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When President Donald Trump announced his decision in June 2017 to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, Mayor Jennifer Roberts of Charlotte, North Carolina, quickly responded, saying, “Climate change is an issue that affects us all, and we do not have time to wait for a new administration.”¹ Volumes of scientific evidence show more extreme heat, drought, wildfires, storms, and floods bearing down on Charlotte’s future.² Charlotte has made great gains over the past 15 years to address air pollution and extreme weather risk by expanding public transit, tree canopy, and energy and water efficiency solutions. However, without deliberate efforts to build resilience, damage from climate events will challenge Charlotte’s ability to manage and sustain its rapid growth as well as its ability to bridge the drastic divide between rich and poor.

Charlotte’s expanding prosperity and good quality of life have long remained out of reach for historically disadvantaged communities. Extreme weather exasperates existing environmental injustices and barriers to low-income residents’ economic mobility by putting extra stress on resident’s health, safety, and wallets. Costly damage from storms or dangerous heat waves can force families living paycheck to paycheck to choose between putting food on the table or buying medicine and fixing a roof or turning on an air conditioner. At present, climate change risks outpace the city’s urban planning and equity efforts as well as the business community’s efforts to transition to a global low-carbon economy. A vacuum of environmental and civil rights leadership in the federal government compels action from cities, states, and businesses to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Charlotte, too, must take action in order to protect its community.

Charlotte needs a comprehensive climate action strategy that includes climate change science and focuses on reducing carbon pollution and building residents’ preparedness and resilience to extreme weather shocks, with particular focus on the city’s communities of color and working-class neighborhoods.

Mayor Roberts, City Manager Marcus Jones, and the City Council will benefit from collaboration with community members to build on existing successes and create and pass a far-reaching and inclusive plan that will give all Charlotte communities a fair shot at thriving in the 21st century. Charlotte officials, hand in hand with a socially-minded citizenry that is energized to bridge the city’s enduring divides, can mitigate loss of life and property from extreme weather events; address social and environmental justice concerns; and sustain the city’s substantial growth.

To these ends, the Center for American Progress recommends the following actions:

• Create and carry out an equitable and measurable climate action strategy
• Effectively engage and empower communities to raise awareness of climate change threats as well as shape priorities and effective solutions at all stages of plan development and implementation
• Assess working-class communities’ vulnerability and resilience to climate change and assess resilience strategies for equity
• Reduce working-class communities’ heat risk through cooling centers and spraygrounds
• Improve access to solar and wind energy
• Expand access to safe and affordable active transit
• Promote energy efficiency in homes and businesses
• Expand green infrastructure to reduce flooding; provide cooler, cleaner air; and feed people
• Make corporate social responsibility through deep decarbonization and natural resource conservation core to the Charlotte business community’s mission

By taking these actions, Charlotte city leaders and community members can create a springboard to a climate-ready and thriving future.

With a population of more than 827,000 people, Charlotte is the second-fastest-growing large city in the nation. The city adds new residents at a rate of 44 people per day, and the metropolitan region is ranked 14th nationally for economic output.³ The city is home to the largest U.S. utility, Duke Energy Corporation, and the second-largest U.S. banking sector, with both Bank of America headquarters and Wells Fargo corporate offices.⁴ This robust downtown business district greatly contributes to the state and region’s economic growth and affluence. In addition to the city’s economic output, Charlotte’s thick tree canopy projects an image of good environmental and public health. “People really love their trees in Charlotte. We don’t have an ocean or mountains, so the trees are really characteristic to Charlotte,” says Shannon Binns, founder of Sustain Charlotte, the city’s only urban planning advocacy organization.⁵ Over the past decade, Charlotte has been awarded numerous accolades as one of the top places to live in the United States and is considered a well-managed city.⁶ Mayor Roberts, who was inaugurated in December 2015, and Jones, who joined the city’s leadership in October 2016, seek to manage and sustain this growth and prosperity and balance it with the city’s environmental image.⁷

Per a Brookings Institution comparison of the 100 biggest metro areas, as the Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia region has grown, it also shot up 44 and 52 spots to 20th and 46th place in the prosperity and economic inclusion rankings, respectively, when comparing 2005 and 2015 data with 2010 and 2015 data.⁸ While these are critical trends that city leaders and the business community should take pride in, these changes mask historical barriers to opportunity within Charlotte society.

According to the most recent data from 2015, nearly 17 percent of Charlotteans live in poverty—a 3 percent growth since 2010—with residents of color comprising a disproportionate share of the city’s impoverished populace.⁹ While many similarly sized U.S. cities have long struggled with entrenched racial segregation and intergenerational poverty, social injustice is not a footnote in the history books for Charlotte. A 2014 Harvard and University of California, Berkeley study of economic mobility placed the city last out of the 50 biggest U.S. cities.¹⁰ A Charlotte child who was not born in the city’s predominantly white and affluent “southern wedge” area had the worst chances of escaping poverty compared with a child from any other large urban area.¹¹

Rapid growth exasperates inequality for many residents

As more people have moved to Charlotte attracted by high-skill jobs and low cost of living, they have pushed into low-income neighborhoods close to downtown. According to the University of Virginia, between 1990 and 2012, the number of college-educated people living close to the city center increased by 32 percent. By contrast, more than 25 percent of Mecklenburg County residents living in poverty did not finish high school. This trend is reflected in many of Charlotte’s central Uptown communities, such as the historically African American neighborhood of Cherry.¹² Increased competition for housing has sparked more development and higher prices for rent and other services, displacing many longtime residents into other neighborhoods or out of the city of Charlotte altogether.

As of 2014, the housing burden—or the percentage of household income spent on mortgages or rent—of white residents was 19 percent lower than that of black residents, whose housing burden was almost 57 percent of their income.¹³ Generally, white residents comprise 50 percent of the city’s population, and black residents comprise 35 percent, showing the imbalance of Charlotte’s affluence.¹⁴

Per a National Low Income Housing Coalition report, residents of Mecklenburg County—which is 80 percent Charlotteans—would need to work 40 hours per week at almost $16 per hour in order to afford rent for a two-bedroom apartment.¹⁵ However, only about half of all people of color in Charlotte earn that wage or higher, compared with 82 percent of white residents.¹⁶ In Charlotte, the most basic living wage to support a family of three is $23 per hour. A 2016 report on the state of poverty in Charlotte made numerous references to residents’ struggle to pay for housing, utilities, healthy food, and health care.¹⁷

Charlotte’s efforts to support economic equity and racial justice are unlikely to receive support from the conservative state or federal government. In 2016, the state Legislature passed a law prohibiting attempts by municipalities to raise the minimum wage.¹⁸ Though the measure was repealed in 2017, any efforts to raise the state’s minimum wage above $7.25 per hour are widely believed to fail while conservative control of the state Legislature remains.¹⁹ The state Legislature has also passed voting restrictions, which the U.S. Supreme Court determined were unconstitutional in their deliberate attempt to disenfranchise black voters.²⁰ Additionally, the Trump administration has recommended historic cuts to the social safety net and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as proposed the closing of numerous federal offices devoted to civil rights, including the EPA’s environmental justice office. ²¹ These actions have been met with either support or silence from the Trump administration’s allies in Congress.

Families in Charlotte continue to face great difficulties affording necessities as well as saving enough money to deal with emergencies, which bodes ill for people’s ability to grapple with costly extreme weather damage and disruption.

In Charlotte, health disparity reflects racial and economic disparity

Charlotte’s affluent communities have greater access to a clean environment and good health compared with the city’s working class communities. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services found notable racial and economic disparities in asthma levels and hospitalizations throughout the state.²² Poor quality housing exposes residents to unsafe indoor air quality due to factors such as mold or asbestos. The continued concentration of communities of color and working-class neighborhoods near traffic corridors and industrial complexes exposes them to higher levels of air pollutants such as ozone and fine particular pollution. The National Lung Association’s 2017 State of the Air report gave Mecklenburg County an “F” grade for ozone pollution.²³ According to Dave Cable of TreesCharlotte, a tree-planting and forest conservation organization, a lack of trees in some working-class areas exacerbates air pollution issues.²⁴

While no coal-fired power plants are located within the city of Charlotte, communities that live on the city-county border are more likely to be exposed to dangerous levels of pollutants from nearby coal and industrial plants due to cross winds.

Charlotte cannot compel neighboring municipalities to address regional air pollution and haze. Though to help residents receive better information about their outdoor air quality, Clean Air Carolina, an air pollution reduction advocacy group, launched a real-time data collection project, which has Charlotte residents in both affluent and nonaffluent communities utilize air monitors during their daily routines. Terry Lansdell, who organizes the program, describes the effect that greater data has on Charlotteans’ health: “Already you can see from the data that there are moments when a gust of wind will blow in dangerous levels of pollution from industrial sites in and around Mecklenburg County. When this happens, residents are able to protect themselves and their families until the pollution has passed or capitalize on clean air opportunities.”²⁵

Other residents worry a coal-ash spill will destroy their access to clean water. The rupture of Duke Energy’s waste retention pond in 2014 spewed coal ash into North Carolinians’ drinking water and damaged riparian ecosystems.²⁶ An estimated 2 million people in North and South Carolina rely on the Catawba River for drinking water.²⁷ For Charlotte residents, the loss of clean public water would create financial and health challenges, particularly for the nearly 141,000 impoverished residents that would be unable to afford the purchase of bottled water; water filters for cooking, drinking, and bathing; and water pollution kits to monitor the safety of their water.

Civil unrest underscores the need for intersectional social and climate justice solutions

In many Charlotte neighborhoods, people experience economic inequity and environmental injustice alongside other social and civil injustices. These experiences came to a head in September 2016, when predominantly African American Charlotteans protested in the streets and clashed with police for a week, an event spurred by the shooting death of Charlotte resident Keith Lamont Scott. Many felt that the protest—which was one of several national instances in 2016 unofficially linked to the Black Lives Matter movement—was emblematic of the community’s anger not just over the need for better community policing, but also of being excluded by a city changing around them and a lack of faith in city institutions’ ability to fix chronic problems.

Nonetheless, Charlotte officials, businesses, philanthropies, universities, and community advocates are working to unite around economic equity as a priority.²⁸ “Since September, there has definitely been a citywide fervor to address these issues and make lasting change,” says Amanda Zullo, founder of Pop Up Produce, a Charlotte nonprofit, which works to increase access to fresh food for people struggling to make ends meet.²⁹ The Leading on Opportunity report, produced by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Opportunity Task Force and released in March 2017, lays out a strategy for supporting the poorest members’ economic mobility through education and career readiness, but it does not address environmental disparities related to public health.³⁰

To working families, climate change may seem like a distant problem. But layered on top of societal hardships, climate change will increasingly exacerbate barriers to vital resources and prosperity. As climate change creates aggressive and damaging weather patterns, families will be forced more often to divert already limited funds from daily necessities to emergencies, and deteriorating public health could keep people away from work and school.

Charlotte city leaders should harness the energy of a community that cares deeply about social justice to build a base that supports strong and inclusive climate mitigation and resilience action. By cutting climate pollution, designing resilience solutions that benefit all residents, and strengthening the city’s ongoing efforts to have a basic living standard for everyone, city leaders can better equip the people of Charlotte to support themselves and their families on multiple fronts. According to Nakisa Glover, a Charlotte community organizer and climate justice fellow at the Hip Hop Caucus, “Charlotte is setting itself up to be a world-class city, and for it to truly be a world-class city, it must take care of its people first. But Charlotte has for too long left residents behind. And in the face of climate change, which is already happening, these communities are being overburdened by these layered issues. Our inability to effectively deal with climate change is directly correlated to the health of our community, poverty, housing, and other justice issues.”³¹

Heat risks

Located about 160 miles from the Atlantic Coast in the Catawba River Basin, Charlotte is in a part of the United States projected by scientists to see more hot days and drought alternate with cold snaps and deluges of rain as its climate continues to change. By 2041, Charlotteans will see at a minimum an extra month or more per year where temperatures climb above 95 F.³² With more moisture evaporating from soil into the atmosphere and disrupting the water cycle, naturally occurring cycles of drought plus spring and winter precipitation will intensify. The result is that Charlotte and the surrounding Piedmont region are more vulnerable to debilitating heat waves, water crises, and wildfires as well as damage from storms and flooding.³³

More hot days and cold snaps threaten the physical and financial well-being of residents that depend on the use of an air conditioner to escape heat exhaustion or a heater to stay warm. Children, seniors, the homeless, and community members who work or play outside or are dependent on outdoor transit services—such as waiting at bus stops—will be exposed to greater levels of heat illness and mortality as temperatures across the region climb. Unless the current global carbon emissions trend is significantly curbed, by the end of the century, North Carolina is expected to have the climate of towns on the Texas-Mexican border.³⁴

Rising temperatures also mean poorer air quality for vulnerable Charlotte residents who already struggle with medical expenses. Hotter environments are often matched by higher levels of air pollution from industrial plants and car tailpipes.³⁵ More heat and humidity can spur the creation of mold and bacteria and cause the deterioration of landfill covers.³⁶ Smoke from wildfires can cause dangerous health effects, such as the November 2016 wildfires that caused Code Orange air quality days in Charlotte. For working-class residents without paid leave who have respiratory or cardiac conditions, not going to work or staying home to take care of a family member is too often a costly choice.

This hotter climate will magnify the region’s drinking water concerns, particularly for low-income residents who are dependent on public water services sourced from the Catawba River. Already endangered by potential coal ash spills and nearly unchecked withdrawal from the Catawba River due to Duke Energy’s operations, Charlotte residents and small businesses will now have to defend against longer and more intense droughts and potential cuts to resident’s public water usage.

Drought is projected to alternate with larger rainfall events that have already caused bacteria from sewage overflows as well as urban and agricultural runoff to pollute the Catawba River.³⁷ Polluted water poses a threat to the health and security of the Catawba as a drinking water source. In recent years, the nation has seen a rise in nuisance flooding caused by more rain. Pooling of polluted floodwaters in neighborhoods can foster the transmission of diseases and other health risks. Stagnant water in hot environments also becomes breeding grounds for mosquitos.³⁸

Flood risks

As rain events become more severe, the Catawba River Basin’s vast network of urban creeks are more likely to flood, which will put thousands of homes, businesses, and infrastructure at risk of damage.³⁹ Even minimal flooding of cars parked in driveways, roads or transit services can obstruct everyday chores, commutes, and trips to school as roads become impassable and unsafe. Since 1950, heavy downpours in Charlotte have increased by 86 percent.⁴⁰ Rainstorms already cause headaches as basements and yards regularly flood in the city’s under-resourced areas, such as along Stewart Creek.⁴¹

Moreover, flooding due to a major rain event in Charlotte or upriver has the potential to be catastrophic. Flooding brings city life to a standstill; businesses and schools are shut down, homes are destroyed, and mobility and access to services are limited. After the 2010 downpour-induced flood in Nashville, Tennessee—a city with similar environmental, demographic, and economic makeup to Charlotte—an estimated 400 businesses never reopened and more than 1,500 jobs were deemed unlikely to return.⁴² In communities that are already underemployed, loss of income can be debilitating to families. Cash-strapped residents that are unable to grapple with disaster recovery costs can lose financial security, be pushed over the edge into poverty, be forced to move and cut ties with their communities, or become homeless.⁴³ Without safeguards, sharp, post-storm rises in rent can squeeze affordable housing options even further. Unless aggressive steps are taken to prepare, all it takes is one major storm to destroy a community’s chances at economic development for years or even decades.

Charlotte’s city officials and community advocates support a standard of living that allows middle- and low-income Charlotte residents to not have to choose between stretching already tight budgets and a safe and healthy home environment for themselves and their families. Faced with extreme weather threats to the city’s public safety and health; costly economic and infrastructure damage; more Code Red air quality days; water crises; and unmanageable housing, energy, and health care bills, some Charlotte leaders are already taking steps to build the city’s resilience to climate change through smarter planning.

Rob Phocas, the city of Charlotte’s sustainability director, understands the need for more climate action. “There can be a tendency in Charlotte to think we aren’t going to be affected by climate change because we aren’t on the coast and we won’t be dealing with sea level rise. But we need to be taking the threat of more extreme weather seriously.”⁴⁴

Charlotte city leaders, foundations, community organizations and residents, and the business community are taking action through various initiatives to help the city prepare for drought, more heat and pollution, and storms and flooding. With the Trump administration and their allies in Congress proposing historic cuts to programs that are designed to support low-income communities and climate action—including the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, HOME Investment Partnerships Program, the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program, the weatherization assistance program, the low-income heating assistance program, and state energy and environmental program grants—these local initiatives are more important than ever. Despite a lack of leadership at the federal level, Charlotte can help all community members thrive in the midst of future concerns through intentional and aggressive action to create clean, healthy, and extreme-weather-ready communities. Charlotte stakeholders should support and build on these efforts.

Supporting safe and accessible active transit

Charlotte did not always consider the public health risks of heat and pollution. In the early 2000s, North Carolina was cited by the EPA for its dangerous air quality and was required to take action to reduce pollution. Reductions in dangerous air pollution were supported by a 2002 state law cracking down on power plants.⁴⁵ Charlotte was spurred to create a strategic transit plan and develop light rail to help reduce unhealthy levels of air pollution, such as ozone, from traffic.

The city is continuing to invest in active transit strategies, including walking, biking, and the use of public transit, to cut down on car dependency for mobility and manage traffic as the city rapidly grows.⁴⁶ The city is also sponsoring car-free days downtown Charlotte to help educate the public on the health, safety, and mobility benefits of active transit. These efforts have important implications for Charlotte residents. An estimated more than 23,000 households in Charlotte do not have car access and are limited to existing public transportation options.⁴⁷

Additionally, Charlotte is a dangerous place to be a pedestrian or bicyclist. Air pollution is creating respiratory and cardiac condition hotspots along traffic corridors, and fatal crashes including pedestrians and bicyclists, almost doubled between 2012 and 2016, amounting to an estimated 900 deaths.⁴⁸ As part of the new Transportation Action Plan, which was adopted by the City Council in February 2017, the city is executing the Vision Zero strategy to reduce traffic crashes. Efforts to make the city’s streets safer will in turn support the public’s use of more environmentally friendly active transit options that the city plans to invest in.

Neighborhood and district resilience planning

The city is also reducing carbon pollution and improving resilience to extreme temperatures by focusing on energy efficiency in homes, businesses, and municipal buildings, as well as providing heating and cooling assistance to the poorest residents. Energy efficiency cuts down on households’ electric utility bills and supports public health and safety on extreme heat days or during cold snaps.

Many of the city’s community resilience and urban planning goals are reflected in the North End Smart District plan, a collaboration between neighborhood residents and 16 city government, community organization, and business entities.