Your asthma puffer is probably contributing to climate change, but there’s a better alternative.

I breathe all the way out. There’s a quiet puff of gas from my inhaler, and I breathe all the way in. I hold my breath for a few seconds and the medicine is where it needs to be: in my lungs.

There is an environmentally friendly option. 

Many readers with asthma or other lung disease will recognise this ritual. But I suspect few will connect it with climate change. Until recently, neither did I.

In asthma, there is narrowing of the airways that carry air into and out of our lungs. The lining of the airways becomes swollen, muscles around the airways contract, and mucus is produced. All these changes make it hard to breathe out.

The most commonly used medicines in asthma are delivered by inhalation. Inhaling gets the medicines straight to the airways, speeding and maximising their local effects, and minimising side effects elsewhere compared to, say, swallowing tablets.

Read the piece on The Conversation by the Senior Lecturer in General Practice at the University of Western Australia, Brett Montgomery - “Your asthma puffer is probably contributing to climate change, but there’s a better alternative.”

The water is coming for Copenhagen; good design could be its best defence

Each day, hundreds of thousands of commuters snake their way across bridges that connect Copenhagen’s many islands. Cyclists, motorists and pedestrians speed over busy canals and race through the thin cobbled streets of the old city, while canal tour boats filled with tourists slowly orbit the centre. On a warm day, the canals are lined with sunbathers jumping from BIG architects’ famous harbour baths, with their distinctive barbershop stripes. Paper Island, in the Christianshavn district, is home to the city’s new pop-up cultural precinct. It is regularly filled with diners, who spill out of the warehouse housing Copenhagen Street Food to watch the sunsets on its banks.

Copenhagen is a city that thrives from its coexistence
with water. By 2100, this relationship will need to be re-negotiated.

Since its beginnings as a Viking fishing village, Copenhagen’s relationship with the Baltic Sea has played a vital role in shaping the city’s culture. Today, canals cordon off its many islands, serving the veins that pump life into its distinct geographical and cultural pockets, such as Christianshavn, even as they divide them. The canals contribute both to Copenhagen’s particular aesthetic and its leading place in global liveability rankings. But the harbour city, whose name has become shorthand for the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference, sees water not only as its biggest asset, but one of its biggest risks.

Read the Foreground story - “The water is coming for Copenhagen; good design could be its best defence.”