Whales Say: Take the Bus
I'm a day late on this, but... new findings from Washington's Department of Ecology: cars, not industry, are becoming the biggest polluters of Puget Sound. That could mean that the future of iconic creatures like orcas, already highly contaminated, will depend on growth management that reduces driving.
A big city concerned with protecting ecosystems might want to seriously consider transportation alternatives as opposed to big ticket highway spending and re-building. Hint, hint, Seattle.
Medical Cost of Obesity
The US national rate of obesity has doubled since 1990, so that in 2004, nearly one-quarter of Americans (23.1 percent) were classified as obese. Medical studies have established clear links from obesity to a variety of medical conditions, including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and others. Obesity is also costly: the increasing prevalence of obesity and costs of treating obesity-related diseases has helped to fuel the recent rise in medical spending. By one estimate, 27% of the cost increase from 1987 to 2001 was due to obesity.
The latest studies estimate that obesity alone costs the US around $75 billion annually, while while the added costs of treating conditions brought on by simply being overweight bring that share up to 9.1% of total US medical expenditures. On a regional level, obesity alone costs the Northwest over $2.3 billion dollars a year. That's around 0.5% of our gross state product (see table below).
