Tag Archives : coal

A comprehensive and critical medical report by the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) entitled Coal’s Assault of Human Health, replete with expert medical and public health opinion, states that ‘coal pollutants damage every major organ in the human body and contribute to four of the top five leading causes of death in the United States.’ [...]

The current mantra is to ‘reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than 25 percent by 2020 — and more than 80 percent by 2050.’ While these attempts will curb our dependence on fossil fuels, doing ‘everything possible to promote alternative energy’ may also entail ‘financial, political, and technical pressures as well as time constraints [...]

A leading Confucian intellectual in China makes the proposal for a political system that will give equal emphasis to the otherwise ignored sectors of modern democracies: foreigners, future generations, and ancestors. “Is democracy really the best way to protect future victims of global warming?” he asks. Confucianism is premised on human kinships [...]

Around the world, 13 million deaths could be avoided each year just by making some positive changes to improve the environment. The World Health Organization (WHO) has published its report on environmental health, with findings that show the inequalities between rich and poor regions. According to WHO data, poor countries lose 20 times more healthy [...]

Carbon dioxide emissions brought about by human activity have caused global warming or that which is commonly defined as the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. It is caused by the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The biggest of these greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide or CO2 that is emitted to [...]

The concept of acceptable risk is not particularly easy to define. It is essentially a measure of the risk of harm, injury or disease arising from a chemical or process that will be tolerated by a person or group. Think China’s insistence to continue using coal-fired plants because the economy is said to be unable to afford non-coal power generation. Whether [...]

It’s an age-old paradigm that poor countries remain poor because of their poor access to technology. Much more so in this day and age when climate change is the great leveler of nations: meaning environmental disasters do not know economies of scale. But it is logical fact to consider that poor nations have lesser chances of adapting to global warming. [...]