Daily equity news

“Van Jones, Patriot,” - Washington Post

It makes me sad and a little sick that Van Jones, the White House Green Jobs Czar, was forced to resign after being targeted by a vicious smear campaign. The Obama administration lost a brilliant mind who worked day and night to, as Van would say, “get the greenest solutions to the poorest people”. Indeed, Van did as much as anyone to put the concept of the Green Collar Economy on the map, including publishing a best-selling book with that title. More than that, he was one of the nation’s most pragmatic environmental visionaries, someone who was always thinking up practical, pattern-changing solutions to massive climate problems.

Van grew up in a small town in Tennessee, went to a provincial college, and wound up graduating from Yale Law School, launching a number of important nonprofit organizations, and winning way too many awards to count, including being named to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list. He’s a remarkable American success story, eloquently captured in Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker profile.

“The Social Side of Obesity: You Are Who You Eat With,” - NEWSWEEK

Sending your kids back to lunch-lady land this fall? Careful, your child’s dining mates may be upping his chances of packing on the pounds. A study published in the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that how much tweens and teens eat can be influenced by how much their friends weigh.

In the study, 130 kids ages 9 to 15 were allowed to snack as much as they wanted while hanging out with a friend or with a peer they did not know. All the kids ate more when they were with a friend than with a stranger. But the overweight children ate the most when paired with an overweight friend - an average of 300 more calories than when they spent time with leaner friends. The research also found that friendship itself makes the appetite grow stronger: when overweight kids ate with similar-weight kids who were already their pals, they threw back an extra 250 calories than when they ate with chubby kids they had just met.

“‘24 hours in the ER’ shows challenges of health system,” - USA TODAY

Dr. Robert O’Connor had taken charge of the emergency room only minutes earlier when the cellphone in his pocket rang: The Western Albemarle Rescue Squad was on its way with a 14-month-old girl who had suffered a possible seizure.

Ten minutes later, Tyler McNeely climbed out of the ambulance, her face frantic and her pale, subdued baby in her arms. Shana Crabtree, a third-year resident in green scrubs, waited for them at the University of Virginia Medical Center. EMT Andrew Todhunter delivered a staccato summary of Clara’s vital signs.

Daily equity news

 ”Playgrounds: They’re safer but still can be dangerous,” -  USA TODAY

Playgrounds have come a long way from the asphalt jungle gyms of the 1960s and 1970s.

Monkey bars and hot metal slides have virtually disappeared. They’ve been replaced by colorful plastic castles with guardrails and ramps and rounded edges. And instead of blacktop and concrete, many new playgrounds are covered with soft wood mulch or springy rubber chips made from recycled tires.

Yet in spite of these improvements, many playgrounds still fall short on safety, experts say.

“Stimulus Law Bolsters Food Bank Offerings,” -  The New York Times

Struggling to meet a demand for food that spiked with the unemployment rate, some food pantries have had to turn away people seeking help. Others are packing a little less food into each shopping bag they give out. But recently the nation’s food banks received a $100 million windfall of extra food, as part of the federal stimulus law.

The grant is a big boost for the food bank program, which usually gets $250 million a year from Washington, and the amount of food it can buy seems supersize, even for a field that routinely measures servings by the millions of pounds.

 ”Bay Area entrepreneur makes plans to open eco-friendly building-supply stores,” - Contra Costa Times

Bay Area entrepreneur aims to square off against big-box hardware stores — and buck a sour economy in the process — by offering green construction materials to builders of all sizes.

San Rafael-based New Home Inc. is planning to open a chain of building-materials stores, including some in the East Bay, that will cater to builders who want to be completely eco-friendly in their construction projects.

Daily equity news

“From the Spanish Steps to Spanish Harlem,” - The New York Times

Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times Gianni Alemanno, right, the mayor of Rome, visited Mad Fun Farm, a student-designed urban farm in East Harlem, on Tuesday afternoon.

After meeting with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg at City Hall on Tuesday, Gianni Alemanno, the mayor of Rome, arrived in East Harlem on Tuesday afternoon for a guided tour of a neighborhood garden run by 7- and 8-year-old children.

 ”The Slimming Figures of Childhood Obesity,” - The Wall Street Journal
Studies Suggest That Rates Are No Longer Rising, but Researchers Lament the Paucity of Data and Spar Over Methodologies

Evidence for the expanding epidemic of childhood obesity is thinning.

Nutritionists, health advocates and media reports have been sounding the alarm about a rise in childhood obesity, which could lead to diabetes, heart disease and other problems. But a series of studies from half a dozen countries suggest that rates have held steady over the past five to 10 years, albeit at levels much higher than in the 1960s and 1970s.

Daily equity news

“Cities Lose Out on Road Funds From Federal Stimulus,” -  The New York Times

Two-thirds of the country lives in large metropolitan areas, home to the nation’s worst traffic jams and some of its oldest roads and bridges. But cities and their surrounding regions are getting far less than two-thirds of federal transportation stimulus money.

According to an analysis by The New York Times of 5,274 transportation projects approved so far — the most complete look yet at how states plan to spend their stimulus money — the 100 largest metropolitan areas are getting less than half the money from the biggest pot of transportation stimulus money. In many cases, they have lost a tug of war with state lawmakers that urban advocates say could hurt the nation’s economic engines.

“Economic toll of obesity and inactivity exceeds $41 billion in California,” - Oakland Tribune

An overweight man walks the streets of Washington Tuesday, July 22, 2003. The political debate on fat has spilled over into public policy, with proposals for a junk-food tax, limits on food advertising, demands for more details on labeling and lawsuits against food manufacturers. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds) The excess weight and inactive habits of many Californians don’t only exact a personal toll, they’re saddling businesses and taxpayers with more than $41 billion in annual costs, according to a report released today.

“We think mostly about the health implications,” said Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, speaking of the 59 percent of Californians who are obese or overweight, and the 48 percent who are physically inactive

“Lawmakers, businesses jockey for ‘green’ jobs,” – MSNBC.COM

ELKHART, Ind.— In the empty factories and laid-off workers in this struggling section of the Rust Belt, entrepreneur Wil Cashen sees “unimaginable potential.”

Seeking to capitalize on the trend toward more-energy-efficient vehicles, Cashen has a plan to retrofit pickup trucks with electric motors at several of Elkhart County’s large, dormant manufacturing facilities and sell them to utility companies.

Daily equity news

“A Green Way to Dump Low-Tech Electronics,” -  The New York Times

“Thousands still in FEMA trailers,” -  USA TODAY

“The Metro Crash: A Nation’s Aging Transit System,” - Times Magazine

 Daily equity news

“California leading growth in nation’s green jobs economy, study finds,” - Los Angeles Times

“Lawmakers in Farm Belt Try to Steer Climate Bill,” -  The Wall Street Journal

“Curbing childhood obesity one office visit at a time,” - Los Angeles Times

Daily equity news 

 “Customers Prove There’s a Market for Fresh Produce,” - The New York Times

“How green are trains, public transportation, and hybrid cars? It depends,” -  Christian Science Monitor

 ”Investors bet on Detroit housing market,” - CNNMoney.com

The folks at the Drum Major Institute hosted Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and NYC Council prez Christine Quinn for a discussion on how a city can “go green.” Very interesting conversation. Here’s some video and a liveblog on DMIBlog:

A recap of this week’s equity news

“Access to healthy foods worse in poor areas,” - Reuters

People who live in poorer neighborhoods in the U.S. are less likely to have easy access to supermarkets carrying a wide variety of fresh produce and other healthy food, an analysis of 54 studies confirms.

But they probably have plenty of unhealthy fast food joints to choose from, Dr. Nicole I. Larson of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and her colleagues found.

“Environmental Groups Slam Stimulus: Green Advocates Question Funding Disparity for Mass Transit,” - The Washington Independent

To hear the Democrats tell the tale, the $825 billion economic stimulus proposal unveiled by House leaders last week would usher in a new era of energy efficiency and green jobs in America. Yet a growing chorus of environmental groups says it falls short of those goals, providing too much funding for new roads and too little for public transportation and other green initiatives.

Under the current proposal, new construction could consume three times as much funding as public transportation. The environmental groups hope more public transit money will be added when lawmakers make changes to the proposal in committee, an amendment process which began Wednesday afternoon.

 ”Fair-Wage Bill Clears The Senate,” - Washington Post

A wage-discrimination bill that narrowly failed less than a year ago moved closer to becoming law last night, when the Senate passed the legislation and sent it back to the House for final consideration.

The measure, approved 61 to 36, would overturn a Supreme Court decision to make it easier for women to sue employers for pay inequity, regardless of when the discrepancies took place. It may become the first legislation signed by President Obama, who campaigned in favor of it.

This post was written by Chione Flegal, a PolicyLink Senior Associate working to ensure public investments promote social, economic, and environmental equality.

We hear about climate change all the time now. The Olympics have gone green. Car commercials tout their MPG rating the way they used to tout heated seats. And even a Texas oilman is going on TV to promote clean energy.

But don’t be fooled. Just because “being green” has entered the mainstream doesn’t mean that climate change affects us all equally — or that the costs and benefits of addressing climate change will be shared fairly. In fact, while we all lose if climate change advances unabated, some of us risk losing a whole lot more. Similarly, how we address climate change has the potential to create clear winners and losers.

A recent report published by the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (EJCC) notes that African Americans have 19 percent lower carbon emissions per capita than Anglos. This is striking considering that African Americans already spend an estimated 25% greater share of their income on energy than the national average. Unfortunately, while African Americans may contribute less to climate change, African Americans, and other people of color and low-income people will bear the lion’s share of the costs associated with a warming planet. Increased exposure to toxic air pollutants, economic hardships related to rising fuel costs, and heat-related deaths are just the beginning of the many climate hardships that these communities will face.

In fact, these communities are ALREADY experiencing many of these problems. One study found that 80 percent of Latinos and 65 percent of African Americans live in areas that fail to meet federal EPA air quality standards, as compared to 57 percent of whites. Not surprisingly this has huge health impacts. According to researchers, Latinos, African Americans and Asians in California’s South Coast Air District, have a lifetime cancer risk from exposure to  ambient air toxics, that is nearly 50 percent higher than the cancer risk for Anglos.

The solutions we use to address climate change will profoundly impact people of color and low-income communities. In fact, in many ways, these communities will serve as a measure of how effective our solutions really are. As we continue to debate the question of how to address climate change, we must reframe our thinking. Fundamentally, climate change is not simply another environmental problem. Climate change is an equity problem. Only by viewing it in these terms can we develop climate policy that serves us all.

For more information on climate change as an equity issue, please see the new PolicyLink report, “Understanding Climate Change: An Equitable Framework”