By Ned Parker
Across the United States, cities have launched new programs focused on dealing with extreme weather, reflecting the growing impacts of climate change on local communities, according to experts.
Since 2019 at least 30 U.S. cities have taken fresh action such as hiring specialists to combat the impact of extreme weather, including Phoenix, Houston, Louisville, Nashville, and Oakland, according to the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, based at Washington D.C.'s Atlantic Council think tank.
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New EPA data released in May, after years of delays during the Trump administration, showed heat waves across the country occur more frequently, last longer and are often hotter, that wildfires are torching more land, and that the East and Gulf Coasts are flooding more often.
Many times poor and minority communities take the brunt, said Alice Hill, an energy and climate policy expert at the independent Council on Foreign Relations think tank based in New York. "There has been a growing recognition that because they are at greater risk of harm, more needs to be done to protect them," she said.
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