Tag archives for health
Posted by In a finding that confirms the devastating health impact of energy poverty, the landmark Global Burden of Disease study published today tallied 3.5 million annual deaths from respiratory illness due to burning of wood, brush, dung, and other biomass for fuel. Cooking on traditional cookstoves is a far greater risk factor than poor water and…
Posted by When it comes to water from hydrofracking, the question of safety is murky at best. The Chemical Cocktail of Fracking Fluid For many folks the big baddie of hydraulic fracturing, also called hydrofracking or fracking, is fracking fluid — the mixture of water, sand, and chemicals that’s injected deep below the surface to fracture the…
A tactical retreat or an abdication? It’s a scant 14 months to the 2012 elections. The economy’s in the tank, as are the president’s poll numbers. (See here, here, here and here.) The pundits tell us (for instance here and here) that Obama will pivot to jobs, jobs, jobs in an effort to rehabilitate his…
The UN proposes a way to delay dangerous warming by decades. If you’ve read this recent U.S. National Academy of Sciences report, you’d have an idea of how little time we may have to avoid passing the 2-degree Celsius (3.6-degree Fahrenheit) warming threshold set by international groups (see here [pdf] and here) to avoid dangerous…
Posted by While attending the CITES (Convention on Trade in Endangered Species) biodiversity summit in Nagoya, Japan, late last year, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said that we must foster development and reduce poverty, and at the same time preserve and improve the planet’s biodiversity and ecological resilience. He noted during a speech at the Cancun COP16…
Are cook stoves a hotter climate-change item than international negotiations? Climate Talks Wrap – Progress or Retreat? Last week in Cancun, Mexico, officials from the 190+ nations wrapped up international climate talks at the 16th Conference of the Parties on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (a k a COP-16). The somewhat upbeat…
Posted by I became an environmentalist much later in life than I should have. Born in San Francisco I grew up in Suisun, California, a small town of small, aging ranch-style houses on a slough that fed the Bay. It’s the kind of town that, usually if someone thinks they’ve heard of it, they’re actually thinking of…
