(Photo courtesy of fortherock)

Taking a hike may boost your brainpower
Spending time outside doesn’t just make you happier and calm your frazzled nerves, reports the Wall Street Journal. It can also improve creativity. According to a yet-to-be-published paper by University of Kansas researchers, a group of hikers that spent four days in the woods outperformed another set of hikers that had yet to hit the trails on a standard creativity test. This wasn’t just a meager boost in creativity, though. The test results showed a nearly 50 percent increase in performance from the hikers who were already on the trails. In addition to boosting creativity, previous studies have shown time spent in nature (or even having a window that looks out into a grassy area) can improve everything from short-term memory to how you handle life’s major challenges.

 Fukushima fish swim their way to California waters
U.S. scientists recently announced that Bluefin tuna contaminated with low levels of radiation from last year’s Fukushima meltdown were found along the California coast five months after the disaster, reports Mother Jones. The finding comes on the heels of Japan’s own announcement that it’s preparing to restart one of the nation’s nuclear plants, which were idled after the Fukushima meltdown. Despite the stigma that radioactive fish will no doubt entail, the scientists maintain that radiation levels found in the fish is lower than what occurs naturally in the environment and therefore doesn’t pose a risk to human health. Unfortunately, these days radiation isn’t the only contaminant that people have to worry about when ordering a tuna fish sandwich. Many fish, including Bluefin tuna, also contain mercury, a toxic chemical linked to impaired neurological development and having other harmful effects. But unlike nuclear radiation pollution, which tends to happen only when there’s a meltdown, mercury is willingly created every day by industrial sources like coal-fired power plants. Find out how we're shutting them down and cleaning them up.

Trains transport coal to export terminals in open cars, a mile-and-a-half long. (Shutterstock)

(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of blog posts by the author on issues related to proposed coal exporting from the Northwest.)

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

—John Muir

We are often reminded—perhaps nowhere more profoundly than in nature—that life does not persist solely of its own volition. When we look closer, we invariably find that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In German, the phenomenon is called gestalt—the notion of the unified whole.

This is the proper lens through which to analyze the increasingly controversial issue of coal export in the Pacific Northwest. With domestic demand for coal waning in the United States, coal companies seek to ship as much coal as possible from Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to emerging Asian economies. Thus, there are six coal export terminal projects currently proposed for Pacific Northwest ports: Longview, Wash.; Bellingham, Wash.; Grays Harbor, Wash.; Coos Bay, Ore.; the Kinder Morgan terminal at Port of St. Helens, Ore.; and the Ambre Energy project with facilities at the Port of Morrow and the Port of St. Helens, Ore.

An environmental analysis examining each project in piecemeal fashion would not address the overall cumulative impacts to the region’s environmental health and quality of life. The cumulative impacts of the proposed coal export terminals would be significant:

Photo courtesy of matthewven (flickr.com)

Investigation sets flame to chemical retardant claims
Flame retardants have long been heralded as life-saving chemicals that slow fires, but a recent investigative series by the Chicago Tribune has found that the toxic chemicals, which are found in American babies at the highest recorded levels among infants in the world, both may not be safe or prevent fire deaths. Among the discoveries that the Tribune uncovered includes a decades-long campaign of deception by the flame retardant industry that has loaded American homes with furniture treated with chemicals linked to cancer, neurological deficits, developmental problems and impaired fertility. Read the entire series here.

Air pollution protecting humans from climate change
Air pollution may be clogging up your lungs and burning your eyes, but at least it’s keeping global warming in check, reports E: The Environmental Magazine. According to research by Harvard scientists, for many decades the eastern half of the U.S. stayed cooler than the rest of the country thanks to a thick cloud of particulates that reflected incoming sunlight, helping to mitigate rising temperatures. But as levels of industrial pollution have decreased, warming has increased, inadvertently creating a perverse incentive to pollute the air. Despite the benefits, the researchers were quick to point out that they weren’t against improving air quality. After all, air pollutants like particulate matter from coal-fired power plants can embed themselves deep into the lungs and cause serious health problems, no matter how breezy the weather stays. Find out how Earthjustice is working to enforce Clean Air Act regulations to both clean up the air and reduce greenhouse gases.

A 129-car BNSF coal train going through White Rock, B.C. (Michael Chu)

Warren Buffett is a famous gazillionaire who owns a railroad company known as BNSF Railway. BNSF Railway operates trains that transport coal from Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to shipping ports on the coast of British Columbia. The coal that is shipped via Buffett’s railway to the B.C. coast eventually gets put on big boats and sent across the Pacific to China where it is burned in poorly regulated coal power plants. These poorly regulated coal power plants emit enormous amounts of pollution that harm human health and exacerbate climate change.

All sounds pretty crummy, eh?

Fortunately, a brave group of Canadians aren’t intimidated. British Columbians for Climate Action has planned a coal protest for May 5 in White Rock, B.C. That’s where Buffett’s BNSF trains travel en route to the coal export facility at Westshore Terminals near Roberts Bank, B.C. The Canadian activists explain their upcoming action:

We're doing this because we have to. The science is solid: within the decade, if we don't work hard we are going to run out of time to avoid runaway global warming. It's not enough anymore just to go to rallies, write letters, and shut off our lights for an hour once a year. We're aware of what is at stake, and we have a moral obligation to do our best to stop the things that are destroying the planet.