Some physicians are concerned about the United States not attending the final talks on the Kyoto Protocol on global warming held in early November. The physicians say global warming is already a problem and is adding to a number of public health threats. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Some physicians are concerned about the United States not attending the final talks on the Kyoto Protocol on global warming held in early November. The physicians say global warming is already a problem and is adding to a number of public health threats. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.
Some physicians believe the increase in infectious disease outbreaks such as West Nile virus, Lyme disease, and Hantavirus are connected to global warming. They say the warming already seen contributes to the spread of the viruses. The warming also could be causing more volatile weather –such as sudden storms in some parts of the Great Lakes region. That can cause flooding of sewer systems that lead to illnesses. Bob Musil is the Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He says the group is encouraging politicians to upgrade sewer systems to cope with the changes.
“There are sudden storm surges, sudden precipitation leads to flooding in combined sewage and storm drains. In the state of Michigan in our report we discussed this problem. And we actually, as physicians, go and talk to the responsible officials.”
But the physician’s group says adapting to the changes only treats the symptoms. Musil says the long-term problem can only be dealt with by reducing air pollutants that cause global warming, something the group says the U-S is refusing to do right now. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.
Father Charles Morris installed a solar-wind hybrid system to make his parish less dependent on fossil fuels for energy. Other congregations across the country are taking similar steps to be more energy efficient. Photo by Arthur Cooper.
Even before September 11th, energy policy was being fiercely debated in the U.S. Now, such a policy has taken on even greater importance, and President Bush is again promoting what many environmentalists view as an outdated energy plan. They say his focus on renewable energy is insufficient. And protest against the plan is gathering speed. But some may be surprised at who’s helping to lead the way. Many religious leaders are voicing concern about America’s dependence on fossil fuels. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has the story:
Transcript
Even before September 11th, energy policy was being fiercely debated in the U.S. Now, such a policy has taken on even greater importance, and President Bush is again promoting what many environmentalists view as an outdated energy plan. They say his focus on renewable energy is insufficient. And protest against the plan is gathering speed. But some may be surprised at who’s helping to lead the way. Many religious leaders are voicing concern about America’s dependence on fossil fuels. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has the story:
(natural sound of birds, street sounds, wind)
Twenty minutes before Father Charles Morris will listen to confessions, he’s up on the rectory roof… inspecting his new solar panels and windmill. He’s perched three stories above the ground, so he has a clear view of his neighborhood here in Wyandotte, Michigan. It’s a sunny afternoon. But for as far as he can see, his roof is the only one that’s turning the sunlight into electricity. And he wants to change that.
“Even in a working class, industrial area such as Wyandotte, an inner ring suburb, if it can work here, it can work anywhere. If you would have homes all across the Detroit area, across Michigan, across other communities, that were to adopt this model, I think it would have a profound impact on the stress we’re placing on nonrenewable resources.”
Father Morris’ parish, St. Elizabeth Roman Catholic, is among the first congregations in the U-S to draw energy from the sun and wind. But he’s not alone in his mission to expand the use of clean energy throughout America.
Across the country, religious leaders are writing to Congress, rallying at SUV dealerships, and making their houses of worship more energy efficient.
St. Elizabeth is a winner of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star award. Four other congregations also won this year’s award, including a Sikh temple in Illinois, and a Lutheran church in Iowa.
This past June, Father Morris was up on his roof, standing above a gathering of 70 people. For those watching, the day held some miracles.
“During the blessing of the solar panels, it was a bright sunny day, no wind, and no wind all morning. But the moment that the prayer had finished for the blessing of the solar panels, and they were switching over to the blessing for the wind generator, and I walked over with the holy water to bless it, this gust of wind comes out of nowhere, and it starts to spin, just as it’s beginning to spin right now (windmill whirs).” “It was incredible, and people were going, ‘ooh, ahh.'”
While using alternative energy sources has immediate benefits at home, leaders such as Father Morris hope that enough people will save energy locally to have a broader impact.
Not only on energy policy but also on energy practices around the globe.
There are 18 Interfaith Global Warming Campaigns in the U.S. Kim Winchell directs the one in Michigan. Her group is concerned that America is ignoring global warming. Electricity generated from fossil fuel releases emissions that add to global warming. So Winchell’s group wants Americans to use less fossil fuel. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian leaders have joined the effort, which Winchell says fits their beliefs.
“All faiths – Christian, Muslim, Jewish – teach that life is sacred, and the created world is given into our keeping by God.”
But should all congregations run on alternative energy?
Critics say that solar and wind energy are not practical for poor or working-class neighborhoods such as the one served by St. Elizabeth because such systems cost thousands of dollars to install. But Father Morris believes in the long-term, the investment is worth it.
“Every dollar you save on energy is a dollar you can feed a hungry person, a dollar you can pay an employee a just wage, a dollar you can do outreach.”
To pay for his hybrid system, Father Morris took a risk – and drew from the parish savings. It may take 12-15 years to see a return on his investment. So he says some churches may hesitate to follow his example.
U-S Representative David Bonior attended the blessing at St. Elizabeth. He thinks the federal government should invest in renewable energy.
“We ought to provide some incentive, not only for churches, but for anybody who institutes energy wise devices. The government has a central role to play in moving us to a more efficient, technologically safer and cleaner environment.”
Some states are already offering incentive programs and grants. But the amount varies, because state energy conservation usually depends on federal funding.
Father Morris just got a grant from the state of Michigan. He used it to put in a solar thermal system to heat water. He’s also inviting schools and churches to tour St. Elizabeth.
“This is the living room; we’ve got the TV on at the moment…” (sounds of football game)
Father Morris lives in the rectory, and his entire first floor runs on solar and wind power. That includes his living room, bedroom, four offices, two computers…and a radio.
“Here’s one of those old fashioned radio/stereos. We’ll have to put the radio on and see what’s on.”
(sound of pop music)
“I don’t know what that stuff is.”
(sound of rapid change between stations)
“You see, this is being powered by solar right now and so the quality of life is the same, there’s no change.”
President Bush’s new energy plan is now being considered by Congress. But whatever the government does, Father Morris says the role for people of faith is clear: to be witnesses for the nation, one windmill at a time.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.
Chicago is the first major city in the U.S. to commit to a carbon emissions trading system. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Chicago is the first major city in the U.S. to commit to a carbon emissions trading system. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has announced that the municipality would join two-dozen private companies that have signed on with the Chicago Climate Exchange. The exchange will create a market in carbon dioxide emissions futures. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Daley is recommending the city take a new approach to energy; replacing the bulbs in traffic signals with new longer-lasting, brighter, but more energy efficient bulbs. He also wants the city to put in more energy efficient boilers, and increase the use of cleaner-burning alternative fuels in the city’s fleet of cars and equipment. The city will be able to trade any savings in carbon emissions for shares in carbon futures, supplementing city coffers. The mayor admonished business leaders to find creative solutions to energy and environmental problems, such as the Chicago Climate Exchange. Although the city government buildings and cars make up only a small fraction of the city’s pollution sources, the mayor’s initiative is expected to be an example for the private sector. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.
Some public health experts are concerned that a changing global climate, along with increases in carbon dioxide emissions, might be contributing to a sudden rise in the number of asthma cases. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:
Transcript
Some public health experts are concerned that a changing global climate, along with increases in carbon dioxide emissions, might be contributing to a sudden rise in the number of asthma cases. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.
Worldwide, the level of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere has risen. So scientists have been studying what might happen to plants if the C-O-two level continues to rise. One study indicates the increase in C-O-two levels makes conditions more favorable for weedy species… such as ragweed, which aggravates asthma. Paul Epstein is with the Harvard Medical School and has been working with the study.
“The ragweed pollen counts go up so that doubling of asthma in the last several decades may be partially accountable just by the rise in CO-2 as well as, perhaps, prolongation of seasons and the early arrival of spring and the late arrival of fall.”
Epstein says it appears the air pollution that is believed to be causing global climate change and triggers asthma could be compounding the problem by indirectly contributing to the increase in pollen allergens. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.
Not too long ago, the fall harvest season was celebrated for its bounty of locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. Thanks to the globalization of our food system, we can now buy fresh produce 365 days of the year. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne Elston says the end result is that most of us have no idea where our food actually comes from:
Transcript
Not too long ago, the fall harvest season was celebrated for its
bounty of locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. Thanks to the
globalization of our food system we can now buy fresh produce 365
days of the year. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne
Elston says the end result is that most of us have no idea where our
food actually comes from.
As a kid I grew up near the Okanagan Valley near Canada’s west coast.
The area was famous for its fruit trees. During harvest time, my
parents would stop at a roadside stand and buy a basket of cherries
and put then in the back seat for my sister and I to entertain
ourselves with. The first thing we’d do is look for double hung
cherries to hang over our ears like drop earrings. Then we’d bite one
of the cherries and use the sweet juice to paint our lips and cheeks.
We’d throw back our heads and do our very best Marilyn Monroe
impression before diving into the remaining fruit. We’d fill our
mouths to the point of bursting, and then spit the pits at each
other, giggling and laughing in a fit of harvest bliss.
This delicious ritual remains carefully etched in my mind because
it’s so rare today. My kids can eat fresh fruits and vegetables from
around the world on virtually any day of the year. They’ve already
tasted things that I didn’t even know existed when I was a kid –
kiwis from New Zealand, exotic star fruits and Jamaican plantain for
example.
On the surface, this seems like a good thing. Thanks to international
trade and modern storage technologies, we are no longer restricted by
local growing seasons and soil conditions. But in having so much,
we’ve actually lost sight of the process of growing food. Most of us
are about three generations away from having to go to the henhouse to
pick up the eggs on the family farm. And if our ancestors didn’t
actually grow their own food, they purchased it from a neighbor who
did.
Today instead of going out in the back garden and picking a tomato
for dinner, the tomato that ends up on your supper plate may have
traveled thousands of miles by truck. It’s then delivered to a
distribution center, shipped by yet another vehicle to your local
supermarket, and then given a ride home in the back of the family
van. This idea of being removed from our food source is something
called distancing.
Distancing not only adds to the cost of food, but it also places a
heavy toll on the environment. Trucking fresh produce across vast
distances burns a whole lot of fossil fuel – a major contributor to
both global warming and smog. Some of the countries that we import
produce from don’t have the same strict guidelines that we do about
pesticides. The result is that along with fruits and vegetables, in
some cases we’re also importing chemicals such as DDT that we banned
decades ago.
And then there’s the produce itself. Although it’s technically fresh,
it has to be picked long before it’s ripe in order to survive the
journey. Then it spends several days – or perhaps even weeks – before
it shows up on store shelves. Sure it looks great, but for those of
us who have experienced the taste of freshly picked fruit, it’s not
even in the same ballpark.
Which is perhaps why cherry is now my least favorite flavor. It’s so
far removed from the delicious cherries of my childhood, that I’d
rather not taste it.
Some environmentalists are concerned that the terrorist attacks on September 11th will hurt the environmental movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
Transcript
Some environmentalists are concerned that the terrorist attacks on September
11th will hurt the environmental movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.
Tom Lowe is a professor of environmental management at Ball State University in
Munice, Indiana. He says the reaction to the attacks could lead to bad decisions that would devastate the environment down the road.
“If we continue to spoil the environment, the tragedy of 9-11 is going to be amplified many times by what is going to happen with the environmental impact of global warming and other kinds of problems.”
Lowe says one example is drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. He says national security interests may push for that now, even though it will be damaging in the long run. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.
Researchers are developing models to try to
determine what the effects of global warming will be on the
Great Lakes region. Photo by Jerry Bielicki.
Some scientists in the Great Lakes basin are looking at how global warming might be affecting the region, both today and long into the future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the story:
Transcript
Some scientists in the great lakes basin are looking at how global warming
Might be affecting the region, both today and long into the future. The
Great lakes radio consortium’s Lester graham reports.
Many researchers in a number of different fields are coming to the same basic conclusion: the earth is warming and it’s affecting the Great Lakes. So far, the effects have been difficult to track, unlike watching the day-to-day changes in the weather. Measuring climate change requires measurements over many decades, or better yet over centuries. There are only a few places where weather measurements have been taken over that long of a period. But, where they have, researchers are finding weather is becoming more chaotic and indications are that the long-term climate is warming.
Many climatologists believe that warming is due at least in part to greenhouse gases, that is, pollution in the upper atmosphere trapping more of the sun’s heat, much in the same way a greenhouse works.
Taylor Jarnigan is a research ecologist with the U-S Environmental Protection agency who’s been looking at one aspect of climate change. He’s been studying whether increasing amounts of lake effect snow from Lake Superior over the past century, especially the past 50 years, is evidence of a change in the temperature of the lake. Preliminary study suggests that the lake’s surface temperature is warming, and that causes more snow when cold air passes over it. But he says the amount of snow has varied widely from year to year.
“Some of this variability is certainly due –in my opinion– to an increasing volatile climate system itself. El niño and la niña are becoming more intense, so you have an increasing oscillation between, say, an usually warm summer followed by an unusually cold winter which tends to produce an unusually large amount of snow.”
The surface temperature of the lake has only been monitored for a few decades, while snowfall depths have been recorded for much longer. Jarnigan says, since there seems to be a direct correlation between the surface temperature of the lake and snowfall, he can calculate the temperature of the lake going back more than a century, and finds that Lake Superior is getting warmer.
When researchers find direct measurements that have been taken for more than a century, they feel fortunate. For example, John Magnuson with the University of Wisconsin has been reviewing the conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That’s the international organization established by the United Nations to study global warming. As a part of that review, Magnuson has been looking over shipping and harbor records that date back 150 years or more to see if there’s evidence of global warming. One thing he’s learned is that lakes and streams aren’t iced over for as long as they once were.
“And in the last hundred-and-fifty years we’ve seen significant changes in lakes around the entire– lakes and streams around the entire northern hemisphere. The date of freezing on the average and the date of break up is changing by about six days per century.”
And Magnuson says that six day change on both ends of the freeze-thaw cycle mean that there’s nearly two weeks less ice coverage than a century ago.
That seems to bolster research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Ecological Research Laboratory. Studies there indicate that over the last several years Great Lakes ice coverage on average is not as far ranging and doesn’t last as long as it did historically.
There’s no certain way to tell what might happen to the Great Lakes if the apparent warming trend continues.
But there are some ways to speculate. There are at least two computer models that try to estimate how much warmer the climate in the Great Lakes region might become by the year 2090. Based on those models, researchers have tried to figure out what that might mean for the area. Peter Sousounis was working at the University of Michigan at the time of that research. He says using either computer model it looks as though crops would produce more. Soybean yields could double. But other predictions are not as beneficial. It looks as though Great Lakes water levels would drop, probably about three feet more than they’ve already dropped, causing some problems for shipping. The study also found algae production would decrease by 10 to 20 percent. That’s important because algae provide the base for the Great Lakes’ food chain. Pine trees might also be all but eliminated from the region, and Sousounis says dangerously high ozone days might occur twice as often.
“Our findings indicate there are some potentially serious consequences in terms of reduced lake levels impacting shipping across the region, some serious economic impacts that if we don’t learn how to deal with these, there are going to be some serious changes in our lifestyles.”
Critics say the models can’t represent all of the variability in nature, so it’s difficult to be sure about any of the predictions. An adjustment here or there can lead to all kinds of alternative scenarios. Sousounis concedes more work needs to be done and more variables plugged into the models, but he’s convinced change will come; the degree of change is the only question.
These days, very few scientists argue against the studies that suggest the earth is warming. John Magnuson with the University of Wisconsin says a few DO argue that the change might merely be natural climate variability – that is, Mother Nature taking an interesting twist– and not necessarily a warm-up caused by manmade greenhouse gases.
“The skeptics, or the more cautious people, what they do when they look at that range of variation over the last thousand years, what they see is there is a signal in the warming that’s coming above the historic variation of climate. And, the climatologists of the world collectively feel there’s very strong evidence that warming is occurring, that greenhouse gases are a very significant part of that warming.”
Magnuson says most mainstream scientists agree climate change is happening, and even dramatic reductions in greenhouse gases won’t prevent some continued global warming over this century. But most say reducing pollution would slow the rise in temperatures and curtail the warming sooner. Only time will tell how that warming will change the Great Lakes region, and all of the researchers we talked to say in the meantime we’ll likely see more chaotic roller coaster type weather patterns as never before in recorded history.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Researchers are developing models to try to
determine what the effects of global warming will be on the
Great Lakes region. Photo by Jerry Bielicki.
Researchers are trying to determine how global warming might affect this region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Researchers are trying to determine how global warming might affect this region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.
Using two different sophisticated computer climate models, researchers are asking questions such as what happens to the water levels in the Great Lakes. Both models predict they drop even farther, causing shipping problems. They predict crops will produce more, and they predict some trees will die off. Peter Sousounis is one of the researchers studying the models. He says the region needs to consider what appears to be happening.
“I’m concerned that we won’t be prepared, we will not have done our homework. I think as a society we can certainly adapt, if we are given enough time. And if we don’t adapt, life might adjust to a new mean state all around.”
While nearly all climatologists believe the earth is warming, not everyone agrees whether the changes will be harmful. Sousounis agrees more research needs to be done to try to determine what the effects might be. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Last month (April) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided
against regulating ash and sludge from coal-burning power plants as a
toxic hazardous waste. Instead, the EPA will develop voluntary coal-ash
disposal standards. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne
Elston says the move is a major setback in the war against global
warming:
Much of the industry in the nation’s mid-section relies on
shipments of raw materials on the Great Lakes. Great Lakes ports in the
U-S and Canada handle more than 200-million tons of material annually.
The Lakes are also a source of water and recreation for nearly a third
of
the nation’s population. But, during the last two years, water levels
have
been falling at a record breaking pace. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
