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The decision was largely motivated by protecting people’s health, tho’ the U.K. government considered the effects of climate switch, too. Among European nations, the United Kingdom has the most diesel-run vehicles.

“Poor air quality is the fattest environmental risk to public health in the U.K.,” a government spokesperson told the Guardian. A February report found that 40,000 people die prematurely in the country each year due to indoor and outdoor air pollution from cars, household cleaners, and more.

Britain’s ban forms the backbone of an air quality plan released Wednesday, which budgets $322 million for short-term fixes like retrofitting vehicles. The U.K. has slated an extra $1 billion for driverless and zero-emissions technology research.

Even so, some activists have called the ban of gas and diesel vehicles a publicity stunt. According to analysis from Bloomberg Fresh Energy Finance, almost eighty percent of cars purchased in the U.K. by two thousand forty would be electrified under existing policies.

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The Fortunes Are Turning

Can we not talk about Hurricane Harvey’s effect on car sales right now?

Especially if we don’t know what to say about it yet?

Here’s a screenshot of a Google search for “Harvey cars”:

A flooded chemical plant near Houston is just going to keep exploding.

On Thursday, explosions and black plumes of smoke were seen coming from a chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, fifteen miles east of Houston’s city center.

Arkema, the company that possesses the plant, said there was nothing they could do to prevent further explosions. The volatile chemicals stored onsite need to be refrigerated at all times to prevent breakdown, but flooding from Harvey cut the plant’s power. The “only plausible solution” now is to let the eight containers, containing 500,000 pounds of organic peroxides, explode and burn out, Arkema CEO Rich Rowe said at a press conference on Friday.

That’s bad news for Arkema’s neighbors. On Thursday, fifteen public safety officers were taken to the hospital after breathing in acrid smoke from the plant. After local officials took a peek at Arkema’s chemical inventories, they ordered everyone within a 1.5-mile radius of the plant to evacuate. We don’t know precisely what’s in the noxious fumes, as Arkema has refused to release details of the facility’s chemical inventories.

In the worst-case screenplay documented in the company’s two thousand fourteen risk-management plan, the air pollution coming from the plant could put the one million people living within twenty miles radius in danger. That seems unlikely – but then again, Harvey has outdone slew of worst-case screenplay predictions so far.

Trump’s Harvey aid donation is a drop in the bucket compared to the storm’s real price tag.

True, a $1 million donation isn’t anything to sneeze at (assuming he goes after through with his donation promises this time) but initial estimates of Harvey’s cost aren’t in the millions. They’re in the billions.

How many billions? Nobody’s sure yet. AccuWeather kicked off the guesstimates with an alarming $190 billion, calling Harvey the “costliest and worst natural disaster in American history.” Meantime, reinsurer Hannover Re sits on the opposite end of the spectrum, with a guess of $Trio billion or less. Meteorologist Bryan Wood says the most likely estimates lie somewhere inbetween $70 to $100 billion.

Harvey blew all predictions out of the water, so it’s no surprise that the same goes for the financial repercussions. Chuck Watson, a geophysical hazards modeler, told NBC that traditional forecast models don’t work for the tropical storm and with estimates of “a big system like Harvey, you’re so dependent on things you can’t predict.”

In the meantime, as donations proceed to pour in, Trump finds himself “standing in a puddle acting like a President.”

nor any drop to drink

Harvey knocked out the water supply for thousands in Beaumont, Texas.

The storm made a 2nd landfall Tuesday, pouring twenty six inches on the oil town one hundred miles east of Houston. Floods inundated its roadways, leaving many of its 118,000 residents stranded.

To make things worse, now Beaumont doesn’t even have running water. Floodwaters bruised the city’s pumps, knocking out its primary and backup water sources early Thursday morning. Local authorities say the water supply is out indefinitely, since they have to wait until the flood recedes to inspect the pumps.

The lack of water compelled the shutdown of a large hospital, which also suspended its emergency services, NPR reports. And Beaumont residents lined up outside stores overnight, waiting to buy water and supplies. Almost two hundred people were in line outside the local Walmart on Thursday morning, according to the Huffington Post.

Some area stores reported water deliveries were coming from Houston, but major roadways inbetween the two cities were impassable as of Thursday morning. FEMA Director Brock Long called Beaumont’s situation “dire” and said the military plans to supply water to the city’s residents.

A little early for pumpkin spice, isn’t it?

One way to think about climate switch is that it makes everything topsy-turvy. What was snow is now a puddle; what was a tree is now a pile of ash; what were securely considered the golden days of summer are now the opening notes of pumpkin spice season.

The Fresh York Times reports that “pumpkin spice season” is upon us earlier and earlier. Pumpkin spice is traditionally considered a Fall Thing because pumpkins are an autumn vegetable, even however there are exactly zero pumpkins to be found in a pumpkin spice-flavored anything.

The debut date of the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte, an almost archetypically mainstream beverage that the Times incorrectly identifies as a “cult beloved drink,” has been bumped up to September 1. September 1!

The earlier onset of the season actually has nothing to do with climate switch: It’s capitalism, folks. The irresistible draw of faux-pumpkin is supposed to prep consumers for holiday shopping sprees, according to the Times.

But capitalism causes climate switch! Total circle. Pumpkin spice, therefore, portends certain planetary doom. Don’t buy it.

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Why the U.S. Is a World Leader in Car Crash Deaths

By Kimberly Leonard, Staff Writer | July 6, 2016, at Three:50 p.m.

The U.S. is leading the world in car crashes. Getty Pictures

Public health experts often cite diminished car crash deaths as one of the most successful examples of how common-sense laws can dramatically reduce injuries and deaths. Through strategies like enforcing seat belt usage and drunken driving laws, the U.S. from two thousand to two thousand thirteen diminished its rate of crash deaths by thirty one percent. Some who herald such an achievement even use it as an example of how similar approaches could be applied to curb gun violence.

But it turns out the U.S. isn’t doing as well as it could be when it comes to crash deaths – or certainly not as well as many of its counterparts. In fact, the U.S. had the worst rate of crash deaths in two thousand thirteen per 100,000 people when compared with nineteen other high-income countries, according to a Vital Signs report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 32,000 people in the U.S. died in car crashes that year – the latest covered by the report – and an extra two million people were injured.

These deaths proceed to occur because of alcohol-impaired driving, speeding, and failing to use seat belts, car seats or booster seats. According to the report, about half of drivers or passengers who died in crashes in the U.S. in two thousand thirteen were not wearing a seat belt.

Erin Sauber-Schatz, a transportation safety team lead with the CDC and an author of the report, said in a call with reporters Wednesday that dispelled driving – which includes texting while driving – contributes to about ten percent of fatal accidents and eighteen percent of injury accidents.

To assemble its report, the CDC analyzed data compiled by the World Health Organization and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Probe authors admitted that it’s difficult to quantify all the reasons for differences inbetween countries, noting that the U.S. has a significantly higher population than the countries it was being compared to, as well as a greater dependence on cars. But they partially adjusted for these differences by controlling for population size, miles traveled and number of registered vehicles.

The researchers found that the U.S. had both the most motor vehicle crash deaths per 100,000 people and per Ten,000 registered vehicles. Other than the U.S., countries included in the investigate were Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Fresh Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The U.S. scored so poorly in part because so many drivers and passengers still do not buckle up. Among countries for which seat belt use data were available, the U.S. ranked eighteen out of twenty for front-seat use – at eighty seven percent – and thirteen out of eighteen for seat belt use among backseat passengers.

On average, ninety four percent of people in the studied high-income countries wore seat belts while in the front seat. France had the highest adherence to front seat belt use, at ninety nine percent, and Austria had the lowest – just bashful of the U.S. – at eighty six percent.

Authors of the CDC report noted that countries differ in auto safety enforcement deeds. For example, in some U.S. states, a seat belt is only required if you are sitting in the front of an automobile.

Alcohol use also contributed to the mortality rates, with the U.S. tied for the second-highest percentage of deaths involving alcohol-impaired driving among nineteen countries evaluated.

Countries vary on how they define drunken driving. In Canada, the U.S. and the United Kingdom, the blood alcohol concentration limit is at 0.08 grams per deciliter, the report said, while in other countries it goes as low as 0.02 percent.

Other differences also exist. For example, while the U.S. has a higher legal drinking age than many other developed nations, other countries have a higher age at which they permit teenagers to drive a car. “It is difficult to taunt out the different lumps of road safety because it’s a elaborate issue,” Sauber-Schatz said.

Speeding also played a role in death rates. Out of fifteen countries for which data about speeding were reported, the U.S. had the eighth-highest percentage of crash deaths.

15 countries reported the percentage of deaths related to speeding.

Sauber-Schatz cited speed cameras as an effective way to lower these deaths. In Sweden, which had the lowest crash death rate overall, speed cameras across the country have contributed to reducing deaths, she said. Authors of the report said if the U.S. had the same crash death rate as Sweden, about 24,000 fewer lives would have been lost in 2013.

While the U.S. has significantly diminished crash deaths, it also still fell behind in its progress. On average, nineteen comparative nations had diminished crash deaths by fifty six percent inbetween two thousand and 2013, with Spain having the highest reduction at seventy five percent.

“It is significant to compare us not to our past but to our potential. Witnessing that other high-income countries are doing better, we know we can do better, too,” Dr. Debra Houry, director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said in a statement.

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