Two separate commissions are suggesting farm chemicals and pollution in rivers are the biggest threats to ocean health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
Transcript
Two separate commissions are suggesting farm chemicals and
pollution in rivers are the biggest threat to ocean health. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
The privately funded Pew Oceans Commission and the U.S.
Government’s Commission on Ocean Policy are coming to the same
conclusion. They say issues such as agriculture runoff into
streams, rivers, and lakes are at the top of the list of threat
to ocean plant and animal life. Tom Kitsos is the director of
the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. He says the first step is to
change people’s approach to watershed management:
“I think this is a question of education
and public awareness of the watershed managers and watershed
councils that are prevalent in the Midwest, the farm associations
and individual farmers becoming aware that what they do on their
land affects our coasts and affects our oceans.”
The Commissions are recommending the government do more to stop
the kind of chemical usage that contributes to the problems in
oceans. Both reports will be sent to Congress for consideration.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.
Urban sprawl is affecting communities across the Great Lakes region. In one Ohio community, residents are turning to their churches to fight back. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Schaefer reports:
Transcript
Urban sprawl is affecting communities across the Great Lakes region. In one Ohio community,
residents are turning to their churches to fight back. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen
Schaefer reports:
Forest Hill Presbyterian Church was built in Cleveland Heights 100 years ago. Pastor John Lentz
says, in its heyday, some 15-hundred people regularly walked to church services every week.
Today, the congregation totals just 600. Lentz says it’s a constant struggle to replace those who
leave his flock for the greenfield developments that surround the urban center.
“Churches are anchors of communities and I think we need to be active in the kinds of issues that
affect our communities, like fair and open housing and education, and really make it our mission to equip
faithful people to, you know, walk the walk.”
He and other religious leaders have banded together to form the Northeast Ohio Alliance for
Hope. The group is working with 15 Cleveland suburbs, taking on issues like predatory lending,
school funding, and home repair.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Schaefer.
The people most at risk from contaminants in fish often don’t know it. Different chemicals found in fish from many inland lakes, including the Great Lakes, can be harmful to human development. State governments issue fish consumption advisories that recommend limiting eating such fish. In the second of a two-part series on contaminants in fish… the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that not everyone learns of the advisories:
Transcript
The people most at risk from contaminants in fish often don’t know it.
Different chemicals found in fish from many inland lakes, including the
Great Lakes, can be harmful to human development. State governments
issue fish consumption advisories that recommend limiting
eating such fish. In the second of a two part series on contaminants in
fish… the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that not
everyone learns of the advisories:
Horace Phillips likes to fish. He can often be found casting a line into a
lagoon off of Lake Michigan on Chicago’s south side. He says he and a lot of
his fishing buddies know about the fish consumption advisories, but he doesn’t
think he eats enough to matter…
“Sure, it’s always good to know, but, as I say, I’m not consuming that much fish.”
That’s because Phillips gives away much of the fish he catches. Like a lot of
anglers, he enjoys the sport, and shares what he catches with friends and
relatives. He doesn’t remember getting a fishing guide when he got his fishing
license, but the retailer was supposed to give him one. It not only outlines limits
on the amount of fish an angler can take, but also includes recommendations
on how much fish he should eat in a given month.
But Phillips says he thinks he learned about fish contaminants from the
newspaper. He never really thought about passing on the warning to people
with whom he shares his fish.
“I suppose the same literature that’s available to me is also available to them.”
But often the people who prepare the fish or who eat the fish don’t have a
clue that there’s anything wrong with the fish.
We should note here that fish is nutritious. It’s a good low-fat, lower calorie
source of protein. Eating fish instead of higher-fat and cholesterol laden foods
is believed to help lower the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure,
diabetes and several forms of cancer. Pretty good food, fish.
But some fish contain PCBs – polychlorinated biphenyls – believed to cause
cancer. Chlordane, a pesticide, has been found in fish. And methyl mercury is
found in some fish. These chemicals can cause serious health problems,
especially for children and fetuses. They can disrupt the systems that
coordinate the nervous system, the brain, and the reproductive system.
Studies have shown women store some of these chemicals in their
fat tissue until they become pregnant. Then, those chemicals are passed
to the child they’re carrying. Studies have indicated that of mothers
who ate three or more fish meals a month, those with the highest exposure
gave birth to children with health problems.
They had significant delays in neuromuscular and neurological development.
Those children continued to show short-term memory problems at age four… and
significant reduction in IQ and academic skills at age seven.
Barbara Knuth is a professor of Natural Resource Policy and Management at
Cornell University. She says given the health concerns with eating too much contaminated fish, the information about restrictions needs to be more widely distributed.
“Where we need to focus effort now is not so much on the angler, but we need to be focusing
on the people with whom they’re sharing those fish, the women, their wives, mothers
of childbearing age, women of childbearing age, children, because that’s where we now know,
scientists now know – who are studying this – where the real health effects are.”
But where to start? After all, the fish might come from a friend… it might be at the deli… it could be on the plate at a local restaurant. There are no rules requiring a notice that fish is from a lake, or the ocean, or farm-raised. So, how do you get the word out?
One federal agency is working to get the information to those at highest risk by going through their doctor. Steve Blackwell is with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
“We’ve taken on trying to reach health care providers that are serving the target
population, the most at-risk population of women, children, pregnant women and reach those
groups such as OBGYNs, family physicians, pediatricians with this information to help raise
awareness within that group that serves the at-risk population to try and make sure that they’re receiving the message and they’re not telling their patients something different from what the patients may be hearing outside that realm.”
Whether the doctors are actually passing on the concerns about contaminated fish is a
whole other question. But assuming they are, there’s still another concern. Many of the women who are most at risk might not see a doctor until the day the baby is due. Poor women… the very same women who might rely on fishing for a good part of their diet… might not be told
about the risks.
And so their children are born into poverty… and the added burden of chemicals that can hurt their development. Blackwell says reaching those women is something the federal government cannot do alone.
“You want to reach those people through local leaders, through churches, through
institutions that aren’t medical.”
And that’s best done, Blackwell says, by local government, not the federal
government. But state budgets are strapped. And, in some cases, states are
reluctant to raise awareness of an issue that they really can’t fix. A source within
a state agency told us that an higher-ranking official indicated to
him that he didn’t want to assign a full-time person to work on fish contamination
awareness alone because it would send the wrong political message. Another state stopped publishing fish consumption advisories as a budget cutting move… that is… until local reporters exposed that particular budget cut.
In short, warning pregnant women and women of childbearing age about the dangers of
eating too much contaminated fish and how that could damage their children’s
intellectual and physical development has not gotten enough attention yet to become a
political priority.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Children who grow up in the inner-city often don’t know how the food on their tables is grown and harvested. A program at a farm has helped hundreds of kids in the Midwest learn about agriculture. Organizers hope the kids also learn a little about themselves in the process. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman has this story:
Transcript
Children who grow up in the inner-city often don’t know how the food on their tables is grown
and harvested. A program at a farm has helped hundreds of kids in the Great Lakes region learn
about agriculture. Organizers hope the kids also learn a little about themselves in the process.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:
Rockford, Illinois is a sprawling industrial center of 150-thousand. The aging rust belt city
has
battled a weak manufacturing economy. Its crime rate is higher than Chicago’s. And it’s where
11-year-old Astarte Goodwin spends most of his time.
“It’s not a bad neighborhood. It’s a pretty good neighborhood. As long as I don’t start trouble
or
nothing with the neighbors”
Astarte is part of a program called “Roots and Wings”.
It’s a joint project between a Rockford community center and the Angelic Organics Farm in
nearby Boone County. The kids visited the farm once a week this summer to learn the basics of
growing vegetables and working with animals.
The kids in the “Roots and Wings” program are all considered “at-risk”. They’re from low-
income families. Many of their parents are having problems with drugs and alcohol. Some of
their parents are in jail.
Barb Verni-Lau is a child and family advocate at the Northwest Community Center in Rockford.
“They have a harder time in life. They don’t usually come from two-parent families. And I think
the single-parent families that I have, the mothers are struggling hard.”
Under Barb’s leadership, the kids have been growing a vegetable garden on the grounds of the
community center. They’re using techniques they learned out at the farm.
Tadrick Tate is ten years old.
“Worms are good for plants because they, like, soften the soil and stuff. And they help the
plants.”
But Tadrick and the other kids are learning about more than just worms and plants. The “Roots
and Wings” program is helping the kids’ social, emotional and educational growth. That’s
according to Mary Solan-Goers, a social worker at a nearby middle school. She says grades and
attendance are up.
“A lot of the skills that they learn in school come alive when they’re gardening. And I think
there’s a lot of pride in seeing something that they planted and watch it grow and develop. And
sometimes you have to deal with some things live and some things die and then seeing the beauty
of this and how they all work together to create this lovely garden. So I think there’s a lot of pride
that
goes with that.”
“To The Pumpkins!”
Out at the farm, Tom Spaulding has been showing the kids the finer points of growing vegetables.
The Angelic Organics Farm holds educational programs for children and adults. Spaulding says
the programs help people connect with nature, the earth, and the things that sustain life.
“The soils and the plants and the animals that are around us, the ecosystem that we live with.
It’s
so fundamental and so basic sometimes we overlook it. You know, there’s so many kids that
come here who they just don’t want to leave. They get so enthused and awestruck while they’re
here. So I see it everyday when there’s a group here, how separated we’ve become from what our
own sustenance is a lot of times. The closest many of us get anymore to food is just the
supermarket shelf.”
More than 12-hundred kids from Rockford, Chicago and Milwaukee have visited the farm over
the past few years. Spaulding says he hopes the kids’ experience on the farm will have lasting
benefits.
“Hopefully on a basic level it connects them to life, to what it means to be alive and to what it
means to be a healthy person, to have positive relationships with those around you, that we’re
all
embedded in systems of relationships with people and the earth. And they learn a lot while
they’re here about what creates a healthy ecosystem, about what creates a healthy farm, what
creates healthy relationships between people. So hopefully they carry those into other
settings.”
At the Northwest Community Center, it’s time to harvest the vegetables. Astarte Goodwin’s
hands are covered with dirt as he works in the garden the kids have tended all summer long.
“We’re trying to make the community better. Because before, all this used to be was a pile of
junk. I mean, I shouldn’t say that, but, but you know people used to throw chip
bags, pop cans, pop bottles, dirt. This just used to be a dirt yard.”
But the children in the Roots and Wings program have done more than simply clean up a plot of
land in a Rockford neighborhood. Because of their hard work, they’re taking home fresh
vegetables for their dinner table. They’re also taking home a feeling of accomplishment. The
kind of accomplishment that comes with knowledge and responsibility.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.
This Thursday (November 21st), trees will be planted in every state capitol in all 50 states. The non-profit group, the National Tree Trust, is organizing the coordinated planting. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:
Transcript
This Thursday (November 21st), trees will be planted in every
state capitol in all 50 states. The non-profit group, the National Tree
Trust, is organizing the coordinated planting. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:
The National Tree Trust is celebrating the fact that they’ve planted 10
million trees since the organization was founded in 1990. That works out to
be almost two trees per minute. The tree trust helps local communities
plant trees and educates people about the benefits of trees.
Paul Rosenthal is with the National Tree Trust. He says this coast to coast
tree planting event will draw attention to the importance of trees in our
communities.
“It’s the trees that are planted in the urban areas and suburban areas of the
United States… are the ones which really go very far in helping to clean the
air where we live, clean the soil where we live, provide cooling shade where
we live, to help bring down energy costs in the summer and winter time.”
He says according to their calculations, one urban tree provides over
57-thousand dollars worth of benefits over its 50-year life span.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.
The Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park is an outdoor art museum that aims to blend art and nature. This piece is a work by Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro. Photo courtesy of the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.
Recently, a new sculpture park opened in the Great Lakes region. This new outdoor art museum exhibits 24 pieces by acclaimed modern sculptors. Eventually, 80 pieces will be on view and the park is expected to become a regional arts destination. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney has a look at how the sculpture park at the Frederik Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids mixes art and nature:
Transcript
Recently, a new sculpture park opened in the Great Lakes region.
This new outdoor art museum exhibits 24 pieces by acclaimed modern
sculptors. Eventually 80 pieces will be on view and the park is expected
to become a regional arts destination. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Tamar Charney has a look at how the sculpture park at the Frederik Meijer
Gardens in Grand Rapids mixes art and nature:
The pieces in the 30 acres sculpture park are spread out amid hills,
paths, and nooks. There’s an area with stone and bronze works from the
early modern masters like Rodin, Lipchitz, and Henry Moore. In a hollow
there’s an enormous red gardening trowel by Claus Oldenburg and Coosje van
Bruggen. And suspended just inches over a pond is a kinetic or moving
piece by George Rickey. Just downstream from the pond are 15 gigantic
ceramic eggs. A blue robin’s egg, a speckled killdeer’s egg… they are all
enlarged versions of eggs laid by birds you can find at the park. It’s a
work by Carolyn Ottmers, a sculptor from Chicago. She says the sculpture
park meshes the visual arts with the wonders of nature.
“I think in the way they have chosen to arrange the sculptures, and
integrate within the park… created this arena for encounters which for
me is a similar experience echoed when you walk through nature.”
As you move through the park you catch a glimpse of a piece here, a
suggestion of a work there through the trees, around the bend, or across the
pond. Officials with the gardens say the collection is the most
significant one in the Midwest. But it’s not your typical sculpture park,
with formal manicured gardens adorned with sculpture.
“The sculpture is not a decoration of a garden.”
Magdalena Abakanowicz is a sculptor from Poland. Her bronze piece called
“Figure on a Trunk” is a headless, shoeless person. It’s hidden in an alcove
made of young trees. Abakanowicz rails against the idea of art decorating
a garden, but she says nature can create the right space in which to see
sculpture.
“Spaces to contemplate, spaces to meditate, spaces in which we are
confronted to our own scale and the scale of the world.”
These are spaces that change with the weather, the time of day and the
season. Joseph Becherer is the sculpture curator for the Frederik Meijer
Gardens and Sculpture Park. He says it’s the natural setting that may just get more
people interested in looking at art.
“I think there are many, many people… the majority of Americans that are
very intimidated by a traditional museum or gallery but there is something
welcoming, inviting and warm about coming to a garden.”
And some of the things on exhibit in the botanical section of the gardens
can help people understand some of the things on exhibit in the sculpture
section. It’s something Italian sculptor Arnoldo Pomodoro is well aware
of. At the gardens, his piece called “Disk in the Form of a Desert Rose”
sits on a small grassy field next to a waterfall. After the dedication
ceremony, he was strutting around, greeting the people admiring his piece
when he was approached by a young boy with his buddies from school in tow.
Child: “Um, they want to know what the sculpture is supposed to be… like… about.”
Pomodoro: “In the gallery down is a real rose of the desert so the inspiration
comes from this rose which is a stone very beautiful.”
Pomodoro encourages the children to go into the conservatory to see a real desert rose
to start understanding and discovering the connections between art and nature,
and sculpture and the environment.
“You go and see it’s an homage to the nature. Ciao.”
Kids: “Ciao.”
In the coming years, more than 50 new sculptures will be added to the Frederik
Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.
This grizzly at the St Louis Zoo
is displayed in an exhibit that mimics its
natural habitat. A whole industry has emerged to
manufacture these exhibits.
At your local zoo – if you can suspend disbelief for a moment – you might find yourself in the middle of a tropical rainforest. Or a dusty African plain, watching the animals in their natural habitat. Of course, those wild settings are merely a façade. Clever construction techniques covering up concrete cages. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… the thought and planning behind the displays can be nearly as intricate as nature itself:
It’s not uncommon to hear reports of stock prices, inflation, and GNP numbers with most news broadcasts these days. As Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Terry Link argues, maybe it’s time for the media to give similar regular reports of environmental indicators to increase our mindfulness of our environmental health:
Transcript
It is not an infrequent occurrence to hear reports of stock prices, inflation, and GNP numbers with most news broadcasts these days. As Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Terry Link argues, maybe it’s time for the media to give similar regular reports of environmental indicators to increase our mindfulness of our environmental health.
There’s an old adage that you are what you measure. So by that standard, how do we appear? Look at what the media tell us…
“The Dow Jones tumbled 170 points on heavy trading of more than 1 billion shares.” “Consumer confidence is lagging, dropping 0.2 percent from last month’s figure.”
or
“Wholesale prices rose 2.3 percent for the month, hinting that demand for products may once again signal a rebound in the economy.”
You get the picture.”
Given the standard then that you are what you measure, it should be no surprise that we have become simply homo economus.
By constantly trying to measure wealth by GNP and stock prices, we idolize consumption while we devalue much of what gives life its true meaning; namely our connections to each other and with the marvelous and mysterious spinning sphere that provides us with life.
So I believe it’s way past time to give us equivalent daily reports on the health of our biosphere.
Why not report on the spread or decline of disease in humans, animals and plants? Or give regular updates on receding glaciers, severity of storms. Or increased rider ship on mass transit and its affect on reducing pollution? A daily report might sound like this:
“Energy consumption was up briskly in June. But on a bright note the percentage of power generated from renewable resources climbed 25% faster than the overall increase. This has resulted in an overall drop in greenhouse gas emissions despite the rise in overall consumption”
How about we start reporting not only agricultural production but also the inputs –Michigan saw its consumption of lettuce produced locally climb by 19% from last year, as local growers were more effective in marketing locally grown food. This boost in the state economy is welcomed. The diminished transportation need of locally produced food has other advantages for state residents. The reduction of air pollution, traffic congestion, and noise with a simultaneous increase in the freshness of produce is even a bigger benefit for consumers
We must understand that the condition of our air, land and water is more important than fluctuations in our stock portfolios. Making environmental information more prominent and regularly available as we do with stock prices and business reports is a step toward crucial mindfulness.
We might even copy a Wall Street/business reporting model and highlight a socially and environmentally responsible firm or organization that is developing products, services, or processes that help build more sustainable communities.
We need all the hope we can find. We need to nourish the entrepreneurial spirit towards community solutions. And we need the mass media to give more of its news hole to report daily on the indicators of total community health, not simply the financial numbers. We ignore our environment at the peril of our children and grandchildren. By offering regular daily doses of the health of our planet, the media will be a more responsible partner in its recovery. By making visible more measures of what we value we just may nurture a transformation to a more sustainable society.
Recycling, energy conservation programs, and water efficiency projects are all commonplace at many colleges and universities across the country. But a new report by the National Wildlife Federation shows schools may not be making the grade when it comes to teaching students about the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl has the second report of a two-part series:
Transcript
Recycling, energy conservation programs, and water efficiency projects are all commonplace at many colleges and universities across the country. But a new report by the National Wildlife Federation shows schools may not be making the grade when it comes to teaching students about the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.
Lisa Carmichael is a sophomore at Albion College in South Central Michigan. Her school recently made a course in the environment a requirement for graduation. Carmichael says she loves the idea, but says many students see it as just another required course. But Carmichael is optimistic about what the new course will do for even skeptical students.
“Even if they go in thinking, ‘Well, I just have to take this’, If you make it how this really effects their life, or make it about where does their wastewater really go or how is recycling is part of their life, then make it a practical project that they can go out and work on and see how they effect other people and how they effect the planet as a whole.”
Albion College is in the minority, according to a new report by the National Wildlife Federation on the environmental programs on college campuses. The Federation gives mostly A’s and B’s to schools for their on campus environmental efforts such as recycling and Water Conservation. But the schools receive only a C plus for Environmental Efforts in the classroom. The report shows that only eight percent of colleges have a graduation requirement for environmental class work. It also shows less than ten percent of engineering and education majors receive any training in environmental matters. Some teachers and administrators around the country are trying to change that. Debra Rowe teaches business and psychology courses at Oakland Community College in Michigan. She says each one of her courses includes some links to environmental issues. Rowe says every college graduate needs to have some background in the environment, regardless of what field students are planning to go in to.
“Once you understand the need and the opportunity to create a more humane and environmentally sound future, and we get more of our graduates that understand that, that’s going to benefit the business as well as benefit them in their roles as a community member where they can contribute to the overall health of society.”
Rowe works with faculty members at other Universities that want to increase the amount of environmental coursework required by their schools. But it is often a difficult process.
Abigail Jahiel teaches in the political science department at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. She would like to see environmental coursework as part of the general education requirements for all students. But she fears it would be a tough sell at her school.
“I think the concern would be that students already have a very heavy load of requirements, it would be adding something else, and there’s often competition between various academic interests on campus.”
But some schools are working on ways to improve environmental education without adding to the coursework. Tom Lowe is a Dean and assistant Provost at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. He says already existing courses in subjects like science and the humanities could easily add an environmental component. But he says it takes a campus wide commitment to the idea to make it happen in a practical way. Lowe says Ball State has had success with a program to teach professors how to include the environment in a diverse collection of courses.
“So the idea is that the student hears these ideas in many different courses, and in many different settings. Art, music, theatre, dance, now all talk about the environment in addition than just courses that traditionally deal with environmental issues.”
This won’t come easily though. Lowe says it will be a difficult process for many schools to take this approach toward the environment. He says it can be easy to convince a school to take on programs that save money like installing high efficiency lighting or purchasing low emission vehicles. He says it can be much more difficult to get professors to change their ways and add a new element to their courses. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.
A report from the National Wildlife Federation shows colleges are doing a poor job in educating students about the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
Transcript
A report from the National Wildlife Federation shows colleges are doing a poor job in educating students about the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.
A report card from the National Wildlife Federation gives colleges a C plus on Environmental Lessons in the classroom. The report shows only eight percent of schools require any environmental coursework before graduation. Debra Rowe teaches at Oakland Community College in Michigan, and works with schools to add environmental coursework to the curriculum. She says every graduate needs a basic understanding of the environment.
“Since we all live on the planet and all impact the planet, don’t you think you think its really important that they at least get a core base of information so that they can be an educated citizen?”
The Federation’s report also shows some important majors like engineering and education are also lacking. Only ten percent of those students have any environmental instruction as part of their degrees. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.
