A manufacturing job in a wind or solar plant sometimes pays
as little as $11 an hour - much lower than the national
average for workers making other durable goods (Source: Man-ucommons at Wikimedia Commons)
One of the big plans for kick-starting the nation’s economy is to invest in green jobs: solar and wind energy projects, mass transit, and energy efficiency. But a new report finds some of those jobs might not pay as well as some people expect. Julie Grant has the story:
Transcript
One of the big plans for kick-starting the nation’s economy is
to invest in green jobs: solar and wind energy projects, mass
transit, and energy efficiency. But a new report finds some
those jobs might not be pay as well as some people expect.
Julie Grant has the story:
A manufacturing job in a wind or solar plant sometimes pays
as little as $11 an hour – much lower than the national
average for workers making other durable goods.
Kate Gordon is with the Apollo Alliance, a group that
advocates jobs in renewable energy. She helped to write
the report on green jobs.
“Just because something’s a green job does not necessarily
mean it’s a good job. There are a lot of jobs emerging in
renewable energy and energy efficiency companies where
the workers are being paid minimum wage or slightly more
or don’t have benefits.”
At the same time, the report finds that some U.S. wind and
solar companies are already outsourcing jobs to China and
Mexico.
But Gordon says the government can change this direction
with its investments – by requiring local job creation, labor
standards, and domestic content.
Christians for the Mountains field worker
Robert "Sage" Russo standing on Kayford Mountain overlooking an MTR
site in West Virginia (Photo courtesy of Christians for the Mountains)
Environmentalists have been fighting to stop mountain top removal coal mining for
decades. They say they want to preserve the mountains, the water that’s polluted by the
mining and the people. But many of the people don’t want the help. They want the jobs
provided by the mining operations. Sandra Sleight Brennan reports the struggle
between the two sides is complicated. Now churches and synagogues are introducing
religion into that struggle:
Transcript
Environmentalists have been fighting to stop mountain top removal coal mining for
decades. They say they want to preserve the mountains, the water that’s polluted by the
mining and the people. But many of the people don’t want the help. They want the jobs
provided by the mining operations. Sandra Sleight Brennan reports the struggle
between the two sides is complicated. Now churches and synagogues are introducing
religion into that struggle:
The line drawn between environmentalists who want to stop mountain removal
coal mining and the coal miners who depend on it for jobs has always been
smudged.
Often the environmental activists had relatives and close friends who worked for
the mining companies. There aren’t a lot of jobs in the Appalachian Mountains.
Of the jobs that are there, the coal mining jobs pay the most.
In the small Appalachian towns in the coal fields, the God-fearing families who
depended on the mining jobs have often seen the environmentalists as people
who were out to destroy their way of life.
But lately some people are seeing things differently. More than a dozen churches
and synagogues have passed resolutions against mountaintop removal mining.
Allan Johnson is the co-founder of Christians for the Mountains, a group that’s
sided with the environmentalists.
“It’s a serious issue, ultimately it is a moral issue and, as a moral issue, we’re appealing
to the religious communities, the Christian communities. We’ve got to do right. We
cannot destroy God’s creation in order to have a temporal economy.”
And Johnson is getting help from other Christians. Rebekah Eppling is an
Ameri-Corps VISTA volunteer. She’s working with Christians for the Mountains.
“We present ourselves that we are a Christian organization and we are working for
Creation Care and we are following the Biblical mandate to take care of God’s planet – it
brings a different sense of what we’re doing to people. So a lot of people who
traditionally wouldn’t be interested all the sudden start to realize the different aspects of
it. It kind of hits a different spark for them.”
Creation Care is how some Evangelical Christians describe their brand of
environmentalism. One of the most prominent spokesman for Creation Care is
Richard Cizik. He’s a former Vice President of the National Association of
Evangelicals.
“We say Creation Care because first of all we believe the earth was created and
second of all we know from God’s word in Genesis that we are to care and protect
it. So, we call it Creation Care.”
The group, Christians for the Mountains, works with many different
denominations. They teach people who want to get involved about the issues
surrounding mining. They go into detail about how the short term benefit of the
destructive form of mining not only alters the mountains, but pollutes the streams
and ultimately the drinking water. They point out that once the coal fields are
mined, the jobs are gone and the communities are left to live with the damage to
the environment.
Volunteer Rebekah Eppling says there’s resistance to the message.
“The term environmentalist is kind of a dirty word in the coalfields region. Since we are a
religious organization that puts us in a unique spot.”
“We do get some pretty harsh criticism.”
Allen Johnson with Christians for the Mountains.
“We are concerned about people’s jobs. We want to have a healthy economy. And it is
not a healthy economy in that area. If you go down into the area with the mountaintop
removal is going on it in some of the impoverished areas in the country.”
Like the more traditional kinds of environmentalists, these Creation Care
environmentalists have ties to the community. Eppling says her family comes
from an area that’s targeted for coal mining in the near future.
“My family is very supportive of what I’m doing. Because they see the place where they
used to live are now being destroyed. The mountain very close to where my
grandmother and father grew up its being blasted away. My father and his family are
from Boone County – which is one of the big coal producing areas. Coal River runs right
behind his house where he grew up.”
The Christians for the Mountains know the families that depend on the coal
mining don’t always understand why anyone would want to stop one of the very
few industries that offer good paying jobs in the region. But Rebekah Eppling
says there has to be a better way than blowing up the tops of the mountains and
filling the valleys with rubble.
“It’s not just environmentalist versus workers. It’s a very complex. It’s not just about
stopping coal – it’s about bringing in more options for people.”
And some of those options include preserving the environment by finding alternatives for
the region – such as wind energy, tourism, and not letting the mining companies decide
the fate of the Appalachian Mountains and the people who live there.
For The Environment Report, I’m Sandra Sleight-Brennan.
Democrats in the Senate are talking about climate change policy. (Photo courtesy of NASA)
Democrats in the US Senate are talking about climate change legislation again. But its fate is uncertain. Tamara Keith reports from Washington:
Transcript
Democrats in the US Senate are talking about climate change legislation again. But it’s fate is uncertain. Tamara Keith reports from Washington:
Barbara Boxer is the senator who chairs the Environment and Public Works committee. The committee will be putting together the climate change legislation. A climate bill didn’t get anywhere last year in the senate, but Boxer says things have changed since then.
“A lot of those who voted against us are no longer here.”
But what’s not changed is the argument over how sweeping controls on carbon emissions could affect the economy. Those opposed call climate legislation a job-killer. Steve Cochran with the Environmental Defense Fund argues the opposite.
“If those of us who want to see strong climate policy are effective and articulate and persuasive on the jobs argument then I think we can actually get this done. And if we’re not I don’t think we will.”
Boxer said she didn’t know when the full senate would take up the legislation.
Gary Anderson in Front of Coal River Mountain (Photo by Sandra Sleight-Brennan)
Mountaintop removal coal mining blows off the tops of mountains to get to a thin layer of coal. Environmentalists say there’s a better way to extract energy from mountain tops. They want to put up wind turbines. Sandra Sleight-Brennan reports they believe it will mean more energy in the long term and less environmental destruction:
Transcript
Mountaintop removal coal mining blows off the tops of mountains to get to a thin layer of coal. Environmentalists say there’s a better way to extract energy from mountain tops. They want to put up wind turbines. Sandra Sleight-Brennan reports they believe it will mean more energy in the long term and less environmental destruction:
Coal River Mountain is one of the last in Raleigh County West Virginia, and it’s next in line for mountaintop removal mining. A local group, the Coal River Wind Project, wants to build a wind farm along the mountain’s ridges.
Lorelei Scarbro has lived most of her life in the West Virginia coal fields. She’s the daughter, granddaughter and widow of coal miners. She knows her opposition to coal mining is seen by her neighbors as a direct threat to their jobs.
“It has been difficult. But people begin to understand that we’re not trying to take something away from them. You’re trying to add something to the area.”
She says mountaintop removal coal mining is short-term gain with long-term damage.
“The pace we’re going; it will be nothing left. I have a five-year-old granddaughter, and I can’t imagine what the air and water will be like when she is at childbearing age if we continue at this pace, because they’re covering headwaters streams, they’re starving off the water supply, they are destroying the air.”
And the next mountain in Scarbro’s home area to be mined is likely Coal River Mountain.
That’s why Coal River Wind Project commissioned a study to see if wind turbines would work. It turns out, the mountain has industrial strength wind. Enough to power 164 turbines. The project would create 200 local jobs during construction, and 40 permanent jobs. Rory McIlmoir is the project coordinator.
“The wind farm would generate an average of $1.74 million a year for the first 20 years. In year one it would generate over three million dollars. That’s the property tax. Blowing up the mountain for coal, on the other hand, would only bring $36,000 back to the county.”
That’s just the property taxes. The wind farm would make about $1.75 million dollars a year in revenue according to the study.
But the wind project has hit a stumbling block. A recent Bush administration rule change allows mining waste to be dumped into streams. That’s cleared the way for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to approve a permit for Massey Energy to do mountaintop removal mining here. If the mining occurs, the mountains would be lowered by several hundred feet. That would scrap the wind turbine project.
Activist Lorelei Scarbro thinks the wind project is the one thing that can stop the destruction of Coal River Mountain and others targeted for mountain top removal coal mining.
“It will save the mountains, it will save the wildlife and the hardwood forests and the vegetation and the water. It’s something that is desperately needed. Of course, our biggest obstacle is the fact that that the land is leased to the coal company.”
But the people who own the land say, if coal mining were stopped by the government, they’d consider the wind farm. The wind farm project coordinator, Rory McIlmoir, says they’d benefit for a lot longer if they did.
“Because, if they can make a few million each year from royalties then they’re interested in that. But, the choice right now is easily coal.”
The Coal River Wind Project has presented the study to West Virginia’s Governor. And 10,000 people signed a petition asking the state to think beyond coal and think about the future of energy, the economy, the mountains and the people.
For The Environment Report, I’m Sandra Sleight-Brennan.
In his last days, President Bush changed rules that made it easier to blow off the tops of mountains to mine for coal. (Photo by Sandra Sleight-Brennan)
One of the last things the Bush administration did was change a rule to allow coal mining companies to dump debris into streams. That means one mining company will be able to remove one of the last mountaintops in a West Virginia county. Sandra Sleight-Brennan reports:
Transcript
One of the last things the Bush administration did was change a rule to allow coal mining companies to dump debris into streams. That means one mining company will be able to remove one of the last mountaintops in a West Virginia county. Sandra Sleight-Brennan reports:
Gary Anderson takes me out on his back porch and all you can see is Coal River Mountain. Even on a cold, gray winter day, it’s beautiful.
“All of that mountain range of there, that is Coal River Mountain– that mountain runs for about 3 miles up there.”
When he retired, Gary and his wife Barbara moved from Connecticut back to her family home in Colcord, West Virginia.
“That’s basically what brought us back. Is the mountains and the beauty. We grew up here and we came back to spend the rest of our days here. We thought were coming back to what we remember– the beautiful mountains. And really they just started doing the mountaintop removal over here in the past couple years.”
Other mountains in the area– Cherry Pond Mountinan and Kayford Mountain have been flattened so energy companies could get to the coal inside them.
Over one million acres in West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky have already been leveled to mine the thin vein of coal.
The mining companies dynamite the tops off to get to the coal underneath.
“Once in awhile you’ll see a big puff of dust go up in the air like a bomb has been dropped and in awhile it will settle down and then it will happen again the next day.”
Mountains are shorted and flattened–- often by 100’s of feet to get to a 14-inch seam of coal. What the dynamite loosens is dumped in the valleys. Thousands of miles of streams have been covered over and nature destroyed.
It’s pretty simple. They put dynamite in the mountain and blow it up.
Joe Lovett is the Executive Director of the Appalachian Center on the Economy and the Environment. He’s been fighting mountaintop removal for the past 10 years.
It’s like a layer cake. The mountain is like a layer cake and that coal is the icing. The dirt and rock in between is the cake. There is a lot more dirt and rock and mining waste than there is coal. And when they blow up the mountain the dirt and rock swell. So they have even a bigger problem because they have more material than they know what to do with. So, as they blow the mountain up they need to find something to do with the dirt and rock and they dump it into the streams and the valleys.
Dumping into streams was stopped. The Surface Mining Act’s Stream Buffer rule protected the streams. But the new Bush administration rule changes that.
Joe Lovett says that Coal River Mountain fair game for Massey Energy to blow the top off and fill the valleys.
“We have always believed that the rule prevented these fills, that and I guess so did the coal industry and the Office of Surface Mining because this has been the main thing that the coal industry has wanted from the Bush administration for a long time is that change in this rule.”
Lovett says its not good for the environment and it’s not good for the local economy.
“We are taking mountains that could support sustainable timber jobs for generations and, in a few short years, destroying them forever and mining them in such a way that those forests will never come back.”
The mining industry argues that we need this inexpensive energy source in order to be energy independent. But, says Lovett and other environmentalists, if valley fills were outlawed tomorrow the cost of coal for our electric rates would only go up by pennies.
I’ll also talk to an official of the mining industry about why this type of mining needs to continue. The fact it provides American energy and jobs and that West Virginia’s economy depends upon it.
Back at Gary Anderson’s home, he wonders how it came to this.
Who gave them the right to blow the tops of mountains off to get the coal? I mean, that’s what gets me. Where, back in time, did they get the permission to come in and just below the mountains up? It’s really unbelievable. You can’t go back and reconstruct a mountain that’s been here for hundreds of millions of years. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”
But, the mining companies now have the legal right to level the top of Coal River Mountain and fill up the valleys and streams above Anderson’s home.
For The Environment Report, I’m Sandra Sleight-Brennan.
Ice storms in the Midwest revealed weaknesses in a dated electric power grid. (Photo courtesy of US Department of Health and Human Services)
Hundreds of thousands of people in the lower Midwest are still without electricity and heat because of an ice storm. Lester Graham reports the storm shows that the electric power grid is fragile:
Transcript
Hundreds of thousands of people in the lower Midwest are still without electricity and heat because of an ice storm. Lester Graham reports the storm shows that the electric power grid is fragile:
People who tried to stay at home are running out of supplies and now heading for shelters. Rachel Harper and her three children are staying in a shelter in a church basement staffed by Red Cross volunteers from around Bowling Green, Kentucky.
“We’re doing okay. They’ve been watching movies, playing games. Just trying to be together as a family.”
Others are trying to stick it out at home. Mike Jarvis was stocking up at a Wal-Mart.
“I’ve got a wood heater and we’re cooking on the grill, so we’re doing okay.”
In the hardest hit areas, power crews say it will be two more weeks before they find all the downed lines.
The stimulus package includes money for automatic meter readers that could help find downed power lines faster.
Patrick Levine is with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. He says that technology could help.
“There is probably an opportunity to more quickly identify which consumers are without power.”
The ice storm revealed just one of the weaknesses in the grid that’ll have to be upgraded if we’re going to start using electricity to power our cars.
There’s a chance that
potentially-contaminated food is still sitting on store shelves, and maybe in
your pantry (Source: Gene.Arboit at Wikimedia Commons)
Hundreds of products with peanuts or peanut-butter have been yanked from
store shelves. That’s because of an outbreak of salmonella poisoning. Kyle
Norris has the latest on the outbreak:
Transcript
Hundreds of products with peanuts or peanut-butter have been yanked from
store shelves. That’s because of an outbreak of salmonella poisoning. Kyle
Norris has the latest on the outbreak:
We know the products include cookies, crackers, snack bars, cakes, candies,
ice cream—even pet foods are affected. And there’s a chance that
potentially-contaminated food is still sitting on store shelves. And maybe in
your pantry.
Matthew Boulton is an associate professor of epidemiology. He’s at the
University of Michigan School of Public Health. He says the testing of the
Georgia facility that made these peanut-butter products shows there are
flaws in the food safety system.
“I think one of the big problems is this divide we have between the folks who do the
regulation and the folks responsible for human health. Sometimes you don’t have good
communication between those two groups and it’s really critical if you’re going to get a
handle on insuring a safe food supply.”
Boulton says this peanut-butter scare could go on for a few weeks. Or a few
months.
Back in 2000, Laura Weathered and fellow
artists were drafting what their artist community would
look like. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The artists at the Bloomingdale Arts
Building added open space by removing a warehouse
from the grounds. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Denise Zaccardi runs the Community TV
Network, which trains teens how to produce television
and other digital video. Zaccardi's group bought space
at the Bloomingdale Arts Building as well. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
When artists make a check-list for the ideal place to live – they add things the average family
might not, like plenty of work space and being close to other artists and galleries. Big cities
usually offer all the things on that list – but there’s a problem. Big-city real estate prices have a
habit of rising quickly – and pricing artists out. Shawn Allee found artists who’ve tried to stay
put:
Transcript
When artists make a check-list for the ideal place to live – they add things the average family
might not, like plenty of work space and being close to other artists and galleries. Big cities
usually offer all the things on that list – but there’s a problem. Big-city real estate prices have a
habit of rising quickly – and pricing artists out. Shawn Allee found artists who’ve tried to stay
put:
Laura Weathered began her career in painting in Los Angeles.
It was tough enough finding her muse – but it was also tough finding places to live that stayed
affordable.
“This kind of history of settling into a space and then the neighborhood going through
gentrification was chasing me all over L.A.”
Fed up, Weathered left for Chicago.
Before long, she found some Chicago artists had the same problem – rents and home prices just
weren’t stable.
Weathered and fellow artists got tired of toughing it – so about thirty of them put their heads
together and looked into buying property – to live in, to work – and maybe share with artist
groups, too.
“And someone’s comment was, You know, this is going to cost more than a million
dollars – who’s going to rent a bunch of flaky artists a million dollars?”
But then they did some back-of the napkin kinda math.
“We had a everyone go around the room and, What are you paying for rent? And that
was the Aha moment – collectively we could afford much more than a million dollars,
because that’s what we’d been paying all along.”
It took almost ten years to dig up funding and expertise, but eventually – they transformed a
former metal-stamping factory into artist housing, studio and office space.
People have been living in the artists’ community for five years now.
When you walk around, you see paintings in some loft windows and sculptures near the front
step.
Weathered shows off some shared gallery space.
“So, this is really important. You can bring test audiences in and see how it plays and get
feedback and the like without taking huge risks.”
All this is great – but the big idea was to make the space stay affordable for artists and artist
groups. So far, it’s worked.
“We can stay here a long time.”
This is Denise Zaccardi.
Zaccardi runs the Community TV Network. It has offices at the Bloomingdale Arts Building.
The network teaches low-income teens how to produce news, TV and documentaries. Zaccardi
says arts organizations like hers can benefit from this stability.
“Kids can tell their brothers and sisters down the line we’re here – we’re not moving
every three years, which is a common thing for people who rent, especially for artists.”
So, sounds like everything is an artist’ dream, right?
Well, like in other condo-associations, members have fought over repair costs. And artists who
own their units can only sell them to other artists. Plus, if they do sell … their profits are
capped. That’s made the units much lower in value compared to their neighbors’.
Laura Weathered says there’ve been second thoughts.
“I think some people are saying, ‘Did I agree to this too quickly?’ because it’s restrictive,
but the agreement originally was that we wanted an artist community and not just for one
generation for the future.”
Weathered says the idea was to keep units affordable for artists – and that’s been the case for
five years.
She says it’s not perfect, but if it works for a decade or two more, it might be a model for other
artists to follow.
Obama delivering the American Recovery and Reinvestment speech on Thursday, January 8, 2009 (Photo courtesy of the Obama Transition Team)
One group wants part of the economic stimulus package to plug up some leaks. It says old toilets and leaky water pipes below city streets are wasting water. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
One group wants part of the economic stimulus package to plug up some leaks. It says old toilets and leaky water pipes below city streets are wasting water. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The group is called the Alliance for Water Efficiency. It’s made up of plumbing manufacturers, contractors, city water systems, and enviromental groups.
They want about ten billion dollars of the economic stimulus package to go to shovel-ready projects that conserve water.
Alliance board member Susan Stratton says the work could include everything from century-old city water pipes to replacing many older, water-wasting toilets in private homes.
“This requires the skills of a plumber and it requires retailers and wholesalers to deliver products. These are things we know how to do. There are people in the work environment who have these skills and can ramp up pretty quickly.”
Stratton says cutting water use would also save energy by reducing power use at water utilities.
Asian Carp is one species that is very dangerous to the Great Lakes ecosystem (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
Nature never made a connection between the nation’s big rivers and the Great Lakes. But Chicago did. A canal was dug connecting the Mississippi River system – including the Missouri, the Ohio and all their tributaries – to all of the Great Lakes at a point on Lake Michigan. It opened up commercial shipping to the interior of the nation.
But it also opened up both bodies of waters to aquatic life you don’t want traveling back and forth. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel have traveled from one to the other. Asian Carp have already caused havoc in the Mississippi. Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. There’s an electric barrier in place, but some people don’t think that’s enough.
Joel Brammeier is with the environmental group Alliance for the Great Lakes. His group is proposing a barrier that will separate the Mississippi system from the Great Lakes completely, to stop those invasive species. He talked with Lester Graham about the barrier:
Transcript
Nature never made a connection between the nation’s big rivers and the Great Lakes. But Chicago did. A canal was dug connecting the Mississippi River system – including the Missouri, the Ohio and all their tributaries – to all of the Great Lakes at a point on Lake Michigan. It opened up commercial shipping to the interior of the nation. But it also opened up both bodies of waters to aquatic life you don’t want traveling back and forth. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel have traveled from one to the other. Asian Carp have already caused havoc in the Mississippi. Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. There’s an electric barrier in place, but some people don’t think that’s enough. Joel Brammeier is with the environmental group Alliance for the Great Lakes. His group is proposing a barrier that will separate the Mississippi system from the Great Lakes completely, to stop those invasive species. He talked with Lester Graham about the barrier:
Joel Brammeier: Well, ecological separation means no species moving between
the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. When you consider the problem of
invasive species, unlike chemical pollution, which you can reduce to a certain
safe level, there is no safe level of invasive species. Once two get in, they can
reproduce, and the damage is done, and there’s no going back. So, an
ecological separation means stopping fish, and eggs, and other critters from
moving back and forth between the two systems.
Lester Graham: How do you do that when there’s so much commercial traffic
and recreational boating, and just the water flowing through?
Brammeier: Well, in our research, we found that tech fixes – electrical barriers,
sound barriers, blowing bubbles through the water to try and deter fish from
moving – those things can reduce the risk. But for invasive species, risk
reduction really isn’t enough – you need 100% protection. And to do that, we’re
probably looking at some physical barrier that prevents water and live organisms
from moving between those two great watersheds.
Graham: I can imagine the commercial shippers are not thrilled about that.
Brammeier: Well, I think it remains to be seen. Nobody’s quite sure where the
best place is to put a barrier. We discussed about half a dozen different
scenarios under which you could implement that kind of separation. The
Chicago waterway system does support about 25 million tons, give or take, a
year of commercial commodity traffic – and that’s a significant amount. The
reality is that most of that cargo is internal to the Chicago waterways. So, there
isn’t a huge exchange of cargo between the Chicago waterway and the Great
Lakes. And that’s a good thing. That means we have opportunities to actually
split the system back to the way it historically was, and at the same time, solve
our invasive species problem.
Graham: Now, we can see how that would benefit the environment, but how
would it affect the economy?
Brammeier: Well, again, going back to this issue of commercial navigation. If we
create a separation in this system that has a minimal impact on most of the cargo
in the Chicago waterway, we’re really talking about potentially a very small
impact. And, frankly, there’s an opportunity here to create a benefit for
commodity movements as well. A lot of the cargo transfer facilities on the south
side of Chicago are outmoded, outdated, and not competitive. And, any
investment in this kind of project that changed that and also allowed cargo to
move more efficiently and created new port facilities, could have that kind of
benefit, besides protecting the Great Lakes from invasive species.
A manufacturing job in a wind or solar plant sometimes pays as little as $11 an hour - much lower than the national average for workers making other durable goods (Source: Man-ucommons at Wikimedia Commons)
