"Groups are turning up the pressure on Congress to do more for black communities being battered by strong storms, rising tides, and intense heat.

Climate change is striking first at low-income black communities around the country, black leaders said at a heated recent roundtable in Washington, where the message for lawmakers was clear: they need to do more.

“People of color have always been on the front line of this movement. We’re hit first and hit worst,” said Alaina Beverly, an Obama White House urban affairs official who’s now vice president for urban affairs at the University of Chicago’s Office of Federal Relations in Washington. “This is our issue.”

Most of the worst effects of climate change are hitting—and lingering in—poor black neighborhoods in the South, according to the Rev. Leo Woodberry, executive director of the New Alpha Community Development Corporation in Florence, S.C."

Stephen Lee, Tiffany Stecker, and Dean Scott report for Bloomberg Environment October 7, 2019. [2]