Climate Change

The fourth season of "Earth Focus" explores how our environments affect our health. Stories of collective resistance and human agency reveal how geography itself is shaped by people, and how people act so that their destinies might not be determined by their geographies.

California’s environmental justice law is supposed to clean the air for 15 hot spot communities, home to almost 4 million people. But after more than four years and one billion dollars, it’s still impossible to say whether it’s worked.

California is welcoming infrastructure upgrades to its roads and bridges, but not requiring that the projects use readily-available lower-carbon concrete. The new construction will make it harder for the state to achieve its climate commitments.

Youth climate activists have criticized the COP26 pact for being "vague" and failing to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. For one activist, the disappointment with negotiations at the global level inspired him to focus his work more locally in Southern California.

Nations addressing climate change took on gasoline and diesel vehicles in pledges that mirror California’s mandates and plans — and in some cases, go even further.

UN nations have pledged to reduce climate-changing methane and forest destruction within 10 years. California has been trying to handle both problems, with limited success.

Drought, wildfires, extreme heat: California lawmakers cast climate change as the culprit in an emerging series of public health threats, setting aside billions to help communities respond. But they stopped short of more aggressively reducing the state’s share of the greenhouse emissions warming the planet.

“I’ve fallen in love with working with my community and working for social justice and environmental rights,” says Bii Gallardo. Those are the reasons why the Apache and Yaqui activist works so hard to recognize Indigenous voices and fight for environmental justice.