Interviews - The Environment Report

Interview: The Attack on Science

Michaels' book about industry's influence on science. (Oxford University Press)
Bisphenol-A, in bottles like these, is one instance where Michaels says companies are calling for more data, even though the picture is clear (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

There’s a lot of confusion about global
warming. Is it real or not? Are the ingredients
in our food, our soap, the household products we
use all safe? Even if they’re not, there’s a
whole industry that’s working to make you, and
Congress, uncertain. David Michaels recently wrote
about this. His book is titled ‘Doubt is Their
Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens
Your Health.’ Lester Graham talked with Michaels,
who says companies today base their approach on the
tactics of big tobacco. The tobacco companies
successfully obscured the connections between
smoking and lung cancer for decades.

Transcript

David Michaels: “Companies know that by putting off the scientific debate for as many years as
they can, they can keep doing the work that they’re doing and not be disturbed. It works.”

Lester Graham: “We hear about Bisphenol-A in plastics, of course we hear about mercury in fish,
phthalates, even something like dioxin – industry scientists say ‘we’re safe, these are in minute
quantities’ or ‘the jury is out on just how dangerous this chemical is’. If they are dangerous, why
doesn’t the government make that determination and phase these products out?”

Michaels: “Well, right now, the Bush administration has absolutely abdicated its responsibility to
protect the public’s health and the environment. It’s not even a question of phasing them out, the
Bush administration has turned a blind eye, and said ‘we’re not even going to think about those
chemicals’. I’m hoping that as public consciousness of this increases, we’ll have more demand on
regulatory agencies to do something.”

Graham: “You’re very critical of the Bush administration in the book, saying scientific review
boards are stacked with industry officials. Why, or how, does the scientific community continue to
allow that?”

Michaels: “Well, the scientific community doesn’t have the power to stop it. But the scientific
community has me furious about this. And over and over again, not just individual scientists, but
mainstream science organizations, like the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
have issued statements, have passed resolutions complaining, criticizing the Bush administration.
But that’s all we can do. Congress has to stop it. And, the American public has to stop it.”

Graham: “The members of the Bush administration often point out, ‘hey we can’t make knee-jerk
reactions, over some single study, or even a small group of studies, we really need to rely on
sound science, this needs more review’. And it sounds like common sense to many of us.”

Michaels: “Well, when I hear the Bush administration call for ‘sound science’, I see what they’re
doing is calling for something that sounds like science, but isn’t. Bisphenol-A is a great example.
There are well over 100 studies showing that this causes endocrine disorders and reproductive
disorders in laboratory animals. And there are less than a dozen studies that say it doesn’t cause
it. The question we have to ask is: should we be exposing our babies, our children, ourselves to
potentially toxic chemicals that we don’t know that they’re safe?”

Graham: “And Bisphenol-A is, of course, used in plastics, in liners of canned foods, and so forth.
It’s a product that we come across a lot.”

Michaels: “Not only that, the studies are right now that 90% of us have Bisphenol-A in our body.
We can tell that from studies where we’re are excreting it in our urine. So, it’s out there are we’re
being exposed to it. We don’t know what the effects are, but since it causes harm in animals, why
should we be exposing ourselves to it?”

Graham: “You note that journalists are often the victims of their own determination to get both
sides of the story. What are you suggesting? That journalists ignore industry when it questions
studies or scientific method? That would assume that corporations are always bad actors.”

Michaels: “No, but I think it’s very important to note, for example, when an industry scientist
criticizing the study, to note, for example, that, you know, that this criticism is being paid for by the
industry. But the other criticisms, which are, you know, are independent, often paid for by the
government through grants to universities, are independent, and therefore have a lot more validity.
We have example after example, in the book, and all through the medical literature, of companies
that essentially create studies that provide the results they want. In my reviewing it, I’ve never
found a study which disagrees with what the sponsor wanted them to hear. It’s just overwhelming.”

Interview: Grist on Bad Bottles

Clear, colored plastic bottles - such as this one - are made of plastic number 7, which contains BPA (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Recently there’s been a big concern about
bisphenol-A, or BPA, in some plastics.
Some plastic baby bottles and some water bottles have
been pulled from the shelf by retailers. Grist is an
online environmental news outlet. The journalists
at Grist have been looking at the BPA issue for a few
years. We got a chance to talk with Sarah Burkhalter
at Grist about BPA and why it’s suddenly
in the news:

Transcript

Recently there’s been a big concern about bisphenol-A, or BPA, in some plastics. Some plastic baby bottles
and some water bottles have been pulled from the shelf by retailers. Grist is an online environmental news
outlet. The journalists at Grist have been looking at the BPA issue for a few years. We got a chance to talk
with Sarah Burkhalter at Grist about BPA and why it’s suddenly in the news:

Sarah Burkhalter: “BPA has been in our bottles for a long time, and there have just been some
more high-profile studies in the last year. Back in February 2007, the National Institutes of Health
came out with a report saying that there was a link to BPA and health problems. Even at that point,
people were switching over to glass baby bottles and things like that. But just in the same week,
there was another National Institutes of Health high-profile report, just a few days separate from
when Health Canada – the Canadian Health Department – also expressed concern. So, I just think
it was in the news, and people are suddenly realizing that this is a problem.”

Lester Graham: “So, it was a one-two hit in the media, plus when you mention baby bottles, or
possibly the liners of formula cans, that gets people a little nervous, if there’s something toxic in
that stuff.”

Burkhalter: “Absolutely. And, the thing with BPA is that it’s an endocrine disrupter, it can mimic
estrogen. And so the plastics industry has been saying, ‘well, we use it in such small amounts, no,
it’s no problem’. Other studies have said that even in very, very small amounts, BPA can sneak in
and change cell structure, and really muck-up the reproductive system. And it’s been linked to
early puberty, and breast cancer, and behavioral disorders, and all kinds of things. So when they
hear about this being in, you know, things that we’re regularly eating and drinking from, they pay
attention.”

Graham: “Now, here’s the big question – we’ve seen retailers pull some bottles off of the shelves,
there’s been this controversy with Nalgene, and now even a lawsuit against Nalgene about their
plastic bottles – what plastic bottles are safe to use, what ones can’t I use, how do I tell the
difference?”

Burkhalter: “well, BPA is found in number 7 plastic – that’s also known as polycarbonate or lexan –
and that’s the clear, hard plastic. So Nalgene bottles – not the white ones – but the brightly
colored, clear ones. Those are number 7. There’s also, as you mentioned, plastic adhesive in
linings of cans, some of those, BPA is also in some dental sealants. But when it comes to bottles,
number 7 is the one you want to watch out for when we’re talking about BPA. Number 3 has its
own problems – that’s PVC or vinyl – that’s another one you want to watch out for. If you gotta use
plastic, you’re gonna want to look for numbers 2, 4, and 5.”

Graham: “So we look for those numbers on the bottom of the bottle?”

Burkhalter: “Yup. Those are, I mean, you know, they’re not on every plastic, but if there is a
number on them, its ‘2, 4, and 5 to stay alive’. It’s the rhyme I just made up.”

Interview: Economics and Environment

In the last few decades the economy of the
US has grown faster than ever before. Corporations
work hard to expand and to drive share prices higher.
The author of a new book ‘The Bridge at the Edge of
the World’ says in this process of growth, capitalism
is not paying for its consequences. Lester Graham
talked with Gus Speth, the dean of the School of
Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale. Speth
says since the environmental movement began in the
1970’s, we’ve dealt with many of the symptoms of
environmental damage, but not many of the causes:

Transcript

In the last few decades the economy of the US has grown faster than ever
before. Corporations work hard to expand and to drive share prices higher.
The author of a new book ‘The Bridge at the Edge of the World’ says in this
process of growth, capitalism is not paying for its consequences. Lester Graham
talked with Gus Speth, the dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental
Studies at Yale. Speth says since the environmental movement began in the
1970’s, we’ve dealt with many of the symptoms of environmental damage, but
not many of the causes:

Gus Speth: “We did do some cleaning up, and certainly rounded out a lot of the
rough edges, but despite that, we are in a very dire situation now, I believe. The
global warming issue, disruptive climate change coming at us, is the most potent
environmental threat that we’ve ever experienced. Meanwhile: we’ve been losing
an acre a second of tropical forest for decades now, we’re consuming vast
quantities of fresh water from our streams and rivers, a flock of rivers no longer
reach the ocean in the dry season around the world, we’re over-fishing 75% of
the marine fisheries, 90% of the large predator fish in the oceans are gone, half
of the wetlands are gone, we’re extinguishing species a thousand times the rate
of natural extinction. So, these are very serious problems.”

Lester Graham: “You suggest in your book that tackling environmental problems
will require us all to stop looking at things with such a narrow view. The
environment is connected and affected by business, and government, and
lifestyle – or, in other words: capitalism, democracy, and consumerism. Do you
want to change the world? Is that what it is going to take?”

Speth: “Well, I think, quite literally, we have all got to be out to save the world at
this point. And I think these issues are linked. We forget sometimes that the real
thing that is undermining the environment is economic activity. And this growth
carries with it enormous potential for increased environmental destruction. Now,
the problem is, companies have enormous incentive not to pay their
environmental costs, to push these costs off on to other people and on to future
generations. The result is that the prices for their products are environmentally
dishonest.”

Graham: “Can you give me an example of a case like that?”

Speth: “Well, I would say any oil or coal company, and us in using the oil and the
coal in our electricity and in our homes or whatever. We’re paying nothing
compared with the environmental cost that the use of the fossil fuels is imposing
on our environment and on our own human health. And that basic arrangement
is buttressed by enormous power, now, on the part of the corporate sector. Not
only are they the principle economic actors in our system, but they are the
principle political actors in our system, now. It is buttressed by our own
consumerism, our own pathetic capitulation to the advertising machine that we
face everyday. And it’s buttressed by government, which is really wholly
dependant now on growth for raising extra taxes without having to raise tax rates,
and for holding out the promise of better lives which don’t materialize.”

Mckibben: Are We Running Out of Time?

On the left is a photograph of Muir Glacier taken on August 13, 1941, by glaciologist William O. Field; on the right, a photograph taken from the same vantage on August 31, 2004, by geologist Bruce F. Molnia of the United States Geological Survey. According to Molnia, between 1941 and 2004 the glacier retreated more than seven miles and thinned by more than 800 meters. (Photo courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center)

Back in 1989, a guy named Bill McKibben wrote
the first book on global warming intended for a general
audience. He was attacked – by conservative talk show
hosts and others. Global warming, climate change – was
crazy talk just 20 years ago. Lester Graham talked with
Bill McKibben about how long it took for climate change
to grab the public’s attention:

Transcript

Lester Graham: “Since you first started writing about climate change, the public
has become much more informed, more aware about the issue. So when will we
get to the point where enough people are willing to take action, or force the
government to take action?”

Bill McKibben: “That’s the question. You know, 18 months or so ago, I just got
despairing that we were ever going to get to that point. And, the first thing I did
was do this slightly cockamamie, but in the end, quite successful, march across
the state of Vermont, where I live. And because it was so successful, last year –
’07, we did this ‘Step It Up’ campaign, and we organized 1400 demonstrations in
all 50 states. Now, we’re trying the same thing on a global level. We’re calling it
‘350.org’, 350 being the number that the scientists are now telling us is the ‘upper
end of where we want to be’ with carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, measured in
parts per million. We’re beginning to make those political steps. We’ve gotten
more traction in the last 18 months than we got in the 18 years before that, that
I’ve been working on this.”

Graham: “How much of that had to do with Al Gore’s movie?”

McKibben: “I think the two key things were Hurricane Katrina, I think it opens the
door, and I think Al Gore walks through it, you know. We’re now at the point
where 70% of Americans understand that there is a problem. But that doesn’t
mean that change comes automatically. We’ve got, maybe, a little window left –
but not much of one. And we’ve really got to get big change, globally, soon.”

Graham: “When I look at popular culture – priorities placed on having the right
things, living in the right house in the right neighborhood, driving the right car – I
wonder if my concerns about the environment aren’t just a little futile. When do
you find yourself most in doubt about whether we’ll ever arrive at some kind of
proper balance?”

McKibben: (laughs) “Oh, yeah. I find myself in doubt about that a lot. It’s not
that I think that given enough time we wouldn’t get there. Look, we’ve evolved
this incredible collection of emotions, and intellect, and senses, and muscles, and
stuff – it’s got to be for something more than reclining on the couch and flipping
the remote. I think, give us 75 years, and we’ll have grown out of this particular
phase that we’re in. The problem is we don’t have 75 years. So, of course, there
are moments when one despairs, and despairs a lot. On the other hand, one
looks around, and sees that, in this country, local farmers markets are suddenly
the fastest growing part of the food economy. That people everywhere I go are
at least beginning to talk about how much they’d like to put solar panels up on
their roof. It hasn’t yet quite gotten ahead of the Jacuzzi and the list of must-
have items, but I think it’s getting there pretty fast. As I say, I think it’s a race at
this point.”

Graham: “So you think ‘green’ might be becoming trendy?”

McKibben: “Well, ‘green’ is clearly trendy for the moment. But I think it’s more
than it’s becoming trendy. I think it’s that people are beginning to realize that the
kind of changes we want to see in our communities are also the kind of changes
that we need to see to make environmental progress.”

Bill McKibben’s latest book is a collection of his essays about the environment.
It’s called The Bill McKibben Reader, published by Holt.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Interview: Great Lakes Compact

Map of the Great Lakes, the basin, and the 8 connecting states. (Photo courtesy of Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, NOAA)

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Compact is an
agreement to stop shipping water out of the Great Lakes
basin. But all eight Great Lakes states and Congress
must approve it first. Lester Graham talked with Peter
Annin, the author of the book “The Great Lakes Water
Wars.” Annin says some of the states have been reluctant
to approve the treaty because Michigan has an image of saying
‘no’ to water requests from other states while putting
almost no water restrictions on its own towns and businesses:

Transcript

Peter Annin: “Michigan has been a laggard in monitoring and regulating its own domestic water
use. And so it’s seen by some other states as being somewhat hypocritical in the water debate.
For example, Minnesota, which is the most progressive domestically, if you’re going to withdraw
water from the Great Lakes at 10,000 gallons a day or more, you have to get a permit. In the state
of Michigan you can go up to 5 million gallons of water withdrawn from Lake Michigan per day
before you have to get a permit. 10,000 gallons in Minnesota, 5 million gallons in Michigan, and
this is what is causing tension between Michigan and some of the other Great Lakes states.”

Lester Graham: “Lets assume that all 8 Great Lakes states do pass this within the next year or
two, Congress then has to pass it – and many of the members of Congress are in those thirsty
Southwestern states. What happens then?”

Annin: “Yeah, that’s a really good point. We have to remember that the compact is just a piece of
paper until it passes all 8 Great Lakes legislatures and then is adopted by Congress. And there
are a lot of concerns among the general public, given that we have these dry-land states that have
a lot of problems with water perhaps opposing the Great Lakes compact. I’m not so certain that
that’s going to be an issue, because those states also have a lot federal water projects that come
up for renewal all the time that require the Great Lakes Congressmen to sign off on. And I’m not
sure they’re in a position, given how precious and important water is for them to survive on a daily
basis down there, that they’re really that interested in getting into a water fight with the Senators
and Congressmen in the Great Lakes basin. But, we’ll see.”

Graham: “I’ve looked at different models for getting Great Lakes water down to the Southwest,
and economically, they just don’t seem feasible. It would be incredibly expensive to try to get
Great Lakes water to the Southwest states, yet, State Legislators say again and again ‘oh no,
they have a plan, they know how it will happen.’ And as water becomes more valuable, they could
make it happen. How likely is it that there would be a canal or pipe and pumping stations built to
divert Great Lakes water, if this compact doesn’t pass?”

Annin: “It looks highly unlikely today, for the reasons that you just mentioned. It takes an
extraordinary amount of money to send water uphill, which is what would be to the West, and we’d
certainly have to cross mountain ranges if you’re even going to send it a shorter distance, to the
Southeast. To the point where it would be cheaper for many of these places to, even though it’s
expensive, to desalinate water from the ocean and then send it to inland places. But, you know, a
lot of water experts in the United States say ‘never say never’, because the value of fresh, potable
water is probably going to skyrocket in this century. We’re leaving the century of oil; we’re entering
the century of water. But, for right now, you’re absolutely right, it is extraordinary cost-prohibitive.
But let me say one other footnote here, it’s hard to find a federal water project in this country that
actually made economic sense.”

Interview: Why Big Houses?

The average new American home is now 2400 square feet. Smart Growth
advocates say we’re buying big houses on big lawns and making the
problem of urban sprawl worse. Lester Graham talked with Chris Micci.
He’s a land development manager for a residential homebuilder. He’s
also a former lobbyist for the Real Estate Building Industry Coalition
in Charlotte, North Carolina. Micci says buyers see bigger as better:

Transcript

CM: Typically, most suburban home buyers are looking for that larger lot, larger home.
And, you know, I can’t say there’s an absolute reason for why that is, but it’s what the,
what the customer or the consumer in the marketplace looks for.

LG: A lot of people see home as status and in fact, generally, I’m wondering how people
view their home or their house as it relates to their status in life.

CM: Oh yeah, absolutely, people definitely relate their home to their status. Obviously,
you know, for the majority of us out there, the home is the single largest purchase
financially in a person’s life…in their lifetime. As such, they see that home as a symbol of
their status and you know, appropriately so, want it to reflect that kind of status. Which,
you know, in turn reflects a larger home.

LG: Homebuilder associations say that local governments often drive the market for
bigger homes and bigger lawns because they zone areas so that lots have to be a certain
size. The idea is to draw those wealthier residents, upscale neighborhoods, so tax revenue
will come with those valuable properties. So builders have to build big houses to recoop
their money from the large land purchases. How much of a factor is government zoning
and regulation in the trend of big houses and big lots?

CM: Oh, I think it’s enormous. I think it’s probably about 95% of the entire equation when you
look at it. What they see is, they have to be able to see the ability that the development is,
in their minds, paying for itself. It’s paying for the government services that it provides.
As such, they see larger lot, larger home, higher sales prices as an answer to that to help
pay for those services… and that may or may not be the truth.

LG: Do you see places where towns are working with developers so that they can have their big
suburbs but still find a place for affordable housing within the same general area?

CM: There’s been one approach to it that I don’t necessarily agree with, but it’s called
“inclusionary housing.” What it typically does is the local government will require a
developer to include about 10% of dedicated housing as considered “affordable.” And
affordable can mean just about anything. There really is no clear, working definition of
what affordable is. A lot of folks out there that have their homes, they see that as a large
investment in their life. They see a lot of high value in that investment. As such, they get
concerned that with a proportion of affordable housing in their community that has to be
mandated and dedicated as such, that it could, in fact drive values down.

In a better case scenario is when local governments work with the folks in the industry to
put together, you know, a master plan community where you can include both segments
of affordable housing, higher end housing… a mix of retail, commercial space, et cetera. I
think you’ll see more success in efforts like that than you will in mandated housing.

HOST TAG: Chris Micci is a land development manager for a residential homebuilder in
North Carolina. He talked with the Environment Report’s Lester Graham.

Interview – Greening the Business World

Some businesses once considered
‘bad actors’ by environmentalists are now being
praised for leading the ‘corporate greening’
movement. Lester Graham spoke with an advisor who
helped some of those companies, John Elkington.
Elkington is the founder of the consulting firm
SustainAbility. He says not all corporations have
realized the importance of becoming more
environmentally-friendly at the same time:

Transcript

JE: Around the world, different regions are in very different places
and companies are in different places as a result of that. In the
United States you’ve had a period of, to some degree on issues like
climate change, denial. And that’s beginning to break down, and it’s
breaking down very rapidly. So you see companies, for example in the
financial sector like Goldman-Saks, talking about the environment and
green issues in a very, very different way than they would’ve done a
few years ago.

You see General Electric, which hasn’t been a great ally of
environmental movement, launching it’s Ecomagination initiative. And
initially, people dismissing that very much as greenwash, but when you
look at the numbers, very serious growth going on inside that business
and some of these areas. And then, perhaps to top it all, you see Wal-
Mart, most peoples’ sort of bogey company in a way, announcing some if
its initiatives around renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable
fisheries and so on. And in a sense, it almost doesn’t matter whether
Wal-Mart is serious or genuinely wanting to go green or whatever. This
stuff is starting to cascade through the supply chain. They have 61,000
vendors, these companies around the world. And the work that we do with
companies, they’re saying, whether they’re 3M, or Dupont, or Dow…
they’re saying this company is serious and it’s driving us to do things
we hadn’t previously thought were possible.

LG: Let’s look at consumer level. I think typically, most people are
not spending a lot of time researching which brand of corn flakes is
most carbon-free or sustainable. I think most people make their
decisions on commercials or packaging at the store. How can they make
better choices about sustainable products or companies?

JE: You’re absolutely right. I think most people rely on things like
brands. I mean, they trust a brand or they don’t and they hope a brand
will deal with environmental or fair trade or whatever issues
appropriately. But there are certain moments when things start to speed
up, and this is one of them, and then a different set of actors come
in.

I mean, traditionally, the activist campaigning groups, the NGOs, and
so on, play an incredibly important role in denting brands or building
the credibility of particular brands. And increasingly you get these
standards around environmental and fair trade issues. But I think
actually the key actors at the moment – this is certainly true in
Europe and my own country, the United Kingdom – you’re seeing
supermarkets getting involved again. They did it in the late 80s, early
90s, they played a very important role. That has a huge knock on
impact.

LG: Let’s talk about the energy sector for just a moment. We’ve seen a
lot of renewable energy being built around the world lately. But we
seem to see a lot of power companies, some oil companies still digging
in their heels and fighting tooth and nail to keep things just the way
they are. Are we going to see a sea change in the energy sector like we
are beginning to see in many of the other sectors of the economy?

JE: That’s a very difficult question to answer because I think you’re
going to see several different trends at the same time. You’re going to
see for example, the coal industry, Peabody and people like that,
digging in and saying basically, we’re going to burn a huge amount of
coal. Yes it’s going to have to be clean coal but you’re going to have
that trend. You’re going to have the Exxon Mobiles of this world trying
to look a bit more civilized and say we’ve been misunderstood, we’ve
got to communicate better and so on… But basically still, anti-
climate change is a big issue.

And then you’ve got a bunch of actors. In Europe, you’ve got companies
like Statoil, BP, Shell, who’ve actually gone through that tipping
point quite a number of years back, basically believe climate change is
a reality… Still thing fossil fuels is a very large part of our
energy future, but still starting to explore renewables and energy
efficiency and so on. So I think you’ve got a differentiation and I
don’t think this is an issue of leopards changing their spots. I mean,
some of the companies that are finding this very difficult to deal with
will continue to find it very difficult to deal with even if they
become a bit more sophisticated on the communication front.

HOST TAG: John Elkington is the founder of the consulting firm
SustainAbility. He spoke with the Environment Report’s Lester Graham.

Interview: The Future of Water in a Warmer World

Peter H. Gleick, President and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, is concerned that without reducing greenhouse gas emissions, global warming will have dire impact on water resources. (Courtesy of the Pacific Institute)

With concern about climate change growing, some scientists are trying to determine how global warming will affect sources of water. Lester Graham spoke with the President of the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick about what climate change might mean to weather patterns:

Transcript

With concern about climate change growing, some scientists are trying to determine how global warming will affect sources of water.

Lester Graham spoke with the President of the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick about what climate change might mean to weather

patterns:

PG: Overall, the planet is gonna get wetter because as it gets hotter, we’ll see more
evaporation. The problem is, we aren’t always gonna get rain where we want it.
Sometimes we’re gonna get rain where we don’t want it. And at the moment it looks like
the biggest increases in rainfall will be in the northern regions where typically water is
less of a problem. Or at least water quantity is less of a problem. And we may actually get
less rainfall in the Southwest where we need it more.

LG: Let’s talk about some of the precious areas to North America. For instance, a lot of
people are worried about snow pack in the Rockies.

PG: Yes, well, one of the most certain impacts of global climate change is going to be
significant changes in snowfall and snowmelt patterns in the western United States as a
whole, actually in the United States as a whole because as it warms up, what falls out of
the atmosphere is going to be rain and not snow. Now that really matters in the Western
United States, in the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada where our snow pack really
forms the basis of our water supply system. Unfortunately, as the climate is changing,
we’re seeing rising temperatures and decreasing snow pack. More of what falls in the
mountains is falling as rain, less of it’s going to be snow. That’s going to wreck havoc on
our management system, the reservoirs that we’ve built to deal with these variations in
climate. Incidentally, it’s also going to ruin the ski season eventually.

LG: You mentioned that the farther north you go, according to some models, we’ll see
more rain or more precipitation. At the same time, with warmer temperatures, we’ll see
less ice covering some of the inland lakes, such as the Great Lakes, which means more
evaporation. So, what are we going to see as far as those surface waters sources across
the continent?

PG: Without a doubt, global climate is changing. And it’s going to get worse and worse
as humans put more and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And as it gets
warmer, we’re going to see more evaporation off of the surface of all kinds of lakes,
including especially the Great Lakes. And interestingly, even though we don’t have a
great degree of confidence of what’s going to happen precisely with precipitation in the
Great Lakes, all of the models seem to agree that over time, the Great Lakes levels are
going to drop. And it looks like we’re going to lose more water out of the surface of the
Great Lakes from increased evaporation off the lakes than we’re likely to get from
precipitation, even if precipitation goes up somewhat. And I think that’s a great worry for
homeowners and industry around the margin of the lake. Ultimately for navigation,
ultimately for water supply.

LG: There’s a lot of talk about the gloom and doom scenarios of global warming, but
they’ll be longer growing seasons and we’re also going to be seeing, as the zones change,
more of this fertile ground in as northern US and Canada get longer growing seasons.
That’s not a bad thing.

PG: There are going to be winners and loser from global climate change. And
interestingly, there are going to be winners and losers at different times. Certainly, a
longer growing season is a possibility as it warms up. And I think that, in the short term,
could prove to be beneficial for certain agriculture in certain regions. Interestingly
though, and perhaps a little depressingly, over time, if the globe continues to warm up, if
the globe continues to warm up, evidence suggest that the short term improvements in
agriculture that we might see might ultimately be wiped out. As it gets hotter and hotter,
some crop yields will go down after they go up. We’re going to see an increase in pests
that we didn’t used to see because of warmer weather. Unfortunately, pests like warmer
weather. Furthermore, if we don’t really get a handle on greenhouse gas emissions, if we
don’t really start to cut the severity of the climate changes that we’re going to see, the
doom and gloom scenarios unfortunately get more likely. Over time, the temperatures go
up not just one or two or three degrees Celsius but four or five or eight degree Celsius.
And that truly is a catastrophe for the kind of systems we’ve set up around the planet.

HOST TAG: Peter Gleick is a water expert and President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, based in California.

Interview: Sports Teams Go Green

All kinds of sports teams and venues are looking at more environmentally-friendly business practices. Lester Graham talked with Eben Burnham-Snyder who’s with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council about the new green trend in sports:

Transcript

All kinds of sports teams and venues are looking at more environmentally-friendly business practices. Lester Graham talked with Eben

Burnham-Snyder who’s with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council about the new green trend in sports:

EB: Well, I think for a lot of these sports teams, it’s come down to just
good business practices. You know, a good examples is when we approach
the Phildelphia Eagles in 2004 and said, ‘Hey guys, you’re getting a
lot of your paper from a forest that is a main habitat for the American
eagle. That started a dialogue.

They’re now buying 25% of their electricity from renewable sources,
they’re using recycled paper, and they’re even recycling cooking fat
from the chicken tenders and fries during the game day to run the
stadium’s vehicles on bio-fuels. So, there’s an understanding that you
can still have a good, robust business, a good robust sports business,
and do good for the environment at the same time.”

LG: So how are the big greens, the big environmental groups such as the
Natural Resource Defense Council, working with the sports industry?

EB: Well, we’ve been working a lot recently with major league baseball and
the National Basketball Association. It’s something you’re going to
hear a lot about over the next couple months. We try to work with teams
to try and find out what are some of the best practices they’ve been
using already, with recycling and energy efficiency, and we’re trying
to help all of these sports teams understand… here are the different
steps that you can take to both lessen your environmental footprint and
cut costs.

I think for fans ultimately, that’s a chance for them to yet again
pressure their teams and take that money that they’ve saved and put it
maybe into some free agents.

LG: You know, it seems with teams jetting back and forth across the
nation for games and burning a lot of fuel, we see these huge parking
lots of concrete or asphalt that are sometimes only used once a week
for a season. We’ve got some older stadiums, such as Wrigley Field in
Chicago, using restroom facilities that are basically troughs with
constantly running water, and NASCAR burning lots of fuel, even if it’s
using bio-fuels, it seems there’s little actually being done to make a
real difference for the environment. So how is this movement in sports
anything more than just tinkering around the edges?

EB: Well, you know, listen, there’s only so much that they can do within the current
structure.

But when you have industries, like the ski industry, going 100%
renewable at mountains, when you have places like the Philadelphia
Eagles and their field buying 25% of their energy from renewable
sources, those are actually large steps for industries to be taking,
especially when they’re really aren’t any standards for them right now.
They’re really isn’t any program out there right now to guide them.

So, this is a case where business is really trying to lead government
and let them know that we can do this but we need your help, too. We
need you to set limits on pollution to make it easier for us.

LG: Course there’s an incredible fan base for sports of all kinds and
we’re starting to see some attention drawn to these environmental
issues. For example,Sports Illustrated‘s cover is talking about
global warming, we’re hearing teams talk about this. What will this do
for awareness for the typical sports fan?

EB: Well, I think, as with a lot of the coverage we’ve seen on global
warming over the past couple years, it’s an indication that something
that a lot of people have had sort of a common sense reaction to for
the past few years.

For example, this past winter was the warmest winter ever on record.
People are coming to the realization that things are changing. But
sometimes it’s hard to connect those dots and so when you have
something like Sports Illustrated putting global warming on the
cover, what that does is it helps people who already said, you know
what, I haven’t been able to play pond hockey for the past couple of
years with any sort of consistency. I haven’t been able to go skiing.
You know, there are things that seem to be changing, what’s up?

And then they make that connection. And you know, the more evidence,
the more knowledge that comes out about global warming, I think the
more people you’ll see make those connections in their daily lives and
how global warming and other environmental challenges we face really do
affect them.

Eben Burnahm-Snyder is with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He spoke with the Environment Report’s Lester Graham.

SPORTS TEAMS GO GREEN (Spot)

The world of sports is taking an abrupt turn toward more
environmentally-friendly operations. Lester Graham reports teams
from the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball are all looking at
ways to go green:

Transcript

It was only a few years ago that the Milwaukee Brewers baseball
team got news headlines just because it decided to recycle trash
left behind by fans. Eben Burnham-Snyder is with the
environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. He says these days, a
lot more sports teams are stepping up to the plate:

“Going from recycling, which is very important, I would never
want to minimize recycling, but going from recycling to buying
huge amounts of renewable energy… So, there are huge steps that
have been taken by these sports teams, by the sports industry and
it’s only going to get more robust over the next couple of
years.”

He adds the sports industry is learning that a lot of the
environmentally-friendly changes also mean saving money for the
teams, which might translate into more money for better players.

For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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