For years, public health researchers have been running projects that demonstrate that asthma symptoms can be substantially reduced by working in homes to remove or clean moldy carpets, provide indoor air filters and reduce infestations of dust mites and cockroaches.

FORBES: Obamacare Spurs New Thinking On Using the Market to Pay for Prevention

Zoning laws would be rewritten so that, over time, large parcels of abandoned land would be converted into landscaped open space networks that would capture and clean storm water, improve air quality, and clean contaminated soil as well as provide new recreational opportunities like bike paths and hiking trails and create habitats for local wildlife and migrating birds.

FORBES: Detroit's Innovative Survival Plan Is A Model For The World - But Will It Work?

Plants provide invaluable services, they provide us with the very air we breathe, clean water and fertile soil and they help regulate the climate.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

More economic development would produce the money to help clean the now foul water and air, but also provide access to better education, one of the best ways to assure more manageable birth rates.

FORBES: The Green Movement's People Problem

The White House is promoting the controversial Clear Skies Act of 2003, which the Environmental Protection Agency claims will provide health benefits cheaper, faster and more reliably than the current Clean Air Act.

CNN: Challenges ahead for a changing Earth

And while the expats may provide a breath of fresh air and unleash a wave of initiatives, it is unlikely that they can clean up Pakistan's economic mess in few months.

CNN: ASIANOW - Asiaweek | Business | A Foreign Solution