9. Climate Change and Basic Living

The growing climate change problem means that people of color and low income communities will soon have to pay more for basic necessities.

According to The Climate Gap: Inequalities in How Climate Change Hurts Americans & How to Close the Gap, a report released last year by the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at the University of Southern California, the growing climate change problem means that people of color and low income communities will soon have to pay more for basic necessities. As it stands, low-income and minority families already spend as much as 25 percent of their entire income on just food, electricity and water, which is higher than what most whites spend. There have been recent efforts by activists to lower some of these costs by installing compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) in homes in many high risk communities. These bulbs are designed to fight environmental pollution by reducing electricity use by 75 percent and lasting an average of 10 years. A 25-watt CFL can create as much light as a 100-watt incandescent bulb.

10. Heat in the City

Since most people of color live in inner cities, they are twice as likely to die in a heat wave, and suffer from more heat-related stress and illnesses.

Many recent studies show that climate change will increase heat-related deaths in urban areas in the next few years. Cities tend to be on average 10 degrees warmer than suburban areas. Since most people of color live in inner cities, they are twice as likely to die in a heat wave, and suffer from more heat-related stress and illnesses. Nationally, there have been discussions by policy makers and activists on ways to increase central air conditioning and swimming pools in these communities.

Environmental current problems Kazakhstan

There are a number of environmental issues in Kazakhstan, in large part due to its years under the Soviet Union. Partly because of the country's enormous semi-arid steppe, the Soviet government used Kazakhstan as its nuclear testing site. Along with near-absent pollution controls, this has contributed to an alarmingly high rate of disease in many rural areas. Kazakhstan has identified at least two major ecological disasters within its borders: the shrinking of the Aral Sea, and radioactive contamination at the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing facility (in fact a large zone south of Kourchatov (Курчатов)) and along the Chinese border. The Central Asian Regional Environmental Center is located in Kazakhstan, which fosters regional cooperation on environmental issues. Most of Kazakhstan’s water supply has been polluted by industrial and agricultural runoff and, in some places, radioactivity. The Aral Sea, which is shared with Uzbekistan, has shrunk to three separate bodies of water because of water drawdowns in its tributary rivers. A Soviet-era biological weapons site is a threat because it is located on a former island in the Aral Sea that is now connected with the mainland. The reduction in the Aral Sea’s water surface has exacerbated regional climatic extremes, and agricultural soil has been damaged by salt deposits and eroded by wind. Desertification has eliminated substantial tracts of agricultural land. Plants in industrial centers lack controls on effluents into the air and water. The Semey region in the northeast has long-term radiation contamination from Soviet-era weapons testing. The Ministry of Environmental Protection is underfunded and given low priority. Some new environmental regulation of the oil industry began in 2003, but new oil operations on Kazakhstan’s Caspian coast add to that sea’s already grave pollution. International programs to save the Aral and Caspian seas have not received meaningful cooperation from Kazakhstan or other member nations.