Nov 2022 update. The World Health Organization (WHO) reduced exposure guidelines for PM 2.5 concentrations to 5 ppm in 2021. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/what-are-the-who-air-quality-guidelines The World Health Organization maintains that clean air is a basic human right. Yet, air pollution continues to pose a significant threat to people worldwide – it is the greatest environmental threat to health and a leading cause of …
Rural students are far less likely to go to college than their urban and suburban counterparts, and they’re less likely to finish once they start
“Rural students are far less likely to go to college than their urban and suburban counterparts, and they’re less likely to finish once they start.” NYT Mag (gift article for ND readers): The Tragedy of America’s Rural Schools. (If rural Americans and inner city Americans ever realized they were victims of the exact same systemic unfairness and got together to …
Cooking with gas is like cigarette smoking in the home in terms of impacts on children and rate of childhood asthma
By Lloyd Alter, May 24, 2021 A new report from the Climate Council of Australia, Kicking the Gas Habit: How Gas is Harming our Health, looks at the hazards of the production of gas, including from coal seams and from shale gas, as well as the effects of cooking with gas in homes.1 It concludes “the direct health impacts of mining …
Why is it when you destroy property it’s considered vandalism, but when we destroy nature it’s called progress? How is it that some people, or corporations, can knowingly perpetuate the damage? Or, as people routinely ask me, `Don’t they have grandchildren?’
May-June 2021 Bill McKibben: The Particular Psychology of Destroying the Planet << The New Yorker: “How is it that some people, or corporations, can knowingly perpetuate the damage? Or, as people routinely ask me, `Don’t they have grandchildren?’” Bernie Sanders: What Happens Next in Congress Will Determine Future of Country << CNN: “In this pivotal moment in American history, Democrats …
Undoing Equivalence: Rethinking Carbon Accounting for Just Carbon Removal
Front. Clim., 16 April 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.664130 by Wim Carton1*, Jens Friis Lund2 and Kate Dooley3 – 1Lund University Center for Sustainability Sciences (LUCSUS), Lund, Sweden; 2Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO), Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark; 3Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2021.664130/full Concerns are increasingly raised over the centrality of carbon removal in climate policy, particularly in the …
Rethinking Education: Latinx and Black Family Homeschool Educators Enjoy Greater Control Over Curricula
The pandemic created a new, more diverse, more connected crop of homeschoolers. They could help shape what learning looks like for everyone. IT’S EASY TO homeschool in Texas. A cursory search leads to a step-by-step guide for withdrawing your kid from the school system. Plug a few bits of information into a templated letter, send to a district administrator, and voila! …
Attorneys General in 17 ‘Red’ States Seek to Insert Themselves as Adversaries to Juliana v. United States Plaintiffs
June 8, 2021, Our Children’s Trust EUGENE, Ore. – Six years after the filing of the constitutional climate case Juliana v. United States – and just days before settlement talks were scheduled between the youth and the government – attorneys general from 17 states have asked to insert themselves into the case so they can oppose any proposed settlement and …
Some of the worst ozone pollution in the U.S. settles along the Front Range
Colorado has made some progress toward reducing the chemical dangerous to human health. But it will take leaning on automobiles and oil and gas producers to really move the needle. Mark Jaffe, Jun 7, 2021, Colorado Sun When it comes to oxygen, the Front Range sometimes has too much of a good thing. On many sunny, summer days the region …
Why Stockholm’s 1930s Housing Projects Are Now in High Demand. Targeted social housing for vulnerable groups is now back on the agenda in Sweden
Anyone in Sweden is theoretically entitled to permanent tenancy of a rent-controlled apartment. In recent decades, however, lack of supply in areas of greatest demand has created very long waiting lists. Facing a housing crunch almost a century ago, Sweden’s capital built ‘Barnrikehus’ for low-income families. Today the rent-controlled apartments are some of the city’s more sought-after properties. By Feargus O’Sullivan, Bloomberg, …
1953 Review Outlines Key Issues With Fossil Fuels: The Most Colossal Planning Failure in Human History. Rapid Shift and Attention to the Rights of Future Generations Needed.
May 2021 “War Time Footing” Said Needed to Correct Economists’ Climate Change Failings. Steve Keen, a fellow at University College London, recently told CNBC that economic forecasts predicting the potential impact of climate change have grossly underestimated the reality and delayed global recovery efforts by decades. Keen said that mainstream economists ignored scientific data and instead “made up their own …