Harvesting sugar beets. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
A new genetically modified crop will be
growing in farm fields next spring. Sugar beet
farmers have been cleared to plant beets that are
resistant to an herbicide known as Roundup. It will
be the first genetically engineered food crop to be
introduced since the 1990s. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
A new genetically modified crop will be growing in farm fields next spring. Sugar beet
farmers have been cleared to plant beets that are resistant to an herbicide known as
Roundup. It will be the first genetically engineered food crop to be introduced since the
1990s. Mark Brush has more:
A little more than half of the sugar we use comes from sugar beets. Some beet farmers
are excited about the prospect of a genetically modified beet that won’t be killed by the
herbicide Roundup. So an entire field can be sprayed with Roundup – crops and all – to
kill weeds.
Bill Freese is with the environmental group Center for Food Safety. He says the new
engineered sugar beet is just one more crop that will make us more reliant on pesticides:
“Most of the research being done is on more herbicide resistant crops. So where the
biotechnology industry is taking us is to a world where more and more chemicals will be
sprayed.”
The industry has long maintained that Roundup and similar products don’t pollute
waterways the way other pesticides do. But the widespread use of Roundup has led to
more herbicide resistant weeds – that some people call ‘super-weeds.’
Retail groups say consumers will purchase nearly one-third of their holiday gifts
online this year. Using your computer to shop might help you beat high gas prices and
pollute less. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Retail groups say consumers will purchase nearly one-third of their holiday gifts
online this year. Using your computer to shop might help you beat high gas prices and
pollute less. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Ordering items online usually means less driving around to retail outlets, and at
the price of gas, your savings can add up. But online orders often mean a
delivery truck still has to bring you a product.
Bryan Welch of the website EarthMoment.com says you can even cut the
delivery company’s costs and vehicle pollution by having items sent to your
workplace:
“If you work in an office, in all likelihood there are several deliveries a day to that
office already. So there’s no incremental energy used to deliver one more little
box to you at the office.”
Earth Moment is owned by Ogden Publications. It’s also running a program
where money from some online purchases goes to reforestation projects and
other means of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.
Todd Forrest at the New York Botanical Garden's Ladies Border Garden. (Photo by Brad Linder)
The Ladies Border Garden at the New York Botanical Garden. (Photo by Brad Linder)
Marielle Anzelone instructs a crew working on a native plant garden in New York's Union Square. (Photo by Brad Linder)
Marielle Anzelone works on a native plant garden in New York's Union Square. (Photo by Brad Linder)
When you think about global warming, you probably think about polar ice caps
melting and rising sea levels. But climate change is also having a more immediate
effect — on gardeners. As average temperatures rise, many gardeners are finding
they can grow non-native plants in their back yards. Brad Linder visited one public
garden that’s been nicknamed “the global warming garden”:
Transcript
When you think about global warming, you probably think about polar ice caps
melting and rising sea levels. But climate change is also having a more immediate
effect — on gardeners. As average temperatures rise, many gardeners are finding
they can grow non-native plants in their back yards. Brad Linder visited one public
garden that’s been nicknamed “the global warming garden”:
Most gardeners know there are some plants they’ll never be able to grow, because
of the climate where they live. But the Earth’s climate is changing, and that means
plants that normally grow in the southern United States are thriving as far north as
New York City:
“This Japanese Flowering Apricot, prunus mume. This is a plant that’s widely
grown further south. It’s actually native originally to China, but it’s beloved in Japan.”
Todd Forrest is vice president for horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden:
“And so what we’ve found with climate change is that this plant survives, because
the winter temperatures are on average warmer. But because there’s variability in
our local climate, it will often have its flowers burned by frost.”
Forrest is walking through the Ladies Border Garden, an experimental section of the
Botanical Garden designed to demonstrate the impact of climate change on plants.
Forrest sometimes calls the Ladies Border “the global warming garden,” because
most of the plants are species that couldn’t have grown in this area a few decades
ago.
Climate change probably has been affecting plants and gardeners for years. But
Forrest says it’s only recently that people have put two and two together and realized
that unpredictable weather patterns are affecting their herb gardens:
“Gardeners at times suffer the sort of head in the sand syndrome. They’re so
obsessed with and attuned to their individual garden and climate. And we’re all used
to being frustrated by the weather. I think for a long time we all just sort of ascribed
whatever change there was or variability to that darn weather again. Acting up.
Raining when it should be dry. Dry when it should be raining. Cold when it should be
warm.”
In some ways, the Ladies Border Garden shows how exciting global warming can
be for gardeners. You can grow all sorts of exotic plants in your backyard if you don’t
have to deal with the long cold winters you’re used to.
Forrest has been able to get dozens of unusual plants to grow in New York, including
Choysia and even a Himalayan Fan Palm. That’s right, a palm tree growing in New
York City.
But just because you can grow non-native plants doesn’t mean you should. Because
foreign plants can easily become invasive species, killing off local plants.
Marielle Anzelone is a botanist and garden designer. Her specialty is working with
local plants. Today she’s planting a native-species garden in a public park:
“All the plants are going to have little signs in front of them that say what they are,
because it’s meant to be educational. People should see a plant, say oh, it’s
gorgeous. Want it. Oh, it’s vibernum nutem. And then run out to their nursery
and get it.”
Anzelone says many people don’t realize how beautiful local plants are. For
example, she says people often buy wreaths made of Asiatic Bittersweet vines —
even though it’s an invasive species that’s been killing off American Bittersweet:
“And people maybe then who hang the wreath outside on their door. A bird comes
and eats the berries and poops it out in Prospect Park or Central Park. I mean, that
is how these things get around. So it’s not just your world in a vacuum and nothing
comes to your garden. I mean, birds travel, insects travel.”
That’s why, under normal circumstances, gardeners have to be careful what they
plant in their backyards. Because non-native plants have a way of spreading and
competing with local plants, and climate change complicates things by making it
easier for invasive species to spread:
“The thing that keeps me up at night is not global warming. It’s extinction crisis. And I
think people think a lot about extinction as being this big dramatic thing. It’s a fire, it’s
an oil spill. But actually it doesn’t work that way. Extinction happens on a small scale
all the time.”
As the climate changes, Anzelone says she understands that gardeners will want to
try new things. But she says they shouldn’t forget about native plants, which feed
native insects and animals.
The New York Botanical Garden’s Todd Forrest admits that the Ladies Border
Garden is both exciting and disturbing. While he can demonstrate that new plants
will grow in New York, he knows that global warming is also killing off plants that
have lived here for thousands of years.
Botulism is killing fish and the shorebirds that eat them. The cause is likely due to a disruption in the ecosystem by invasive zebra and quagga mussels. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Shorebirds find fish sick from botulism toxin easy pickings. Unfortunately, that easy meal often kills the birds. (Photo by Lester Graham)
A deadly toxin is killing fish and birds along the Great Lakes shoreline.
Researchers think type-E botulism works its way up the food chain from
the bottom of the lake through several invasive species. Bob Allen
reports:
Transcript
A deadly toxin is killing fish and birds along the Great Lakes shoreline.
Researchers think type-E botulism works its way up the food chain from
the bottom of the lake through several invasive species. Bob Allen
reports:
These days, Ken Hyde dreads walking the pristine sandy beaches along
the Sleeping Bear Dunes. He’s the biologist in this national lakeshore
along the Michigan coast, and he only has to hike maybe a hundred feet
to find a dead bird twisted head down and half-buried in the sand:
“This is a cormorant. Just in the last two or three weeks we’re
starting to see a lot more of them. So they’re probably starting to
migrate down from the upper parts of the lake.”
Last year botulism killed over 2,500 dead birds along this 35 mile stretch
of shoreline, mostly gulls and diving ducks, including nearly 200 loons
migrating south from Canada.
This year the die-offs started earlier in the summer and struck more
species. The park lost four endangered piping plovers. The National Park
Service brought in a research team from Minnesota to look for answers.
They’ve been diving in the lakeshore now for two years.
What they’ve found is a huge shoal stretching more than a mile off shore.
It’s covered with native green algae and loaded with invasive zebra and
quagga mussels:
The Park’s research boat docks at a small village along Lake Michigan.
Dive team leader Brenda Moraska Lafrancois was surprised when she
first saw the underwater landscape:
“Last year when we first dove this area we went down and it was
shocking how little of the biomass down there was native. I think
we’re looking at a really altered system.”
Here’s what researchers know so far. The mussels filter nutrients from
the water, the clearer water allows more sunlight to reach the bottom, and
that spurs more algae growth. For good measure, the mussels excrete
phosphorus, in effect fertilizing the algae in the near shore zone. When
millions of mussels and big globs of algae begin to decompose, that uses up
most of the oxygen in water near the bottom of the lake, and that’s a
condition just right for a naturally occurring botulism to grow.
So how does the botulism migrate from the bottom to the surface and
poison shorebirds? Enter the round goby. It’s a small invasive fish that
comes from the same Caspian Sea area where zebra mussels originated.
Last year the research team at Sleeping Bear saw gobies in some places.
Now, says Byron Carnes, everywhere they looked when diving on algae
beds there solid sheets of mussels and blankets of gobies, and he
watched them feeding on mussels:
“Part of the zebra quagga mussel that is the juiciest these guys tend
to go right in and do this frenzy feeding where they just come in and
start pounding away at all the broken shells and trying to get out as
much of the good stuff inside the quagga mussel as they possibly
can.”
Mussels don’t have a nervous system, so they aren’t harmed by botulism
toxin. But when gobies get a dose they flop around on the surface for a
day or so while succumbing, and that’s when shorebirds pick up an easy
but potentially deadly meal.
Some diving ducks may also get poisoned by feeding directly on the
mussels. That’s the theory most scientists in the field think explains
what’s happening, but Harvey Bootsma says it’s not active all the time, so
it’s hard to prove each step. He’s with the Great Lakes Water Institute in
Milwaukee:
“I think the problem is it’s usually a sporadic and short-lived event
when this occurs. And unless somebody happens to be fortuitously
collecting the right samples at the right place and the right time it”s
very difficult to pin down the process as it’s occurring.”
While researchers try to pin down the effects of invasive species in one
place, the cycle spins off somewhere else. This fall there are half as
many dead birds along the Sleeping Bear Dunes shore as last year, but
the die-off is now spreading farther north along the Lake Michigan coast,
and there have been similar outbreaks along Lakes Erie and Huron.
So far Harvey Bootsma says there are no good solutions to break the
cycle of algae, mussels and gobies that scientists think is transporting
botulism toxin to shorebirds.
“And it’s just a great example of how huge an impact a new species
can have on an ecosystem. And I think it makes it all the more
imperative that we try to stem the tide of exotic species coming into
the Great Lakes.”
Researchers say it may take decades for the Great Lakes to recover from
the effects, if they ever do.
A solar panel installation training program run by Grid Alternatives. (Photo by Kristi Coale)
Renewable energy industries are worth 40 billion dollars a year worldwide. (Photo by Kristi Coale)
A new employment program is tying the need low-income people have for
good-paying work to the imperative of meeting the nation’s growing energy
demands. The “green jobs” movement trains out-of-work people and former
blue-collar workers to install solar, wind and other alternative energy
systems at homes and businesses. Kristi Coale reports what started as a
local program might soon be coming to the rest of the nation:
Transcript
A new employment program is tying the need low-income people have for
good-paying work to the imperative of meeting the nation’s growing energy
demands. The “green jobs” movement trains out-of-work people and former
blue-collar workers to install solar, wind and other alternative energy
systems at homes and businesses. Kristi Coale reports what started as a
local program might soon be coming to the rest of the nation:
It’s a sweltering, sunny day – one when people are encouraged to reduce
their energy use. And so it’s fitting that a small group of young adults is
busily installing solar panels on the roof of a house.
People honk their car horns as they drive past this house. Solar power is
supported here in California. The workers on the rooftop stop to cheer, clap,
and pump their fists in response. The atmosphere here is electric. And that’s
to be expected because these young trainees, like Andre Collins, are the
embodiment of a vision, one that takes low-income people, often people of
color, and trains them to work in the fast-growing alternative energy
industry.
“They’re green jobs, because they’re healthy and right for the people and the
environment and they’re green also because they’re taking the people who
would otherwise be poor and putting green in their pockets.”
Andre Collins is one of 15 people who are completing a 9-week training
program in solar panel installation. This program is run by Grid Alternatives,
a non-profit that installs solar in low-income communities. Grid uses
volunteers recruited by local youth employment and job training
organizations. This installation is a graduation of sorts and so these trainees
are thinking about the job market.
“I’m just proud to be a part of this, and I can’t wait to make money.”
Some non-profits are stepping up to make training programs like this
possible. So are cities. The city council in Oakland, California approved a
quarter of a million dollars for such a program, a sum that’s possible thanks
to a settlement between energy companies and the State of California. Six
years ago, when rolling blackouts hit California, companies such as Enron
raised their rates. While Enron and others didn’t admit to any wrongdoing,
they gave the state one billion dollars. Some of that money is being used to
train lower-income people in what’s come to be known as green jobs…
installing solar panels and tankless hot water heaters, converting vegetable
oil to fuel.
Renewable energy industries are worth big money, already 40 billion dollars
a year worldwide. These new industries hold the promise of putting tens of
thousands of people to work in the U.S. Van Jones is president of the Ella
Baker Center for Human Rights. He says support for green jobs is redefining
the environmental movement:
“…A social uplift environmentalism that is less about the Birkenstocks and
the tofu, though that stuff is all beautiful. It’s more about the hard hat, the
lunch bucket, more of a working class, we-can-do-it environmentalism I
think is the next step in the environmental revolution.”
Jones is leading that revolution in cities like his hometown of Oakland,
which has fallen on hard times. Jones says what’s missing in struggling blue-
collar cities like Oakland are good-paying, skilled labor jobs, jobs that used
to come through unions.
“And it’s time to really rebuild the labor movement with we think the new
face of working class America which is more Latino, more black, more
Asian and also with a new consciousness around doing things in a more
ecologically smart way.”
Oakland is the first city to declare a green jobs corps. But there could be
many more. Cities across the country might get a chance to start their own
programs, thanks to pending federal legislation:
“This bill will allow for three million workers here to be able to enjoy this
kind of training and advancement.”
That’s California Congresswoman Hilda Solis describing a bill she’s
authored in a YouTube video. The Green Jobs Act of 2007 proposes to
dedicate a half a billion dollars to train people to do green collar work. This
fall, the U.S. Senate will take up Solis’ bill. Many believe creating green jobs
will not only revitalize the economy and the environment, but also reinsert
something that has long been missing from these communities: hope.
Harvesting sugar beets. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
