Charter boat captain Eric Stuecher says Asian Carp will likely ruin his business.
(Photo by Jennifer Guerra)
A big monster of a fish is at
the center of a US Supreme Court
case. Asian Carp are making their
way up the Mississippi towards the
Great Lakes. Michigan’s Attorney
General filed a lawsuit asking the
Court to close a Chicago canal in
order to keep the carp out. The
shipping industry says, ‘no can do.’
Jennifer Guerra has
a closer look at what’s at stake:
Transcript
A big monster of a fish is at
the center of a US Supreme Court
case. Asian Carp are making their
way up the Mississippi towards the
Great Lakes. Michigan’s Attorney
General filed a lawsuit asking the
Court to close a Chicago canal in
order to keep the carp out. The
shipping industry says, ‘no can do.’
Jennifer Guerra has
a closer look at what’s at stake:
There’s one way to look at this as a purely economic story. In one corner you’ve got the people who ship cargo by water.
“Lynne Munch, senior vice president regional advocacy of the American Waterways Operators.”
She says, if the Illinois is forced to close two of the locks in the Chicago canal permanently, more than 17 million tons of cargo will have to be shipped by truck instead of barge, and hundreds of jobs will be lost.
“One company alone has reported that they will lose 93 jobs next year if the locks are closed. One of our towing companies estimates they’ll lose more than 130 jobs if the locks are closed.”
In the other corner, you’ve got the seven billion dollar tourism and fishing industries.
“Oh hi, I’m Eric Stuecher, I own a company called Great Lakes Fishing Charters.”
Stuecher takes people out on the Great Lakes and in rivers across Michigan. Salmon, Trout, Perch, you name it, he’ll help you fish it. But if the invasive Asian Carp get into the Great Lakes?
“It would probably cost me the business. They’ll eat anything they can get in their mouths, to the demise of so many of our other game fish.”
So that’s the economic side of the story. But what if we told you there’s more at stake here than dollars and cents.
“In terms of environmental impact, the Asian carp have the potential to seriously disrupt the Great Lakes ecosystem.”
That’s Marc Gaden with the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission. He says there are already a lot of pests in the Lakes.
“There are 180 non-native species in the Great Lakes, many of which came in accidentally. Precisely two of them can be controlled. That’s it. So that’s why biologists and others are very, very concerned about the Asian carp. Once they get in, the cat’s out of the bag.”
Asian Carp were first brought to the states by Southern catfish farmers. The carp escaped the South in the 1990s because of flooding and have been making their way north ever since. These fish are huge. They can grow to four feet and weigh up to 100 pounds, and they reproduce like crazy. In some areas, they reproduce so much that by weight they account for more than 90 percent of the fish in the Mississippi River system.
So you can see why people around the Great Lakes don’t want them.
That’s why Gaden and a lot of other scientists say we should somehow block the man-made canal that connects the big rivers to the Great Lakes for barges carrying cargo.
“We need to be open to saying, just because we’ve been moving goods on the canal by barge for decades and decades, doesn’t mean we need to continue to do it that way. Is there a better way to do it? Can we shift it to rail?”
Gaden and others have been arguing for 15 years to get some kind of permanent barrier built in order to stop invasive species from moving from one ecosystem to another.
“The government agencies that are responsible for doing things on that canal are not moving at the speed of carp, they’re moving at the speed of government. And we don’t have a minute to spare.”
That’s because new DNA tests suggest that Asian carp have moved well beyond the electric barrier meant to keep them out of Lake Michigan.
A green "stop-n-shop." Locali's in L.A. (Photo by Devine Browne)
When the banks failed and the recession
hit last fall, lots of people predicted
that the burgeoning green economy would
get nipped in the bud. But that’s not
what happened. Julie Grant spoke with
some business experts about the status
of green companies:
Transcript
When the banks failed and the recession hit last fall, lots of people predicted that the burgeoning green economy would get nipped in the bud, but that’s not what happened. Julie Grant spoke with some business experts about the status of green companies.
Last fall, the iconic supermarket of the green movement was in trouble. After years of growth, Whole Foods’ stock prices were plummeting.
Nancy Koehn is professor of the history of retailing and consumer behavior at the Harvard business school.
She says despite the lingering high unemployment rate and the store’s notoriously high prices, things are looking better today for Whole Foods.
“They’ve rebounded very effectively over the last six months. their stocks trading up considerably, traffic is up in the stores, per customer tabs, or receipts, if you will, are up.”
But Koehn says Whole Foods customers might be a core group that’s committed to buying green. The jury is still out on whether green companies will win over mainstream consumers.
Lots of people rushed to Wal-Mart last Christmas – to get things as cheaply as possible in the wake of the financial meltdown. But Koehn says the large-scale flight to Wal-Mart has mostly run its course.
“The question now is – are consumers now, in this post crisis world, going to move to a new normal? – which includes a different way of thinking about the impact of our dollars on how what we buy affects a whole range of issues and people in the world.”
In other words, will people re-consider buying cheap goods made in China since many American jobs have been lost to that country, environmental concerns about products from China and that country’s record on human rights.
And, Koehn says even Walmart is becoming greener both in its operations and its products. For example, it now sells only energy efficient lights bulbs.
Joel Makower is editor of GreenBiz –dot-com. He says changes at WalMart are just a small part of the green business story today. Although, he might not have said that a year ago.
“I think the remarkable story of 2009 is that the green economy did not disappear when the overall economy went south. that it’s not only remaining in place, but the number of products and services from better cars to better cosmetics to computers are coming in to the market.”
Even though we’re the ones who buy these things, Makower says the future of the green business isn’t really about consumer demand. He says there’s a confluence of green technology, government regulation and available capital that’s driving the green economy forward.
“We’re going to be seeing that in energy, we’re going to be seeing that in buildings, we’re going to be seeing that in vehicles. We’re already seeing that in information technology. Where these things are coming together and regardless of consumer demand are being made available and attractive to consumers.”
Makeower gives the example of the IPOD. He says it wasn’t developed because people demanded it, or because we were running out of material to make CDs – it just offered a better technology – and so consumers have been buying it. In the process, the IPOD saved tons of material that was to be used on CD packaging.
These new products aren’t necessarily being labeled green products. And Business historian Nancy Koehn says American companies are going through a huge transition that won’t make such labels necessary.
“Because pretty soon the core aspects of what we define as green today will be such a part of so many businesses that we won’t make this distinction, we won’t have this kind of differentiation by the word green.”
Koehn says companies that have already started going green might be ahead of their competitors right now – in terms of energy efficiency and offering a wider array of green- products. But because of stockholder demands, government incentives– and eventually consumers – other businesses will likely start catching up to them.
Tom O'Neill (in suit) develops new businesses for Exelon,
an energy company best known for its fleet of nuclear power stations.
The Chicago solar project is the company's largest to date.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Forty acres of formerly abandoned industrial property on Chicago's
South Side are prepped for the arrival of photovoltaic solar panels.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Exelon communications specialist Paul Elsberg stands
beside a pylon that will support the Chicago project's solar panels.
The photovoltaic panels hang between the pylons along an axis. The
axis turns throughout the day, so the panels always face the sun directly.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
There’s a commercial-scale solar project
that’s getting some buzz in Chicago and
beyond. The builders promise to use up
some abandoned industrial space within
the city limits… and hope to provide
some local jobs. City governments across
the country like both of those ideas.
Shawn Allee looks at why this
urban solar project’s falling into place,
and whether it might get repeated across
the country:
Transcript
There’s a commercial-scale solar project
that’s getting some buzz in Chicago and
beyond. The builders promise to use up
some abandoned industrial space within
the city limits… and hope to provide
some local jobs. City governments across
the country like both of those ideas.
Shawn Allee looks at why this
urban solar project’s falling into place,
and whether it might get repeated across
the country:
Carrie Austin is a Chicago alderman, and, as she says, she’s constantly dealing with problems unique to Chicago. But she’s convinced she’s got one problem a lot other cities face, too: what to do with vacant industrial land. She’s got 200 acres of it in her neighborhood.
“The environmental issues left from the company, left us with such devastation without any regards to human life. That has been our fight all these years. ”
Austin says, even with some clean-up in recent years, it’s been tough getting someone to come in with some work – and jobs.
“We’ve talked to FedEx, Kinkos and many other corporate offices. Even to Wal-Mart, bringing some of their distrubution to such a large piece of land. But to no avail.”
Austin says there’s a portion of this land she’s not so worried about now. The energy company, Exelon, is putting up solar panels on about 40 acres. And for the first time in a long time, there’s the sound of new construction there.
“This site’s been vacant for thirty years.”
That’s Tom O’Neill – he develops new businesses for Exelon. We’re walking along a padded-down field of soil where there used to be factory walls, machines, and concrete floors.
“What’s changed is you don’t see the brush and the shrubbery and there was a building that used to be here. The whole site is now graded and you can see signs of the construction where the foundations are going to come out. If you look further west, you can actually see the foundations going in for the solar panels, so it’s changed quite a bit.”
This is a transformation a lot of cities would envy, but I’m curious why Exelon’s doing this in Chicago and whether it’ll repeat it in other cities. On the first question, O’Neill says Exelon’s putting up the panels because it’s got a plan to cut its own carbon emissions.
“This project here will displace 30 million pounds of greenhouse gases per year. So it is a part of our low-carbon initiative.”
This Chicago solar project qualifies for federal loan guarantees and tax credits, but even with that, it’s not clear Exelon will make a profit. So, the question is: will Exelon repeat this? O’Neill says he’s hopeful.
“It is a demonstration project to show what can be done and with its success will come other successes.”
To get an industry-wide view of whether other cities might get urban solar farms, I talk with Nathaniel Bullard. He analyses solar power markets for New Energy Finance, a consulting firm. Bullard says cities are eager to re-use land that can be an eye-sore, or even cost a city money to maintain. For example, some southwestern cities have old landfills – and they’re planning to put solar farms on top.
“We’ve actually see those go much larger than what’s on the books right now for Exelon.”
Bullard says companies are taking a closer look at solar power because states are mandating utilities buy at least some. And the US Congress changed some tax laws recently. Exelon is taking advantage of that.
“First thing to note in the Exelon project is that it is Exelon itself which is going to own its project. If this was a year ago, they would be purchasing the electricity on contract. Now, with a change in policy, investor-owned utilities is allowed to own the asset itself and take advantage of tax benefit.”
Bullard says we’re likely to see more urban solar projects like Chicago’s – if the technology gets cheaper and government incentives stay in place.
Bullard has this joke about solar power that he swears is true. He says, in the solar industry, the strongest light does not come from sunshine – it comes from government policy.
The CCC worked on soil conservation projects, built 3,000 state parks, and replanted forests. The men in the CCC planted three-billion trees - that’s estimated to be half of the trees ever planted by humans in the U.S. (Photo courtesy of the National Resources Conservation Service)
Today we hear a lot of news calling
this “the worst recession since the
Great Depression.” Tonight, PBS
begins airing a series of documentaries
from American Experience called
“The 1930s.” Lester Graham reports
the series looks back at the Great
Depression:
Transcript
Today we hear a lot of news calling
this “the worst recession since the
Great Depression.” Tonight, PBS
begins airing a series of documentaries
from American Experience called
“The 1930s.” Lester Graham reports
the series looks back at the Great
Depression:
The documentaries in “The 1930s” series look at the stockmarket crash, the Dust Bowl, and the government’s response – such as President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Robert Stone directed one of the five documentaries. He looked at the Civilian Conservation Corps – the CCC. Stone says it was the first of Roosevelt’s work programs, but it also tackled the biggest environmental disasters.
“We’d spent hundreds of years just chopping down all of the forests in this country and over-using all of the farmland. The topsoil was all running into our rivers and off into the ocean. And it reached a sort of crisis point in the 1920s and early ‘30s.”
FDR had watched the forests disappear and soil erode near his home in Hyde Park, New York. Putting men to work correcting those problems made sense to him.
“FDR was very aware of that. He started a sort of mini-Civilian Conservation Corps in New York state when he was Governor and then when he went to the White House he came up with the Civilian Conservation Corps.”
FDR: “We are planning within a few days to ask the Congress for legislation to enable the government to take on public works, thus stimulating directly and indirectly the employment of many others in well-considered projects.”
But this was new for government. At that time, helping the poor was something for charity, not government.
Harley Jolley is one of four CCC veterans who tell their stories in the documentary.
He says hiring unemployed young men to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps was new to politicians. But they saw it for the practical politics it was.
“And because all those politicians were well aware that they had young men in their hometown, in their home state that could vote for them next time around, ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ll go with you.’ And very quickly it came to pass.”
FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps was the first, but several work programs followed.
The CCC worked on soil conservation projects, built three-thousand state parks and replanted forests. The men in the CCC planted three-billion trees – that’s estimated to be half of the trees ever planted by humans in the U.S.
This revolutionary idea got off the ground quickly. Camps were set up in every state. Men worked under military officers. The Civilian Conservation Corps members were required to send most of their pay back home.
Sometimes nearby towns welcomed the young men. CCC veteran Vincente Ximenes says, other times, people were wary of Roosevelt’s army of workers.
“And there were some farmers who didn’t like FDR and what he did. He was called a Communist, a Socialist, any name you could find. So, therefore, the CCC-ers also, of course, were no good as far as they were concerned.”
And it wasn’t just farmers.
The documentary’s director, Robert Stone says, in the beginning, President Roosevelt faced a lot of opposition to his government ‘green jobs’ program.
“Well, there were concerns very similar to what you have today with concerns about deficit spending.”
“The national debt today is 30-billion as compared to 19-billions under Hoover. And God knows Hoover was bad enough.”
“So that was on the right. And on the left there were concerns about paying these people a dollar-a-day. The unions were upset about it. But the success of it was such that it really quelled most any opposition.”
The Civilian Conservation Corps documentary, like the other documentaries in the 1930s American Experience series, looks at the connections between environmental damage and economic collapse in a way that still resonates today.
Anderson and Abbe Turner are in the midst of adding a creamery to their goat farm so they can make cheeses. (Photo courtesy of Lucky Penny Farms)
A lot of companies have been slowing
down and cutting back because of the
economy. But tough times aren’t
stopping some new businesses in the
midst of the ‘local food movement’
from moving forward. More than a
year ago, Julie Grant spoke with the
owners of a goat cheese farm. She
visited them again this year. Now,
they’re opening a new creamery, despite
lots of economic obstacles:
Transcript
A lot of companies have been slowing
down and cutting back because of the
economy. But tough times aren’t
stopping some new businesses in the
midst of the ‘local food movement’
from moving forward. More than a
year ago, Julie Grant spoke with the
owners of a goat cheese farm. She
visited them again this year. Now,
they’re opening a new creamery, despite
lots of economic obstacles:
Abbe Turner just quit her day job. She’s had a good-paying
university job – with benefits – for many years. But today
she’s waiting for the delivery of a $5,000 dollar pasteurizer.
“There we go. There’s my pasteurizer.” (cheering)
The truck arrives with a six foot round stainless steel tank.
“I never thought I’d be so excited by a 3,000 pound hunk of
metal in my entire life. But…” (laughter)
Abbe and her husband, Anderson Turner, started dreaming
of goat cheeses three years ago. This big hunk of steel will
help them finally to get their creamery off the ground.
“The pasteurizer will allow us to make cheese in small
batches, artisan cheeses. We’ll do some cheves in the
pasteurizer, some tommes and probably a goat gouda.”
The Turner’s dream started after they bought a few goats for
their hobby farm. They made a little cheese for the family.
And they liked it. So they kept getting more and more goats.
Now they have more than 160 Nubians, La Manchas, and
Alpines. Abbe and Anderson had been getting up before
dawn every morning to milk them. By hand. Then they
would get their 3 kids ready for school and head off to their
full-time day jobs.
The Turners wanted to automate milking, to make things
easier and faster. They even had a group of 23 investors
chipping in to renovate their barn into a milking parlor. But
that was last fall.
“Unfortunately, with the stock market crash, the calls kept
coming in. ‘Hi. We really believe in what you’re doing.
Unfortunately, I’m watching my investments tank and a goat
cheese operation is not something I can write a check for
right now.’”
Some people thought it would be smart to forget about
starting a new creamery in the midst of a recession. Matt
Ord used to sell the Turners feed for their goats. But he had
to shut down his family business when the economy
crashed. Now he’s working with Abbe to build her goat farm
and creamery – even though he’s not convinced it’s the right
time for this kind of venture.
“She’s nuts. But I hope everything goes good for her, I really
do. She’s got a lot of patience and a lot of nerve starting this
business right now. It’s a very scary time. And I know
things are very tough for everybody.”
Abbe likes to think of her family as bold, rather than nuts.
And most of her investors have come back on board since
last year.
Her husband Anderson Turner is glad she’s starting full-time
to get the creamery off the ground instead of waiting for the
economy to turn around.
“I can’t think negatively about opportunity. My time is now.
My opportunities are now, my life is now. So, this is the
cards I’m dealt with. I’ve got to deal. So, let’s go.”
The Turners believe that the local food trend is just getting
off the ground, and that support for local foods will more than
compensate for the tanked economy. They say restaurants
have already put in orders to buy their cheeses.
Junior Rangers-to-be explore the beach at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)
There was a time – not that long ago –
when a lot of the National Parks in the
country were strapped for cash. They
were cutting staff and cutting services.
But, Mark Brush reports, now Congress
is investing more in the parks:
Transcript
There was a time – not that long ago –
when a lot of the National Parks in the
country were strapped for cash. They
were cutting staff and cutting services.
But, Mark Brush reports, now Congress
is investing more in the parks:
It started changing in the last year or two of the Bush Administration. The Bush White House realized that the National Park System was coming up on its 100th Anniversary in 2016.
No one wanted the Centennial marred by crumbling roads or Parks that were understaffed. So Washington pledged to increase the overall budget for the National Park Service by 100 million each year until the Centennial.
And folks like Tom Ulrich say Congress has been making good on that pledge. He’s the deputy superintendent at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan.
“A few years ago our discussions weren’t, you know, ‘Well, we got a little bit of extra money how are we going to spend that?’ They were, ‘We have to cut from last year. What are we going to cut?’ And so it’s nice to have those discussions change.”
Ulrich says a lot of National Parks are also getting some money from the stimulus package passed earlier this year.
Mark Murray, with the nonprofit Californians Against Waste, says that in the space of one month, October 2008, the price for mixed paper on the global market plunged from $100 a ton to less than $30. (Photo by Erin Kelly)
If you want to get a sense of how the overall economy is doing, look outside your window the night before garbage and recycling day. Last fall, you’d have seen trucks full of cardboard circling the neighborhood. By winter, the cardboard poachers had disappeared. That’s because wastepaper – like other recyclables – feeds into a multi-billion dollar global commodities market that rises and falls just like housing prices and stocks. Amy Standen has more:
Transcript
If you want to get a sense of how the overall economy is doing, look outside your window the night before garbage and recycling day. Last fall, you’d have seen trucks full of cardboard circling the neighborhood. By winter, the cardboard poachers had disappeared. That’s because wastepaper – like other recyclables – feeds into a multi-billion dollar global commodities market that rises and falls just like housing prices and stocks. Amy Standen has more:
Last winter, Carolyn Almquist had a problem. Carolyn’s in charge of exports for APL transportation in Oakland, California. It’s her job to move shipping containers full of American exports, like wastepaper, to factories over in Asia. The problem was, the factories in Asia didn’t want them.
“There was no buyer. It would arrive at our terminal, say, in Jakarta, and no one would pick it up.”
Asian paper mills were canceling deals with the ships halfway across the Pacific. And Carolyn – who’s in charge of APL’s exports – was the first to hear about it.
“I’m getting an email saying, ‘what are you people doing? Don’t send stuff without a buyer.’”
Waste paper is the country’s number one export, by volume, so when prices fall, it’s not just Carolyn who’s in trouble.
“Hey, Alex, good morning! Steve Moore calling.”
Steve runs a company called Pacific Rim Recycling, 40 miles north of San Francisco.
“Got any updates for me on the marketplace?”
Every day, he calls around to see how much people are paying for things like newspaper, water bottles, old envelopes.
“What about corrugated?”
Most of our recycled cardboard, and a lot of our plastic ends up at Asian factories where it’s turned into iPhone boxes, polyester shirts, that are then shipped right back to the US market.
Until, that is, we stop shopping.
“When people stop buying those goods and products – the VCRS and the TVs from China – there’s no need for the boxes to go around them.”
That’s Mark Murray, with the nonprofit Californians Against Waste. He says that in the space of one month, October 2008, the price for mixed paper on the global market plunged from $100 a ton to less than $30. In two months, plastic water bottles dropped from $500 a ton, to less than $100.
“What recycling experienced in the last six months is really the same thing the entire global economy has been experiencing.”
So, when the economy falters, recyclers suffer. Some shut down entirely. Others were forced to simply dump unsellable paper into local landfills.
Steve Moore hunkered down to wait it out.
“We couldn’t sell anything for six weeks. All this material was backing up, I had to rent space next door. I had to sell it at $10 a ton, just to get rid of it.”
By February, prices had started to recover, as demand for consumer goods began picking up a bit – but they’re no where near the highs of a year ago.
“And a ton of paper today is worth $100 a ton. Last year, it was worth $200 a ton. It’s a very volatile market, so the economics of that are pretty severe.”
One reason the market’s so volatile is that with recyclables, the supply never stops. No matter how much or how little those Asian factories want our cardboard and our plastic water bottles, we are going to keep putting them out on the sidewalk.
Oil manufacturers can turn down the spigot when demand drops, to control supply so it keeps pace with demand. But bales of paper and plastic just take up too much space. And here at Pacific Rim recycling, the trucks keep rolling in.
(sound of bottles and cans at Pacific Rim)
“The volume of this material is huge!”
But at least it’s moving. Prices for our recyclables might be lower than their peak a year ago, but Steve Moore can relax again.
And, over at the Port of Oakland, Carolyn’s no longer getting angry emails.
“Things are picking up again. Financing has freed up. The banks are a little less nervous, If we had a ship here today, she’s be sailing Oakland full. Life is a little bit easier.”
And Carolyn Almquist knows as well as anyone in this industry to enjoy it while it lasts.
The Energy Information Administration projects that in 2009 we'll cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 5%. (Photo courtesy of the US EPA)
The recession doesn’t have a lot of upsides,
but there is an environmental silver lining.
Carbon dioxide emissions are down. But,
as Tamara Keith reports,
greenhouse gas emissions are expected to
rise as the economy improves:
Transcript
The recession doesn’t have a lot of upsides,
but there is an environmental silver lining.
Carbon dioxide emissions are down. But,
as Tamara Keith reports,
greenhouse gas emissions are expected to
rise as the economy improves:
The Energy Information Administration projects that in 2009 we’ll cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 5%. Emissions were down in 2008 too.
Elias Johnson is an energy analyst. He says the economy is expected to pick up next year. That means coal, natural gas and petroleum use will pick up too.
“It’s not all going to happen at one time, so that will be gradual. And then visvis the emissions from that energy consumption will probably increase gradually.”
In 2010, Johnson says emissions are projected to rise 0.7%. Not much, really. And emissions will still be lower than they were when the economy was booming.
“For one thing, the economic activity is not going to be getting back to those levels.”
Dealers across the country are running out of new cars to sell that qualify for the program. (Photo source: IFCAR at Wikimedia Commons)
Two billion dollars is being added to
the very popular Cash for Clunkers
program. The original one billion dollars
is almost gone. But, Lester Graham
reports, there’s a shortage of new cars
that qualify for the program:
Transcript
Two billion dollars is being added to
the very popular Cash for Clunkers
program. The original one billion dollars
is almost gone. But, Lester Graham
reports, there’s a shortage of new cars
that qualify for the program:
The National Automobile Dealers Association says they’ve been hearing from dealers across the country who’ve been running out of new cars that qualify for the program.
Steve Demers is the General Manager of Cueter Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a state where Cash for clunkers has been especially popular.
“There’s virtually no vehicles available, so there are other areas in the country that may not be as – the program has not been as popular – so we’re able to pluck some of that inventory out of their states, but it’s a nation-wide problem. I mean, we’re out many, many states away, thousands of miles before we can find a vehicle that can be brought in for one of our custormers.”
Factories are shipping more cars to the dealers but can’t keep up with demand.
185,000 gas-guzzling clunkers have been turned in to be scrapped in exchange for the government incentives.
Car buyers get up to 4,500 dollars toward buying a new fuel-efficient model.
Van Jones, speaking on the far right, at a White House event called "Investing in Our Clean Energy Future" (Photo by Jason Djang, courtesy of the White House)
The economy is bad. New scientific reports indicate global warming is worse. And the Obama Administration is trying to tackle both problems through creating green jobs. Lester Graham talked with one of the President’s advisers about that:
Transcript
This is The Environment Report. Well, the economy’s bad and global warming is getting worse. There’s a lot of talk about creating jobs in a new clean energy sector. Van Jones is President Obama’s special advisor for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation at the White House council on environmental quality.
Lester Graham: Mr. Jones, back in 2007, when you were in the non-profit world in California, we aired a report where you said we need a new sort of environmentalism:
Van Jones (from 2007 clip): We need less about the Birkenstocks and the tofu, although that stuff is all beautiful, but it’s more about the hard hat, the lunch bucket, more of a working class, “we can do it” environmentalism I think is the next step to a new environmental revolution.
Graham: Now that you’re in the White House, what are you advising the president to do to take the first steps in that direction?
Jones: Well, I think that if you look at what the President has done, we’re moving right in that direction. We had to do two things: we had to get the public investments right and we did that with the recovery package, where depending on how you do the math, we did between 20 and 60 billion dollars in clean energy efficiency. That’s the biggest single investment in clean energy in the history of humanity. So that public investment side we nailed down and now we got to get the public rules right, and that is our climate and clean energy jobs bill that was voted on the recently—through the house successfully. The future started on Friday, as far as I’m concerned, when you had a chamber of congress step forward and say, “We are gonna change the rules so that clean energy can compete and we are gonna make sure that all sectors of America—rural, industrial—have a chance to transition effectively. But we are gonna move into this clean energy economy. And that’s where the jobs come from—when you get the public rules right and the public investments right you get a boom that is sustainable and lasting. We saw that in telecom, we’ve seen that over and over again, and that’s where we’re going.
Graham: You’ve mentioned a lot of times about, we’ll see more jobs in harnessing energy from the sun, wind, water, smart biofuels, geothermal and advanced geothermal. And that climate change bill would do that, but it faces a tough time in the senate. How will the fate of that legislation affect growth in those green jobs areas?
Jones: Well, I think the senate is going to show the same courage at the end of the day that the House did. The President has been very clear over and over again that if we want the jobs of tomorrow, we’ve got to make the products of tomorrow, and the products of tomorrow will be advanced vehicles, advanced cars, and also advanced energy—wind turbines, solar panels, and all that stuff. And I think the senate has to make a choice: does it want to stay on the sinking ship of yesterday and have the United States fall further and further behind in the race for clean energy, where China is spending 12 million dollars an hour to corner that market on every renewable technology. So we’ll be importing wind turbines, solar panels, smart batteries from them, or are we going to suit up and get in this race. And I think the Senate, looking at the same facts the House just did, is gonna step up and match the President in his leadership and vision.
Graham: During the debate in the house last Friday, we heard a lot about the loss of jobs because of higher cost of energy, because of the reduction of the use of fossil fuels. How much might the creation of green jobs offset the loss of jobs because of what the conservatives and opponents of the bill say we’ll see?
Jones: I mean, everybody who has looked at this objectively—I mean, there’s some reports out there that are circulating from extreme ideological groups, that are kind of masquerading as these reports, you hear a lot of, “Oh you’ll lose two jobs for every one green job.” All that stuff has been debunked. The Wall Street journal looked at that stuff and said the methodology is flawed. What every serious study shows is that you will create many more jobs in a clean energy economy—you’ll have more work, more wealth, and better health for Americans when we are producing the technologies of the future. There are just not that many more jobs available in some of the legacy sectors. But, we can put… we have a wealth of solar power, wind power, and other power in this country that we’ve never tapped. The challenge facing America is simply this: can we tap our clean energy power centers and connect them to our population centers. We have a sun belt in this country that is a wealth of solar power but it doesn’t stop there—really on rooftops across America. We have wind potential in this country—gigantic wind potential—untapped. Not just in the plains states, but off our coasts, up in the Great Lakes area, in our mountains. These are potential power centers for the country. If you tap our clean energy power centers, connect them to our population centers, you create jobs in rural America, urban America, you advance our resource and technology agenda, you get our scientists engaged and you unleash innovation and entrepreneurship on this problem. And that’s how we’re not only going to beat the global warming problem, it’s also how we’re going to beat the global recession by putting Americans back to work.
Graham: Who do you envision getting these jobs? Are we talking about out of work, blue-collar workers getting green-collar jobs or are we talking about low income folks who need training?
Jones: Well, the great thing about this green wave that President Obama is talking about is that it’s a green wave that can lift all boats. You’re talking about jobs from the GEDs to the PHDs and back again. And you’re talking about giving somebody who, maybe they were working in the automotive sector and they’ve been thrown out of work, well, Hilda Solis just put 50 million dollars, our secretary of labor, toward retraining those workers and giving them the opportunity to become green workers. If you know how to make a car, you probably know how to make a wind turbine and other things, with a little bit of retraining. If you were a home builder—we’re probably not going to be building am lot of homes in the next 12 months, 18 months—but we have five billion dollars in the recovery package for helping those home builders and others go into the work of rebuilding homes, upgrading homes, for energy efficiency, weatherization, retrofitting building. If you’re a farmer, if you’re in rural America, if you like at the recovery package, if you look at the climate bill there are opportunities to grow smart advanced biofuels, to put upwind turbines on your acreage, to become a part of the solution by grabbing carbon out of the air with your tilling and with your agricultural practices. Every part of America can play a role from the GEDs to the PHDs. The other thing that’s so important: get people on the ground floor, low-income people, people who are marginalized, people who have not had good economic opportunities—let’s get them in on the ground floor so that they can… maybe this summer their installing a solar panel, next summer if that firm grows, they can become a manager, and then an owner, an inventor, an investor. Green pathways to prosperity are available if we move now, seize the opportunity, and make sure all Americans get a chance to play.
Graham: When you talk to homeowners, many of the middle class homeowners get all excited about the gee-whiz stuff of solar panels on the roof, maybe a backyard wind turbine, but most people skip the first step, and that is weatherization. You’ve been talking about weatherization for not just homes, but buildings in general for a while now. How much employment could there be in just that sector alone?
Jones: Well, if we got serious and aggressive and said we wanted to retro-fit the majority of our building stock, you’re literally talking about millions of jobs. And what’s so exciting about that is we are an advanced industrial country, we have a lot of building stock, but it was built using what are now outdated technologies, outdated materials. The chance to go back through all of those buildings and blow in clean, non-toxic insulation, replace ill-fitting windows and doors with the new high-performance windows, putting in the high-performance boilers and furnaces—all that is work, but it’s work that pays for itself in energy cost savings. So you’re talking about going back and upgrading our buildings and cutting unemployment, cutting energy costs, cutting pollution from our power plants, which will have to work less hard. And at the same time, you say “How are you going to pay for it?” Well, it can pay for itself through the energy cost savings. That’s why the President but 5 billion dollars, as opposed to the last term’s 200 million, five billion into energy efficiency for people of moderate income, because we know it’s not just the solar panels, which everybody likes, the gee-whiz stuff as you said, it’s also the caulking guns. It’s also those existing technologies that right now are sitting on the shelf. You’ve got workers sitting on the bench—stand those workers up, let them take those technologies off the shelf, and get out there and retrofit America, save money on energy bills and also put people to work.
Graham: Conservatives, some members of Congress, some think tanks have expressed some concern that businesses, ne’er-do-wells, will grab government money saying their creating green jobs when in reality it simply might be the difference between and janitor or a lawyer working for a bank, and a janitor or a lawyer working for a solar panel installer or environmental group. What are you doing to make sure we’re actually creating green collar jobs with the taxpayer money that’s being used to kick-start those jobs?
Jones: Well, you know, one of those things is that we have more commitment to transparency and accountability in this program, the recovery program, than in the history of the Republic because we have the technology now that makes this stuff a lot more possible. We’re very confident that we’re going to be able to make sure that we get the maximum benefit to the American people out of the recovery dollars. I think that sometimes we don’t worry about the right things. Often the upshot of that is that therefore the government should sit back and do nothing, we should let people pay too-high energy bills, we should let workers go idle, we should continue to pump massive amounts of carbon-pollution, heat trapping pollution, into the atmosphere, and continue to let Asia and Europe get all of the jobs of tomorrow. And I think the problem with that way of thinking is that it has nothing to do with the way Americans have been for the past 200 hundred years. This is the one country in the world that has always leaned forward into change; we’ve always led the change. Talking about the industrial revolution, the information revolution, the space race—we weren’t afraid of the future. We went out and defined the future, created the future. And for some reason we’ve had stagnation in our energy sector, which we’re now finally busting through. We’re shattering that old logjam that we’ve had where we were told that if we tried to do right by our grandchildren environmentally, to give them the best possible future, we would be starving our children economically. We would have to take care our children economically or our grandchildren environmentally but we couldn’t do both. Well, Barack Obama has shattered that old logjam, that false choice, he says no we can actually do great by our children economically, grow our economy, but do it using the clean and green and new technologies that will also take care of our grandchildren environmentally. And that’s the breakthrough. You know, you’re always going to have naysayer’s but they’ve never won in American politics, and they’re not going to win on this one either.
Graham: I’m wondering if there’s anything you think we should be talking about that I haven’t asked you about so far?
Jones: Well, I just think that the courage of the president to actually run for office talking about environmental issues as he did, talking about clean energy jobs and green jobs as he did, and then to actually use his political capital to get it done, is something that is extraordinary. I think sometimes we take this stuff for granted. But I’m someone, again, coming from outside of electoral politics, more working at the community level, I’ve always seen politicians come and they make all these promises to the community and as soon as they get elected you never hear from them again. Here’s an administration I’m proud to be a part of, that made a bunch of promises around healthcare, made a bunch of promises around the environment, and the economy, and education, and we’re actually beginning to deliver. And my big hope is that not only do we restore our economy, and restore our environmental health, we can begin to restore people’s confidence that government and community and people working together can actually solve tough problems again. This is not the only tough problem we’re going to have to solve in this century but I hope we’ll be able to set a good example on this one.
Graham: Van Jones is the special advisor on Green Jobs to President Obama. Thanks for talking with us.
Jones: Well, thank you.
Graham: That’s The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.
Van Jones is a special advisor on green jobs, working with President Obama. He spoke with The Environment Report’s Lester Graham.
Charter boat captain Eric Stuecher says Asian Carp will likely ruin his business. (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)
