Can efforts to slash climate-changing emissions also fight social and racial inequity?

As it pushes to cut its emissions 45% by 2025 - just four years away - Los Angeles "is trying to demonstrate how climate action is also a road to racial and economic justice", said Lauren Faber O'Connor, the city's chief sustainability officer.

How? Former gang members and ex-prison inmates are being trained to install solar panels, particularly in low-income communities. Poor areas are getting discount access to electric car-sharing plans and their own charging stations.

A clean tech incubator also is nurturing green start-ups  - like one selling pavement that repels the sun's heat - many of them run by women and racial minorities.

"It’s going to be a long haul to meet our carbon-neutrality mandates. And we are only as strong as the partnerships we can build," O'Connor noted.

Across the United States, cities from Miami to Minneapolis - where George Floyd died at the hands of police officers - are launching "resilience hubs" designed to battle both climate change and social inequities, and rebuild faith in government.

Cities with the most social cohesion tend to bounce back the most quickly from any kind of shock, so building that now is key - and not just to deal with climate threats, backers say.

"When you don't have that trust, you can't give clear directions on how to respond to COVID-19, (you) can't tell people to go inside for curfew to separate rioters from protesters," noted Ron Harris, Minneapolis' chief resilience officer.

"Things that shock a community have to do with climate, but more urgently they have to do with systemic inequities," he said, pointing to police shootings, civic unrest and the growth of homeless encampments.

Britain is just one place not yet prepared for climate threats, from worsening extreme heat to potential food shortages, its advisory Committee on Climate Change has warned.

In a country better known for its damp and rain, 40-degree-Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) deadly summers remain hard to imagine - one problem in getting ready for them.

"How do we expect the unexpected?"-  from UK wildfires to empty supermarket shelves as climate extremes hit homegrown and imported food - asks climate scientist Richard Betts.

In Brazil, one particularly severe threat this year may be what doctor Mario Vianna, president of the Amazonas state doctors' union called the "explosive combination" of Amazon forest fires and COVID-19-damaged lungs.

Asterio Martins Tomas, leader of the Amazonian Diuna Livramento indigenous community, said many - like him - are still recovering from the virus even as the fire season approaches.

"I still feel tired, and my chest is in pain. When I breathe, it hurts," said the worried 60-year-old, one of many at risk in a country where coronavirus has already claimed a half million lives.

And in Bangladesh, could garment factories save money going green? Our correspondent Naimul Karim takes a look.

See you next week!

Laurie

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