Analyze

我訪問到的阿嬤也有在高度人力密集的產業中工作過，如餐飲、紡織等等，反映了當代大環境中原民來到都市的處境。都市原民作為台灣產業發展的推手之一，卻無法擁有安身立命的家，而被迫在各處流浪，直到近代才開啟了與政府溝通的橋樑，卻依然有種種難題需要克服。

Published in May 2021, amid the coronavirus pandemic where in-person community workshops and meetings turned into weekly virtual meetings. 

-> Authors:

Shahir Masri: Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Program in Public Health, University of California, Irvine; air pollution scientist.

Alana M. W. LeBrón: Department of Health, Society, and Behavior, University of California, Irvine; Assistant Professor, Chicano/Latino Studies; Interests: structural racism and health, health of Latina/o communities, community-based participatory research.

Michael D. Logue: Department of Chicano/Latino Studies, University of California, Irvine

Enrique Valencia: Orange County Environmental Justice, Santa Ana

Abel Ruiz: Jóvenes Cultivando Cambios, Santa Ana; CRECE Urban Farming Cooperative member

Abigail Reyes: Community Resilience, University of California, Irvine

Jun Wu: Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Program in Public Health, University of California, Irvine

This article was published in 2022 in England. This is amid the coronavirus pandemic and after the populist influence of Trump’s fake news politics around the world. With populist leaders propagating their own version of post-truths in India, Russia, Turkey, and Brazil. These leaders have incited a new wave of climate change deniers while political conflicts and environmental vulnerabilities worsen worldwide. 

At the time of the article, Trump had defunded environmental protection and pulled the USA from the Paris agreement - although, since then, Biden has proposed other plans on environmental justice, and the US has rejoined the Paris agreement -, Brexit had threatened to derail  environmental regulation - still remains an issue -, and Brazil’s Bolsonaro had opened vast tracts of Amozonian forest for permanent exploitation - still remains an issue. 

Lee argues that EJ practice has long stagnated over an inability to properly define the concept of disproportionate (environmental and public health) impacts, but that national conversations on system racism and the development of EJ mapping tools have improved his outlook on the potential for better application of the concept of disproportionate impact. Lee identifies mapping tools (e.g. CalEnviroScreen) as a pathway for empirically based and analytically rigorous articulation and analysis of disproportionate impacts that are linked to systemic racism.

In describing the scope and nature of application of mapping tools, Baker highlights the concept of cumulative impacts (the concentration of multiple environmental, public health, and social stressors), the importance of public participation (e.g. Hoffman’s community science model), the role of redlining in creating disproportionate vulnerabilities, and the importance of integrating research into decision making processes.

Baker ultimately argues that mapping tools offer a promising opportunity for integrating research into policy decision making as part of a second generation of EJ practice. Key areas that Lee identifies as important to the continued development of more effective EJ practice include: identifying good models for quantitative studies and analysis, assembling a spectrum of different integrative approaches (to fit different contexts), connecting EJ research to policy implications, and being attentive to historical contexts and processes that produce/reproduce structural inequities.

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As outlined in this brief article by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, energy consumption by New York City alone has dropped significantly more than the surrounding areas. On a prima-facie observation, one could say the foregoing alleviates stress on the existing energy infrastructures. However, deeper analyses should consider the repercussions that demanding less energy may have on production, supply, and distribution, as well as transitions between larger and smaller electric microgrids. Given energy infrastructures in the United States are already vulnerable, can it be really said the pandemic alleviates stress on the existing energy infrastructures when everybody is connected to the internet and is generally using more technology at home?

The present report briefly outlines how energy infrastructures have been significantly affected by shifts in consumptions as a result of instituted lockdowns and shelter-in-place. Overall, the impacts of the pandemic have been stressing present energy infrastructures in a way that is unprecedented. Energy patterns have decreased, as far as commercial emissions are concerned, and have worked to highlight the already stressed and vulnerable electricity infrastructures. The foregoing calls attention to the need for measures of economic recovery in the energy field, a move to "electricity secure and resilient energy systems" (IEA, 2020).

More than economic activities, this artifact focus on the economic inactivity that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused. More specifically, such a reduced economic activity has reshaped the oil and gas industries, to the point their prices have significantly dropped. More specifically, these impacts can be better seen in energy system's production and distribution chains, where lockdowns and pandemic mitigation practices have sized down the worker-power both on the demand and the production end. The foregoing is reshaping production, supplies, demand, as well as financials. The crisis has risen several major crises, with industries severely unprepared in their contingency planning given world-wide lockdowns have been unprecedented. All of the factors listed are working to reshape how many in the energy sectors view contingency planning for the future and how they plan to re-establish operations, including cutting some operating costs.