Urban Air Quality and Climate Change: How Policy and Regulation Can Cool the 'Hot Spots' in Vulnerable Communities

摘要

Communities of color and low income communities are typically faced with disproportionate environmental hazards exposures. Research has shown that the siting of landfills, waste treatment facilities, and other stationary pollution sources are typically located in vulnerable communities that are already impacted by multiple environmental stressors. In addition to these factors, climate change has added a new challenge by increasing community vulnerability. While mechanisms like cap and trade may seem harmless to some, it is important to unpack the potential environmental injustices that can develop from policies that have a goal of mitigation (i.e. reducing greenhouse gases), but could overburden some communities unintentionally. Most recently, legislation has been proposed to again, address mitigation efforts to confront the climate change dilemma. The proposed legislation will not impact carbon producing industries as much as it will impact the communities that deal with the direct and indirect effects of increased emissions of carbon dioxide. Consequently, the purpose of this review is to explain the importance of the use of cumulative risk assessments to better characterize environmental stressors on the health of vulnerable communities through the lens of proposed legislation and policy solutions to reduce GHG emissions.