy, anything new will have to be less free. Socialism and communism come to mind. Although they’re not new, their proponents aren’t afraid to play fast-and-loose with the truth.
4. From the article:
The report suggested implementing a “fee, tax or allowance auction on polluters,” which was meant to “eliminate the financial burden on low-income and moderate-income households.This would pay for efforts to reduce global warming. Hoerner said that although it would cause product costs to increase, under his policy, the revenue from the “fee, tax, or allowance auction payment” would be redistributed to consumers to offset the higher costs.
Of course, there’d be administrative fees and bureaucratic salaries taken out of the “redistributed” money before it gets to the global warming “victims.” Would the victims get anything at all?
La Shawn, 700 words isn’t nearly enough!
Will you please focus on responding to the post instead of threatening to “send a few people” to comment anonymously on somebody else’s blog? You’re responding to a trackback, not a commenter. If you have something to say to that blogger, say it on his/her blog. – Admin
This is so idiotic! His point is that global warming like everything else will impact poor people harder. I am so sick of these so called leaders making poor and African American synonyms in their research.
I am at a loss for words here. Clyburn can’t be this imbecilic, can he?
Thank you Carter.. and that was actually my point.
All it does it ruffle the feathers of those on the right who believe that everything wrong about being poor and “black” is the fault of the poor and “black”.
Either you’re down with the Global Warming jive, or you’re not. It has nothing to do anyone’s persuasion..
I always thought us blacks had a higher tolerence toward warmer climates.
I bet the study overlooked all the BBQ places in southcentral Los Angeles. You should see (and smell-yum!) all the smoke they put out.
Of course the leftie solution to this is to impose “windfall profits” taxes on oil companies, legislate the purchase of overpriced, underusable “green” products, and promote the use of food products as automotive fuel, causing food prices to skyrocket. What a boon to poor people that is!
And what a boondoggle this all is. I first heard the “we only have 10 years” line, back when I was young and foolish and a liberal feminist environmentalist, in 1967.
1967.
That has to be the longest ten years in history.
They are REALLY going too far; lurching into complete ridiculousness. People aren’t really falling for this stuff, are they?
It’s all racism. Everything. The water. The trees. The grass. The very air. Molecules and atoms. A racist conspiracy from the beginning. Racist … racist … racist!
Global warming is not caused in any significant degree by humans and it’s not happening now anyway.
Jim Clyburn is my congressman and I am not being well represented.
I just wish they would require this test for any proposed global warming remedy.
Will the proposed remedy hurt a Haitian farmer less than it hurts Al Gore? If it can’t pass that test its no good.
AIDS, Global Warming…they just won’t stop coming after us!!
Who is “they”?
You MEAN James Clyburn, right? He’s the only THEY in this equation.
15. Trish “That has to be the longest ten years in history.” Then, “they” told us we were entering the next ice age, but some of the same “theys” later said no, it was global warming, and now the “theys” are clever enough to call it “climate change”; covers all bases. We Humans don’t control the thermostat of God’s creation, and polar bears routinely swim 20 miles or more.
The conflation of “black” and “poor” really disturbs me, and we see it so often in the news and in baloney like this. Yes, I realize there are statistical disparities in economic status between races, but simply making the equation “black” = “poor” is simply untrue — it contributes to stereotypes and does *no one* any good. (I’m so sure the best way to help poor black people improve their standard of living is to tell them they’re poor because they’re black, and, well, since ya’ can’t change that…)
First, you’re right. This report should have said Poor People. Discussing the impacts on subgroups – black, native, urban, etc, would have been very appropriate.
2nd, the topic of getting more black people (in general) and poor black people who are disproportionately impacted by environmental stuff is a laudable mission. One of biggest peeves with “black” action groups is that they only talk about and rally their constituents over “Black Issues”. Social justice Groups like NAACP, NUL, and others completetely overlook important topics like environmental conservation, climate change, etc. They come off as only caring about their issues and not national or global issues. Now that someone has connected the race-related dots to climate change to them, Now they jump into the fray….Social justice is social justice..these topics should be on the fore all of the time.
I’ve posted on this topic before. http://sciedsociety.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-understanding-science-matters.html
It seems only natural that liberals would use blacks as the post childs for yet another one of their special interest causes. Peta used the issue of slavery of blacks to promote how animals were being treated. Gay rights organizations tried to compare their quest for “gay marriage” to that of the “civil rights” movement. Illegal immigration groups have used the black cause of civil rights to push their agenda as well, and now the ecco freaks are pimping how the poor down trodden black folks will be adversely impacted more then any other group.
World Ends: Poor Hardest Hit
#24, I don’t know why you said “laudable” as there is absolutely no virtue in this permutation of the Global Warming message, and even less in the dialog about it.
Dear Mr. Barber:
I am one of the authors of the report “A Climate of Change: African Americans, Global Warming, and a Just Climate Policy in the U.S.” Your account above contains three important inaccuracies.
First, as to your title. we of course never make any such absurd claim. Weather plays no favorites. And yet, anyone who followed the aftermath of Katrina at all knows that the injuries caused by the hurricane fell disproportionately on African-Americans — which we predicted, based on a combination of geographic and social factors, in a previous report issued a year _before_ Katrina occurred.
Second, this is not a report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which had no connection with its production. The JCPES released an unrelated report surveying African-American attitudes on climate change at about the same time. The Climate of Change report was produced by the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, a coalition of 27 U.S. environmental justice, climate justice, religious, policy, and advocacy networks representing millions of individuals who want a just and meaningful climate policy.
Third, although some of the results in the report are driven by income, we have identified a number of areas where the impact of climate change or climate policy on African-Americans differs from the impact on non-Hispanic whites who are matched by income. These include different patterns of energy usage, geographic location, industry of employment, likelihood of being laid off in economic downturns, likelihood of receiving charitable assistance, and level of wealth. In these cases and many others, we have explicitly established that there are racial effects of an importance that is comparable to or greater than the income effect. In a few cases, such as the percentage of the population without insurance, we established a racial difference but did not have the time or resources to untangle racial and income effects.
Two final comments. First, I assure you that nothing would please me more than to “stop racializing everything.” I am, in fact, somewhat puzzled as to why the differences between African-Americans and non-Hispanic whites that are not based on income are so consistent in aggravating harms relating to climate change and climate policy. However, this is the result that emerges from the data — mainly official U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data — and I am not willing to mischaracterize or disguise it. That data shows beyond all reasonable doubt that, regardless of what we might prefer, race remains an important causal factor in distributional issues we analyzed.
And second, to the gentleman above who wanted to know “Why are Hispanics excluded from this discussion?” — our analysis of the data on Hispanic-Americans is not yet complete, but preliminary results suggest that many of the same conclusions will apply, with a handful important differences.
Sincerely,
Andrew Hoerner
Director, Sustainable Economics Program
Redefining Progress
MR Barber? Wow. I really have to change that photo!
Thanks for commenting, Andrew. Since the article I cited called the Commission to Engage African-Americans on Climate Change “a project of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies,” I assumed the Joint Center had something to do with the related report.
So you’re saying the Joint Center has nothing to do with the report, didn’t provide any research/resources, nothing? It does not endorse the report (rhetorical – obviously it does endorse the report) or sponsor the Initiative? If not, I will correct the record.
Dear Ms. Barber–
Thank you for your courteous response. My apologies for the mistaken “Mr.” There was no obvious photo on the blog page to which i responded, and the “Shawn”s in my own life have been male.
I agree that the article to which you refer is confusing, as it puts together two separate reports released by two different organizations on two different days into a single article without a sharp distinction between them. This is all the more confusing as the speech by Congressman James Clyburn appears to refer to both reports at different times. However, the quotation from the article copied below, if carefully read, does establish that the reports and organizations are distinct.
“Clyburn spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to help launch the Commission to Engage African-Americans on Climate Change, a project of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
The launch came on the heels of a separate report by the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (EJCC), which claims African-Americans are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”
Most sincerely,
Andrew
Comments on this entry are closed.