Environment and Health
Don’t Give Up the Fight
My social circle was shaken a few days into the new year with an upsetting blog post. A friend I will call Mary is seriously ill. The blogger requested loving messages to her to be sewn into a quilt. This bombshell began a flood of phone calls, emails, and Facebook...
Scrubbing the Air of Smog
I can only imagine the fear that must grip a parent when his or her child suffers an asthma attack. And I can scarcely fathom how much time and energy they spend doing everything they can to avoid triggers for these potentially deadly attacks. A major asthma trigger...
Pipeline to Nowhere
When Maria van der Hoeven summed up the 20-year outlook for global energy investment in London last year, she identified a couple of daunting challenges. The amount of money required by 2035 is a staggering $48 trillion, the International Energy Agency chief and...
Your Smartphone Could Be Poisoning Children
Kim Gunoo is a 15-year-old South Korean boy who has lived with perpetual diarrhea since birth. His first seven months were spent in and out of the hospital, where four major surgeries resulted in the full removal of his large intestine. Ever since, Gunoo has required...
Get Wild without Abandoning Common Sense
Minutes to midnight on New Year's Eve, I sat around a fire with friends, discussing plans for 2015. I told them mine: to hike over 200 miles on the John Muir Trail through the High Sierras, by myself. They told me that I’m nuts. “I might do it if I brought my gun,”...
A Lump of Coal for Fossil Fuels
The fossil-fuel divestment movement got the perfect holiday gift in 2014: tumbling stocks. Founded only two years ago by experts and students fed up with the glacial pace of climate action, this global effort is already liquidating more than $50 billion of the oil,...
Warning: Fracking May Harm Public Health
What do public health advocates like me tell people all the time? Get tested. Use protection. In practice, that means we’re always explaining how everything from cancer screenings to immunizations to bike helmets can save lives. The same logic ought to apply to...
The Frack Oil Salesman
Neighbors Don’t Let Neighbors Frack
All my life, I’ve been a good citizen. I vote. I volunteer. I know my neighbors. Moreover, I take care of my property. I garden. I make jams and jellies to give away for Christmas. In short, I fulfill my obligations as a rural homeowner. Still, there's one additional...
These Boots Were Made for Waiting
Heads are finally rolling because of the Department of Veterans Affairs' assorted waitlist scandals. Some 1,000 or more workers may lose their jobs over chronic bottlenecks and fake waitlists, VA chief Robert McDonald disclosed shortly before Veterans Day. Then,...
