Fast-Food Ban Proposed in South Los Angeles



Listen to this story... by Mandalit del Barco

All Things Considered, September 16, 2007 · In South Los Angeles, where 30 percent of adults are obese, activists and lawmakers are pointing to one possible cause: few dining-out choices except for fast-food restaurants. Now, City Council member Jan Perry has proposed a two-year ban on opening new fast-food restaurants in South L.A.


With the healthy concern for  its  citizens,  South Los Angeles  takes a  serious  consideration  for  the regulation to  limit  the growth of  fast food  restaurants. The main reason to target on fast-food restaurants is that the high amount of sugar and calories in drinks and food. The main culprit for the  obese endangers citizens health. By reducing the supply of high-fat contained food, people may change their dinning behaviors when they go eat out. I think it's a good try to do something for improvement.

China prepares to send peacekeepers to Darfur
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I always have a dream that  someday I can I live in the countryside with my love ones. we may run a small business and enough money to support  our  lives. 

I pray for being calm to accept the inevitable.
I pray for courage to achieve ability.
I ask God for  giving  me  the wisdom to  distinguish  the twos.

My English learning through NPR

A Campus Challenge: Handling Underage Drinking

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14031513

the poster says:
with so many things to do, no wonder most kids choose not to drink

Dark matter

Dark matter is an invisible, mysterious substance believed to make up more than a quarter of the universe. Astronomers have long suspected there must be some substance holding galaxy clusters together, otherwise galaxies would only have the gravity from their visible stars, which would not be enough to keep them from flying apart. As a result, astronomers have inferred dark matter exists by observing how its gravity bends the light of more distant background galaxies. A few days ago, the Hubble Space Telescope spotted a ring of dark matter in a galaxy cluster some five billion light-years away from Earth, presenting the most solid proof yet of the existence of dark matter.      

暗物質

暗物質是一種看不見的神秘物質，據信佔了全宇宙的四分之一以上。天文學家們長久以來便懷疑某種物質維繫著星系團，否則星系間將只有可見星的重力，並不足以阻止它們向四處飛散。結果，天文學家們籍由觀察因重力彎曲、更遠處的星系光，推論出暗物質的存在。日前，哈伯太空望遠鏡觀測到距地球約五十億光年、星系群中的環狀暗物質，為暗物質的存在提供了截至目前最有力的證明。

pop-up key word:

science, the power of knowledge, astronomy, galaxy, universe, space, dark material, space station,

personal opinions:

It is a controversial issue that should we spend a great number of money to study the world outside our planet. Astronomers believe that the more we get to know about the space, the more we understand what we are. Nevertheless, others think the money shouldn’t be wasted on such a time-consuming research. Practically, they prefer to spend money on something they can see. Although some groundbreaking discover on astronomy do help us to learn more about both the earth and university, others cannot really related that with their daily lives. Maybe that’s the main reason people don’t be aware of the importance of astronomy study.

A Mining Adviser's View of Global Warming

by Richard Harris 

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Tom Burke started out his career as a firebrand environmental activist. Then he decided to pursue an environmental agenda from behind the scenes. Today, he's an adviser to mining company Rio Tinto and the British government. NPR

 

Burke's Proposal

Tom Burke looks at climate change from an unusual point of view. He's one of 's leading environmentalists — and he works for one of the world's largest mining companies, Rio Tinto. He is also a close adviser to the British government. In seeking ways to deal with climate change, he knows he needs to find a solution that will appeal to the public, business and government. Here, a look at Burke's thinking on realistic ways to tackle global warming: 

Why Now


Europe has made a decision that global warming in excess of 2 degrees Celsius (4 F) represents "dangerous interference" with the world's climate. The Earth is already 0.7 C (1.25 F) hotter than it was a century ago. And oceans have warmed, too; as they gradually let out some of that heat over the coming century, another 0.6 C (1.1 F) could be added to the global air temperature. That means we are already close to

Europe 's worry zone. Population growth and increased energy use will push us to that limit in just a few decades. The definition of "dangerous interference" is a political call — there's no strict scientific definition. A treaty signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 compels those who signed to avoid "dangerous anthropogenic interference" with the climate system, but the

has so far not defined what it considers "dangerous interference."

The Cost
Burke has a back-of-the-envelope estimate that it will cost about $100 billion a year to make power clean. That's about what the spends on the war, he says. That figure is optimistic. 's chief economist, Nicholas Stern, for example, estimates that addressing climate change would cost about 1 percent of global economic output. That's about $650 billion a year in current terms. (Stern's analysis says it's worth spending that money to avoid the worst consequences of climate change).

How to Get Onboard
The U.S. Senate rejected the Kyoto climate treaty because was not obligated to reduce its emissions under the initial agreement. will soon overtake the as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases. Climate change cannot be solved if both the and

(and everyone else) don't agree to cut emissions sharply. Burke's view is that we need to find a solution that will allow to continue its rapid economic growth, which is based heavily on burning coal. He favors rapid development of technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide as a solution.

Carbon Capture
Carbon capture could solve emissions from coal-fired power plants, but CO2 can't be captured from the gas- and oil-fired furnaces that heat homes, Burke says. The world needs to reduce emissions by 80 percent to stabilize the climate. To do that, eventually we will need to move to electric heating. Reducing the risk to the climate will cost consumers, but it will be a big business opportunity. 

Burke's Reputation
Burke has maintained his reputation as a straight shooter among environmentalists. His message is the same, whether he's talking to government officials, company executives or his friends in the environmental movement. For example, he's still opposed to nuclear power, even though Rio Tinto owns and operates two major uranium mines. Nuclear plants don't emit greenhouse gases. But Burke says nuclear power is uneconomical and can't be scaled up fast enough to make a big dent in emissions. — Richard Harris

 Climate Connections Profiles

All Things Considered, May 3, 2007 · In his efforts to tackle global warming, Tom Burke wears many hats. He's a businessman at one of the world's largest mining companies, as well as an adviser to the British government.

And at heart, he's an environmental activist.

But Burke is a pragmatist in the corporate world and the halls of government. He doesn't plan to give up his creature comforts and he doesn't expect that others will, either. He lives in a swank

London apartment that opens onto a Japanese garden, complete with waterfall and carp pool. From the balcony, he could easily pitch an olive pit from a martini into the


Thames

River ; though he prefers to drink scotch and fine wines.

Burke's lofty apartment is filled with books and art, much of it the work of painter Alan Rankle. Pointing to the misty Turner-esque landscapes marred by broad brushstrokes of blue and titanium white, Burke says, "They communicate what's happening to the planet in a way that strikes people in their stomach, not in their head, and therefore it creates an aa to do something, as opposed to an idea to think about."

He spends every waking day trying to do the same thing, whether he's working for the mining company or the British government or as an environmentalist. Today, Burke has short-cropped gray hair that frames his round face. But back in the early 1970s, he was a firebrand environmental activist, leading campaigns to save the whales and fighting nuclear power, eventually as leader of Friends of the Earth in the .

"There's a limit to campaigning," he says. "Environmentalism is an opera, and there are lots of different songs to be sung in it, and I'd in a sense sung the campaigning song. I wanted to go sing the political song."

He ran twice for Parliament with a green agenda. He lost. So he decided to pursue an environmental agenda behind the scenes. And, as the science about climate change grew, global warming became Burke's central issue.

"We still for the most part think of this as just another environmental problem, and it's not," he says. "This is a problem which, if we don't fundamentally solve it in the next two decades, could make civilization impossible."

Dealing with climate change isn't impossible, but it is daunting. Societies have to change the way they generate power for the global economy, Burke says. He doesn't think on a small scale. His lamps still have conventional light bulbs, for instance. And although, at the age of 60, he could get a free pass for

London 's buses and the underground, he instead rides a beefy BMW motorcycle a few miles to his office at the mining company.

Looping past the Globe Theatre, crossing the Thames and turning past

Trafalgar Square

— the old center of the

British Empire , where Burke has organized many demonstrations — he pulls his motorcycle into the garage at the offices of Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining companies.

— the old center of the British Empire , where Burke has organized many demonstrations — he pulls his motorcycle into the garage at the offices of Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining companies.

 

— the old center of the British Empire , where Burke has organized many demonstrations — he pulls his motorcycle into the garage at the offices of Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining companies. 

Rio Tinto has huge coal and uranium mines in its energy division, and its operations for processing aluminum and copper ores consume vast amounts of electricity. A company video reminds viewers that the world economy is growing rapidly and, with it, our appetite for power.

"I started out wanting to work for any company, not a mining company in particular, because I wanted to learn how the corporate sector worked," Burke says. "Another good reason for doing it is to get a mining company to work for me, and to some extent, I've been able to do that."

A few years ago, for example, Burke suggested that the company hire a top executive to deal specifically with climate change issues.

"It didn't do that because I said, 'Boy, you've got to do that,'" he says. "It did that because when you debated the issues internally, it became pretty clear that that was a sensible way to proceed. You're not going to abandon the coal industry, but nor were you going to think that it's business as usual and we don't give a damn."

Burke says there's no way countries are going to stop burning coal. So he's trying to get companies and governments together to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and put it under the ground instead of into the air.

"There is no question that we can afford to do this, should we choose to," he says. "If you ask me what I think are the prospects of that, I think they're slim. But they're political problems, they're not technological or economic problems."

To that end, Burke spends one day a week as an adviser to the British government. "The fact that they're a 15-minute's walk away is quite convenient for me," he says, leaving the Rio Tinto office and walking through St. James' Park toward

Whitehall . "But actually, you can't solve the problem without being able to move from government to business and business to government."

Burke's political challenge is to get governments to think beyond their parochial interests. Right now, climate negotiations are actually a surrogate for other issues, with countries like the and jockeying for economic advantage. But Burke says, given the stakes, we need to think bigger. He says that the Kyoto Protocol and taxes on carbon emissions won't fix the problem.

"The idea that we can get the price right and somehow it'll all fall into place is just completely stupid," he says.

Burke says countries must spend money to combat climate change, just as we spend money on health care and defense. And the public needs to convince politicians of that need. But that will require a shift in values.

"Behavioral change is culturally driven, not economically driven," he says. "And that's something that the people trying to deal with climate change have not actually grasped." Still, Burke remains cautious of going too far in regulating behavior, mentioning dictators like Hitler and Stalin, whose social engineering projects ravaged their societies.

"All I'm trying to understand is: How do you deal with a problem that could literally make it impossible for us to continue to live in the way we do, without reaching that level? I don't know. I'm not counsel of comfort here."

At the 's Foreign Office, Burke has an appointment with Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett. Burke has the advantage of working with a government that's a leading voice in climate change policy. But he's not deluding himself.

"I have no hope, in the sense of the outcome coming right away. That's not why I'm doing it," he says. "I'm doing it because you see the problem, and not to try to do something when you see the problem would be a moral failure."

Burke says his job, really, is to draw out that feeling in all of us — to tap into what

Lincoln called the better angels of our nature, and to do it before our world is as horribly transformed as it is in the paintings he awakens to every day.