Here’s a shocker (not really): living in a walkable neighborhood reduces your chances of being overweight.

It should seem obvious, but a new study from the University of Utah has tracked the connection between walkable neighborhoods and weight statistically. The researchers found that the average guy living in a walkable neighborhood weighed 10 pounds less than his more car-dependent counterpart, while the average woman weighed six pounds less.

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Until recently when I discovered the SpaRitual line at a little body shop, called Mountain Body, in Park City, Utah. With flavors like, Strawberry Fields Forever and Paradigm Shift (which I am currently admiring as I type!), you not only feel good about wearing the nail lacquer but empowered.

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After six years of research, Raser Technologies will deliver geothermal energy to the city of Anaheim, California. The geothermal generator, which is located in Beaver County, Utah, will produce 10 megawatts of energy, or enough to power 9,000 homes. It should be completed by October. Anaheim’s new energy source will put it on the fast track to reaching 20 percent of its total energy needs through renewable energy by 2012.

The Raser geothermal model is much more consumer-friendly than previous models, as it operates at the relatively low temperature of 165 F. And a lot is riding on its success. According to Merrill Lynch’s managing director of corporate finance Roy Piskadlo, “The success of this project will be important, because with this new low-temperature technology, the range of potential commercial sites is much wider.”

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Public lands within the Utah region and elsewhere have been a longtime target for oil drilling and government granted leases but always with the understand that wilderness and public lands in close proximity to national parks were typically off limits. That is, until the Bush administration decided to green light drilling near national parks in Moab, Utah in 2002. Although park scientists protested that the national parks could take decades to recover from the shock waves caused by local oil derricks, the administration claimed that parks would “barely notice changes,” according to a New York Times article published on February 8, 2002.

In February of this year, proposed oil drilling in the Great Salt Lake region was met with great resistance from residents and local and national environmental groups, such as The Friends of the Great Salt Lake and the Wilderness Conservancy who at the time I wrote this had received nearly 10,000 signatures in protest of the drilling from around the world.

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Years later, your father dies of lymphoma, and you realize it may have been the result of breathing that green air from the atomic testing range. And you finally understand why the state troopers warned motorists about the dirty air.

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Let's pretend for a moment that Global Warming is truly a natural act that we have no control over. If the consensus gelled with the science, would we still not act on the pollution choking our lungs? Would we ignore the damaging waste fed into our rivers, the mercury ingested by our children, or the garbage clogging our landfills? These very issues harbor just as much danger as global warming. Climate change is simply something we can all rally behind with the solutions to stopping it also playing a role in curing some of our other ailments. To dismiss it would be turning our backs on dangers we can truly see, feel, touch, and die from.

One perfect example of an issue we can all relate to is smog. Emissions from cars, factories, even fireplaces can all contribute to this toxic 'soup' that reduces visibility, leads to lung damage, and can contribute to asthma or other respiratory diseases. In Salt Lake City, Utah, this year's smog has become a major issue. With the city and surrounding counties sitting in a "bowl-like" geographic feature stuck between mountains and valleys, smog rarely has anywhere to go. As a result, the pollution can stretch almost 120 miles from north to south! And it's getting worse.

During the winter of 2006, Salt Lake City has 3 red alerts: warnings where motorists are encouraged to get off the roads, children are taken inside, and fires are discouraged. This year, the city has had 25 red alerts, with one jogger commenting that he hasn't spent a day of January outside due to the pollution!

Similar to stars disappearing from light pollution, those that travel to Utah looking for beautiful scenery have been squinting to pick out anything through the yellow haze. The area is awaiting a storm to push the smog away and let others benefit from the "soup".

And so, while climate change will slowly start to impact us over the next several decades, we've already created a veritable nightmare scenario. Instead of checking for rain or snow, some parts of the country must daily check air-quality ratings. How can we call ourselves an advanced society when we're poisoning ourselves willingly? Global warming may or may not be the end of the world, but go for a run in Salt Lake City, and I'm sure you'll agree that what we're doing now is a pretty good preview.

Source: Utah Mountains, Valleys Under a 'Soup'