globalbriefs
Bad Air Smog Pollution Threatens National Parks
The nonprofit Sierra Club is waging a fund- raising campaign to protect U.S. national parks from the effects of power plants burn- ing dirty coal. Executive Director Michael Brune reports, “Nearly one-third of all na- tional parks exceed pollution safety levels.” To date, the club has been successful in stop-
ping construction of 160 coal-fired plants. Natural Resources Defense Council (
nrdc.org) analyses show that not only
cities, but seaside suburbs and rural areas as well, are reporting health-threatening “bad air days” during the summer due to smog pollution. Some 250 communities and parks in nearly 40 states, led by California, rou-
tinely experience one or more “code orange” dangerous air days, deemed unsafe for children, older adults and those with breathing problems to be outside. More than 2,000 air quality alerts occurred nationwide in the first seven months of 2011, with many areas having long periods of days marred by elevated smog levels. The push for cleaner air comes amid ongoing Environmental Protection Agency de-
lays in approving updated air pollution standards, which the council notes could annu- ally save thousands of American lives and eliminate tens of thousands of asthma attacks.
Sky Scrapers ‘Living’ Buildings Might Inhale Urban Carbon Emissions
Dr. Rachel Armstrong, a senior TED fellow and co-director of Avatar, a research group exploring advanced technologies in architecture, is promot- ing the development of buildings with “lungs” that could absorb carbon emis- sions and convert them into something useful and “skin” that could control interior temperatures without radiators or air-conditioning. She projects that, “Over the next 40 years, these ‘living’ buildings, biologically programmed to extract carbon dioxide out of the atmo- sphere, could fill our cities.” It’s an application of synthetic
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biology, a new science devoted to the manufacture of lifelike matter from syn- thesized chemicals that engineers create to behave like organic microorganisms, with the added benefit that they can be manipulated to do things nature can’t. Armstrong calls them protocells. She explains, “A protocell could be
mixed with wall paint and programmed to produce limestone when exposed to carbon [emissions] on the surface of a building. Then you’ve got a paint that can actually eat carbon and change it into a shell-like substance.” As an added feature, protocells
could naturally heal micro-fractures in walls, channeling through tiny breaks and helping to extend the life of the structure. Plus, says Armstrong, “The thickness of the limestone will grow over time, creating insulation and al- lowing the building to retain more heat or [else] sheltering it from heating up underneath the sun.”
Source:
Tinyurl.com/7bcqa8x 12 Rockland & Orange Counties
naturalawakeningsro.com
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