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by Cole Voorhies, Fordham Environmental Law Review Journal Symposium Editor, Class of 2021<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could go on and on, talking about different social dynamics that disproportionately impact communities of color,\u201d said Ms. McTeer Toney<\/a>, who is now national field director for Moms Clean Air Force, an advocacy group. \u201cFor every single one of them, we can make a link to climate.\u201d \u2013 New York Times, Oct. 5, 2020.<\/p>\n Climate change causes inequities that reach even the classroom<\/a>. \u00a0A recently published report<\/a> by R. Jisung Park, Joshua Goodman, and A. Patrick Behrer asserts that students\u2019 standardized test performance suffered for each additional school-day of 80 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.\u00a0 While this is a problem globally (the study<\/a> measured data across 58 countries), the report<\/a> also notes that in the United States, Black and Hispanic students disproportionally shoulder the impact of rising temperatures.<\/p>\n The effect of this paradigm is that rising temperatures are widening America\u2019s racial achievement gap<\/a> in education.\u00a0 The paper<\/a> concludes that the gap reflects the lack of air conditioning available to Black and Hispanic students (both at home and school), which in turn affects students\u2019 ability to learn. \u00a0Indeed, the conclusion<\/a> is that increased temperatures affect only <\/em>Black and Hispanic students. \u00a0This paradigm is underpinned and compounded by racial school segregation<\/a> in the United States, regardless of the geographic region.\u00a0 Therefore, any policy seeking to address climate justice in the classroom must address school segregation and include a plan for its undoing.<\/p>\n We already know that rising temperatures hit BIPOC<\/a> (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) folks the hardest.\u00a0 Indeed, a New York Times article<\/a> about the report points out that this problem is compounded by issues identified in other intersectional climate research<\/a>: Black and Brown neighborhoods tend to be hotter due to fewer trees and more paved areas.\u00a0 Additionally, all urban areas experience generally higher extreme temperatures than their suburban or rural counterparts.\u00a0 This is due to heat island effect<\/a>, a phenomenon that results in higher temperatures in urban areas due to a variety of factors including lack of tree cover, building density, paved area, and emissions.\u00a0 Thus, any solution to classroom climate injustice includes a plan to decrease the vulnerability of Black and Brown communities to rising temperatures and extreme heat events.<\/p>\n