Search Results

New report on obesity from Trust for America’s Health. The US obesity rate has risen to 32 percent—an increase from just 15 percent in 1980. And 66 percent of adults are “overweight,” a classification that also includes obesity. But one curiosity gets overlooked: national rates of adult obesity and overweight have risen almost not at all since 2000. (That’s not true for children.) See the charts on page 3 of...

Cascadia has a wealth of astonishing and pristine natural places. It’s part of why residents here are so committed to this place. One measure of the Northwest’s bounty is the number of world heritage sites—natural and cultural places so unique that they are designated by the United Nations as the most important repositories of the planet’s ecological richness and humankind’s legacy. The boundaries of Cascadia include all or part of...

The US Food and Drug Administration today, finally, approved the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B for over-the-counter sales in pharmacies and clinics to adults, as the New York Times reports. This news is excellent. We’ve been calling for it for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long,long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time. The change will help tens of thousands of...

Our car-less family vacation in Vancouver, BC, was a big success. Here’s a full report, for those of you who shared your own car-lessvacation stories and are interested in such things. For the rest of you, you might want to skim the travelogue to find the five lessons I draw. The only nail-biter (if you can call it that) was the very first leg of the trip, which resembled the...

The world’s oceans have taken a beating in the past couple of weeks. Off the coast of Lebanon, an estimated 15,000 tons of oil spilled from an Israeli-struck storage facility is being described as “the biggest environmental catastrophe in Lebanon’s history” and a “threat to biodiversity” in the Mediterranean Sea. Clean-up was impossible until Tuesday, for obvious security reasons. In the Indian Ocean, a Japanese tanker collided with another vessel...

The other weekend, I went to Vancouver’s Grouse Mountain for the first time (“The Peak of Vancouver” TM). It was lovely but touristy, including 5 or 6 restaurants, a pricey gondola ride, a logrolling demo, and two captive grizzly bears. The bear exhibit wasn’t as sad as it sounds; the bears had been orphaned at a young age, and at Grouse they have 5 acres of habitat to prowl around...

I wrote recently that global warming threatens human health in a rather prosaic way: with the warming. Heat kills. I’ve also written on the protective effects of social ties. People who have close friends, family members, and neighbors tend be healthier than those who don’t. So I was fascinated to hear of new research arguing that a portion of the 800 heat-related deaths during Chicago’s 1995 heatwave can be attributed...

A couple of weeks ago, Alan solicited tips on vacationing without a vehicle in the Pacific Northwest. Yesterday, CBC Radio did a story on the subject, featuring yours truly and Brian Grover, author of BC Car-Free, and invited listeners to call in. I asked friends to submit ideas for the show. Below are excerpts. Please share yours! (As for me, I plan to vacation for several months to test-drive—so to...

An interesting tidbit from yesterday’s Bellingham, WA newspaper: The 450 jobs at Alcoa Intalco Works are safe for now, thanks to a new power supply contract that is expected to keep the aluminum smelter west of Ferndale operating at its current reduced capacity for the next five years. Apparently, the Bonneville Power Administration, which manages most of the hydroelectric dams in the northwest US, has agreed to subsidize Alcoa’s power...

As we’ve mentioned before, the Food and Drug Administration has spent the better part of a year stalling on allowing over-the-counter access to Plan B, a medication that reduces the chances of pregnancy if taken within 72 hours after intercourse. (We’ve written on the importance of wider access here.) This Monday, on the eve before his Senate confirmation hearings to become the new head of the FDA, Dr. Andrew von...