Climate change, failing infrastructure and growing inequality add up to a perfect storm that is poised to hit the nation's poor, says Megan Mullin. Our weak infrastructure is ill-equipped for extreme weather events, which grow more likely with climate change. Meanwhile, storms and floods will hit poor communities especially hard, since those communities have even less to spend on repairing aging water pipes, roads and bridges.
Mullin is an associate professor of environmental politics at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment.
Transcript:
From Duke University, this is “Glad You Asked,” where we consider the question “What should we be talking about this election season?”
“I’m Megan Mullin, associate professor of environmental politics at the Nicholas School.
“It’s surprisingly missing, but so far we really seem to be missing conversation about climate change and the impacts it is having right now in American communities.
We’ve had decades of inadequate investment in infrastructure. We have drinking water pipes that are deteriorating, bridges and roads and transit systems that are in disrepair, flood control infrastructure that is failing.
And all of these systems are very much at risk. They would be at risk without climate change, but they are even more at risk given the growing likelihood of extreme natural events.
“And we have sorted ourselves into communities mostly by income. And that means that American communities have very different capacities to protect themselves.
“Across the board, we haven’t prepared ourselves adequately. But importantly, the inequality that we’ve seen growing over the last several decades not only is affecting people’s everyday lives, but is increasingly putting people at very different levels of risk from events that are unfolding and will continue to unfold because of climate change.”
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