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It’s a very good thing that neural tube defects are relatively rare in the U.S., because they are very cruel conditions for a newborn to suffer. The two most common types of such birth defects are spina bifida – in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close properly — and anencephaly, in which [...]
Environmentalists here in the U.S. are not happy with President Obama, in part because he pulled back on a promise to tighten ground-level ozone and smog standards for air pollution. But American greens should remember: much of the rest of the world has it far, far, far worse. That’s one takeaway from a new report [...]
In part because we have a political press obsessed with Washington, we tend to gauge the success of climate and energy legislation only through the national lens. And the picture from Capitol Hill is deeply depressing. One party completely ignores the science of climate change and only wants to engage on fossil fuels, and that [...]
There aren’t a whole lot of scientific disciplines that haven’t had something to say about climate change over the years — and with good reason. When a problem is global in scale there’s a universe of specialists and subspecialists who have to pitch in to to fix it — meteorologists, chemists, geologists, physicists, zoologists, biologists, [...]
Does it look like a bad day to go out for a run? Maybe a little too hazy out there? Here’s a tip: It is. Don’t do it. A study released today by Hong Kong University and published in the journal Environmental Research has found that lower visibility due to pollution has a direct correlation [...]
A new survey released yesterday by Hong Kong’s Civic Exchange found that one in four residents are considering leaving Hong Kong because of the city’s chronic air pollution problems. Over half the people surveyed with post-graduate educations are considering leaving — up 12% from 2008 — along with 37% of university graduates. Only 22% of [...]
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was the belle of the ball this morning at a international climate change conference here in Hong Kong. He was here as the new chair of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a group of 40 cities worldwide committed to tackling climate change. (Here’s a map of participating cities.) [...]
In Sunday’s New York Times—which I consumed along with a bagel on my iPhone—architecture critic Nicolai Ourousoff has a report from Masdar, the zero-carbon, ultra-sustainable city growing up in the deserts outside of Abu Dhabi. The Masdar project is the result of a government initiative by the sultans who control Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich capital [...]
