The United States is the second most polluting country in the world, according to the latest U.N. emissions report, which registered a record year of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2017, the Trump government withdrew from the Paris Agreement, under which countries pledged to collectively maintain the global temperature increase by 2 degrees Celsius, or as much as possible, 1.5.
The impact of climate change in the United States is bigger for the Latino community, the second largest demographic group in the country.
There are data that prove this. Chela García, director of Conservation Programs at the Hispanic Access Foundation, wrote for The Hill that Latinos are 165% more likely than Anglo-Saxons to live in U.S. counties with unhealthy levels of particulate matter pollution and 51% more likely to live in counties with harmful ozone levels.
This NGO published other data: Hispanics have a 21% higher probability of living in urban heat islands, which metropolitan areas considerably warmer than the surrounding rural areas, because they have more heating asphalt and cement and fewer green areas. Urban heat islands, as pointed out on the Hispanic Access Foundation website, can produce breathing difficulties, exhaustion, heat cramps, heat stroke and even death.
During heat waves, it is common for hospital visits and deaths to increase. The Hispanic Access Foundation recalls that Hispanics have less insurance coverage to access these services and treatments. As a matter of fact, according to the Office of Minority Health of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Latinos are the group with the lowest health coverage among all the so-called racial minorities in the U.S. 17.8% of the Hispanic population does not have health insurance, compared to 5.9% of Anglo-Saxons. Besides, this year Latino immigrants opted less for health insurance because they feared Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
On the other hand, according to the Hispanic Access Foundation, 80% of the nearly 3 million farm workers in the United States are Latino. Their livelihood depends on these jobs, but droughts and heat waves are affecting the natural cycles of crops.
Hispanics are also laborers or day laborers in forestry, fishing and hunting: 168% compared to 10.3% for Anglo-Saxons. “Higher temperatures and heat waves will thus disproportionately impact Latino laborers,” says a report on the Hispanic Access Foundation website.
On the other hand, the most up-to-date studies by the NGO Voces Verdes indicate that Latinos in the United States are “60 times more likely” to suffer asthma attacks than Anglo-Saxons. In the case of children, the probability of death from asthma is 40% higher.
They are more aware
In the polls, Hispanics are very aware of the problem.
In a 2018 Latino Decisions survey, 32% of respondents who indicated they had been affected last year by climate change (with heat waves and/or flooding) in their states were Latino. Thirty-three percent said they had suffered from this during the previous two to five years. 49% of those who said it was “extremely important” that the then new Congress pass laws that would “aggressively” combat climate change were Hispanic.
Yale University published in 2017 a comprehensive study, with a sample of 2,054 Hispanics, on the perception of climate change among the Latino population in the United States. The year Trump came out of the Paris Agreement.
The results are indisputable: 84% of those consulted believed in the existence of global warming, 63% were very or extremely sure of its existence, 78% were worried about it, 53% said it affected him personally and 48% said they talked about the subject in their environment.
On the other hand, 68% responded that the United States should reduce greenhouse gas emissions on its own, “regardless of whether other countries do it.” 81% of respondents agreed to require fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax and 50% to regulate carbon dioxide.
77% said industries and corporations must do more to address climate change, while 74% said President Trump should do it, 73% think is the Congress and 74% it is the citizens.
60% said they are willing to vote for a candidate because of their stance on climate change.
Among those interviewed in this poll, 70% said that global warming is due to human activity.
In 2015, the Pew Research Center found similar results that they also compared to other racial groups in the United States. Seven out of 10 Latinos (70%) said the planet is warming because of human activity, while only 44% of Anglo-Saxons and 56% of African Americans agreed with them.
In the Yale University survey, 35% of Latinos said they buy products from companies that take action against climate change and 75% said they intended to do so in the future, while 31% refused to buy the products from companies that do nothing about it and 55% would do so in the future.