Rachel's Democracy & Health News back issues from April 2008:
CHANGE WE MUST
Apr 03, 2008; ... The New York Times carried an important story in its science section this week. Two people have sued in federal district court in Honolulu, trying to stop a group of scientists in Europe from conducting a particle physics experiment that, they say, might create a black hole that could destroy ...
LETTER FROM SIERRA CLUB PRESIDENT ROBERT COX
Apr 03, 2008; ... This note is in response to reports about the Sierra Club Board of Directors' vote to suspend the Florida Chapter volunteer Executive Committee for four years. What has not been clear in some reports is that the action is the result of requests from Sierra Club members in Florida, themselves, ...
MOBILE PHONES MORE DANGEROUS THAN SMOKING
Apr 03, 2008; ... Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their ...
WEIGHING THE CLIMATE RISK OF AN UNTAPPED FOSSIL FUEL
Apr 03, 2008; ... Vienna, Austria - A recent workshop* on methane hydrates felt like a powwow of 19th century California gold prospectors, looking ahead to both riches and peril. Sizing up the prize, Arthur Johnson, a veteran geologist of the oil industry who is now an energy consultant based in Kenner, ...
JAMES HANSEN LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA
Apr 03, 2008; ... The Hon Kevin Rudd, MP Prime Minister of Australia Australian Parliament Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 2600 Dear Prime Minister, Your leadership is needed on a matter concerning coal-fired power plants and carbon dioxide emission rates in your country, a matter with ...
STUDY LINKS PARKINSON'S DISEASE TO LONG-TERM PESTICIDE EXPOSURE
Apr 03, 2008; ... Scientists have found further evidence of a link between Parkinson's disease and long-term exposure to pesticides. A study of more than 300 people with the neurological disease - which can affect movements such as walking, talking and writing - found that sufferers were more than twice ...
ONE SKY, MANY OWNERS
Apr 03, 2008; ... It's 1999. To reduce the risk of global warming, the United States and other industrial nations have agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent in the coming decade. To make these cuts efficiently, the United Stares has set up a system of marketable permits for carbon ...
COPS AND FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENTS RAN BLACK OPS ON GREEN GROUPS
Apr 10, 2008; ... A private security company organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, ...
WHO SENDS CLIMATE DISTRESS CALL
Apr 10, 2008; ... Countries must make urgent preparations to cope with adverse health impacts of climate change that could kill millions, the World Health Organisation said on Monday. Rising global temperatures threatened more deaths and disease from malnutrition, storms and floods, water shortages, heat ...
CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS INCREASING RAPIDLY
Apr 10, 2008; ... Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels stood at a record 8.38 gigatons of carbon (GtC) in 2006, 20 percent above the level in 2000. Emissions grew 3.1 percent a year between 2000 and 2006, more than twice the rate of growth during the 1990s. Carbon dioxide ...
HERMAPHRODITE FROGS FOUND IN SUBURBAN PONDS
Apr 10, 2008; ... Common frogs that make their homes in suburban areas are more likely than their rural counterparts to develop the reproductive abnormalities previously found in fish in the Potomac and Mississippi Rivers, according to the study by David Skelly, a professor of ecology at the Yale School of ...
THE FIFTEEN MINUTE TIP: SIZING UP YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT
Apr 10, 2008; ... NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - Go green. It's in the news all the time now. Reduce global warming, save the planet, do the right thing. But how - and how much? New carbon-footprint measures help you know. Carbon dioxide. Otherwise known as CO2, or "greenhouse gas," it's the main byproduct of ...
TOXIC SOCKS
Apr 10, 2008; ... Arizona State University researchers have found that socks impregnated with odor-fighting silver nanoparticles release the nanoparticles when washed. This study, the first to examine how nanoparticles are released from commercially available clothing raises concerns about silver particles ...
IN JUSTICE SHIFT, CORPORATE DEALS REPLACE TRIALS
Apr 10, 2008; ... In 2005, federal authorities concluded that a Monsanto consultant had visited the home of an Indonesian official and, with the approval of a senior company executive, handed over an envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. The money was meant as a bribe to win looser environmental regulations ...
LIVING ABOVE THE LINE
Apr 17, 2008; ... I know it's not fashionable to talk about limits. Nobody likes limits. But anyone who's paying attention knows that the Earth has definite limits. It's a tiny place, really. (If the Earth were a peach, then the part of it we inhabit - the biosphere - would be the fuzz on the ...
THE BRIDGE AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Apr 24, 2008; ... Between Two Worlds The remarkable charts that introduce this book reveal the story of humanity's impact on the natural earth.[1] The pattern is clear: if we could speed up time, it would seem as if the global economy is crashing against the earth - the Great Collision. And like the crash ...
REASONABLE DOUBT
Apr 24, 2008; ... Among the many environmental concerns surrounding nuclear power plants, there is one that provokes public anxiety like no other: the fear that children living near nuclear facilities face an increased risk of cancer. Though a link has long been suspected, it has never been proven. Now that seems ...
SMALL AND THIN
Apr 24, 2008; ... [Rachel's introduction: Two revolutionary discoveries, made only in the past 20 years, radically alter our perspective on the importance of "the environment" for human health. One such discovery is "fetal programming" - mechanisms by which chemical exposures in the womb can "program" a person in ...
WARMER SEAS, OVER-FISHING SPELL DISASTER FOR OCEANS: SCIENTISTS
Apr 24, 2008; ... HANOI (AFP) - The future food security of millions of people is at risk because over-fishing, climate change and pollution are inflicting massive damage on the world's oceans, marine scientists warned this week. The two-thirds of the planet covered by seas provide one fifth of the ...
EPA OPENS CHEMICAL RISK ASSESSMENT TO CORPORATE LOBBYING
Apr 24, 2008; ... Washington, DC - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has unveiled a new process for assessing the health risks of new chemicals that allows chemical manufacturers and other industries to play key roles. As a result, it will be much easier to inject corporate influence into public health ...
POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS SLUDGE USED IN LEAD POISONING TEST
Apr 17, 2008; ... Scientists conducting research supported by federal grants spread sewage sludge made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether the fertilizer could protect children in the area from lead poisoning in the soil. Families in the areas were assured the ...
IS INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION MAKING AMERICA FAT?
Apr 17, 2008; ... Despite the nagging of diet experts, fitness instructors, public health officials, doctors, nurses and moms, the tide of obesity that has practically engulfed Western civilization over the past two decades shows no sign of reaching its ebb. In the United States, the percentage of adults ...
U.N. CHIEF: FOOD CRISIS IS NOW EMERGENCY
Apr 17, 2008; ... United Nations - A rapidly escalating global food crisis has reached emergency proportions and threatens to wipe out seven years of progress in the fight against poverty, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned Monday. He called for short-term emergency measures in many regions to meet ...
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
Apr 17, 2008; ... One sunny day 10 years ago, Captain Charles Moore was sailing home from a yacht race in Hawaii when he steered his boat off-course in search of a little adventure in the North Pacific. Heading north in his 50-foot catamaran, Alguita, Moore wanted to graze the lower Eastern corner of a rarely ...
HEALTH FOOD IS GOING TO THE DOGS - LITERALLY
Apr 17, 2008; ... Consumers have been displaying a hearty appetite for all things healthy, natural and vitamin-infused. Consumer companies are pushing that trend a step further, right into the heart of the canine world. Cott Corp., a maker of private-label sodas for human consumption, is one of the latest ...
GLOBAL HOT SPOTS OF HUNGER SET TO EXPLODE
Apr 17, 2008; ... UNITED NATIONS - As food prices continue to escalate worldwide, some of the poorest nations in the developing world are in danger of social and political upheavals. The unrest, which is likely to spread to nearly 40 countries, has been triggered largely by a sharp increase in the prices ...