Fig. 5: Impacts of alternative scenarios on racial/ethnic minority exposure and disparities between racial/ethnic minorities and the overall population.

All results are relative to the 2030 baseline scenario (Table 1, #2). The green X shows the results of our main policy case (Cap 50%, Table 1, #3). The colored dots show the optimization scenarios (with associated numbers from Table 1) which minimize the racial/ethnic minority exposure under different constraints while achieving emissions reductions from 40% to 60% (emission targets are shown by colors). “Nation-total (max exposure)” shows a scenario that maximizes the racial/ethnic minority mortality while achieving 50% CO₂ reductions, serving as a lower bound of the exposure reductions. The black dots show 5000 potential emission reduction scenarios, derived from random selection of sources and the amount of emissions reductions at each source, which all achieve the same level of CO₂ reduction (−50%). Those scenarios do not aim to optimize the racial/ethnic minority mortalities but are used to show the full potential range of alternative policy scenarios.