Celsias Expert Articles

Climate Activism Can Be Good for Depression

Ok, here's a new one from some of the wackier climate change deniers – climate change is all a conspiracy in order to make people depressed so that they go to shrinks, buy antidepressants and commit suicide. Either that, or they say that we all have to stop talking about climate change because it can make people depressed. This is partially based on reports of what the medial health profession is calling "climate change delusion", where someone tries to commit suicide and lists fears about climate change as one of their reasons.

Speaking as someone who has suffered from endogenous ...

The 100th Coal Plant Milestone

by Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign

As of today, 100 coal plants have been defeated or abandoned since the beginning of the coal rush. Late yesterday, news came down that Utah-based Intermountain Power Agency is abandoning plans for a third coal-fired generator in the state.

This news comes as President Obama is at the G8 summit in Italy discussing action on global warming. As other countries like China say they will not act until the U.S. does, these 100 stopped plants are a sign from Americans. We are taking action against global warming ...

Climate Negotiations Stagnate at G8

Expected agreement falls through as countries disagree over how cuts should be allocated by Stephan Faris Climate Change and the Environment Correspondent for Global Post

Activists of charity organization Oxfam, wearing masks of the G8 heads of state U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, perform in downtown Rome July 8, 2009. G8 leaders have failed to get emerging powers to agree climate change goals for 2050 and conclusions from their summit will not directly refer to a sensitive debate about the domination of the dollar. (Remo Casilli/Reuters)

ROME — The ground seems to have fallen out ...

The Daily Dose: Your Guide to the World Today – 9 July 09

The G8 nations have agreed to cut their emissions by 80% by 2050, but calls for a global reduction of 50% by that date have apparently fallen on deaf ears in the developing nations. At the same time, UN head Ban Ki-moon has criticised G8 leaders for not making deeper cuts sooner.

However Russia appears to have already bailed out of the G8’s climate change agreement, with a top presidential aide, Arkady Dvorkovich, saying a figure of 80% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2050 was “unattainable” for them. He refused to say what targets Russia might agree to.

A ...

Wicked Cool World of Organics - Edition 18

This week's dose of organic headlines, updates, resources, goodies, and recipes courtesy of Doug Snodgrass...

Jill Richardson reveals a recent FDA appointment that is less than desirable.

Obama White House Appoints Former Monsanto Lobbyist to FDA

The FDA just announced the appointment of Michael Taylor as a Senior Advisor to the FDA Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg.

Taylor previously worked at the USDA from 1976-1981 as a staff lawyer. He left government to work at King & Spaulding, a law firm representing Monsanto.

He returned to government - this time to the FDA - for a stint as Deputy Commissioner for Policy from 1991-1994 ...

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Decoder

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) signed into law by President Obama in February of 2009 provides some tremendous opportunities for homeowners. In the short run, it creates jobs; in the long term, homes that use less energy will save consumers money.

But what exactly does weatherization mean? How much will it cost the average family, and what exactly can homeowners do to reap the rewards? Green building efficiency expert Charlie Szoradi and his team spent the past several months reading and deciphering this 400-page piece of legislation to create a free resource for homeowners that decodes the Act ...

From Gulf War Syndrome to Green Surf Boards

Todd Patterson was a Gulf War Veteran and competitive martial artist working in the entertainment industry. In 2002, he found himself getting sick all the time and in constant pain. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. “Here I was, this competitive go, go, go guy and I was bed ridden,” he tells me, “and I didn’t know why. It was the most suicidal I’ve ever been in my life.”

One day his wife met someone from the Veteran’s Administration and got to talking about her husband’s health issues. She came home ...

The Daily Dose: Your Guide to the World Today – 8 July 09

The G8 leaders have begun their annual meet with a working lunch in the earthquake-stricken Italian town of L’Aquila – an ironic and perhaps prophetic choice given the tremors and splits already emerging around the issue of cutting greenhouse emissions.

The G8’s “vision” of halving greenhouse emissions by 2050 appears to be dead in the water before their summit even starts, with negotiations among the 17-nation major economies forum breaking down overnight over the issue. Both China and India have steadfastly refused to commit to any targets.

Not only is it shrinking in area, but Arctic sea ice thinned ...

Summer Sports with Lighter Carbon Footprints

Summer is a time for playing tennis, surfing, skateboarding, riding a bike, hiking and generally enjoying the great outdoors in it’s natural splendor (what’s left of it anyhow.) Regrettably fun in the sun isn’t always so kind to Mother Earth. Equipment, and careless behavior can often leave a heavy footprint. With the health of the planet in mind here are some ways you can have fun and keep your global impact in check.

Surfing

You probably won’t find a group of people, other than environmental scientists, that are more eco conscious than surfers. Their hyper awareness ...

Roadsters Embrace Green Racing

Fast and green. That's what it takes to get to the winner's circle in a new type of auto racing. Called green racing, it's a meshing of the fast and furious world of auto racing with the quest for cleaner-burning fuels and more energy efficient engines. But make no mistake about it, being green does not mean being slow.

Race cars actually move the technology of street cars in several ways. One, the technology of race cars develops at a much faster pace than the technology in street cars. And two, they form the basis of what ...

China Sets 15% Renewable Energy Target, Ups Ante on U.S.

As the United States Congress battles over the costs, benefits, and especially, definitions of its own national renewable energy standard, coal-giant China announced a plan to get 15 percent of its energy capacity from wind, solar and other renewable energy sources by 2020, the state-run China Daily reports.

Perhaps sent as a signal to the U.S. and the rest of the world that China is taking seriously the threat of climate change, the news of China's new renewable energy targets should also be taken with a grain of salt: the country is also expected to release a revised ...

The Daily Dose: Your Guide to the World Today – 7 July 09

Climate change has caused the tropical zone to widen by some 500 miles in the last 25 years, an Australian study reveals. In turn, the arid subtropical zone is expanding into formerly temperate areas – with potentially devastating consequences for water resources, natural ecosystems and agriculture.

Mumbai (Bombay) is suffering severe water shortages as a result of the late monsoon, with only 25% of usual rainfall in the Maharashtra region so far this year. Authorities have cut water supplies by 30% to twenty million Mumbai-dwellers to try to manage the shortage.

Sulphur dioxide emissions from US power plants are down 24 ...

Going Local In An Era Of Globalization (+ Video)

Unlike previous global environmental problems such as the depletion of ozone via CFC’s and excessive pesticides (DDT), greenhouse gases are not something we can phase out. First off, there is the problem that previous years of releases are with us and will stay with us for quite some time. Second off, greenhouse gases are a product of a lifestyle that we all can not just give up. This is even truer now that we have a global economy where we ship food, materials, consumer products, and other resources all around the world. So how do we get to stabilizing ...

More than Half of Leading U.S. Supermarkets Show Progress in Latest Greenpeace Sustainable Seafood Scorecard

From Greenpeace; Supermarkets make progress on sustainable seafood, Trader Joe’s receives worst ranking of national supermarket chains, again

In the third edition of Greenpeace’s seafood sustainability scorecard – Carting Away the Oceans - more than half of the leading supermarket chains in the U.S. have now made some sign of progress in increasing the sustainability of their seafood operations. – some of the world’s most critically imperiled species. None of the companies featured in the report guarantee that they won’t sell seafood from fisheries that are harming sea turtles, dolphins, seals, sea lions, or other marine mammals.The ...

Water for Energy, the Bad Bet for Biofuels

This story by Peter Gleick, President of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California originally appeared on SFGate.com

In the ongoing debate about rethinking America’s energy future, there has been far too little discussion about water. It takes a tremendous amount of water to produce our energy, no matter how you measure it.

According to the USGS assessment of water use in the United States (done every five years), about half of all freshwater and saline-water withdrawals for 2000 were used for thermoelectric power. Most of this water was derived from surface water and used for once-through cooling at ...

The Daily Dose: Your Guide to the World Today – 6 July 09

It’s (semi) official: Fertilizers and processed foods are killing us. Rhode Island Hospital researchers have found strong links between nitrate and nitrite exposure and deaths from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes – and modern consumers are ingesting these carcinogenic substances daily in literally hundreds of ways.

China may not commit to emissions targets, but it is serious about green tech: they are about to start building a $17.6 billion 20 gigawatt wind power project in Gansu province, and are aiming to raise wind generating capacity to 100 GW by 2020.

Yes, but does anybody know there’s a ...

Dr. James Hansen is a Hero

NASA’s James Hansen is a hero. He has put his liberty and his reputation on the line to stop big coal. He got himself arrested on June 23, in a protest against mountaintop-removal mining. There were some other well-known people there, but Hansen is perhaps the best known and most widely respected climate scientist in the world – and if this case goes to court then the bigger argument will immediately become, is coal a clear and present danger to America and to you. This case could be the environmental Roe vs. Wade.

Hansen thinks the danger from climate change ...

If the U.S. Won’t Ban Dangerous Pesticides in Our Markets, It’s Up to Us to Ban Them from Our Homes

Yes, you can get away with just buying organic milk and meat products. Yes, an organic apple is twice as expensive as conventional. Yes, there’s a reason they call it Whole Paycheck.

But then you come face to face with the truth: Unless you’re buying organic, your food is full of chemicals that are banned in other countries because they’re dangerous to our health.

The Pesticide Action Network’s new WhatsOnMyFood [www.whatsonmyfood.org] website is a revolutionary resource that makes this fact undeniably clear. Created with information from the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program cross-referenced with ...

Millions Face Climate-Related Hunger as Seasons Shift and Change

New Oxfam report warns multiple climate impacts could reverse 50 years of work to end poverty

Shifting seasons are destroying harvests and causing widespread hunger - but this is just one of the multiple climate change impacts taking their toll on the world’s poorest people - concluded a new report launched by Oxfam today (6 July 2009).

The report ‘Suffering the Science - Climate Change, People and Poverty’, is being published ahead of the G8 Summit in Italy, where climate change and food security are high on the agenda. It combines the latest scientific observations on climate change, and evidence from the ...

The Daily Dose: Your Guide to the World Today – 5 July 09

The U.S. Supreme Court just ended its latest term. During that span they ruled on five environmental cases, and every one of their decisions were anti-environmental. A director of the Supreme Court Institute at George Washington University went so far as to label it “the worst term ever” for environmentalists.

It looks like plants may have saved planet earth's butt from getting totally frozen over for the last 25 million years. That's what scientists say, but if you'd rather hear what the crazy folk say, go here.

Denmark's Climate Minister is troubled with what he ...