1 . The World Health Organization warns that millions of people are dying every year from indoor air pollution. Nearly three billion people are unable to use clean fuels and technologies for cooking, heating as well as lighting.

These findings show that the use of deadly fuels in inefficient stoves, space heaters or lights is to blame for many of these deaths.

WHO officials say indoor pollution leads to early deaths from stroke, heart and lung disease, childhood pneumonia and lung cancer. Women and girls are the main victims. These diseases can often result from the burning of solid fuels. These fuels include wood, coal, animal waste, crop waste and charcoal.

The United Nations found that more than 95 percent of households in sub-Saharan Africa depend on solid fuels for cooking. It says huge populations in India, China and Latin American countries, such as Guatermala and Peru,are also at risk.

Nigel Brace is a professor of Public Health at the University of Liverpool. He says researchers are developing good cook-stoves and other equipment to burn fuels in a more efficient way.There are already multiple technologies available for use in clean fuels.There is really quite an effective and reasonably low-cost alcohol stove made by Dometic (a Sweden-based company) that is now being tested out. LPG (Liquefield Petroleum Gas) cook is obviously widely available and efforts are under way to make those efficient. Another interesting development is electric induction stoves. WHO experts note that some new, safe and low-cost technologies that could help are already available. In India, you can buy an induction stove for about $8.00. And in Africa you can buy a solar lamp for less than $1.00.

But this,the agency says, is just a start. It is urging developing countries to use cleaner fuels and increase access to cleaner and more modern cooking and heating appliances/devices.

2 . Nobody wants to snack on plastic bags or soda rings, but according to a recent study from the University of Neweastle, we could be consuming roughly a credit card's worth of plastic every week.

Microplastic, which are less than a quarter-inch size and come in various shapes, have polluted the natural world and infiltrated(渗入)our bodies. The first clue to microplastic exposure in humans came around 2013, when scientists discovered plastic particles in seafood prepared for consumption. But in 2019, when the University of Newcastle study was published, the scientific community understood that the problem was considerably broader. Microplastics shed off clothes and tires and have been found in beer, honey, table salt and other food items. We breathe in plastic staying in the air and drink plastic floating in our drinks. It's no stretch to conclude that our exposure is significant. What we don't know is what this means for us.

The amount of evidence collected on this subject is growing rapidly, according to Scott Coffin, a toxicologist(毒理学家). Studies done on mice and rats have found that plastic in their bodies can severely damage cells and cause stress.

Because microplastics are too small to clean up, the only solution is to stop plastic waste at the source. And doing so would take a thorough adjustment, given that plastics are deeply embedded in our economy and lifestyle. Stopping using them would fundamentally affect countless industries, including textiles(纺织业), transportation and manufacturing.

"I think we need to have more studies coming out that are directly related to human health before we see a lot more concern from the general public," Scott said. "It takes a lot to convince people that something that is really convenient for them to use is something they should sacrifice."

The question of microplastics and human health needs more attention—from the scientific community ,the general public, the government and funding groups. The issue isn't being ignored, but it's not being prioritized either.

4 . Too much light at night can cut the number of seeds a plant makes, a new study finds. Researchers put up street lights in Swiss meadows, far from any real streets. The setup was built similarly to urban light pollution. In these now-light-polluted fields, flowers had 62 percent fewer night visitors — insect pollinators — than did the flowers in dark meadows.

The researchers reported a cabbage thistle bloom hosts a guest insect after dark. Cabbage thistles are the most common flowers in these meadows. Fewer insect visitors at night could mean less pollen pollinated from plant to plant (the first step in making seeds). For the thistles, daytime pollinator visits didn’t make up for this loss at night, says Eva Knop, an ecologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Overall, night-lit plants produced one-eighth fewer seeds than did plants that got full nights of darkness.

Light pollution might affect a whole network of plants and their pollinators, Knop and her colleagues now suggest. Indeed, night pollination was not just a lonely business for a few special plants. There were lots of links between pollen hauls by night and by day. Plants with a lot of night visits were often very busy by day, too. Light at night that decreases seed numbers could over time mean fewer new plants. And fewer plants could mean less food and shelter for daytime insects. So a lot of pollinators working the day and night shifts could be affected, Knop worries.

The new study is the first to show how artificial light affects plants’ ability to make seeds. The test is also unusual because it considers all kinds of insect pollinators instead of focusing only on night-flying insects. The researchers paid special attention to the cabbage thistle, but they also mapped which kinds of insects visited other plants by day or night.

5 . Google is getting further into the business of saving lives. The internet giant announces that users of its Android phones in New Zealand will receive warnings of damaging earthquakes about to strike their locations. And those earthquakes will be detected not by the usual seismometers, but by the phones themselves.

Traditional warnings, even if they only come seconds before a quake hits, can buy people enough time to survive the quake. These systems are practical, but they are difficult and expensive to develop. One system, known as ShakeAlert, cost $60 million to build and needs more than $30 million annually to operate. Such an earthquake warning system as developed by Google can cut down this expense and has great potential globally.

A phone-based network makes earthquake detection possible because modern devices are equipped with motion sensors that monitor movement, such as when a user picks up or rotates the phone. Those sensors can also be programmed to detect the distinctive shaking caused by the pressure and waves of earthquakes.

Google has built quake-sensing capabilities directly into its more than 2 billion active Android phones. When a Android phone detects an earthquake signal, it sends word, along with a rough location, to a central server and more than 100 phones need to sound the alarm before Google believes it. Android phones have been publicly detecting earthquakes worldwide since last year and have detected more than 1000 quakes. The warnings have performed well in terms of speed and accuracy when compared with ShakeAlert. Regardless of it, false alarms haven’t been too hard to weed out.

The Android system still has a lot to prove, including its ability to detect quakes that start in less populated regions. New Zealand will pose a particular challenge, because much of its population is gathered in a few cities. That means phones might not warn of a quake that starts far from downtown until after the trembling has already begun. Until the system’s performance is clear, Google should be cautious of promising too much.

7 . How To Eat Better for the Planet

You are environmentally conscious and hungry. Here are answers to all your eco-friendly food questions.

Does what I eat have an effect on climate change?

Yes.     1    . About one quarter of the planet-warming greenhouse gases are generated by humans each year. That includes raising and harvesting all the plants, animals, and animal products we eat, as well as processing, packaging, and shipping food to markets all over the world.

    2    ?

When forests are cleared to make room for farms and cattle, large stores of carbon are released into the atmosphere, which heats up the planet. Also, fossil (化石) fuels are used to operate farm machinery and ship food around the globe, all of which generate emissions (排放). Which foods have the largest impact?

    3    . Cattle accounts for roughly the same amount of emissions as all the cars, trucks, airplanes, and ships in the world today, while plant-based foods like beans and grains tend to have the smallest effect. Pork, chicken, and eggs are somewhere in the middle.

Why does meat have such a big effect on the climate?

It’s often more efficient to grow crops for humans to eat than it is to grow crops for animals to eat and then turn those animals into food for humans. A conclusion was reached by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in 2017.     4    .

Is there a simple food choice I can make that would reduce my climate footprint?

Consuming less red meat and dairy will typically have the biggest effect for most people in wealthy countries. A number of studies have concluded that people who eat a meat-heavy diet could reduce their food-related footprint by one third or more by moving to a vegetarian diet.     5    . If you don’t want to go that far, just eating less meat and dairy can reduce emissions.

8 . We've got to do a better job of stopping global warming, a new report says.

The report, released Wednesday by the United Nations, says the world isn't doing nearly enough to control fossil fuel production to the level that's needed to stop "catastrophic" levels of global warming, pointing fingers at both developed countries and developing countries.

However, developing countries currently cannot sustain (维持) themselves, let alone grow, without relying heavily on fossil fuels. To them, fossil fuels are still the cheapest, most reliable energy resources available. India, for example, is home to one-third of the world's 1. 2 billion citizens living in poverty. That's 400 million people in one country without sufficient food or shelter. India hopes to shift to renewable energy as its economy grows, but the investment needed to meet its renewable energy goals “is over ten times the country's annual spending on agriculture and infrastructure (基础设施).” Unless something changes, developing countries like India cannot fight climate change.

Yet the weather changes and consequences of global warming, like tons of droughts and poverty are already impacting economic growth in many countries. Is there a solution?

According to a World Bank report, “poor and middle-income countries account for just over half of total carbon emissions.” And this percentage will only rise as developing countries grow. In Sub-Sabaran Africa, the number of people living in poverty increased by 98% in the thirty years, while carbon dioxide on average decreased by 17%. Given the current energy situation, if sub-Saharan Africans are to escape extreme poverty, they will have to increase their carbon use unless developed countries step in to offer clean alternatives and financial aid.

After all, global warming is, by definition, a global crisis. Reducing this threat will require global cooperation and global solutions.