Last Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its assessment of the complexities of regulating greenhouse gases under the provisions of the Clean Air Act. The assessment is open for public comment for 120 days. The EPA followed this announcement with the release on Tuesday of a proposed rule for the Federal Requirements related to the sequestration of greenhouse gases.
These announcements were followed by the release on Thursday of a 284-page report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, primarily written by the EPA, that focused on the impacts of climate change on human health, settlements, and welfare. The report concluded that climate change will have negative health impacts, varied welfare impacts, and that the population is trending to moving to geographical areas most likely to be influenced by climate change.
The week also saw the publishing of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science concluding that global warming will result in an increase in the occurrences of kidney stones in the United States by moving the boundary of the geographical kidney stone “belt” further north.
News Items
News items related to climate change from the past week.
- Sun Could Cause 15% To 20% Of Effects Of Climate Change, Researcher Says – Science Daily (Jul 18, 2008)
- Warming Is Major Threat To Humans, EPA Warns – Washington Post (Jul 18, 2008)
- Mitigating Climate Change By Improving Forest Management In The Tropics – Science Daily (Jul 17, 2008)
- Should we move species to save them? – AP (Jul 17, 2008)
- Warming health report: Poor, elderly to hurt most – AP (Jul 17, 2008)
- Climate change should influence building codes, says expert – Regina Leader-Post (CA) (Jul 16, 2008)
- Battle lines drawn on environment at premiers’ meeting – Canada.com (Jul 16, 2008)
- Ottawa far behind provinces on climate: report – Globe and Mail (CA) (Jul 16, 2008)
- Climate science: The long summer begins – Nature (Jul 16, 2008)
- Heavy industry workers’ jobs on the line – Herald Sun (AU) (Jul 15, 2008)
- Global Warming May Up Kidney Stone Risk: Study – ABC News (Jul 15, 2008)
- Governors stop short of backing climate change fixes – Salt Lake Tribune (Jul 14, 2008)
- Bridging the Gap on Climate Change – Washington Post (Jul 14, 2008)
- Oysters getting cooked by climate change – L.A. Times (Jul 14, 2008)
- Pope expresses worry about climate change – AP (Jul 12, 2008)
Fresh Air. The Scent of Pine. 
It’s obvious that the effects of climate change affects the environment as well as our health. Besides, the extreme weather conditions, devastating hurricanes, and excessive drought & floods affects our health, the soil, and crops. Deforestation, which is one of the major contributors of climate change & global warming, releases a massive amount of carbon dioxide during the incineration and burning of forest plants when clearing land.
Consider this, the island of Haiti has less than 1% of its forests left and with its ongoing food crisis, this phenomenon is worsening its agricultural sector. In an effort to solve the issues of deforestation in Haiti, non-profit organization Lambi Fund of Haiti and Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai of the Green Belt Movement is partnering to plant 1 million trees over three years on an island where less than 1 percent of its forest remains.
Posted by Fabiola | July 19, 2008, 10:55 pm