Special Issue on Climate Justice Highlights Disproportionate Effects of Global Warming and Pollution

PRLog (Press Release) - Dec 22, 2009 -
Contact: Vicki Cohn, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., (914) 740-2100, ext. 2156, vcohn@liebertpub.com

Special Issue on Climate Justice Highlights Disproportionate Effects of Global Warming and Pollution on Disadvantaged Communities

New Rochelle, NY—Global warming, pollution, and the environmental consequences of energy production impose a greater burden on low-income, disadvantaged communities, and strategies to prevent these inequities are urgently needed. A provocative collection of articles on climate justice presents the global implications of climate change and its effects on human health and the environment in a special issue of Environmental Justice, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The entire issue is available online at http://www.liebertpub.com/env
   
This important series of articles emerged from a conference on climate justice held earlier this year in New York City, co-hosted by West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT) and the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum on Climate Change. WE ACT, an active participant in the climate debate and the environmental justice movement, compiled the special issue under the leadership of Guest Editor Peggy Shepard.

The articles explore a range of topics, including “The Environmental Injustice of ‘Clean Coal’,” by Stephanie Tyree and Maron Greenleaf and “Climate Change, Heat Waves, and Environmental Justice,” by Jalonne White-Newsome and colleagues. The issue offers both a global perspective in “The International Dimension of Climate Justice and the Need for International Adaptation Funding,” by J. Timmons Roberts, and a focus on more local concerns, including “Minding the Climate Gap: Environmental Health and Equity Implications of Climate Change Mitigation Policies in California,” by Seth Shonkoff and coauthors, and “Best in Show? Climate and Environmental Justice Policy in California,” by Julie Sze et al.

“Facilitating Climate Justice Through Community-Based Adaptation in the Health Sector,” by Kristie Ebi and “U.S. Childhood Obesity and Climate Change,” by Perry Sheffield and Maida Galvez discuss the implications of global warming on human health and on healthcare utilization.

“During the last days of December 2009 the global community has waited with anticipation for the decisions among government leaders during the World Climate Change Meeting in Copenhagen,” said Sylvia Hood Washington, PhD MSE, ND, Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Justice, and Research Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. “This rapt world attention about what is going to be done about the climate change problem exists because many understand that the problems that we face now and will face in the future from rising temperatures on our planet are inexorably tied to the equity of global health and not just global political/economics in a rapidly increasing industrialized world community. Readers will be immersed in the complexities of the imbalanced economy of human health in the context of recognized climate change in this first special issue of the Journal.”

Environmental Justice is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published quarterly in print and online. The Journal encompasses study and debate on a broad range of environmental inequalities at the local, national, and global level tied to social, health, and economic equity. The Journal features studies that demonstrate the adverse effects on populations that are already at risk for health and environmental hazards, as well as the complicated issues inherent in remediation, funding, and relocation of facilities that pose hazardous risk to health. Tables of contents and a free sample issue may be viewed online at http://www.liebertpub.com/env

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science, medicine, biomedical research, and law, including Sustainability: The Journal of Record, Environmental Engineering Science, and Ecopsychology. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry’s most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm’s 60 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available at http://www.liebertpub.com

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.140 Huguenot St., New Rochelle, NY 10801-5215
Phone: (914) 740-2100 (800) M-LIEBERT Fax: (914) 740-2101
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