Expert: Climate Change Will Increasingly Become Global Health Issue - US News and World Report

Previously just the worry of climate scientists, environmentalists, doomsday prognosticators, and gas-price watchers, climate change is starting to worry some others— public health specialists, who say that global warming could affect large swaths of the population.

In a paper published in the journal PLoS Medicine Tuesday, a group of European public health experts write that climate change could alter "patterns of physical activity and food availability, and in some cases [bring] direct physical harm." Slight temperature increases could also change disease distribution in colder regions and make hotter regions less hospitable to humans.

..."Certain subgroups are at more risk—mainly the young, the old, and the poor," says Peter Byass, director of the Umea Centre for Global Health Research in Sweden. "The middle age and wealthy will be better off. It's a crude way of looking at it, but it's not so far off the mark."

..."It's about behaving in a way that's responsible for the planet. One would hope the United Nations could help get everyone together," Byass says. Countries must be willing to take an economic hit in becoming more energy efficient. "Protecting the future of the planet has a price tag, there's no doubt about that."

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Eagles May be Latest Casualty of Renewables Policy | Wildlife | The Back Forty | KCET

As concern grows over the toll industrial wind turbines take on California's largest birds, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) wants to extend the life of "take" permits for bald and golden eagles to 30 years from the current five-year maximum. "Take permits" are permits to disturb, injure, or kill the species in question; the extension is intended specifically to make it easier to establish large wind farms in eagle habitat. FWS is accepting comments on the proposed rule change until July 12.