Anushka Asthana and Matthew Taylor, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Britain is joining France, Norway, The Netherlands, Sweden, and other European nations as well as China and India in committing to noncarbon energy transportation. They will lead the world, their workers will have the jobs, the wealth the transition creates will finance their infrastructure.
Ministers believe poor air quality poses largest environmental risk to public health in UK.
Credit: Peter Macdiarmid
Britain is to ban all new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040 amid fears that rising levels of nitrogen oxide pose a major risk to public health.
The commitment, which follows a similar pledge in France, is part of the government’s much-anticipated clean air plan, which has been at the heart of a protracted high court legal battle.
The government warned that the move, which will also take in hybrid vehicles, was needed because of the unnecessary and avoidable impact that poor air quality was having on people’s health. Ministers believe it poses the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK, costing up to £2.7bn in lost productivity in one recent year.
Ministers have been urged to introduce charges for vehicles to enter a series of “clean air zones” (CAZ). However, the government only wants taxes to be considered as a last resort, fearing a backlash against any move that […]
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JENNY STALETOVICH, - Miami Herald
Stephan: Exactly as I predicted in 2005 and have noted numerous times since then. We are going to see the greatest real estate collapse in human history between now and 2050 -- 33 years. Fifty two per cent of the American public will be affected.
Last month, heavy rain closed the massive Sawgrass Mills Mall for three days. Sales for the mall reportedly average $7 million a day. Credit: AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
In low-lying areas like South Florida, where rising seas and repeat floods are already driving up insurance costs, the nation’s beleaguered flood program should consider more aggressive efforts to buy out risky property, the Natural Resources Defense Council said Tuesday.
In a study that looked at escalating costs to a program mired in $24 billion in debt, the group found that the National Flood Insurance Program spent $5.5 billion to rebuild 30,000 properties that flooded repeatedly between 1978 and 2015. That’s just a fraction of the 5 million insured. The study also found lower-priced property valued at less than $250,000 typically cost more to rebuild — about 122 percent —than its value.
To end the cycle of “flood, rebuild, repeat,” that often traps lower-income homeowners, the group is pushing for legislation that would make it easier for willing property owners to secure an option […]
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DAVID STEINGOLD, - Study Finds
Stephan: Are you "overfat"? Here's how to know.
The vast majority of American men are “overfat,” a new study finds.
Various researchers, led by Australian health expert Philip Maffetone, examined the prevalence of individuals in society who have excess body fat that impairs health, many of whom aren’t conventionally considered overweight.
They particularly looked at excess fat stored in the abdomen region, which is associated with an increased risk of chronic disease (e.g., cancer, stroke, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes), higher levels of morbidity and mortality, and reduced quality of life.
In many cases, overfat individuals notice that their condition aids and abets the development of other health conditions.
The researchers found that up to 90 percent of adult males in developed countries are overfat, along with up to 80 percent of women and half of children.
While the problems were most magnified among denizens of the United States and New Zealand, they were fairly pervasive worldwide.
Previous research by the same authors had concluded that up to 76 percent of the world’s population may be overfat.
Meanwhile, measuring body mass index (BMI) isn’t effective for determining whether someone is overfat, so Maffetone et al. devised a simple equation to help anyone make that determination.
Quite simply, if the circumference of […]
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Saturday, July 29th, 2017
Jonathan Latham, M.D., Carol Van Strum, Mary Bottari, - PRWatch
Stephan: Last night and today brought two major examples of the corruption of government to enable corporations to make money while poisoning our lives. As you read this, remember that the Trump administration is working as fast as it can to relax or eliminate all kinds of protections to keep us safe from toxins and poisons.
The Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy today are releasing a trove of rediscovered and newly digitized chemical industry and regulatory agency documents stretching back to the 1920s. The documents are available at PoisonPapers.org.
Together, the papers show that both industry and regulators understood the extraordinary toxicity of many chemical products and worked together to conceal this information from the public and the press. These papers will transform our understanding of the hazards posed by certain chemicals on the market and the fraudulence of some of the regulatory processes relied upon to protect human health and the environment. (emphasis added)
“These documents represent a tremendous trove of previously hidden or lost evidence on chemical regulatory activity and chemical safety. What is most striking about these documents is their heavy focus on the activities of regulators. Time and time again regulators went to the extreme lengths of setting up secret committees, deceiving the media and the public, and covering up evidence of human exposure and human harm. These secret activities extended and increased human exposure to […]
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Saturday, July 29th, 2017
Richard Valdmanis, - Scientific American/Reuters
Stephan: The thing about history is that things eventually come to light. Here for example is the truth about what the carbon eneergy industries knew about climate change, and when they knew it.
This what a society looks like when it has only one social priority and profit is more important than wellbeing.
Marathon Petroleum refinery in Canton, Ohio
Credit: PR
The U.S. electric industry knew as far back as 1968 that burning fossil fuels might cause global warming, but cast doubt on the science of climate change and ramped up coal use for decades afterward, an environmental watchdog group said on Tuesday. (emphasis added)
The California-based Energy and Policy Institute, which opposes fossil fuels, cited documents it obtained. It said its research mirrors reporting conducted by InsideClimate News about Exxon Mobil’s early understanding of climate change, which triggered an investigation by New York’s Attorney General.
The documents released by the EPI showed the Edison Electric Institute industry group was warned at its annual convention in 1968 by a member of then-President Lyndon Johnson’s administration that carbon emissions from fossil fuels could change the climate and trigger “catastrophic effects.”
The electric industry’s research organization, the Electric Power Research Institute, then began studying the issue in the 1970s and produced its own research that included warnings of rising CO2 levels, temperatures, and sea levels, according to the EPI, which provided links to documents supporting […]
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