World leaders are meeting in Bangkok for preliminary discussions on climate change. (Photo source: Alter at Wikimedia Commons)
In December, the world’s nations
meet in Copenhagen to try to come
up with a treaty to deal with climate
change. Right now, preliminary talks
are going on in Bangkok. Lester Graham
reports observers don’t think there’s
much progress:
Transcript
In December, the world’s nations
meet in Copenhagen to try to come
up with a treaty to deal with climate
change. Right now, preliminary talks
are going on in Bangkok. Lester Graham
reports observers don’t think there’s
much progress:
Warren Evans is the Director of the Environment Department at the World Bank. He’s just back from Bangkok where climate change negotiations are going slowly. Evans says that shows just how hard it will be to finalize a treaty in Copenhagen.
“Well, I think our assessment is that there will be considerable progress and that it should set the stage for moving forward, but is it the final agreement that actually put in motion all of the necessary steps and finance? That’s highly unlikely.”
The world will be watching in December to see whether U.S. will agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
It refused to ratify the Kyoto climate change treaty in 1997. Critics are making some of the same arguments now.
They say a Copenhagen treaty could put the U.S. at an economic disadvantage to rapidly developing countries such as China and India.
Baylor Radtke bags up anemometers for the climbers to carry up the tower. The student crew placed three anemometers at different heights, along with two wind direction indicators. The data is recorded and analyzed to estimate average wind speed. Researcher Mike Mageau is getting detailed information on several towers up and down the North Shore of Lake Superior. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
Jonathan Morales determines how high up he is on the tower at Moose Mountain. He wants to place an anemometer at 30 meters, 45 meters, and 60 meters above the ground. Data will be logged for at least a year; the information will help determine whether it's feasible to build wind generators on the North Shore of Lake Superior.
(Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
The spectacular views on the North Shore's Sawtooth Range are a sign of good wind speeds. Researcher Mike Mageau has clocked average speeds of 15 to 20 miles an hour. A citizens group in Grand Marais is trying to determine the feasibility of installing a wind generator that could supply close to half the power the city needs. Similar research is underway at other North Shore communities.
(Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
Howard Hedstrom is a fourth-generation owner of Hedstrom Lumber in Grand Marais. He'd like to sell chipped bark for use in a planned local biomass district heating system, instead of shipping it to markets many miles away. His waste bark could supply as much as half the fuel the burner would need. The other half could come from forest thinning, and from clearing done around homes to protect them from wild fires.
(Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
People concerned about energy are
getting more and more interested
in producing their own. Stephanie
Hemphill reports on an effort to
harvest the wind, and other natural
resources, to power a community:
Transcript
People concerned about energy are
getting more and more interested
in producing their own. Stephanie
Hemphill reports on an effort to
harvest the wind, and other natural
resources, to power a community:
(sound of climbing)
Three students are getting ready to climb a TV tower on Moose
Mountain on the north shore of Lake Superior. They’ll put up three
anemometers – little cups that spin in the wind and measure how fast
it’s blowing.
As they deploy their climbing equipment, their professor, Mike
Mageau, keeps asking if they have enough safety gear. He seems a
little anxious.
“Two of them are mountain climbers. So they seem to think this will
be no big deal.” (laughs)
Mageau teaches at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He’s been
measuring the wind on the high ridge that runs along the Lake
Superior shoreline.
“If you look at the statewide wind maps, they don’t give us credit for
having any wind along the North Shore of Lake Superior. But Grand
Portage was interested in wind, and they did some monitoring and we
helped them. This was years ago.”
That’s the Grand Portage Band of Ojibway Indians. Mageau got a
grant to install monitoring equipment up and down Lake Superior
shoreline.
“And we found 15 to 20 mile-an-hour average wind speeds at the
sites.”
That’s about the same as the best wind sites in Iowa, where huge
wind farms spread across the landscape.
Mageau doesn’t advocate a big wind farm here. Instead, the idea is
to put up one windmill for each community along the shore. One big
turbine could supply roughly half the electricity each town uses.
He knows some people are nervous about this. The North Shore of
Lake Superior is beautiful, and no one wants to ruin the scenery. It’s
also an important route for migrating birds. There’s concern that
birds could fly into the spinning blades. A separate group of
researchers is studying the migration routes.
“Are they flying close to the lake, along the peaks, just inland or
lakeside of the peak, where are they flying? So hopefully when we
pick a wind site we’ll stay away from the birds.”
If a wind tower is ever built here, the power would go to the town of
Grand Marais Minnesota, 20 miles north. And it would fit in with other
projects local folks are working on, to become more energy self-
sufficient.
Buck Benson owns the local hardware store. He says he and his
friends, George and Lonnie, hatched the idea while they were fishing.
“We were grumbling about all this stuff, ‘what can we really do.’ And,
when we came back home, George kept prodding us, ‘you know what
we talked about,’ so we formed a little group. And I think we’ve done
good work since we started this organization.”
The group has been researching various ideas about how to produce
energy locally. One team is pursuing that windmill idea we heard
about. Another project is a little closer to being built: they want to
burn the wood chips from a local sawmill in a central heating system
for the town.
(sound of buzzing)
The chips would come from Hedstrom Lumber mill. Howard
Hedstrom says the mill sells bark chipped off the trees. But he has to
haul it miles away to sell it.
“By the time you pay the freight, there’s not much left. And if it could
be used locally, why not use it locally and save all that transportation
cost.”
The city of Grand Marais has applied for a federal grant to pay for half
the cost of the boiler.
Communities across the country are looking to use what they’ve got
around them, instead of importing energy from a big coal or nuclear
plant miles away.
It helps keep money close to home, and it could be better for the
earth.
For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
This is a mock-up of what the proposed label would look like (Photo courtesy of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)
Back in 2007, Congress told the
National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration to come up with
new fuel efficiency labels on tires.
Mark Brush reports on when we might
see those labels in tire shops:
Transcript
Back in 2007, Congress told the
National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration to come up with
new fuel efficiency labels on tires.
Mark Brush reports on when we might
see those labels in tire shops:
It’s been 2 years, and the government is still working out how to get this labeling program going.
Right now, if you walk into a tire shop, it’s hard to compare tires on how fuel efficient they are. There’s no official standard yet.
But that should change soon. The new tire labeling program is expected to roll it out in the next few months.
Dan Zielinski is a spokesman for the Rubber Manufacturers Association. He says they support a labeling law because it’ll help competition.
It could give tire makers something to brag about.
“’It will be an incentive to say ‘my tire is better because,’ or, ‘my range of tires here are better because.’ It offers the consumers better performance on certain criteria. And I think that will drive the market even before the consumer demand does.”
A more fuel efficient tire will only get you a couple of miles per gallon more. But, put those tires on the 200 million cars and trucks driving the roads these days, and that could add up.
JD Willson holding a juvenile python. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Python enclosure at the Savannah River site, near Aiken, SC. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Rick Bower, a student volunteer from Davidson College, tracking the pythons in the enclosure. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Foreign animals that get released
in the wild usually don’t spark that
much interest. But when that species
is a giant snake, well, most people
sit up and take notice. That’s the
problem facing the state of Florida,
where Burmese pythons have moved in
to Everglades National Park. Now,
scientists are trying to figure out
if the snakes could spread to the
rest of the country. Samara Freemark reports:
Transcript
Foreign animals that get released
in the wild usually don’t spark that
much interest. But when that species
is a giant snake, well, most people
sit up and take notice. That’s the
problem facing the state of Florida,
where Burmese pythons have moved in
to Everglades National Park. Now,
scientists are trying to figure out
if the snakes could spread to the
rest of the country. Samara Freemark reports:
Meet South Florida’s newest invasive species – the 20 ft long, 200 lb,
Burmese python.
“They’re impressive animals. They’re really impressive animals. And
they’re breeding
like crazy out there.”
That’s python researcher JD Willson. He says the pythons probably started
off as pets –
until their owners got bored of them and dumped them in the Everglades. Now
those pets
have procreated their way into a huge wild population.
“Certainly thousands. Certainly tens of thousands. Some people have gone
as far as to
say hundreds of thousands.”
Willson says most pythons won’t attack humans. But they do pose a big
threat to local
ecosystems.
“These are snakes that are top predators. They eat alligators, they got a
bobcat record, a
couple of white tail deer. These are a predator that native wildlife are
just not prepared to
deal with. They’re not used to having a giant snake around.”
Florida lawmakers are considering putting a bounty on the pythons – paying
hunters to
kill them. And people in neighboring states just have their fingers crossed
that the
pythons won’t spread north.
But no one really knows enough about the snakes to come up with a good
control plan.
Willson and some other researchers are trying to change that.
“This is the python enclosure.”
They’ve built a little artificial habitat in South Carolina, surrounded
it with a really tall
wall, and filled it with 10 pythons. The researchers want to learn more
about how the
snakes behave in the wild, and see if they can make it through a winter
with freezing
temperatures.
(sound of door opening)
The snakes are tagged with radio transmitters, so the scientists can track
them and record
data on how they’re doing.
Freemark: “It’s safe to be in here?”
Bower: “Oh yeah, they’re not aggressive.”
Inside a student volunteer, Rick Bower, is tracking the snakes with a radio
receiver.
“As you sweep it across, you can see how the signal strength changes and
you get an idea
of where the strongest signal is coming from.”
The receiver tells us we’re basically standing right on top of one of the
pythons.
“Yeah, he’s right at our feet. Yeah, he’s down there.”
But we don’t see anything, even when Willson starts jabbing a stick at
the source of the
beeping.
“Somewhere within an 8 foot radius of where we are, there’s an 11 foot
snake. And he’s
hiding in this aquatic vegetation. And not only can we not see him, but
poking in the
vegetation doesn’t seem to be eliciting too much of a reaction.”
He’s a really sneaky snake.
Whit Gibbons is also working with the crew. He says that if the scientists
have so much
trouble tracking down their pythons, in an enclosed cage, using radio
transmitters –
there’s no way bounty hunters could make even a dent in the Everglades
python
population.
“So they find a hundred, so what. There’s a hundred thousand left. No
one’s going to find
100,000. I mean, we’ve got ‘em in a small enclosure, 10 big snakes,
over 75 feet of snake
if you add them up. And you can’t find them.”
Instead, Gibbons says people could opt for a harm reduction strategy- focus
on limiting
the spread of the snakes, try to protect species they threaten.
“One position is, ‘okay, they’re here, here’s what they can do to
us, or to our pets, or to
the wildlife. Let’s learn to live with them.’”
The South Carolina python study ends next summer. JD Willson says he’s
not sure what
they’ll do with the snakes afterwards. But he does know one thing –
they’re not going to
release them back into the wild.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the biggest state-funded green jobs training program in the nation. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
California is putting together
a huge green jobs training program.
Lester Graham reports it will mean
thousands of workers trained for a
growing part of the economy:
Transcript
California is putting together
a huge green jobs training program.
Lester Graham reports it will mean
thousands of workers trained for a
growing part of the economy:
Last week, lost in the news of wildfires and state budget problems, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the biggest state-funded green jobs training program in the nation. California is leveraging federal stimulus dollars with state money and public-private partnership matching funds.
“This $75-million program will train more than 20,000 workers for clean and green jobs in the future.”
Green jobs – such as repairing hybrid and electric cars, installing solar panels and building wind turbines.
Governor Schwarzenegger says this Clean Energy Workforce Training Program is where economic growth starts.
“There are still people out there who think that protecting the environment will slow the economy down, but it’s quite the opposite here in California and all over the United States.”
Some business leaders say the green sector likely will be the only growth sector in this economy for a while.
Leading Edge Aviation has put in an application to offer as many as 300 helicopter tours a year around the edge of Crater Lake. Travis Warthen is the company Vice President.
(Photo by Jessica Robinson)
Scott Silver is Executive Director of Wild Wilderness, a group that monitors motorized recreation on public lands.
(Photo by Jessica Robinson)
Some worry that the noise from helicopters would be a disruption to people enjoying Crater Lake National Park.
(Photo by Jessica Robinson)
When Congress returns from its August
recess, one of the tasks on the agenda is
confirming President Obama’s pick to head
the National Park Service. If confirmed,
Jonathan Jarvis will have some tough
decisions to make about what kinds of tourist
attractions to allow in the parks. Jessica
Robinson reports on the latest proposal to
add aerial sightseeing tours at a National
Park in Oregon:
Transcript
When Congress returns from its August
recess, one of the tasks on the agenda is
confirming President Obama’s pick to head
the National Park Service. If confirmed,
Jonathan Jarvis will have some tough
decisions to make about what kinds of tourist
attractions to allow in the parks. Jessica
Robinson reports on the latest proposal to
add aerial sightseeing tours at a National
Park in Oregon:
Nearly 8,000 years ago, Mount Mazama spit out ash and lava and collapsed in on itself, leaving what became Crater Lake.
Park Superintendent Craig Ackerman says the stillness of the blue waters is matched only by the stillness in the air.
“You can stand on the east flank of Mount Scott and you can absolutely hear the wind whispering through the white bark pines and the hemlocks.”
It’s true – there are moments when it’s just your footsteps, the wind, and the birds.
But then, at the popular viewpoints, there are the other species you find at many national parks: like Toyotas, Winnebagos, and Harleys.
(sound of a motorcycle)
Now, a company up the road in Bend, Oregon, has a proposal that could add one more sound to the mix.
(sound of a helicopter)
Leading Edge Aviation has put in an application to offer as many as 300 helicopter tours a year around the edge of Crater Lake. Travis Warthen is the company Vice President.
“I mean, it really is a majestic sight to see. And, the noise level is less than that of a car – you know, definitely motorcycles, RVs, the bus tours. I mean, it’s difficult for us to understand the huge opposition.”
At 1,000 feet up, he says, the choppers sound to someone on the ground, about as loud as a normal conversation.
“So you say, ‘it’s already compromised by the motorcycles and the motor-homes, so what’s wrong with a little more?’”
That’s Scott Silver. He’s executive director of Wild Wilderness, a group he started with a friend to monitor motorized recreation on public lands.
Silver sits in his back yard, just across town from the aviation company proposing the tours. He says National Parks should provide a respite from some of the noise we’re used to in everyday life. As he explains this, a passing helicopter interrupts our interview.
(sound of a helicopter)
“That’s actually the helicopter from the hospital. But, okay, it’s no big deal really in town. It’s just a distraction. But everyone still stops and looks up if it’s flying over a national park. And really, why should visitors have need to look up to listen to sounds over head?”
National Parks advocates worry that helicopter flights at the Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park, and others are making commercial tours the norm for parks visitors. They’re hoping Obama’s pick to lead the National Park Service, Jonathan Jarvis – a former Crater Lake biologist – will reverse the trend.
But here’s the rub: there’s nothing stopping you from flying over any National Park right now – if you have a private plane.
And Jeff Allen, head of the Crater Lake Trust, wonders if that’s fair.
“There’s a part of me that feels like, if you’re going to allow it at all, I’d rather see regular folks be able to have that experience, than have you have to go out and own a plane or know someone who owns a plane.”
Aerial tours of Crater Lake won’t be offered any time soon though. There’s a hefty backlog of similar requests at other parks – and they’ll all have to go through not one but two federal bureaucracies: the National Park Service and the FAA.
Junior Rangers-to-be explore the beach at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)
There was a time – not that long ago –
when a lot of the National Parks in the
country were strapped for cash. They
were cutting staff and cutting services.
But, Mark Brush reports, now Congress
is investing more in the parks:
Transcript
There was a time – not that long ago –
when a lot of the National Parks in the
country were strapped for cash. They
were cutting staff and cutting services.
But, Mark Brush reports, now Congress
is investing more in the parks:
It started changing in the last year or two of the Bush Administration. The Bush White House realized that the National Park System was coming up on its 100th Anniversary in 2016.
No one wanted the Centennial marred by crumbling roads or Parks that were understaffed. So Washington pledged to increase the overall budget for the National Park Service by 100 million each year until the Centennial.
And folks like Tom Ulrich say Congress has been making good on that pledge. He’s the deputy superintendent at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan.
“A few years ago our discussions weren’t, you know, ‘Well, we got a little bit of extra money how are we going to spend that?’ They were, ‘We have to cut from last year. What are we going to cut?’ And so it’s nice to have those discussions change.”
Ulrich says a lot of National Parks are also getting some money from the stimulus package passed earlier this year.
James Woolsey was the Director of the CIA from 1993 to 1995 (Photo courtesy of James Woolsey)
The current recession has caused the price of oil to drop – most think temporarily. James Woolsey was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency – the CIA – during the Clinton Administration. The Environment Report’s Lester Graham recently talked with him. Woolsey has been arguing that, no matter what the price, dependence on oil is a national security problem that we need to solve:
Transcript
The current recession has caused the price of oil to drop – most think temporarily. James Woolsey was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, during the Clinton Administration. The Environment Report’s Lester Graham recently talked with him. Woolsey has been arguing that no matter what the price, dependence on oil is a national security problem that we need to solve:
James Woolsey: Well, I think moving away from oil dependence, period, is extremely important for our security, and it’s important because of climate change. We are funding both sides of the War on Terror. Oil, when it comes into a hierocracy or into a dictatorship, tends to enhance the power of the state. Tom Friedman summed that up very well in his chapter of his new book ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded,’ the chapter is called ‘Fill’er Up With Dictators,’ and it’s a pretty accurate statement. We’ve also run the risk of oil cutoffs, of terrorist attacks in the Middle East, oil is just a very big national security problem for us, and it has a 97% monopoly on transportation. So, we’ve got to break that monopoly.
Lester Graham: It seems the only time you can get the general public’s attention on this issue is during periods of gas price spikes. What do you think it will take to get a sustained effort at the personal level to become more energy independent?
Woolsey: Most major automobile companies are coming out with plug-in hybrids here before long. Plug-in hybrids let you drive all electric for 30 or 40 or 50 miles before you then become just a regular hybrid using some liquid fuel. Three-quarters of the days, the average American car goes less than 40 miles. You’re driving on the functional equivalent of 50 to 75 cents a gallon when you’re driving on electricity. And that, I think, is going to get people’s attention and provide a real economic incentive to move toward plug-in hybrids – if the up-front cost of the battery is taken care of, by a tax credit, or by leasing the battery instead of buying it, or by some other financial arrangement. So people can then see they can drive on a lot less than the cost of driving on gasoline, whether it’s driving on $3 a gallon or $4 a gallon.
Graham: Now, you’ve stated your concern on climate change, global warming on several occasions, you consider yourself fairly conservative politically, I’m wondering what you make of the controversy and the debate that you recently heard in the House and what we’re likely to hear in the Senate.
Woolsey: Well, I’m kind of liberal on domestic things, and kind of conservative on defense and foreign policy things – which, to me, is a perfectly reasonable balance, but some people don’t see it that way. I think part, and possibly a very important part, of warming and climate change is likely to be being produced, most climatologists would say, by the fact that we’re pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and trapping heat, that creates a problem. We still need to get the job done of stopping, as much as we can, something that could make the world a very, very unpleasant place – in terms of the height of sea levels and other things – for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Graham: I read an article in The Futurist Magazine from the World Future Society which explained you’re doing a lot in your personal life to become more energy independent – what’s worked for you?
Woolsey: Well, we have photovoltaic cells on the roof of our farmhouse, and lead-acid gel batteries in the basement, and a plug-in hybrid. It’s a little expensive, but you can do a lot these days to make it possible to operate your home, at least the key functions of it, even if the electric grid goes down because of an accident or some kind of hacking attack or something. And you can be, at least, partially independent. It’s not ideal, it’s not perfect, it’s going to get better, it’s going to get cheaper, but you can get started now, if you want to.
Graham: James Woolsey is a former CIA Director, and is now a partner at Vantage Point, a venture capital firm. Thanks for your time.
President Barack Obama addresses the opening session of the first U.S.-China Strategic and Economic
Dialogue. Listening at left are Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan, center, and Chinese State
Councilor Dai Bingguo, left. (Photo by Chuck Kennedy, courtesy of the White House)
The Chinese are in Washington in high-level talks with the Obama administration about – among other things – energy and the environment. Lester Graham has more on that:
Transcript
The Chinese are in Washington in high-level talks with the Obama administration about – among other things – energy and the environment. Lester Graham has more on that:
Opponents of the climate change bill in the U.S. like to remind us that China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. China likes to point out the U.S. didn’t even sign the Kyoto Protocol.
“We’ve been each other’s biggest excuse for the past five, eight years about not acting on international commitments.”
That’s Jennifer Turner. She’s Director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Turner says things are changing.
Recently China and the U.S. started talking about how they can help each other. And, she says, while China’s not talking about climate change a lot, it is talking about energy efficiency.
“China has actually been doing a lot over the past eight years on lowering their CO2 emissions, pushing energy efficiency more, for trying to ensure their own energy security and to lessen the health impacts of pollution.”
While the U.S. has been stressing climate change.
The governments have figured out they’re working on the same problem, just looking at it a little differently.
President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sign documents on nuclear arms reduction
before their news conference at the Kremlin in Moscow Monday, July 6, 2009.
(Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
President Obama has reached what he’s calling a “joint understanding” with Russia on reducing the number of nuclear arms. But as Mark Brush reports this agreement doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be dismantling a lot more nuclear weapons:
Transcript
President Obama has reached what he’s calling a “joint understanding” with Russia on reducing the number of nuclear arms. But as Mark Brush reports this agreement doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be dismantling a lot more nuclear weapons:
As it stands now, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia will take warheads off of a delivery system, like a missile.
So, unless things go farther with this treaty, the warheads will still be kept in storage. And as it turns out, there are already thousands of these warheads kept in both countries.
Hans Kristensen is the Director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists.
He says even if the warheads get dismantled, there’s still the sticky issue of what to do with all that radioactive plutonium.
“The plutonium cores of those weapons, most of them, are still stored. We have something in the order of 15,000 warhead cores. An enormous amount of plutonium.”
The radioactive plutonium can be reprocessed and used in nuclear power plants.
Kristensen says the U.S. bought plutonium from old Soviet warheads – and that fuel is used nuclear power plants here in the U.S.
World leaders are meeting in Bangkok for preliminary discussions on climate change. (Photo source: Alter at Wikimedia Commons)
