The Growing Trend

In recent years, medical spas like this medical spa in Bourbonnais, IL have emerged as popular destinations for women seeking a holistic approach to beauty and wellness. Unlike traditional spas, medical spas, or “medspas,” offer a unique blend of relaxation and medical-grade treatments designed to rejuvenate the skin, enhance physical appearance, and promote overall well-being.

One of the primary reasons women flock to medical spas like The Face Place medspa is for access to advanced skincare treatments and procedures. From chemical peels and microdermabrasion to laser skin resurfacing and lip fillers, medspas such as this med spa in Cape May Court House, NJ offer a wide range of cosmetic treatments like peptide therapy that can address various skin concerns, including fine lines, wrinkles, acne, and hyperpigmentation. These medical-grade procedures are performed under the supervision of trained professionals, ensuring safety and efficacy.

Furthermore, medical spas like this med spa in Frisco, TX or medspa in Pittsburgh, PA provide a one-stop-shop for women looking to enhance their appearance from head to toe. In addition to skincare treatments, many medspas offer services such as laser hair removal, body contouring, and cellulite reduction. These procedures can help women achieve their desired aesthetic goals without the need for invasive surgery or lengthy recovery times.

Beyond cosmetic treatments, medical spas also offer therapeutic and relaxation services aimed at promoting overall wellness. From therapeutic massages and acupuncture to vitamin injections and IV therapy, these holistic treatments can help women de-stress, recharge, and achieve a sense of balance and harmony in their lives.

Additionally, medical spas like this med spa in OKC provide a welcoming and inclusive environment where women can feel comfortable discussing their concerns and goals with trained professionals, preferably ones that attended conferences such as Music City SCALE 2024. Whether seeking advice on skincare products or exploring treatment options for specific concerns, women can benefit from personalized recommendations tailored to their individual needs and preferences.

Women visit medical spas such as this med spa in Lehi, UT for a variety of reasons, including access to comprehensive aesthetic services, holistic wellness therapies, advanced skincare treatments and even Soteri Skin 2 Step Eczema Care products. With a focus on safety, efficacy, and personalized care, medical spas offer women the opportunity to enhance their beauty, boost their confidence, and prioritize their overall well-being in a nurturing and supportive environment.

Fracked to Death

One of the least understood and least reported stories of the Covid era has been the death of fracking — the much-touted “new technology” that was supposed to usher in a revolution of the American oil industry that would lead to energy independence and world oil-market domination. It did no such thing. It did not even come close. And now it is shutting down.

At a time when world oil demand and prices are rising, and the production of oil has become theoretically profitable again after a long, pandemic-induced coma, legacy oil fields are ramping up production and singing, “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Fracking, on the other hand, is sinking deeper into its final coma. Continue reading

Alaska Pipeline Coming Down

The 800-mile-long Alaska Pipeline, one of the wonders of the industrial world, is about to become a victim of climate change. But it really doesn’t matter much.

One of my favorite things is to connect two major news stories, each of which is credible on its own,  but one of which cancels the other. One of my least favorite things is the shoddy journalism that goes into one of the stories. So today is the best of days, and the worst of days.

Story number one is alarming on its face, and at that somewhat understates the danger: “Alaska: One of the World’s Largest Pipelines Threatened by Thawing Permafrost,” blares one of the many headlines seen around the world. The fact is, the pipeline is doomed. On the other hand, it’s not going to matter very much. Continue reading

The End of the Industrial Age is Set in Concrete

Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida demonstrated what happens when concrete reaches the end of its useful life.

Every year, the world pours enough concrete to build a wall 88 feet high and 88 feet wide girdling the globe at the equator. The varieties in concreting, as you see here, are proof. In just two years — 2011 to 2013 — China poured more concrete than the United States did in the entire 20th Century. Manufacturing cement — the product that makes concrete out of water, sand and gravel — is the third largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions in the world; if it were a country, it would be the world’s fourth worst polluter. Increasing demand for, and scarcity of, sand for both concrete and fracking has created a vicious global competition that in some respects resembles the worst of the drug cartels for violence, ruthlessness and lawlessness. 

Now the bad news. Concrete has a life span. Salt, water and heat degrade it until at some point it can no longer be the road or the bridge or the high rise or the dam it once was. If nothing is done to replace or repair it, it fails. And people die.  Continue reading

The First Tombstones

They lie as if bracketing a continent’s agony. They are among the first tombstones for an age that is being slowly but mercilessly swept from its place atop the civilized world by fire and water. 

In the North, a sprawling expanse of black ashes, where the village of Lytton, British Columbia, first had to endure a savage heat wave leading to the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada — 121 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the next day, June 30, virtually the entire village and its surrounding homes burned to the ground in a raging, 20,000-acre wildfire that, like the heatwave, was the spawn of global climate change. 1,000 people are homeless. 

In the South, on the water at Surfside, Florida, a pile of crumpled concrete that was a 12-story condominium building until in the early morning hours of June 24 it simply fell down, crushing its occupants. For decades there had been reports of rising sea water regularly — at every unusually high tide — infiltrating the lowest level of the parking garage to depths of two to four feet. For decades it had been known that the building was slowly sinking into the reclaimed wetlands on which it had been built. No one knows for sure what exactly brought it down, but the role of climate change will emerge as a major contributing cause.  (Exclamation point: a hurricane, one of the earliest ever in the season, is approaching Florida as this is written.) The death toll is expected to reach 150.

Someone should hold services over these tombs. Words should be said, and cut into granite. Pretty soon, there won’t be time.

“This is a Climate Emergency.”

California wildfires like this one, unprecedented in number, extent and the length of their season, are only one small part of the onslaught of climate change now under way in America.

The heat wave that just relaxed its grip — slightly– on the Pacific Northwest was unprecedented in the history of the region, indeed of the entire United States. It came earlier in the year, set more all-time records, and set them by unprecedented margins of in some cases 20 to 30 degrees. That it has backed off for now means nothing, as Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state understands; this is climate change. “This,” he said on national TV, “is the beginning of a permanent emergency.”

Underground and surface water in the region are depleted; crops over much of the state are damaged or dead; human health has been affected by temperatures and humidity levels that are simply not survivable (in a region where air conditioning is regarded as unnecessary). Continue reading

First Condo Down? It Won’t Be the Last.

It is quite likely that America has lost its first high-rise building to climate change and the resulting sea level rise. The collapse of South Champlain Towers in Miami Beach early Thursday morning is unprecedented in American history. Buildings under construction, or damaged by explosions or impacts, have collapsed, but never an untouched building on a quiet, cloudless night. When it Comes to Fire Protection, There Should Be Passive Protection As Well, that should be ensured by all the constructors before and after completing the given project.

The other thing that we have never seen in American history is the kind of assault now ongoing on Florida real estate by rising seas. The region is plagued by what the locals call “sunny day flooding,” incursions of flood water not from rain but from rising seas. Salt water is infiltrating the freshwater aquifers and poisoning coastal farm and garden fields. Continue reading

Treating the Soil Like Dirt

Even the bedrock has a contribution to make to the plants growing on the surface — essential trace minerals — but cannot do so if the topsoil is destroyed.

When I first read the headline of the article in Smithsonian Magazine — “The Nation’s Corn Belt Has Lost a Third of Its Topsoil” — I didn’t find it particularly alarming. Given the rate of loss I documented in Brace for Impact 12 years ago, I thought we’d be much worse off than that by now. If the average topsoil cover is six inches, and we still have four inches left, we’re not doing so badly. 

But that’s not what this new study meant to say, at all. Using satellite technology, it examined the soil breadbasket — the once-rich farmland that stretches from Ohio to Nebraska and produces 75 percent of the corn grown in this country — in unprecedented detail. It concluded, not that the region had lost one third of the depth of its topsoil, but that 35 percent of the land area of the region had lost all of its topsoil and was barren.

Just another “Holy shit!” moment among way too many experienced in recent years.   Continue reading

Climate Migration Has Begun: The Emergency is Here

They were probably using the backhoe to build a sea wall. But at some point you have to give up.

In recent weeks, four — count them, four — major, reputable news organizations have run major stories on the beginning of the greatest disruption of American life that has ever occurred: climate migration. Attention: these stories all recognize not that this disruption is possible if we don’t do something soon, but that it has already begun.  Continue reading

If You Really Want a Civil War, This is How to Do It.

Really? You want to do this again? Well, history tells us: be careful what you wish for, and don’t presume you know how it will turn out.

When I visited Costa Rica in 1988, on assignment for a national wildlife magazine, it happened to be the 40th anniversary of the country’s civil war, so there were commemorations and recollections everywhere, all the time. Otherwise I would not have learned the story that provided one of the major political and historical epiphanies of my life.  I did not know that any country had done what Costa Rica had done, indeed it had never occurred to me that any country could do what Costa Rica did. 

Then when I revisited the story this year in connection with something I was writing, details I had not especially noticed before ignited like fireworks and illuminated in an entirely new way the presidency of Donald Trump and the events of January 6, 2021, in Washington D.C. Continue reading