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Environment People

What Impact Are Vape Pens and E-Cigarettes Having on the Environment?

Is vaping a safer alternative? Probably not.
While we're still developing an understanding of the environmental impact posed by e-cigarettes, the overall health implications of vaping are more clear. It's true that e-cigarettes lack the harmful carcinogens found in traditional tobacco smoke, but it would be a mistake to call vaping a "safer" alternative to cigarettes. Memory and attention can be negatively affected by vaping, and oral health can be significantly impacted as well. Nicotine from vaping may contribute to the development of gingivitis, as well as gum recession and periodontitis. What's more, nicotine can mask the symptoms of gum disease, making it more difficult to diagnose the condition.

The environmental impact of cigarettes is well documented: For more than 30 years, cigarette butts have been the most collected type of beach litter. Cigarette butts also account for approximately 38% of litter items globally and can take about a decade to biodegrade.

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Climate Environment People

Why Environmental Damage Is Also Harming Our Veterans

Veterans
Veterans should be respected and honored for their service. However, we cannot let that support be idle lip service. We need to start thinking of world issues as veteran issues, and vice versa. Environmental issues affect everybody, including veterans.

Typically, environmental causes are associated with left-leaning politics, and pro-military action is publicly associated with the right. However, a large number of veterans are liberals or are willing to embrace bipartisanship when it comes to sustainability. Thus, some veterans are speaking up about environmental damage.

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Life on Earth Animals People

Wildlife crossings make animals and people safer

Wildlife crossings save animals
A green wildlife bridge over an "autobahn" in Germany. As of 2015, the country had more than 35 wildlife crossings over major roads. Wildlife crossings are structures that allow animals to cross human-made barriers like roads, railroads, canals, electric power lines, pipelines, etc. safely.

Wildlife crossings over (and under) the highways could make animals (both wild and domesticated) and people safer.

Our expanding network of roads is interrupting and fragmenting the territories of wild (and also domesticated) animals who need to cross our roads in search of food, water, mates, and shelter. Many are routinely struck and killed by vehicles in this most basic quest for survival.

In addition to conservation concerns, animal-vehicle collisions have a significant cost for human populations because collisions damage property and injure and kill passengers and drivers: in the United States only, collisions between wildlife and vehicles have increased by 50 percent in the most recently reported 15 years. These accidents now cost Americans $8 billion every year.

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Life on Earth Astronomy Evolution People

Humans walking on two legs because of exploding stars, new study says

Evolution of bipedalism (walking on two legs)
As the forests shrank, it would have become harder and more time-consuming for individuals to find food. One theory, suggested by anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University, says "a mutually beneficial arrangement evolved: males gathered food for females and their young and in return females mated exclusively with their providers. To be successful providers, males needed their arms and hands-free to carry food, and thus bipedalism evolved." Another theory considers the efficiency of upright walking. In the 1980s, Peter Rodman and Henry McHenry, both at the University of California, Davis, suggested that "...as forests shrank, hominid ancestors found themselves descending from the trees to walk across stretches of grassland that separated forest patches". The most energetically efficient way to walk on the ground was on two legs, Rodman and McHenry argued.

Walking on two legs is an evolutionary leap that led humans to conquer the world. But, why humans are walking on two legs? It’s still unclear. Now, according to a new study published in the University of Chicago’s Journal of Geology, the reason might be exploding stars a few million years ago.

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Climate Global Warming History People

Did European Colonisation precipitate the Little Ice Age?

Little Ice Age. The Frozen Thames.
From the Little Ice Age. The Frozen Thames, looking Eastwards towards Old London Bridge (1677) by Abraham Hondius. Courtesy the Museum of London. Abraham Danielsz. Hondius (about 1631 - 17 September 1691) was a Dutch Golden Age painter known his depictions of animals. He was the son of a city stonemason, Daniel Abramsz de Hondt. Hondius was born in Rotterdam and trained under Pieter de Bloot (1601-1658) and Cornelis Saftleven. He lived in Rotterdam until 1659 and moved then to Amsterdam. He moved to London in 1666, where he spent the rest of his life. Hondius combined throughout his career several stylistic influences and struggled to develop a style of his own. He however specialized somehow in animal pieces: more than two-thirds of his paintings, etchings and drawings are hunting scenes, animals fighting and animal studies. He also executed landscapes, genre and religious scenes. Hondius most likely moved to London in 1666 where he spent the rest of his life and died. He painted views of London such as The Frozen Thames and London Bridge. His last known work is Ape and Cat Fighting over Dead Poultry, dated 1690.

Many of us think that rapid environmental change is a quintessentially modern crisis. Today, temperatures are soaring, topsoil is washing away, phosphorous is being diluted, forests are retreating, pesticides are sterilising farmland, fertilisers are choking waterways, and biodiversity is plummeting under the onslaught of overpopulated, industrialised societies. Some of these changes are indeed truly new. But many others have deep roots and distant echoes in the early modern period, the years between around 1400 and 1800 when much of the world began to assume its present form. Recently, scientists, geographers, historians, and archaeologists have combined expertise and evidence to reveal just how profound early modern environmental transformations really were.

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People Planet Earth

The urbanization of the world

An aerial view of Tokyo
Once a small fishing village named Edo, Tokyo, the capital of Japan is the most populous city in the world (by the metropolitan area). As of July 2016, the population of Tokyo's metropolitan area is 37,800,000. It has also the world's largest urban agglomeration economy.

The world has been urbanizing rapidly in recent decades. In 1950, only 30 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas, a proportion that grew to 55 percent by 2018. The global urbanization rate masks important differences in urbanization levels across geographic regions.

Northern America is the most urbanized region, with 82 percent of its population residing in urban areas, whereas Asia is approximately 50 percent urban, and Africa remains mostly rural with 43 percent of its population living in urban areas in 2018 (United Nations, 2018).

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Environment People

How Cities Will Evolve to Become More Sustainable

Central Park
Increasing environmental sustainability has become an important topic both on the minds of many individuals and in the media. This is for good reason - recently, studies have starkly illuminated the impact of climate change and the role humans play in increasing global temperatures. With sobering consequences such as drought and more severe weather patterns, an increased number of people have started to consider how they can become more sustainable. In this global shift, many cities are moving to become more sustainable and decrease negative impacts on the environment. Although the level of involvement varies by city and country, an evolution is occurring as cities implement improved infrastructure and policies to become more sustainable.

Increasing environmental sustainability has become an important topic both on the minds of many individuals and in the media. This is for good reason – recently, studies have starkly illuminated the impact of climate change and the role humans play in increasing global temperatures. With sobering consequences such as drought and more severe weather patterns, an increased number of people have started to consider how they can become more sustainable. In this global shift, many cities are moving to become more sustainable and decrease negative impacts on the environment. Although the level of involvement varies by city and country, evolution is occurring as cities implement improved infrastructure and policies to become more sustainable.

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Environment People

The Earth’s carrying capacity for human life is not fixed

Crowded Istiklal street, Istanbul
Photo: "People walking on Istiklal Street in Istanbul" on Deposit Photos.

In a recent Nature Sustainability paper, a team of scientists concluded that the Earth can sustain, at most, only 7 billion people at subsistence levels of consumption (and this June saw us at 7.6 billion). Achieving ‘high life satisfaction’ for everyone, however, would transgress the Earth’s biophysical boundaries, leading to ecological collapse.

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People

Two new innovations to save children from dying

Steven Pinker thinks people today are living longer, healthier, and happier lives than ever before
Steven Pinker says infant mortality rate (IMR) is declining and this progress has not just been achieved in rich countries. It's happening in the developing world as well. For the world, and for both less developed countries (LDCs) and more developed countries (MDCs), IMR declined significantly between 1960 and 2001. For example, in Ethiopia, as late as 1980, almost a quarter of the children died before their fifth birthday. Today, fewer than 6% die, which is still far too many, but the numbers continue to fall. Image: Max Pixel

Thanks to improvements in healthcare and many other areas, people today are living longer, healthier, and happier lives than ever before. And what’s more, these improvements are global. It’s happening in developing countries as well. Africa, the poorest continent (eighteen of the poorest countries by GDP per capita are in Africa) is also no exception: the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) declined significantly between 1960 and 2001.

For example, in Ethiopia, as late as 1980, almost a quarter of the children died before their fifth birthday. Today, fewer than 6% die, which is still far too many, but the numbers continue to fall. And vaccines play a very crucial part here. But, supplying vaccines to distant clinics in hot climates served by poorly developed transport networks is a big problem. The vaccines must be kept between 2 and 8° C (36 to 46 °F). They need to be distributed in a temperature-controlled supply chain, which is called a “cold chain”. Now, there are two new innovations addressing this problem.

One of them is MetaFridge, a cooler that allows vaccines to stay between 2 and 8° C (36 to 46 °F) for days, even if the power is out.

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Planet Earth Environment People

World’s Water Inequality Crisis

Water inequality: digging for drinking water in a dry riverbed
A woman scoops water in a dry riverbed near Kataboi village in remote Turkana in northern Kenya. In 40°C heat and with no access to clean water, she resorts to collecting unfiltered water for her family in containers. The lack of rain in the arid years across the Horn of Africa results in failed crops, lack of water and death of livestock. Picture: Marisol Grandon/Department for International Development. Image source: Wikimedia

Despite today people are living longer, healthier, and happier lives than ever before, there are still many problems that humanity should address. One of the most important of them is water inequality. While people in First World countries can very easily take fresh, clean water for granted, more than 800 million others in impoverished areas have no access to any clean water source. It is a common occurrence in some regions for people to defecate openly, walk more than 30 minutes to access clean water, and share toilets with other humans. In 2018, is this really something that we should just accept as an inevitable way of the world?

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