Greenhouse

President Obama's executive order on greenhouse gas emissions is a refreshing first step toward reversing the government's harmful inaction on climate change. With a stroke of his pen, Obama repudiated eight years of the Bush administration's head-in-the-sand approach to global warming. The president directed Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson to consider California's request to establish its own limits for emissions from cars and trucks, action that Bush resisted.

Seeking to play down the effects of global warming, in October 2007 Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed to delete from congressional testimony references about the consequences of climate change on public health, a former senior EPA official claimed Tuesday. . . . From the Desk of The Vice President of the United States Date: October, 2007 To: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention From: Darth Subject: Public health consequences of climate change hoax I've been going over the 14 - make that 13 pages (note to self: Don't sit so close to shredder)

In 1997, Diane Newbury and her husband, Steven Berman, bought a large 19th-century house in Chestnut Hill that needed overhauling from top to bottom. So did the two acres surrounding it. Imagine overgrown trees, poison ivy and patchy lawn. Superimpose a gummy pool and enough paved surfaces to park a truck fleet, a greenhouse covered with wood paneling, and a broken fountain filled with dirt. "A bit of a wasteland," says Berman. But Newbury was undaunted. In fact, she says, when she first laid eyes on this rather forlorn L-shaped property on the Montgomery County line, "I had tingles all over my body.

Linda M. Ciccantelli, 56, director of the horticulture therapy program at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, who for 32 years helped heal broken bodies and spirits by encouraging patients to nurture plants while learning to care for themselves, died Dec. 19 of coronary artery disease at her Chestnut Hill home. "Linda devoted her life to her horticulture program and patients," said Ron Siggs, a Magee spokesman. "She had a magical quality about her, and helped thousands of head and spinal-cord injury victims find a reason to live again through her therapy program.

Chester County is going green. The county last week announced the formation of a 64-member Green House Gas Reduction Task Force that will recommend to the county commissioners ways to deal with climate change and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The panel is patterned after a similar effort in Montgomery County, said Steve Fromnick, director of facilities management for Chester County, who heads the project here. Like their Montgomery County counterparts, Fromnick said his group can't force anyone to do anything and will leave any issues that involve money or taxes to elected officials, the commissioners.

As part of the world's carbon footprint, Montgomery County doesn't even constitute as much as a toe. But the county wants to make an even smaller impression. So today, its commissioners are expected to take a rare step and adopt a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a variety of ways. No other county in Pennsylvania or South Jersey has done so. "It's really groundbreaking . . . and is a real model for what other counties or regional bodies can do," said Brian Hill, president of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group.

New Jersey is poised to take on global warming with a plan that imposes some of the nation's strictest limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. Under legislation overwhelmingly approved last week by the Assembly and Senate, the state would cut its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent of last year's levels by 2050. The bill would set into law the recommendations Gov. Corzine made in February via executive order and now awaits his signature. The plan puts New Jersey at the forefront of a growing number of states imposing their own global-warming crackdowns while citing an absence of federal leadership.

A whole lot of caring's going on at Keystone House - for the residents, who are terminally ill; for the mansion, which is being restored; and for the gardens, which are being planted once more. The 19-bed residential hospice opened in 1998 in a historically certified Victorian home in Wyndmoor. Like so many of its era, this elegant 25-room estate on Stenton Avenue had gone from glory to degradation in a few short generations. Over the last nine years, it's been inching back.

A whole lot of caring's going on at Keystone House - for the residents, who are terminally ill; for the mansion, which is being restored; and for the gardens, which are being planted once more. The 19-bed residential hospice opened in 1998 in a historically certified Victorian home in Wyndmoor. Like so many of its era, this elegant 25-room estate on Stenton Avenue had gone from glory to degradation in a few short generations. Over the last nine years, it's been inching back. In 2010, when an $11.5 million restoration and expansion is completed, beauty and dignity will infuse a place that, in its latest incarnation, aspires to bestow those gifts upon the people who live within it. "People leave legacies, and this house has a legacy, too. We want to make sure it has another 75 or 100 years," says David Traupman, once a garden volunteer at the nonprofit hospice, now its vice president.

In one of the most ambitious governmental actions yet taken on global warming, Gov. Corzine yesterday signed an executive order calling for his state to dramatically cut its greenhouse-gas emissions. Under the order, New Jersey would cut its emissions to 1990 levels - a reduction of 20 percent - by 2020. It calls for a total 80 percent reduction by 2050. "Today we have taken steps to preserve our planet for our children and grandchildren by adopting aggressive goals for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," Corzine said in a press release.