Racial Climates

Abstract

AbstractIn this chapter, racial climates are detailed as multidimensional phenomena that include a number of dimensions: 1. the impacts of the framing of governmental and institutional policies, programs, and initiatives relevant to climate change and to the impacts of climate change; 2. the historical legacies and inherited sensibilities informing the treatment of various racial/ethnic groups, with emphasis on those that entwine environmental exploitation and the exploitation of certain groups of people; 3. structural dimensions of diversity; 4. psychological dimensions of individual and group perceptions and attitudes and the related affective responses regarding which lives and lifeways are considered valuable and which are seen as less worthy of protection; and 5. differential impacts of unavoidable and unavoided climate change. Case studies of the infusing of these dimensions are offered, including mitigation targets, heatwaves and histories of structural racism, Brazil’s charcoal industry, and unfree labor.