News Archive
Urgency needed to address climate change in Maine
Daniel Oppenheim, MD, PSR Maine member | Bangor Daily News
November 5, 2020
As a doctor concerned about the health of my patients, I cannot help but also be concerned about the health impacts of global climate change on my community, my state and the entire planet.
Let's Pay Attention to What COVID-19 Is Trying to Tell Us About Climate Change
PSR’s Janis Petzel, MD, Common Dreams
May 26, 2020
What do the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change have in common? Both are symptoms of human activity out of balance. They are existential threats whose morbidity and mortality are magnified by the habits of modern life. COVID-19 and climate change intensify the health inequities experienced by people of color and other vulnerable communities. Both threaten our future, but COVID-19 is, we hope, temporary. Climate change may be forever if we don't change our ways. The factors that make COVID-19 so dangerous also move climate change toward the irreversible.
Solar success
Village Soup - Waldo
August 13, 2019
Passage of the most recent version of a solar energy bill, LD 1711, is good news for Maine.
The legislation was sponsored by Lincoln County Sen. Dana Dow, a Republican, and approved by a majority in the House and Senate. Locally, Sen. Erin Herbig, D-Waldo County, and Reps. Scott Cuddy, D-Winterport; Jan Dodge, D-Belfast; Vicki Doudera,
PSR Maine in the news
The Free Press
August 13, 2019
A psychiatrist, Janis Petzel, gave a chilling talk, “Death by Degrees: The Health Crisis of Climate Change in Maine.” Global warming means more Lyme disease and other insect-borne sicknesses such as anaplasmosis; more heat exhaustion,
Letter to the editor: Maine should lead in phasing toxins out of food packaging
Portland Press-Herald
August 13, 2019
As a species, we seem to be spectacularly resistant to the cautionary lessons of history. Humans began using lead several thousand years ago. But we are still trying to address the use of lead in close proximity to children today.
Toxics – What everyone should know
January 23, 2019
Dr Phillip Landrigan, whose studies influenced the US to remove lead from gasoline, visited Maine this past fall and gave an important lecture at UNE as part of a PSR Maine event. You can view his full talk below or click here.
As disease-bearing ticks head north, weak government response threatens public health
Center for Public Integrity
August 13, 2018
The CDC says rising temperatures are partly to blame for the tripling of mosquito, tick, and flea-borne illnesses from 2004 to 2016, but Maine’s governor, a climate skeptic, is tying health officials’ hands
Maine’s invasion came early this year. In recent hotbeds of tick activity — from Scarborough to Belfast and Brewer — people say they spotted the eight-legged arachnid before spring. They noticed the ticks — which look like moving poppy seeds — encroaching on roads, beaches, playgrounds, cemeteries and library floors. They saw them clinging to dogs, birds and squirrels.
By May, people were finding the ticks crawling on their legs, backs and necks. Now, in midsummer, daily encounters seem almost impossible to avoid.
Be wary of fighting ticks with pesticides, consider alternatives
Portland Press-Herald
June 11, 2018
Chemicals can be as troubling as the threatening insects because both are linked to disease and illness.
The recently released results of a Critical Insights poll show that over 80 percent of voters in Maine are concerned about the increased spread of insect-borne diseases like Lyme related to our changing climate. If folks haven’t been outdoors much recently and don’t own a dog, they may not yet have encountered the legions of ticks – those tiny brown messengers of global warming who spent the winter safe beneath the snow. The dramatic increase in the range and prevalence of these pests as the climate warms parallels the worrisome increases of Lyme disease recorded at the Maine Center for Disease Control & Prevention.
Scarborough lawmakers should back solar bill
The Forecaster
February 12, 2018
Letter to the editor from Mark Follansbee on a proposed law that would protect Maine’s solar industry. “New rules, which will be implemented in just a few months, impose an additional fee for using energy that homeowners generate themselves. This undermines the economic incentives for residential-scale solar installations and, in turn, threatens an existing labor force in an important growth industry for Maine.”
Pass legislation to protect community solar projects in Maine
Portland Press Herald
February 9, 2018
Letter to the editor from Mark Follansbee on a proposed bill to protect Maine’s growing solar industry from new fees. “New rules that will be implemented in just a few months impose an additional fee for using energy that homeowners generate themselves. This undermines the economic incentives for residential-scale solar installations, and, in turn, threatens an existing labor force in an important growth industry for Maine.”
Food for Good: A celebration of food and planet
July 27, 2017
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