Environment and the Obama White House

  • Those at the inauguration are hopeful for change with the Obama administration (Photo courtesy of the Obama transition team)

People from across the nation and around the world are gathering in the U.S. capital for the inaguration of President Barack Obama. Among them are people who are hopeful an Obama presidency will be better for the environment. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

People from across the nation and around the world are gathering in the U.S. capital for the inaguration of President Barack Obama. Among them are people who are hopeful an Obama presidency will be better for the environment. Lester Graham reports:

The inauguration of Barack Obama finds people who’ve traveled to Washington DC hopeful.

On the mall, between the capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial, people we interviewed mentioned they’re hopeful for the economy, they’re hopeful for peace.

Jeff Dickson of Finland, Minnesota was an environmental scientist for 25 years. He’s hopeful for the environment.

“I finally found a president who I think is capable of taking this country into a period of environmental responsibility instead of degradation.”

And many people are hoping President Obama finds a way to pursue environmentally friendly alternative energy and conservation in a way that will get us out of the recession and into, what many are calling, the green economy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Fish Detectives

  • The fish detectives (a.k.a. scientists who specialize in fishery genetics) survey the scene. (Photo courtesy of the Lake Erie Center)

On television, the CSI detectives make forensic lab work look glamorous. It’s a cinch for them to track a criminal by the DNA left behind at the scene. In real life, DNA is also a powerful tool for solving environmental crimes and mysteries. Rebecca Williams visits the Fish Detectives:

Transcript

On television, the CSI detectives make forensic lab work look glamorous. It’s a cinch for them to track a criminal by the DNA left behind at the scene. In real life, DNA is also a powerful tool for solving environmental crimes and mysteries. Rebecca Williams visits the Fish Detectives:


(Sound of gulls and reel being cast)


It’s midday, and it’s so hot the gulls are just standing around with their beaks open.


But Joe Al-Sorghali is still trying to get himself a fish dinner:


“Hopefully I can get a good amount of perch today… they’re not that fishy so they’re a really good catch.”


It takes a lot of these little fish to fill up a dinner plate. But that doesn’t stop Al-Sorghali from going after perch and walleye any chance he gets. A lot of people call Lake Erie the Walleye Capital of the World.


Fishing is a really big deal here. So it makes sense that Lake Erie’s also home to the Fish Detectives.


(Dragnet theme music)


The fish detective headquarters is tucked away on the edge of a quiet cove. The investigators at the Lake Erie Center are not wearing trench coats. They’re not even wearing lab coats. This crew of laid-back lab techs and grad students comes to work in jeans and T-shirts.


Carol Stepien heads up the fish detective squad. She says they solve lots of cases of mistaken identity.


Take the Case of the Fried Perch.


Last year the detectives got a call from a TV station in Milwaukee. The news crew was suspicious that the fried local perch on restaurant menus wasn’t really local.


Stepien says she asked the news station to send her some frozen filets.


“So instead they sent their news crew out into restaurants and had their news crew eat the fish and put a little bit of the breaded, cooked fish in a plastic bag and froze those and sent them to me. We were pretty shocked to get those in our laboratory. We didn’t know if we could get DNA from breaded, fried material like that.”


But Stepien says they scraped off the breaded coating… and they actually were able to extract DNA from the little bits of cooked fish.


“And we found that about half of those fish were yellow perch from Europe.”


Stepien says it’s gotten more common for fish brokers to import yellow perch from outside the U.S. because it’s cheaper. She says even though the foreign perch might taste the same when they’re deep-fried… a close look at the DNA of the European yellow perch reveals big differences from Great Lakes yellow perch.


“They probably could be called freshly caught lake perch, but they were certainly frozen and didn’t come from any local lakes, they didn’t come from the Great Lakes. Instead they came from overseas.”


Stepien’s team will tackle any sort of mystery, as long as it involves gills and fins.


Lately they’ve solved cases of home invasion. That is, invasions by exotic species that’ve gotten into the Great Lakes. The scientists can track the invaders by their DNA fingerprints, and find out where they’ve been.


Joshua Brown is a Ph.D student at the lab. He’s been tracking the round goby. It’s a fish native to Europe. Scientists say it caught a ride to the Great Lakes in the ballast tanks of ocean going ships. It’s been crowding out native species.


“We’re going to find somebody to point the finger at, as it were. We’ve found evidence they came from the northern portion of the Black Sea, right around one of the major ports.”


That port is in Ukraine. Even though they’ve found the culprit, Brown says there’s not much governments can do, because everyone’s guilty.


“I don’t think you could really sue a nation for you know, not keeping their species under wraps. If so, we’d be open for a lot of lawsuits too – we export almost as many as we import.”


But Brown says knowing exactly where a foreign species comes from might help keep the door closed to future invaders from that same region.


Whether it’s a case of consumer fish fraud or defending the home turf from invaders, there’s one bottom line for these detectives. They want to find out as much as they can about native fish so they can keep them from going belly up.


For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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High Tech, High Voltage Cars

  • Mechanic Mike Beukema just opened his own shop, Enviro Auto Plus, after working as a Toyota mechanic for 18 years. He specializes in fixing hybrids. He says there's a pretty big learning curve, especially when it comes to dealing with the high voltage battery. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

These days, hybrid gas-electric vehicles make up just a tiny fraction of total car and truck sales. But that’s expected to change. With higher gas prices…
demand for hybrids is
going up. And car companies are stepping up their hybrid production. But there’s a shortage of people who know how to fix hybrids. Rebecca Williams reports some mechanics are getting a crash course in hybrids:

Transcript

These days, hybrid gas-electric vehicles make up just a tiny fraction
of total car and truck sales. But that’s expected to change.
With higher gas prices… demand for hybrids is going up.
And car companies are stepping up their hybrid production. But there’s
a shortage of people who know how to fix hybrids. Rebecca Williams
reports some mechanics are getting a crash course in hybrids:


Mike Beukema’s been a mechanic for more than 18 years. So he’s seen
cars change a lot. But opening the hood of a hybrid car… that pretty
much changed his life:


“This car just fascinates me altogether so that was the perfect fit.
When it came out, I says this is what I want to be all about!”


He loves the technology. He loves that every time you hit the brakes
you recharge the car’s battery. He loves all the little computers that
tell him exactly what needs fixing.


But there’s one thing that took some getting used to:


“The whole issue of safety was freaky at first because you almost
didn’t dare work on them because they were letting you know exactly how
dangerous it was.”


It’s dangerous because you can get zapped by the high voltage battery.


“These have circuit fuses in ’em at 15 amps – there’s plenty of power
there. Not something you want to mess with.”


You can actually get electrocuted.


Mike Beukema’s got experience with hybrids. He worked at Toyota when
the first generation Priuses came out.


Beukema says the high voltage batteries are pretty intimidating for the
professionals, let alone backyard mechanics. And to really know what’s
wrong with a hybrid system, there’s a big thick manual you have to
read. And c’mon, who wants to read the manual?


Beukema says all this means working on hybrids is a pretty big shift
for mechanics. He says at this point most people who know how to fix
hybrids work at dealerships. There aren’t a whole lot of independent
shops that can fix them. That could be a problem if you like to shop
around to save money on car repair. Or if you break down in the
middle of nowhere.


That’s why, here and there, hybrid classes for independent mechanics
are popping up.


Kurtis LaHaie teaches auto tech classes at Macomb Community College in
Michigan. He recently started hybrid classes here. Today, he’s got a
room full of high school auto tech teachers.


He’s holding their attention… even after lunch.


“Too many volts, too many amps, you’re being cooked, literally inside.”


Then he pulls out the face shield and the big orange gloves.


“Now, as a technician, we’re going to need some new tools. These are
lineman’s gloves – people up on telephone poles? That’s what they wear.
That’s what we’re going to wear, same thing.”


LaHaie says electricity can get through even a tiny pinhole in the
gloves… so you have to be careful.


There’s also a big shepherd’s hook you’re supposed to have on hand.
Just in case you have to save your buddy from being electrocuted by a
live battery.


Joe Hart had his eye on that shepherd’s hook. It’s not the kind of
thing that helps sell a guy on hybrids:


“I’m an internal combustion guy, a technician, but you’ve gotta embrace
change and you’ve gotta accept the fact that we’re going to move from
an oil society at some point and I want to be there when it happens, I
want to be ahead of the game rather than trying to catch up.”


Hart might not have much of a choice.


Instructor Kurtis LaHaie says even new internal combustion cars are
getting more complicated. Let alone hybrids:


“If you don’t keep up, you’re going to fall by the wayside. The old
backyard mechanics, they’re very hard to maintain these cars, they’re
very sophisticated. This is just the next level for them to get into.
There’s room for everybody but I think the guys who take the lead in
this, especially now, will take the lead in the future and will do very
well.”


(Sound of grandfather clock chiming)


Mechanic Mike Beukema is hoping that’s true. After a long career at a
dealership, he’s just opened his own shop specializing in hybrids.
Right now, it’s a little lonely for him.


“I’m the service writer, the person that answers the phone, the person
that fixes your car, and person that collects your money – so I am, I
guess, everything here right now.”


Beukema says with any luck, that won’t last too long. He sees his shop
getting big enough that he can quit fixing cars himself. His dream is
to hire guys fresh out of trade school and train them to be experts on
hybrids and other cars of the future.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Genetically Modified Salmon on the Market?

A biotech company is hoping to cash in on a genetically modified salmon. If the F-D-A approves the fish, it would be the first transgenic animal species available for human consumption. The Great Lake Radio Consortium’s Nancy Cohen reports:

Transcript

A biotech company is hoping to cash in on a genetically modified
salmon. If the FDA approves the fish, it would be the first transgenic
animal species available for human consumption. The Great Lake Radio
Consortium’s Nancy Cohen reports:


Aquaculture firms are developing fish that are resistant to disease,
consume low-cost diets and grow faster. The Massachusetts-based Aqua
Bounty Technologies took part of the genetic code from a fish called the
ocean pout, and added it to the Atlantic salmon. The ocean pout’s
genetic material acts as a kind of switch that turns on the salmon’s
growth regulators.


Joe McGonigle is with Aqua Bounty. He says the result is a salmon that
grows twice as fast as other farmed salmon.


“You can get more heart healthy omega 3 protein on the market at a
lower price, you can produce fish more quickly, you can use fewer
resources and you can manage water quality and fish health, in a much
better way than under current conditions.”


But critics are concerned about the environmental impact on native fish
populations if genetically modified fish were to escape into the wild.


For the GLRC, I’m Nancy Cohen.

Related Links

Commentary – Toilet Trade

The falling Canadian dollar created an enticing market for cross-border shoppers coming in from the U.S. And as Great Lakes Radio Consortium Commentator Suzanne Elston discovered, there’s one item in particular that they are eager to flush out:

Low-Flush Toilets Make a Splash

It’s one of the most private, intimate parts of our lives — in fact, most people talk more readily about sex than they do about what goes on in the bathroom. But now, toilet talk is heating up over a federal mandate requiring all new toilets to flush with no more than one-point-six gallons of water. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson has the story: