Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America

Concern over climate change has led the U.S. to consider a cap-and-trade system to regulate emissions. Here we illustrate the land-use impact to U.S. habitat types of new energy development resulting from different U.S. energy policies. We estimated the total new land area needed by 2030 to produce energy, under current law and under various cap-and-trade policies, and then partitioned the area impacted among habitat types with geospatial data on the feasibility of production. The land-use intensity of different energy production techniques varies over three orders of magnitude, from 1.9–2.8 km2/TW hr/yr for nuclear power to 788–1000 km2/TW hr/yr for biodiesel from soy. In all scenarios, temperate deciduous forests and temperate grasslands will be most impacted by future energy development, although the magnitude of impact by wind, biomass, and coal to different habitat types is policy-specific. Regardless of the existence or structure of a cap-and-trade bill, at least 206,000 km2 will be impacted without substantial increases in energy efficiency, which saves at least 7.6 km2 per TW hr of electricity conserved annually and 27.5 km2 per TW hr of liquid fuels conserved annually. Climate policy that reduces carbon dioxide emissions may increase the areal impact of energy, although the magnitude of this potential side effect may be substantially mitigated by increases in energy efficiency. The possibility of widespread energy sprawl increases the need for energy conservation, appropriate siting, sustainable production practices, and compensatory mitigation offsets

Impact of educational attainment on the quality of young women's diets

Objective: New findings, that relate poor foetal growth to long-term outcomes, highlight the need to understand more about the nature of women's diets before and during pregnancy. This study examines the influence of sociodemographic and anthropometric factors on the quality of the diets of young women in the UK.Design: Diet was assessed by an interviewer-administered food frequency questionnaire. A single diet score was calculated for each woman using the first component defined by principal components analysis.Setting: Southampton, UK.Subjects: A total of 6125 non pregnant women aged 20-34 y.Results: The diets of women with low diet scores were characterised by low intakes of fruit and vegetables, wholemeal bread, rice and pasta, yogurt, and breakfast cereals, but high intakes of chips and roast potatoes, sugar, white bread, red, and processed meat and full-fat dairy products. Educational attainment was the most important factor related to the diet score. In all, 55% (95% CI 50-59%) of women with no educational qualifications had scores in the lowest quarter of the distribution, compared with only 3% (95% CI 2-4%) of those who had a degree. Smoking, watching television, lack of strenuous exercise, and living with children were also associated with lower diet scores. After taking these factors into account, no other factor including social class, the deprivation score of the neighbourhood, or receipt of benefits added more than 1% to the variance in the diet score.Conclusions: Poor achievement at school defines a substantial group of women in the UK who may be vulnerable. Many of these women have poor diets that are not simply a result of the level of deprivation in their neighbourhood, or of living at a level of poverty that entitles them to benefits. We suggest that it is a priority to identify and to address the barriers that prevent these women from improving the quality of their diets.Sponsorship: The study was funded by the Dunhill Medical Trust, the University of Southampton and the Medical Research Council