 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
       
|
With the death of my good friend and colleague, David Bates, the adventure called the Health & Clean Air Newsletter is drawing to a close.
David and I believed there was a need for a journal to explain in relatively plain language the accumulating body of evidence demonstrating the profound toll on human health and life being imposed by air pollution. We hoped that if we undertook such a task, others would share our view that such a journal would be a marvelous teaching tool in a university setting, especially one where there were schools of public health, public policy and communications. Unfortunately, though each of us solicited universities, none was interested.
Moreover, with the departure of the Newsletter's principal champion, Dr. Alan Lloyd, from the California Air Resources Board and the California Environmental Protection Agency, future funding is at best problematic. Even if funding were secure, however, this is a task now best left to others.
I personally feel the need to devote my energy to the task of explaining to the public, hopefully in a book, the seemingly inexplicable: why, at a time when it has become unarguable that because of global warming humanity is standing at the brink of the end of life as we know it, when the technologies and measures to avoid this are readily available, the responses not only fail to confront the threat, but arguably worsen it.1 We are at a time when the deaths attributable to air pollution are rising not falling, when the future is grim, not bright. Ours will be the first generation in history, due to its own conscious actions, to leave to its children a world worse than that which it inherited.
Thank you all for your encouragement over the years. Take care all.
Curtis A. Moore,
Editor and Publisher,
Health & Clean Air
__________________________________________
1 Dr. James Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Goddard Institute for Space Studies, believes that humanity has 10 years to act. (His recent testimony before the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont can be found at the Newsletter's website, http://www.healthandcleanair.org/.) Others believe the time remaining is less, perhaps none (Lovelock, James, The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back - and How We Can Still Save Humanity, Penguin Books, 2006, ISBN 0141025972.) Carbon trading is principally stimulating reductions in HFCs, not projects that would displace emissions of carbon dioxide or soot. (Keith Bradsher, “Outsize Profits, and Questions, In Effort to Cut Warming,” The New York Times, p. A1, Dec. 21, 2006)
|
Each year air pollution claims upwards of 50,000 lives in the United States alone, but this and other information too often fails to make its way out of the pages of scientific journals and into the hands and minds of ordinary citizens to whom it is vitally important. The Health and Clean Air Newsletter is our attempt to make this information available to readers ranging from the heads of parent teacher associations to reporters, without sacrificing accuracy. Read the newsletter online, or download it in PDF format. Or, if you've received the printed version, you can review the References section, which contains the citations and abstracts which were not included in the printed version. This newsletter is made possible by assistance from the California Air Resources Board, which we deeply appreciate. We welcome your comments, suggestions, and questions, which can be mailed to 1100 Eleventh Street, Suite 311, Sacramento, CA 95814 or emailed to us via the addresses provided on our Contact page. CURTIS
MOORE AND DAVID BATES, M.D. |
|
|
Copyight Health & Clean Air, 2002-2008 |