There are still a lot of states that don't have any restrictions on diesel idling.
(Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)
Diesel exhaust has been linked
to a lot of health problems –
asthma, heart disease, and cancer.
That’s why so many states and cities
across the country have anti-idling
laws for diesels. Mark Brush reports
some bus companies are being caught
with their engines running:
Transcript
Diesel exhaust has been linked
to a lot of health problems –
asthma, heart disease, and cancer.
That’s why so many states and cities
across the country have anti-idling
laws for diesels. Mark Brush reports
some bus companies are being caught
with their engines running:
In Connecticut and Rhode Island , the Environmental Protection Agency caught a bus company called First Student breaking anti-idling laws. In some cases, they found bus drivers idling their engines for up to two and a half hours.
The government just reached a settlement with First Student. Tim Conway is an enforcement lawyer for the EPA.
“First Student really stepped up to the plate once we’d identified the violations. And they helped us look for solutions that would protect children’s health and protect the health of people around the diesel vehicle.”
First Student is now retraining their drivers and cleaning up their emissions. The company operates buses in 40 states.
There are still a lot of states that don’t have any restrictions on diesel idling. So, on any given school day, you can find long lines of buses polluting the air in front of schools, waiting for the kids to come out.
Some states have shovel-ready rail projects, but others states are just in the planning stage. Here is a high-speed train in Taiwan.
(Photo source: Jiang at Wikimedia Commons)
Today, August 24, is a deadline for
states competing for eight billion
dollars in federal stimulus money
for higher speed rail. Shawn Allee reports, this stimulus could
run in slow-motion:
Transcript
Today, August 24, is a deadline for
states competing for eight billion
dollars in federal stimulus money
for higher speed rail. Shawn Allee reports, this stimulus could
run in slow-motion:
Federal Railroad Administration staff are staying late tonight – August 24 – to accept hundreds of applications for higher-speed rail funds.
FRA spokesperson Rob Kulat says the agency wants to give out stimulus money quickly, but, just in case, it’s announced there might be two rounds of applications – not just one.
“It would be a delay, but the idea is to have successful projects, to have them work cost-effectively. If a state isn’t ready financially or technically to implement their plan, then they need to go back to the drawing board a bit. We’re not going to throw good money after bad.”
Kulat says some states have shovel-ready rail projects, but others states are just in the planning stage.
It could be years before they clear the track for faster trains.
When schools run out of room, they often have to put students in portable buildings (Source: Motown31 at Wikimedia Commons)
When schools get too crowded, they often resort to sticking students in modular classrooms – cheap trailers, essentially. But Sheryl Rich-Kern reports some innovative architects are saying that the energy savings and efficiency of modulars make them an ideal, and often, permanent solution:
Transcript
When schools get too crowded, they often resort to sticking students in modular classrooms – cheap trailers, essentially. But Sheryl Rich-Kern reports some innovative architects are saying that the energy savings and efficiency of modulars make them an ideal, and often, permanent solution:
I’ve actually taught a class in one of those temporary, portable classrooms. It was in the early morning at a community college.
Students would walk in droopy-eyed. My job was to keep them engaged and awake.
Not an easy task – the room was either too hot or too cold. And the ventilation system made weird noises.
But, some experts say portables don’t have to be that way. They can be the kind of room that educators actually prefer.
Michelle Gould is a teacher and parent at the Carroll School in Lincoln, Massachusetts. And she teaches in a new kind of portable classroom.
“The air is very clean in here. It smells like the outside. It doesn’t smell like air conditioning or heating. The lighting is very good for not working under natural light. It seems like you’re outside. And it makes a big difference tutoring kids.”
Tutor: “Did you write your last name, Will? No? Very good, nice spacing. Close your books and put your pencil down.”
(sound of kids playing outdoors)
The Carroll School’s main building is a brick mansion from the early 1900s.
It is stately, elegant. The portable next to it is not. It’s boxy, and has a flat, white roof. Kind of ugly.
But, when you walk in to the portable you feel a change. It’s comfortable!
Cliff Cort is president of Triumph Modular, the firm that leases the country’s first green portable classroom.
“This is a vestibule, we think is a necessary ingredient to almost all buildings, because it controls the weather from the outside to the inside.”
Vestibules aren’t typically found in modular classrooms. Neither is the paperless drywall that eliminates mold, or the sensors that “learn” the best way to control the heating.
“If the teacher tends to come in early on Mondays, the building will begin to learn her habits, and then turn on the heating or A-C just before she gets here. And if they start to take off half a day on Wednesdays, the building would start to learn that no one is here in the afternoons, and then they can shut down. So it helps manage the use of the HVAC system.”
Cort points to the domed skylights known as sun tunnels, which bring in daylight.
“But they don’t bring it in a way that’s too harsh. As you can see, this is screened a bit. So it’s diffused light.”
Triumph Modular is just one of the companies making these more environmentally friendly modular classrooms.
Tom Hardiman is director of the Modular Building Institute, a trade association for dealers and manufacturers of commercial modular buildings.
“Improved acoustics. Improved daylighting. There are countless studies out there that show that it does improve the learning environment.”
Hardiman says many of the old-style portable classrooms end up being used for 20 or 30 years. The problem is they weren’t meant to.
But higher-end portables, like the one in Lincoln, Massachusetts, are built to last.
And, because of the modular construction, they’re greener.
“We typically produce much less construction waste material than site-built construction. Because our factories buy in bulk, they can resuse smaller pieces of material. If you’ve been on a construction site, you’ve seen dumpster after dumpster of two-by-fours and drywall and siding sticking out of the dumpster. There’s just not that much waste with modular construction.”
Hardiman says that green portables are the wave of the future.
They’re not the cheapest solution. But Hardiman says they do provide the best learning spaces on campus.
A proposed program would allow car owners to trade in their gas-guzzling clunkers and get a cash incentive towards a new, more efficient car. (Photo by Martin Hans, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
A proposed cash for clunkers program might jump start the auto industry and help the environment at the same time. Tamara Keith reports the idea is getting some traction in Washington DC:
Transcript
A proposed cash for clunkers program might jump start the auto industry and help the environment at the same time. Tamara Keith reports the idea is getting some traction in Washington DC:
The idea is: if you bring in your old gas guzzler, you’d get money to buy a new fuel-efficient car. The gas guzzler? Straight to the junk yard , getting older, smog belching vehicles off the road. John McEleney is the chairman of the national automobile dealers association. He says how much you’d get would be based on how fuel efficient the new car is. For instance, if you bought a car that gets 27 miles to the gallon:
“They might qualify for say a $3500 incentive. If they instead purchased a vehicle that was rated at 33 miles a gallon that incentive could then go to $5000.”
One big question is whether only American-made cars would qualify. That’s one of the issues congress and the white house will have to work out– Oh, along with figuring out where the money would come from. For the Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.
In a suburban area of Chicago, kids protested to make the area safer for walking to school (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Kids in big cities often live
close to school, so you’d think walking
to school would be an easy solution to
cutting childhood obesity. But some
parents worry about traffic, abduction,
or gangs so much, they stuff their kids
in the car instead. Shawn Allee met some
groups who want parents to overcome that
fear and let kids burn more calories:
Transcript
Kids in big cities often live
close to school, so you’d think walking
to school would be an easy solution to
cutting childhood obesity. But some
parents worry about traffic, abduction,
or gangs so much, they stuff their kids
in the car instead. Shawn Allee met some
groups who want parents to overcome that
fear and let kids burn more calories:
“I’m going to walk you through what Safe Routes To School is and we’ll talk about
how it works in a place like Chicago.”
This is Melody Geraci.
She’s with the Active Transportation Alliance, a Chicago group that promotes walking and
biking.
For Geraci, there’s plain-jane walking to school where you toss your kid a lunch bucket and
wave goodbye – and there’s organized walking.
In some parts of Chicago and other big cities – parents don’t trust the plain-jane kind.
“When we ask parents, why does your child not walk or bike to school, a lot of
parents will say ‘distance’ – it’s too far. That’s not the case in Chicago. Most kids
live close enough to their neighborhood school to get there by foot, right? But then
they say traffic. People are driving crazy. The streets are hard to cross, not enough
crossing guards, all that stuff.”
Geraci says organized school walking is a remedy: put kids together, and put adults in the
mix.
“There’s this phenomenon called safety in numbers. So if you have fifteen people at
an intersection at a light, they’re much easier to see than just one person trying to
navigate it all by themselves and nobody’s seen what happened.”
Geraci says this safety in numbers idea goes a long way in fighting traffic problems.
It can also work on fear over gangs or abduction.
“When fewer people are outside, walking places, biking places, just being out in
their environment, what happens? Things happen. Crime. There are fewer people
watching.”
Geraci’s message resonates with Carmen Scott-Boria.
Scott-Boria recommends walking to school as a solution to childhood obesity.
But she hesitated at first, because of her experience as a kid.
“The same time that I walked to school, that was also a prime gang-recruiting time
after school, so I definitely was intrigued by the gangs and got involved with gangs
because I walked to school.”
Scott-Boria says she’s not trying to scare parents – she just wants them to know what
they’re up against – and how organized they need to be.
To get an idea of what organized school walking can look like, I head to one of Chicago’s
elementary schools.
Victoria Arredondo and Remedios Salinas are near the school’s back entrance.
They run a walking school bus.
Every day, Arredondo and Salinas walk kids on a fixed route between school and home.
It’s like a bus, with no wheels – and no air pollution.
Arredondo says she gets plenty out of it.
“When I’m walking, I feel famous. People greet me, the neighbors, the businesses,
because they see us with the children and they greet us.”
Arredondo appreciates the recognition – because, every once in a while, it’s clear how
important her volunteer work is.
“We have a problem with gangs. A young lady got caught in the crossfire last year.
Since then the violence has settled down. It’s sad because after the loss, people want
to help.”
Her partner Salinas says that doesn’t last long.
“Sometimes people sign up but they don’t continue after a month, they stop doing
it.”
Salinas and Arredondo say their walking school bus makes everyone feel safer and fewer
cars clog up the street near school.
That translates into cleaner air and more exercise for kids.
That’s a community asset they’re glad to protect – they wish more parents would get on
board.
Congress is investigating whether investors are inflating the prices of food and gas for profit (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
The price of food is going up and some
members of Congress want to know why. The Senate
recently held hearings on whether investors in
the commodities market are artificially inflating
prices. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
The price of food is going up and some
members of Congress want to know why. The Senate
recently held hearings on whether investors in
the commodities market are artificially inflating
prices. Mark Brush has more:
Big investors are moving money out of stocks and other investments and into
commodities.
In the last five years, the amount of money in commodities markets has
increased 20 fold. And there’s a theory that these investors are driving up food and gas
prices.
Timothy Wood says that’s not so. He’s the editor of ResourceInvestor.com.
Instead, he
says you’re paying more mostly because the dollar is worth a lot less these days. He also
says Congressional mandates to turn corn into fuel are driving up corn prices.
“When corn is so much a part of the American food chain, and the global food chain, it is
just a complete and utter farce that this has gone and been legislated.”
Wood says Congress should let the markets sort themselves out. But some members of
Congress wonder if big investors in commodities are getting rich at the expense of
families.
Corn production in Colorado. (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)
Food prices are expected to keep rising in the
coming year. That’s at least partly because farmers plan
to plant less corn. Dustin Dwyer reports:
Transcript
Food prices are expected to keep rising in the
coming year. That’s at least partly because farmers plan
to plant less corn. Dustin Dwyer reports:
Jim Hilker is an agricultural economist at Michigan State University. He says the
demand for corn is high right now.
“Ethanol’s probably the biggest driver of it, but there’s also been very strong corn
exports.”
Hilker says those exports are going to countries where the wheat crop has
come in lower than expected.
But with all the demand for corn, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says
farmers across the country are planning to plant about 8% less
corn this year, compared to last year. Last year farmers did plant more corn
than they had in more than 50 years. This year, corn production should still
be high, but it might not keep pace with demand.
Hilker says that could mean higher prices for food.
But he says there are a lot of other factors to consider when it comes to
food prices. He says gas is a big one, since food has to be transported.
George Washington's dentures. (Photo courtesy of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research)
Dental offices are producing higher levels than
expected of a toxic form of mercury. Rebecca Williams
reports on the findings of a new study:
Transcript
Dental offices are producing higher levels than
expected of a toxic form of mercury. Rebecca Williams
reports on the findings of a new study:
When dentists remove fillings, most of the mercury in the fillings is
trapped in a filter in the spit drains. But some of it does get through.
Mercury in its simplest form is not as toxic as what’s called methyl
mercury. That forms when mercury is exposed to certain bacteria. Methyl
mercury is very toxic even in small amounts.
Researchers at the University of Illinois say they found much higher levels
of methyl mercury in wastewater from dental offices than they expected. In
fact – they say they were the highest levels of methyl mercury ever reported
in an environmental water sample. And that toxic mercury is eventually
released into the environment.
The findings were published online in the journal Environmental Science and
Technology.
To put this all in perspective – the authors say the amount of mercury
coming from dental offices is really, really tiny compared to mercury coming
from coal-fired power plants.
Produce section of a supermarket in VA. (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)
Food prices are going up worldwide. A new survey
by the American Farm Bureau Federation finds supermarket
checkout costs have risen nearly 8% this year.
Julie Grant has more:
Transcript
Food prices are going up worldwide. A new survey
by the American Farm Bureau Federation finds supermarket
checkout costs have risen nearly 8% this year.
Julie Grant has more:
Retail food prices usually increase 3% per year. But over the last year the
cost of flour, cheese, bread, meat, oil, and produce is up – by more than
double the average.
The United Nations has predicted prices will stabilize in the long term. But
that consumers worldwide will face at least 10 more years of rapidly rising
food prices.
Commodity prices for corn, wheat, soybeans and other staples have been
skyrocketing over the past year – to more than double 2006 prices.
The higher costs are due in part to weather affecting crops, and growing
demand in China and India.
Economists also point toward the increased use of grains for ethanol and
other biofuels, putting pressure on food prices.
Mary Morran at Avalon International Breads in Detroit (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
Wheat harvest on the Palouse. (Photo courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)
Short supply and high demand for wheat means
prices are at record levels, and rising. But the high
cost of wheat is bad news for people who buy it. And
in North America, where most people’s diets are based
on wheat, that means just about everyone. Sarah Hulett
has this look at what’s behind the run-up in prices:
Transcript
Short supply and high demand for wheat means
prices are at record levels, and rising. But the high
cost of wheat is bad news for people who buy it. And
in North America, where most people’s diets are based
on wheat, that means just about everyone. Sarah Hulett
has this look at what’s behind the run-up in prices:
Jackie Victor is sitting on a stack of 50-pound bags of organic wheat flour inside the
bakery she co-owns. And these days, it’s a pretty expensive seat.
Victor says in the last year, what she pays for those bags of flour has doubled.
“So it’s a very scary time, and I don’t think just – really for the industry, although it is
scary for us – it should be a warning sign for the country that something here is amiss.”
In the fall, Victor raised her retail prices at Avalon International Breads in Detroit.
So a loaf of bread that comes out of this batch getting mixed by baker Kevin Boyer will
cost you 50 to 75 cents more today.
“This is the multigrain bread. This is our Motown Multigrain.”
Soon, one of those loaves will probably cost even more, because the price of flour keeps going up.
(forklift sound)
Avalon Bakery buys its flour from Dawn Food Products. Inside one of its central
warehouses, forklift operators move pallets of baking ingredients into tractor-trailors. It smells like a kitchen pantry. And that’s basically what this is: a gigantic
pantry full of baking ingredients that will be shipped all over the world.
Miles Jones points out a pallet full of wheat gluten, which is used in most commercially-produced baked goods.
“That’s vital wheat gluten there. The price of that vital wheat gluten, just as an example,
has about tripled here in the last six months.”
Jones is co-chairman of the board at Dawn Foods. He’s been in the baking industry for close to four decades, and he says he’s never seen prices so high.
There are several reasons for the spike in wheat prices. Drought and other bad weather
wiped out a lot of the global wheat crop over the past two years. And fast-developing countries like China
and India are consuming more food made from wheat.
And then there’s the ethanol factor. More farmers are planting corn to sell to ethanol
refineries. Jones says that’s gobbling up land that used to be planted with wheat and other
crops. And he says it’s put us on a dangerous path.
“The end results are in the paper every day. You can see the skyrocketing food prices. And when you start trading food for energy, that’s not a good trade long-term.”
With wheat prices at record levels, more farmers might decide to plant it this year. That would boost supply and bring prices down.
Bruce Babcock is an economist, and he heads the center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University. He says the test for that theory will be the amount of spring wheat that gets planted in April and May.
“The problem of course, for farmers, it’s not really a problem, it’s a great thing for farmers, is that they can pick wheat or soybeans or canola or any crop and the price is out of this world. So because the price of everything else is up so high, I don’t think we’ll see wheat increase as much as we would hope.”
Babcock says there is some good news on the global supply front. Australia and Argentina are expected to harvest a normal amount of wheat this year. Those are two major wheat producers that had a couple of years of terrible crops.
A big question will be whether farmers in the US and Canada will get the kind of weather they need and a bumper wheat crop this year.
There are still a lot of states that don't have any restrictions on diesel idling. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)
