The Hawaii Superferry service has been suspended until an environmental impact study can be completed. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s been rough sailing for a Superferry that transports passengers and vehicles around the Hawaiian Islands. A lot of people who live in Hawaii, as well as businesses and tourists, depend on the Superferry. But there’s been a lot of concern about the ferry’s impact on the environment. Heidi Chang reports the Superferry is now suspending its service. The last voyage will take place today:
Transcript
It’s been rough sailing for a Superferry that transports passengers and vehicles around the Hawaiian Islands. A lot of people who live in Hawaii, as well as businesses and tourists, depend on the Superferry. But there’s been a lot of concern about the ferry’s impact on the environment. Heidi Chang reports the Superferry is now suspending its service. The last voyage will take place today:
Back in 2007, Hawaii legislators passed a special law that allowed the Superferry to sail between Oahu and Maui, before an environmental study was completed. The Hawaii Supreme Court has ruled that’s against the law.
Robert Harris is the director of the Sierra Club. It’s one of the groups that challenged the Superferry and the state in court. He’s worried about the impact it might have on traffic and that natural resources could be taken without better oversight.
“One of the first days of operation, some people on Oahu drove a truck over to Maui and loaded up on a bunch of river rocks, and were transporting it back to Oahu, and they were fined, I think significantly for that.”
Harris says the environmental review will also look at whether the ferry might be disturbing whales or transporting invasive species that could endanger native plants and animals.
Jean-Michel Cousteau and school children from Iquitos at the Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm and Amazon Animal Orphanage,
Pilpintuwasi. (Photo by Carrie Vonderhaar, Ocean Futures Society/KQED)
Céline Cousteau comes face to face with a freshwater stingray.
Xixuaú-Xiparina Ecological Reserve, Brazil. (Photo by Carrie Vonderhaar, Ocean Futures Society/KQED)
A butterfly lands on the nose of a turtle.
Los Amigos Research Center, Peru. (Photo by Carrie Vonderhaar, Ocean Futures Society/KQED)
Underwater reflections of the rainforest.
Xixuaú-Xiparina Ecological Reserve, Brazil. (Photo by Carrie Vonderhaar, Ocean Futures Society/KQED)
In a traditional Amazon River myth, at night a boto (pink river dolphin) becomes a handsome young man, a shapeshifter called an encantado.
Ariau Towers, Brazil, Rio Negro. (Photo by Carrie Vonderhaar, Ocean Futures Society/KQED)
A TV documentary will soon bring the Amazon River
basin to living rooms across the nation. Lester Graham
reports the two-part series looks at how the Amazon
affects climate change for all of us:
Transcript
A TV documentary will soon bring the Amazon River
basin to living rooms across the nation. Lester Graham
reports the two-part series looks at how the Amazon
affects climate change for all of us:
The Amazon and its tributaries make up the largest river system in the world.
(Documentary narrator: “In spite of the enormous scale of this tropical rainforest basin, scientific evidence increasingly has revealed how fragile this ecosystem is. And how what happens here will influence global climate dramatically, possible irreversibly, within the next 10 to 20 years.”)
This two-part program produced by Jean-Michel Cousteau, “Return to the Amazon”,
shows that trees are the key to creating rain in the region and keeping the river alive.
Fifty-percent of moisture for rain in the Amazon is released directly from the trees.
So fewer trees means less rain.
(chainsaw noise)
20% of the Amazon rainforest has already been cut down.
And scientists predict if 30 to 40% of the Amazon forest is cut, it will pass a tipping
point, becoming too dry to survive, and no longer absorbing climate changing carbon
dioxide.
Jose Alvarez Alonso is with the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute. In the
documentary he says illegal logging not only endangers the forest, and the climate, but exploits the
indigenous people: paying them a small bag of sugar to illegally cut down an entire
mahogany tree, and in the process destroying their way of life.
“I can tell you that the mahogany taken out of the Amazon now is stained with
blood.”
Most of the logging is, at least, controversial. Much of it’s corrupt. And, often, it’s illegal. But Brazil still
exports massive amounts of wood.
That’s because people in the U.S. and Europe keep buying the rainforest wood.
In the 25 years since Jean Michel Cousteau last visited the Amazon with his father
Jacques Cousteau, he says there have been some disturbing changes and he
wanted people to see what’s going on. We asked Jean Michel Cousteau what he
hopes people get from the programs.
Cousteau: “Well, I really hope that it will be more than people just having had a good time, discovering a place maybe they didn’t know about, or have heard about but didn’t focus on some of the issues, and some of the solutions, and meet some of the local people. And that beyond all of that, they will take action. I really hope that people will be aware enough to understand the connections that they have, how much we depend upon places like the Amazon for the quality of our lives, every one of us.”
Graham: People who watch programs like yours, they look at these things, and they have one question: ‘Well, what can I do?’ What can an individual do when looking at a big problem like this?
Cousteau: Well, what you can do, there’s a lot you can do. As an individual, by being aware. How can you protect what you don’t understand? So, what we’re offering the public is answers to perhaps some of the questions or to highlight some of the problems. That allows you, as an individual decision maker, to make some better decisions when it comes to the wood you’re going to buy, the next time you look at a piece of furniture, you have the right to ask the question: ‘Is that coming from the rainforest?’
The two-part TV series does outline many of the problems. But, it also offers some
hope as researchers, environmentalists and governments in the Amazon basin work
to solve some of those problems.
Some environmentalists are concerned that the terrorist attacks on September 11th will hurt the environmental movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
Transcript
Some environmentalists are concerned that the terrorist attacks on September
11th will hurt the environmental movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.
Tom Lowe is a professor of environmental management at Ball State University in
Munice, Indiana. He says the reaction to the attacks could lead to bad decisions that would devastate the environment down the road.
“If we continue to spoil the environment, the tragedy of 9-11 is going to be amplified many times by what is going to happen with the environmental impact of global warming and other kinds of problems.”
Lowe says one example is drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. He says national security interests may push for that now, even though it will be damaging in the long run. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.
The Hawaii Superferry service has been suspended until an environmental impact study can be completed. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
