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

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.

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

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

You MEAN James Clyburn, right? He’s the only THEY in this equation.

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.