Green spaces 'improve health'

Research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health says the impact is particularly noticeable in reducing rates of mental ill health.

The annual rates of 15 out of 24 major physical diseases were also significantly lower among those living closer to green spaces.

One environmental expert said the study confirmed that green spaces create 'oases' of improved health around them.

The researchers from the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam looked at the health records of 350,000 people registered with 195 family doctors across the Netherlands.

Only people who had been registered with their GP for longer than 12 months were included because the study assumed this was the minimum amount of time people would have to live in an environment before any effect of it would be noticeable.

The percentages of green space within a one and three kilometre (0.62 and 1.86 miles) radius of their home were calculated using their postcode.

On average, green space accounted for 42% of the residential area within one kilometre (0.62 miles) radius and almost 61% within a three kilometre (1.86 miles) radius of people's homes.

And the annual rates for 24 diseases in 7 different categories were calculated.

The health benefits for most of the diseases were only seen when the greenery was within a one kilometre ( 0.62 miles ) radius of the home.

The exceptions to this were anxiety disorders, infectious diseases of the digestive system and medically unexplained physical symptoms which were seen to benefit even when the green spaces were within three kilometres of the home.

The biggest impact was on anxiety disorders and depression.

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Agriculture critic's appearance angers university alumni

When officials at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo scheduled a free lecture by bestselling author Michael Pollan, they envisioned a lively talk about sustainable food, along with Pollan's customary critiques of agribusiness.

What they didn't expect was a wave of denunciations from angry farming and ranching alumni who rank Pollan as a force only slightly less damaging to agriculture than the Mediterranean fruit fly.

Threatening to pull his donations, the head of one of California's biggest ranching operations succeeded in turning today's planned lecture into a panel discussion involving Pollan, a meat-science expert, and a major grower of organic lettuce.

Pollan assented but said in an interview that the incident raised troubling questions about academic freedom.

"It's an open threat to the university," he said. "The issue is really about whether the school is free to explore diverse ideas about farms and farming."

Pollan was the star attraction at a fundraising dinner for Cal Poly's sustainability programs Wednesday night.

For David E. Wood, chairman of Harris Ranch Beef Co., Pollan's solo lecture would have provided the author of such books as "The Omnivore's Dilemma" a soapbox for "anti- agricultural views."

"While I understand the need to expose students to alternative views, I find it unacceptable that the university would provide Michael Pollan an unchallenged forum to promote his stand against conventional agricultural practices," Wood wrote in a Sept. 23 letter to Cal Poly President Warren Baker.

Wood has pledged $150,000 toward a new meat processing plant for the campus cattle herd. In his letter, he said Pollan's scheduled appearance had prompted him to "rethink my continued financial support of the university." He also criticized an animal-sciences professor who said that conventional feedlots like the one run by Harris Ranch were not a form of sustainable agriculture.

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Obama May Be Met By Frustration in New Orleans Visit

Even before Air Force One touches down in New Orleans on Thursday afternoon, President Obama is discovering the burdens of rebuilding a city that feels abandoned by the federal government.

Four years after Hurricane Katrina, swaths of New Orleans remain devastated by the winds and floods that tore through. More than 65,000 homes remain abandoned. There is no public hospital. The levees that keep back the Gulf of Mexico are still vulnerable.

The responsibility for getting more federal help to New Orleans has now passed from President George W. Bush to Obama, and with it the impatience of the city's residents.

"The people that I talk to are frustrated with the setbacks that they have had to endure, are frustrated with the nature of the bureaucracy that allows decisions to be unmade for long periods of time," said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The frustration, she said, is a reflection of "the pent-up need . . . for a sense of serious attention from the federal government."

Obama has repeatedly sent Cabinet secretaries into New Orleans, often with money to jump-start stalled projects. White House officials say they have cut red tape and loosened $1.5 billion in assistance that was stuck in the federal pipeline. They say more than 3,500 people have been moved to permanent housing.

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Current CO2 Levels May Be Highest in 15 Million Years

A new study suggests that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere are higher now than they have been in 15 million years. Reporting in the journal Science, U.S. researchers said that by studying the shells of ancient marine algae, they were able to determine that the last time CO2 levels were this high occurred 15 to 20 million years ago when the earth was 5 to 10 degrees hotter, sea levels were 75 to 120 feet higher, and there was no permanent ice cap in the Arctic. Until now, the best available climate record — obtained by examining ice bubbles in Antarctic ice cores — showed that concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher today than at any time in the past 800,000 years. If the research by Arhadhna Tripati of the University of California at Los Angeles proves correct, that would mean that science has been able to extend the climate record much farther into the past. Tripati and her colleagues determined CO2 levels in the algae shells by studying the ratio of the chemical element boron to calcium, and Tripati reported that her findings matched the overall CO2 trends seen in Antarctic ice cores. She called her findings “slightly shocking” and said that if CO2 levels, now at 387 parts per million, keep going up, the earth could be in store for the high temperatures and major sea level rises of the Middle Miocene period 15 million years ago.

from Yale Environment 360

original article in Science

New research aims to create accurate account of a city’s carbon burden

With more than half the world’s population now living in cities, it is becoming crucial to determine how curbing greenhouse gas emissions from cities can help mitigate global warming. Densely populated areas are capable of impressive energy efficiencies per person, but cities on the whole are major contributors to the human-propelled greenhouse gases that cause global climate change.

Many cities are developing plans and policies to cut their carbon emissions. But their efforts have been hampered by the lack of a reliably accurate, standardized methodology for inventorying their total emissions, as well as reliable data on energy use.

New research led by Christopher Kennedy, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto, takes steps toward establishing that methodology by examining why and how emissions differ between cities. In a recent ES&T paper (2009, DOI 10.1021/es900213p), Kennedy and his colleagues argue that a combination of geophysical factors, including local climate and technical factors, play a major role in assessing a particular city’s total emissions.

The paper investigates greenhouse gas emissions across seven components central to the “urban metabolism”: electricity, heating and industrial fuels, industrial processes, ground transportation, aviation, marine activity, and waste management. The ten urban areas Kennedy and his team have examined—ranging in population from 432,000 to 9,519,000—are: Los Angeles County, Greater Toronto, Canton of Geneva, Greater Prague, Cape Town, Denver City and County, New York City, Greater London, Barcelona, and Bangkok. Both emissions occurring within a city and the upstream life-cycle emissions for fuels used within the cities were calculated.

“This paper is certainly an advancement in knowledge in the area” of assessing greenhouse gas emissions from cities, says Peter Marcotullio, a specialist in urban environments and development at Hunter College of the City University of New York. “The big takeaway messages that are really interesting for me are that it’s not the absolute amount of energy that’s consumed that describes heterogeneity between cities, but what they call the fuel mix,” he says. “In terms of greenhouse gas emissions and the effect on the planet, it’s really the type of fuel you’re using. I think that’s significant, although intuitive.”

Another significant finding, says Marcotullio, is that a city’s relative level of prosperity plays a much smaller role than the city’s climate in total greenhouse gas emissions. “There is a major theory out there that uses income, or GDP, to distinguish between the environmental burdens of cities,” he says. By comparing the number of “heating degree days”—days on which the temperature falls at or below 18.0 °C—across different cities, the researchers found more similarities in energy use than the average income of its residents.

“That this study says [income] just isn’t that important is interesting, and potentially very controversial,” Marcotullio says.

Lily Parshall, a Ph.D. candidate in sustainable development at Columbia University, says that a major challenge for assessing emissions in cities is the lack of comparable data. The biggest contribution of this study “is trying to develop consistent comparisons across a number of cities in different parts of the world, using the best available data,” she says.

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Sicily mudslides highlight how negligence and nature conspire to make Italy a disaster zone

Accidents and natural disasters happen everywhere. Italy has had its share of them this year, with last week's Sicilian mudslides capping a deadly six months that have included an earthquake and a horrific train wreck.

What has many Italians particularly worried, however, is the unusually high death tolls and destruction the disasters have wreaked in a nation that takes pride in being one of the world's most advanced democracies.

While the tragedies are unrelated, experts see a common thread: corruption, chronic negligence, and uncontrolled development conspiring with a disaster-prone terrain to inflict maximum damage.

As the death toll from last week's massive landslides rises to 26 with rescuers still digging for bodies, the nation is once again waking up to the reality of how unprepared it is to cope with nature's fury.

"When all the ills come together a small emergency becomes a tragedy," said Maria D'Amico, 52, a travel agent from the stricken area near Messina.

In April, the towns of central Italy crumbled, killing some 300 people, in a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that would have caused only limited damage in most Western nations. Experts blamed the high death toll on shoddy construction, and prosecutors have begun an investigation.

Two months later, more than 30 died in a Tuscan seaside resort when a broken wheel caused a gas train to derail in an overcrowded area, setting an entire neighbourhood on fire.

Last week's rainstorm released rivers of mud and debris that rushed down mountainsides and submerged parts of the Sicilian city of Messina, a tragedy that might have been averted if homes were not built on hillsides and the trees cut down.

"Although Italy is beautiful, the land is considered something that must be exploited as much as possible," said Enzo Boschi, president of the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology.

The long and narrow Italian peninsula has mountains running through its backbone, leaving little room for cities and infrastructure.

That is one of the reasons why there are few rail lines in Italy, and why dangerous cargo like the Viareggio gas train too often travels through densely populated areas, Boschi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

more from the Canadian Press

Behind Asia-Pacific's Unnatural Disasters

In the shadow of a volcano, under a nightfall that cannot hide the rising stench of death, Pariaman official Yuen Karnova recounts his district's toll from the earthquake that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Sept. 30: at least 400 people believed dead, just some of what will probably be thousands of casualties from the quake; more than 10,000 buildings collapsed or condemned; a dozen or so villages wiped off the map by landslides. Pariaman, Karnova notes, is hardly a stranger to calamity. "Every natural disaster you can think of, it has happened here," he tells me. "Landslides, floods, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, even a tsunami. Some people ask me, Why don't you leave?" Karnova's mouth forms a smile that is not the least bit amused. "We are people of faith," he says, "and we must face up to these challenges."

But what a multitude of challenges has been unleashed upon the Asia-Pacific region in just a week's time. In late September, tropical storm Ketsana killed more than 160 people in Vietnam and nearly 300 in the Philippines, submerging 80% of Manila. Just hours before Sumatra was jolted, another earthquake triggered a tsunami that inundated the Samoan islands and Tonga, extinguishing some 180 lives. In the latest catastrophe, southern India was ravaged by some of the worst torrential rains in decades, killing around 300 people and leaving some 2 million others homeless. (See pictures of tsunami striking South Pacific.)

The unrelenting drumbeat of bad news confirms what many have sensed for some time. First, the globe is being cursed with more natural calamities than before. Second, the distribution of disaster is unequal. A U.N. report released in May studied natural disasters between 1975 and 2007 and found not only that the frequency of catastrophe is increasing because of climate change, unsafe cities and environmental degradation, but also that the brunt of tragedy is borne by poor countries least equipped to deal with such misfortune. In 2008, 98% of natural disaster – related fatalities occurred in Asia, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based research group. At a World Health Organization summit last month, health ministers from Southeast Asia announced that from 1998 to 2009, 750,000 people had perished from natural disasters in their region alone.

Some countries, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, are blighted by geography. But other disaster-prone nations like Japan manage to surmount these disadvantages. In some ways, natural disasters give these developed economies an excuse for technological improvement. So while Japan invests in high-tech skyscrapers designed to withstand the inevitable next earthquake, the West Sumatran capital of Padang — which scientists long predicted would be shaken by a killer quake because it sits astride one of the world's most active fault lines — was crowded with poorly built buildings that crumbled when the earth shuddered on Sept. 30. Similarly, in the Philippines, the vast flooding triggered by Ketsana was largely the result of insufficient drainage. In fact, the U.N. estimates that when equivalent populations in the Philippines and Japan endure the same number of tropical cyclones each year, 17 times more people perish in the Philippines than in Japan. The higher death tolls feed a vicious cycle: constantly struggling to recover from the latest storm or quake, developing countries have a harder time affording the disaster-prevention measures needed to mitigate nature's wrath.

more from Time