Dr. Tanya Berry says the thing that most often kept people from walking was the feeling that there are too many cars on the street. (Photo courtesy of Nathan Johnson, iWalk)
Researchers tell us one way to stay trim is to walk more often. But that’s hard in some neighborhoods – maybe sidewalks are bad or there’re no stores to walk to. Shawn Allee found one researcher who thinks what really stops us … is actually in our heads.
Transcript
Researchers tell us one way to stay trim is to walk more often.
But that’s hard in some neighborhoods – maybe sidewalks are bad or there are no stores to walk to.
Shawn Allee found one researcher who thinks what really stops us … is actually in our heads.
Dr. Tanya Berry researches physical activity, and she surveyed people living in Edmonton, Canada.
She calculated how trim or fat they were, then she logged details about their neighborhoods, things like how many stores are nearby and how many cars pass through the area.
Berry says the thing that mattered most, and kept people from walking was a subjective feeling that there are too many cars on the street.
“There was too much traffic in their neighborhoods, it made it difficult to walk, so they chose to jump in their cars and contribute to the traffic problem.”
Berry says her research team will look at how buildings and streets can be designed to make pedestrians feel there’s less traffic than there actually is, and maybe feel more comfortable walking down the street.
The "Lil' Green Patch" application on Facebook (Image by Jessi Ziegler)
Getting involved in a social
or environmental cause these
days is as easy as clicking
your mouse. Some people think
grassroots activism is just
changing its face as technology
changes… but other people think
we’re becoming slackers. Rebecca
Williams explores whether we’re
a nation of slack-tivists:
Transcript
Getting involved in a social
or environmental cause these
days is as easy as clicking
your mouse. Some people think
grassroots activism is just
changing its face as technology
changes… but other people think
we’re becoming slackers. Rebecca
Williams explores whether we’re
a nation of slack-tivists:
The other day I met this guy, Patrick Diehl. And I was trying to get him to describe himself.
“Uh, I’m a Pisces and I enjoy long walks on the beach and horseback riding; good sense of humor; still gets pimples.”
Add to that: slack-tivist. That’s a slacker activist. But he was telling me he wasn’t always this way. For twenty years, he was one of those door knocking, envelope licking activists. He worked for a governor. He used to drag his little daughter to rallies. Now he’s just burned out.
“I could get on the phone and call someone about an issue but I choose to sit down on Facebook and hit three mouse clicks and a return and feel good about myself.”
And lately, his slacktivism has hit a brand new low.
(sound of mouse clicks)
“My little green patch is dry. That means I’ve been neglecting it.”
If you’re a Facebook virgin, the Lil’ Green Patch is this application that lets you send plants to your friends’ online gardens. The idea is, the more you play, the more money advertisers will give to save the rainforest.
“Rebecca: “So wait did you actually do this for a while?”
Patrick: “Yeah!”
Rebecca: “And you felt good about it.”
Patrick: “Yes! I thought my spending time on here is leading to something bigger than myself.” (laughs)
But then, Patrick got in trouble. His wife – Anita – said he was just spending way too much time online. Lil’ Green Patch died. He’d rather play another online game, like Mafia Wars.
But you know, at least at one time Patrick was very active. Some people think clicking on a little green patch is their contribution to a better world.
“That’s a trending topic, that’s a trending term, slacktivist.”
Apollo Gonzales works for one of those big environmental groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council. He’s what’s called a netroots manager. You might say it’s his job to get slacktivists off their butts.
“If you measure the one click activism, or slacktivism, against someone who’s visiting their representative on the Hill once a year, then yeah I think it’s on the low end of what can be done. But you’ve got to start somewhere with a lot of these people.”
So, Apollo blogs and tweets and uses online social media to get people talking. Because talking sometimes actually leads to doing something.
“We have a world where we are more connected than we ever have been, and a world where we can share our stories faster and more richly than we ever have been able to. And that’s great for people who are fighting for a cause.”
And there’s actually some research to back this up.
Scott Campbell studies new media at the University of Michigan.
“There have been some studies recently that show when people use text messaging as reminders to go out and vote, we do see significant increases in voter turnout.”
He says cell phones and the Internet are basically giving us more ways to communicate – and that’s good for us as a society. But he says we do have to be a little careful – because if all our online friends think like we do, we can become little isolated e-communities.
Basically, the more Facebook friends you have, and the more new ideas you can share, the better.
So if you want to be a better slacktivist, you might have to make some choices. You could sign a million online petitions. I mean there are 15,000 environment causes on Facebook. And then there’re all those other things, like Mafia Wars, and other distractions that people like Patrick have to deal with.
Patrick: “I’ve been kidnapped to Barcelona but I’m gonna ignore that.”
Anita: “See you just say ignore, ignore it!”
Patrick: “Someone just sent me a slap on the rear end. I’m gonna ignore that. I probably wouldn’t but my wife is right here so I’m going to ignore that.” (both laugh)
With distractions like these… even slacktivism’s getting to be hard work.
Ray and Irene Zukley of Zion,
Illinois were forced to sell this Lake Michigan
beach cottage to make way for Zion Nuclear Station
back in the late 60s. The Zukley's and other Zion
residents hoped the plant would last for at least
forty years, but after fits and starts, it closed
fifteen years early. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The Zion nuclear station is a
few hundred yards from the shoreline of Lake Michigan.
Its generators have been off line for more than a decade. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Ray Zukley was a jeweler by trade. He
created pendants with images of the nuclear station's
twin cooling stations and sold them as reminders of Zion's
biggest economic boom. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
America has a new flirtation with
nuclear power. Utility companies are fanning
out across the nation to set up shop. And
they’ve given the government more applications
for new nuclear plants than they have for
decades. Many towns fell under the spell of
nuclear power in the past, but some power plants
stopped running decades earlier than planned,
and towns are stuck with what’s left behind.
Shawn Allee profiles one town’s tarnished
relationship with nuclear power:
Transcript
America has a new flirtation with
nuclear power. Utility companies are fanning
out across the nation to set up shop. And
they’ve given the government more applications
for new nuclear plants than they have for
decades. Many towns fell under the spell of
nuclear power in the past, but some power plants
stopped running decades earlier than planned,
and towns are stuck with what’s left behind.
Shawn Allee profiles one town’s tarnished
relationship with nuclear power:
Irene and Ray Zukley have been together so long, they finish each others sentences.
Especially when I ask how things were in Zion, Illinois back in the 60s.
Zuckley: “The factories were getting downgraded.”
Allee: “What were those?”
Zuckley: “It was the curtain factory, the cookie factory, chocolates and Zion fig
bars.”
But just then, the power company said it would spend hundreds of millions on a nuclear
power plant.
Irene Zukley says most people welcomed it.
“Ray and I never worried about it, you know we just wanted progress is what we
wanted. When you think of having taxes lowered for everybody in Zion, that made
you feel, what else would come in and do that?”
Irene and Ray Zukley were forced to sell their family’s beach cottage to make room for
Zion reactor number one.
Beachfront neighbors did the same.
But, like the Zukleys predicted, taxes and jobs rolled into Zion.
It was supposed to be a forty year windfall.
But it didn’t last.
When you visit the power plant, it’s nearly empty.
“What we’ve got here is what used to be a full-fledged control room.”
Ron Schuster runs what’s left of the Zion nuclear power plant.
Once, it had more than eight hundred employees.
Now, Schuster and about fifty workers help manage the regional power grid.
They also monitor radioactive spent fuel waste.
The generators have been offline since 1997.
“There were large pieces of equipment essential to making electricity that would
have needed total replacement going forward. We’re talking significant dollars so
the economic decision by the board of directors that Zion station would go into safe-
store mode.”
That means the power plant and Zion have been in limbo for ten years.
The radioactive fuel is still on site, but the plant provides no power, few jobs and a
fraction of the property taxes.
Delaine Rogers is Zion’s economic development director. She says the town didn’t plan
on this.
“You’re in a community that has welcomed you. We haven’t had an antagonistic
relationship. They’re not going to close. But they did. And it took 17 million dollars
of our local revenues. We were facing losing all our arts and music and sports in our
schools. How do you fund police the police department. How do you fix potholes? It
was a very scary time.”
Lately, the power company’s gone back and forth about when it will decommission, or
dismantle, the power plant.
It could be done ten years from now or it could take decades more.
But even when most of the buildings are gone, there’s still the radioactive spent fuel.
“They’re just going to leave it. They’re going to put a football-sized concrete pad
filled with 80-90 casks of stored fuel on site, above ground. Tell me how you get a
private developer to think residential or retail. I’m not buying the first condo.”
Dozens of towns are stuck in relationships with dormant nuclear power plants.
Delaine Rogers says the town of Zion is in the same position.
She won’t call it a bad relationship, but says it sure would be nice to know exactly where
it’s going, or when it will be over.
Rick Delisle co-owns two commercial buildings,
one of which is depicted in this photo that dates
from the time of Zion, Illinois' founding. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The nuclear industry is eager to
build new nuclear power plants, but for
now they’re just far-off plans. The real
growth industry is in containers to hold
radioactive spent fuel. Dozens of closed
nuclear plants need somewhere to put spent
fuel waste, and these containers fit the
bill. Shawn Allee looks at why one town’s
bracing for their arrival:
Transcript
The nuclear industry is eager to
build new nuclear power plants, but for
now they’re just far-off plans. The real
growth industry is in containers to hold
radioactive spent fuel. Dozens of closed
nuclear plants need somewhere to put spent
fuel waste, and these containers fit the
bill. Shawn Allee looks at why one town’s
bracing for their arrival:
Illinois’ Zion nuclear power plant hasn’t produced electricity for eleven years.
It’s so close to Lake Michigan you can smell the beach. But other than that, the empty
parking lots and office space make the place seem dead.
The plant manager says that’s not the case.
“I think a lot of people have a vision of us playing cards or swinging our golf clubs
on the beach. I would say we’ve been extremely busy the entire time.”
Ron Schuster says he and other workers remove hazards from the station, like diesel fuel
and electrical equipment.
But one hazard is still here: the spent nuclear fuel.
And when the power plant is dismantled, that radioactive waste will be put in new
containers.
They’re concrete casks.
Schuster: “A cask is approximately fifteen feet tall. It looks like a small silo and
there is no radiation exposure on the outside of these things.”
Allee: “So from this office window, can we see where the casks might go?”
Schuster: “We’ve got four spots on this site that have been at least looked at. When
it comes time to actually put the fuel in dry-cask storage it will be a huge structure,
about as big as a football field.”
Schuster’s confident this will be a simple and safe solution.
Not everyone in Zion so convinced.
“This cask issue, just sitting on the site was never appealing to me.”
Rick Delisle co-owns two commercial buildings close to the power plant.
In other towns with spent-fuel casks, nuclear power plants sometimes get turned into non-
nuclear power plants or into parks.
But Delisle and the city of Zion are hoping to do more – maybe build new commercial
buildings or even homes.
Delisle says having concrete containers full of radioactive waste left on-site could make
their work harder.
“So, I hope the casks are relocated somewhere else. Having them next to a
population of about 23,000 people is probably not a great place for it to be.”
Other communities are in the same position – they’ll be left with spent fuel casks even if
their dead nuclear plants get torn down.
There’s a simple reason.
“We don’t really have a final resting spot for these casks at the moment.”
Dave Lochbaum is with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group.
“The federal government is way behind schedule providing a repository for high-
level waste.”
Lochbaum says the government has one storage place in mind.
It’s inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, but that’s still just being studied.
Power companies can sometimes move spent fuel to other plants or facilities.
But Lochbaum says politically, that just won’t fly.
“There’s no revenue from electricity being generated, so it’s a hard sell to go to a
community and say we’d like to have you store spent fuel for decades into the
future. The easiest way out is to leave it where it is, because those communities have
already accepted that fate.”
Well, cities like Zion say they didn’t accept this exact fate.
They bought into nuclear power for jobs and property taxes – they didn’t count on
babysitting spent fuel waste.
But that’s likely to happen, because the government won’t take it. The power companies
won’t dare move it, and the towns can’t move themselves away.
Dr. Tanya Berry says the thing that most often kept people from walking was the feeling that there are too many cars on the street. (Photo courtesy of Nathan Johnson, iWalk)
