Growing literature over the past years has shown climate change to disproportionately affect Latinos. Now, a top Latino environmental group is launching a multi-million dollar series of bilingual ads to drive the message home.
The group, Climate Power en Accion, will spend $5 million on video ads, billboards, search ads, a new website, as well as radio and a video series in collaboration with Spanish-language newspaper El Tiempo Latino, The Hill reports.
"For Latinos, the climate crisis isn't abstract; it's hitting them now and more severely than most Americans," said Antonieta Cazid, deputy executive director of Climate Power en Accion.
"These educational ads make clear that climate action is synonymous with economic prosperity for Latinos. The ads show what the Biden administration has done to combat not just the climate crisis but also to improve the health and economic wellbeing of Latinos and all Americans," she continued.
The campaign will primarily target audiences 18 to 34-year old Hispanic men, and Latinas under 50 in battleground states like Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania, as well as North Carolina.
The bilingual campaign will also add an economic element to the issue, with ads touting the creation of green energy jobs. A sample billboard in Spanish goes after big oil, blaming high gasoline prices on "oil multimillionaires" — "they win, you pay," reads the billboard.
In the U.S., communities of color face heightened risks and exposure to climate-related events, like extreme heat, with Latinos among the groups most likely to be harmed. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Latinos are 43% more likely than non-Hispanic whites to live in areas where extreme temperatures are expected to cause future reductions in labor hours.
Latinos are overrepresented in many work sectors that are most impacted by climate, including agriculture, tourism, and labor.
For instance, an estimated 83% of farmworkers in the U.S. are Latinos, according to a recently published UnidosUS. This has presented a significant threat to the health of many Latinos and their livelihoods, as outdoor workers are 35 times more likely than indoor workers to die from heat-related illness, and will face heightened risks of heat-exposure-related illnesses, like heat stroke and heat exhaustion.
Because of these figures, Latinos seem to prioritize climate change, compared to other demographics.
An UnidosUS poll of Hispanic voters from November found that only 6 percent of Latinos believe climate change is not real, compared to about 15 percent of the general population. Similarly, 48% of Latino voters said climate change is a serious problem, though only 9% listed it as a top issue for officials to address.
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