CLE Credits: 2
In a talk focused on the racially disparate impacts of air pollution and climate change, author and journalist Beth Gardiner will share lessons and takeaways from her extensive reporting on these issues across the United States and around the world. Beth will provide an overview of the large body of scientific evidence on the devastating health effects of dirty air, and discuss the United States’ dramatic progress in improving its air quality as a result of the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and the many federal regulations promulgated under those two landmark laws. She’ll explore why communities of color have not benefitted as much from the cleanup as whiter neighborhoods, and discuss what steps the Biden administration is considering to address that disparity. Beth will cover the ways traffic, oil and gas development, and increasingly frequent and intense wildfires are impacting Colorado’s air quality, and take a close-up look at pollution’s disparate impact in Denver. She’ll explain why the impacts of climate change – just like the harms of the COVID-19 pandemic — are hitting communities of color first and worst, and explore the policy solutions that offer hope for cleaning the air, stabilizing the climate and rectifying environmental injustice.