According to the China Electricity Council, China's coal demand will reach 4.3 billion tons by 2015, an increase of 970 million tons compared to the year 2010 and an annual increase of 5.2 percent, Shanghai Securities News reported on Monday.

I installed solar panels on my roof in September. I made my decision after my monthly energy bill hit an all-time high, and then exceeded it the next month. But perhaps my most compelling reason to go solar is the least intuitive: I want to help stamp out asthma.

As a hospital-based pediatrician at Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas, I treat hundreds of children with asthma each year. In fact, asthma is the most common chronic disease of children, affecting nearly one in 10, and costing Americans an estimated $56 billion annually. During attacks, children gasp for breath and wheeze. An unfortunate handful of kids do not survive. And what might seem to be a case of genetic bad luck is only partly so; our air quality, which is dramatically worsened when fossil fuels are burned, has a profound impact upon asthma as well.

The Obama Administration approved the Keystone XL pipeline that is slated to carry tar sands from Alberta to Texas to be refined into various forms of fuel. There were also over 1000 protestors arrested during the days the protests took place. Among them was President Obama’s chief climatologist, James Henson. The protestors were protesting that the pipeline will put our clean energy future on hold even longer, and instead of sending a message that we must harness energy from the wind and sun, it is ok to continue to get it from deep under the earth’s surface and pollute the air, water, and land that are so critical to humanity.

Thank goodness, finally after 40 yrs the Environmental Protection Agency, US, issued standards that lower the acceptable levels of sulfur-dioxide emissions and increase the intervals the gas is monitored. With asthma and other respiratory disease on the rise especially in children and the elderly, this is good news.

It means a savings of $13B annually up to $33B annually and prevention of 2,300 to 5,900 premature deaths and 54,000 asthma attacks a year. WHY do we think we can carelessly pump chemicals into the air with no effect on ourselves and I wonder about wildlife and pets, other living things with smaller bodies and greater vulnerability. We need to get that we are the environment, our bodies are made up of what we breath and what we eat and touch. We need a full scale campaign to reduce routine and careless use of chemicals in so many products.