Interview: President of the National Wildlife Federation

  • Larry Schweiger says that we as a society are losing connection with nature, but those who are in nature every day are seeing the changes of global warming take place. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, David Parsons)

The head of a hunting, fishing and bird-watching group has written a book that indicates to save nature as we know it, we have to come to grips with climate change. Larry Schweiger is the President and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation and author of the book “Last Chance: Preserving Life on Earth.” Lester Graham recently talked with him:

Transcript

Graham: You write in your book, “like it or not, global warming is the defining issue of the twenty-first century,” but you also note that there’s a significant amount of what you call “cynical obfuscation” of the science on global warming. If the overwhelming amount of science supports the fact that climate change is happening, and burning fossil fuels is contributing to that change, why is skepticism among the American public growing?

Schweiger: Well I think you need to look at how much money’s being spent by the fossil fuel industry, the oil and coal industry, to confuse the American public on this issue, and they have done a masterful job, as we’ve seen, in creating doubt, sending signals of confusion…

Graham: Most scientists tell me the effects of global warming are happening faster than first predicted, but those effects are often lost on the general public. Your group, the NWF represents hunters, fishers, bird-watchers, people who are out in nature. Are they noticing changes?

Schweiger: They are, and they are helping us to communicate to congress, and helping us to get the word out about what’s taking place. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans today spend 7 hours or more in front of a computer screen or a TV screen, or in some other way disconnected from nature. The average child, for example, spends some 7 minutes a day in nature, so we as a society are losing connection with nature, but those who are in nature each and every day are seeing the changes take place ‘cause they’ve watched it over their lifetime.

Graham: Your book not only makes the case that the world of nature as we know it is worth saving, but you note some things that everyday folks can do—you can protect natural areas near you, talk back to news media, push the politicians, get your hands dirty, literally, by organic gardening at home, but I get the impression most of us are looking to someone else to solve this global problem, I mean after all, the earth is just too darn big for any one of us to make much of a difference.

Schweiger: Well that’s a very important question because in America we assume that our government is gonna just solve our problems, but really what we need to do as Americans is we need to give voice to these problems, and demand that we see action. I think we need to step up and tell our lawmakers what we believe, what we want to see done.

Graham: Now you’ve spent some time in the halls of congress. We saw the house pass climate change legislation last year. The senate has kind of scrapped that whole thing and now senators, Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham, are working on a new plan. When do you think we might actually have some policy put into law that will help us deal with this climate change situation?

Schweiger: Well let me first say that the three senators working on this legislation are doing the type of legislating that we need because they’re working together, it’s a tripartisan bill—

Graham:–Alright, Kerry’s a Democrat, Lieberman an independent, and Graham is a republican—

Schweiger: –Right. So we have all three working together. And I particularly want to acknowledge Lindsey Graham—he has bucked his own party saying we need a new energy policy in America, we need to wean ourselves from dependency on foreign oils, very powerful things, and I think it’s very influential in the way it’s playing out here.

Graham: Larry Schweiger is the president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, and the author of the book ‘Last Chance: Preserving Life on Earth.’ Thanks very much.

Schweiger: Thank you.

Related Links

Interview: Dr. James Hansen, Part 2

  • Dr. James Hansen's book, 'Storms Of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Coming Climate Catastrophe And Our Last Chance To Save Humanity' (Photo courtesy of Bloomsbury USA)

James Hansen is the author of
‘The Storms of My Grandchildren:
The Truth About The Coming Climate
Catastrophe And Our Last Chance To
Save Humanity.’ This is the second
half of our interview with Dr. Hansen.
He’s a climate scientist for NASA
and was the first scientist to testify
before Congress about climate change.
He stresses, he’s not speaking for
the government, but only for himself:

Transcript

James Hansen is the author of
‘The Storms of My Grandchildren:
The Truth About The Coming Climate
Catastrophe And Our Last Chance To
Save Humanity.’ This is the second
half of our interview with Dr. Hansen.
He’s a climate scientist for NASA
and was the first scientist to testify
before Congress about climate change.
He stresses, he’s not speaking for
the government, but only for himself:

Lester Graham: Doctor Hansen, in the book you say we should scrap the cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gases, and instead go with a fee on fossil fuels and then give that money to the people directly to help them adapt to higher energy costs. How would that work?

Dr. James Hansen: The fee would be charged at the mine or the oil head or the port of entry for imported fossil fuels. It’d be collected from the fossil fuel companies and then they money should be distributed to the public on a uniform basis. You’d introduce this gradually so that people can change their habits, the technology that they use, the vehicles that they use, for example. So, you introduce it gradually, but by the time it’s reached a dollar of gallon on gasoline, at the rate of fossil fuel use last year, that would be generating $3,000 per legal resident of the country with to half a share to each child, up to two children per family. So a family with two or more children would be getting $9,000 a year in this dividend, which should be sent to them monthly just automatically, electronically, to their bank account or their debit card if they don’t have a bank account.

Lester: We’re talking about getting that through Washington D.C, where special interests drive the agenda often. I don’t want to accuse you of being naïve, but I believe many in Washington would.

Dr. Hansen: Yes, they do, however, there is a growing realization, environmental groups, like Friends of the Earth, which now recognize this is exactly what’s needed and they’re beginning to promote that. I think that’s why it’s a good thing that we’re kinda taking, probably taking, a year off dropping this cap and trade and give us a chance to discuss this because it’s what’s in the interest of the public as opposed to the lobbyists.

Lester: Since you first made congress aware of climate change as a pressing issue, the Clinton-Gore administration did nothing. President George W. Bush indicated he would deal with the emissions causing climate change, and then evidently Dick Cheney worked to kill that effort and Bush reversed his position. Now President Barak Obama has indicated we must do something, but legislation in Congress is stalled right now. What do you this is stopping this effort if this is such a serious threat?

Dr. Hansen: It is the role of money in Washington and other capitals around the world. Special interests have more influence on these policies than the public’s interest and that’s why, you know, we had hoped with the election of the new president things were really going to change, but I think he hasn’t really looked at this issue closely enough to really understand what’s in the people’s interest. And I hope that over the next year we can convince them that we need to move in a direction that is in the people’s interest rather than in the big businesses interest.

Lester: James Hansen is the author of The Storms of My Grandchildren, the truth about the upcoming climate catastrophe and the last chance to save humanity. Dr. Hansen, thank you very much for your time!

Dr. Hansen: Uh huh, thank you!

Related Links

Interview: Dr. James Hansen, Part 1

  • Dr. James Hansen is a climate scientist for NASA and the author of the book, 'Storms Of My Grandchildren.' (Photo courtesy of Bloomsbury USA)

James Hansen is the author of ‘The Storms
Of My Grandchildren: The Truth About
The Coming Climate Catastrophe And
Our Last Chance To Save Humanity.’
He’s been a climate scientist for NASA
and was the first scientist to testify before
Congress about climate change. In the
book, Hansen wrote about climate change,
‘We seem oblivious to the danger, unaware
how close we may be… to our demise.’
Lester Graham talked to Hansen and noted
that we don’t often hear strong language
like that from scientists:

Transcript

James Hansen is the author of ‘The Storms
Of My Grandchildren: The Truth About
The Coming Climate Catastrophe And
Our Last Chance To Save Humanity.’
He’s been a climate scientist for NASA
and was the first scientist to testify before
Congress about climate change. In the
book, Hansen wrote about climate change,
‘We seem oblivious to the danger, unaware
how close we may be… to our demise.’
Lester Graham talked to Hansen and noted
that we don’t often hear strong language
like that from scientists:

Dr. James Hansen: Well, the public is unaware of the situation, and that’s partly because of the way nature works. You know, weather is highly variable – 10 or 20 or 30 degree variations are common – while the global warming, so far, is about 1 degree Celsius, which is about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. So, people have a hard time seeing it. But the consequences are already becoming apparent, as we see with the melting sea ice in the arctic. The Northwest Passage is now actually open. Mountain glaciers melting around the world, sub-tropics expanding – which is affecting the Southwest United States and the Mediterranean region and Australia. And the problem is that those things are going to grow, and we’re going to pass tipping points, which will have disastrous consequences if we pass them. We don’t have to pass them though. And that’s why it’s appropriate for us to try to communicate the situation to the public, because the kinds of things that we need to do with our energy systems make sense anyway for different reasons.

Lester Graham: The evidence for climate change is growing – almost every week more studies are released, often indicating the future will be worse than first thought. What do you think we need to do to minimize the effects of climate change?

Dr. Hansen: Well, it’s very clear what we need to do. The carbon dioxide is increasing because of the burning of fossil fuels. If you look at how much carbon there is in oil, gas, and coal, you see that coal is, by far, the biggest reservoir. And then there’s the unconventional fossil fuels, like tar shale and tar sands. What we need to do is phase out the coal use and prohibit the use of these unconventional, dirty fossil fuels – and we could solve the problem. But to get there, there’s a very practical requirement, and that is that we begin to put a price on carbon emissions. The reason that people use fossil fuels as their main source of energy is that it’s the cheapest energy. And, as long as that’s the case, we’re going to keep using more and more. But the reason that they’re the cheapest is that we subsidize them – our government subsidizes them – and they don’t make them pay for the costs that they cause for society. The human health problems due to air pollution and water pollution, the mercury and the arsenic that comes from coal, and the costs of future climate change for our children and grandchildren – all of these are free for the fossil fuel companies. They don’t have to worry about those at all. The way we would solve that is to put a gradually rising price on carbon emissions. And there’s actually some good news in the newspaper, and that is that Senators Kerry, a Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a Republican, announced that they’re not going to push cap-and-trade – which had been the big banks’ proposed solution to put a ‘cap’ on carbon emissions, and then they, you would (chuckles) – it was a complicated system where you could trade the rights to pollute. But the big winners would be the traders and the losers would be the public.

James Hansen is a climate
scientist for NASA and the author of the
book, ‘Storms Of My Grandchildren.’ He
spoke with The Environment Report’s
Lester Graham. We’ll hear
more from Dr. Hansen tomorrow, including
his idea on how to reduce using fossil fuels.

Related Links

Interview: Amory Lovins

  • Amory Lovins is the Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. (Photo courtesy of the Rocky Mountain Institute)

There’s a lot of talk about
conserving energy, but many
homeowners are not taking
advantage of the tax credits
being offered to tighten up
their homes. Many are more
intrigued about solar panels
and generating their own power.
Amory Lovins is an inventor,
author, and the chief scientist
at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Lester Graham talked with him
about conserving energy at home:

Transcript

There’s a lot of talk about
conserving energy, but many
homeowners are not taking
advantage of the tax credits
being offered to tighten up
their homes. Many are more
intrigued about solar panels
and generating their own power.
Amory Lovins is an inventor,
author, and the chief scientist
at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Lester Graham talked with him
about conserving energy at home:

Lester: When I talk to some of my friends about energy consumption, they immediately jump to installing backyard wind turbines or solar panels; just getting off the grid. And I always ask, well, have you added insulation your attic? It seems like some of us are really into those gee-whiz aspects of renewable but we tend to overlook conservation, that’s something you’ve stressed. Why?

Lovins: Well, efficiency, which I use instead of conservation cause it unambiguously, means doing more with less is faster, cheaper, easier, than any kind of supply. Look, if you can’t keep your bathtub full of hot water because it keeps running down the drain the first thing you do is get a plug before you go looking for a bigger water heater. Then when you get a water heater, it will be a lot smaller and cheaper and work better. So efficiency first is a wonderful adage, most people live in houses with a square yard of holes in them. Of course if you live in a sieve, it’s hard to stay warm. So, first, you start with stuff like weather stripping and caulk, and if you can you get a house doctor to come do a house call with diagnostic equipment and diagnose you houses chills and fevers. But uh, even in our house which is one of the most efficient in the world, uh, we still need to the blower door test and caulking every few years because with changes in humidity the wood works in and out and you have to renew this stuff occasionally. But the benefits are huge.

Lester: How far can we really go in saving energy at home?

Lovins: If you’re really conscientious about it, most people can save around half to two-thirds of their energy. That’s partly by draft proofing, insulation, and perhaps, although they’re often costlier, uh window improvements. I’m sitting under some windows now that insulate like fourteen sheets of glass but look like two and cost less than three. Then also it means whenever you get lights or appliances, you get the most efficient you can, so after some years you’ve turned over the stock and if you’re ever going to buy an appliance, go to aceee.org. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy posts their list of the most energy efficient appliances. Of course, a minimum, you should get energy star, that at least knocks the worst stuff off the market. But within the energy star category, there is quite a lot of variation and it is worth shopping for the best ones.

Lester: What about the upfront costs of new appliances, new windows, new furnaces, things like that?

Lovins: For many kinds of appliances, there isn’t even any correlation between efficiency and price, but if there is, it’s probably still a very good deal; a much better return than you can get in any other form of investment and with much less risk. Think of it as money very well spent and of course, if you had first done the very cheap stuff like stopping up that square yard of holes in your house, the wind doesn’t whistle through, it saves so much upfront that it helps pay for everything else. The whole package is really quite an enticing return.

Lester: Amory Lovins consults on energy issues and he’s the chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Thank you for your time.

Lovins: Thank you.

Related Links

Interview: Bill McKibben

  • ill McKibben is an author and the founder of 350.org, a grassroots effort to increase awareness of the threats of climate change. (Photo by Nancie Battaglia, courtesy of Bill McKibben)

Bill McKibben has been writing about
climate change for 20 years. More
recently, he founded the grassroots
organization 350.org. It urges
governments to do something about
climate change. Lester Graham talked
to McKibben and asked him how his
group deals with the debate in Congress –
especially when it’s less about scientific
facts and more about your brand of politics:

Transcript

Bill McKibben has been writing about
climate change for 20 years. More
recently, he founded the grassroots
organization 350.org. It urges
governments to do something about
climate change. Lester Graham talked
to McKibben and asked him how his
group deals with the debate in Congress –
especially when it’s less about scientific
facts and more about your brand of politics:

Bill McKibben: Well, it’s hard to deal with it because, of course, we don’t a kind of separate physics and chemistry for Republicans and Democrats. You know, the laws of nature tend to operate the same way no matter whether you spend your life marinating in Rush Limbaugh or not, you know. So it’s difficult because we have to deal with those physical facts. The only good news is that the only place where this is a political issue in those ways is the United States. The rest of the world, everybody’s on-board, understanding that we need to go to work. We’ve still got serious problems in this country. It’s one of the reasons that we desperately need the President to finally make some serious noise about climate change, and say straightforwardly and out-front what the dangers are and do what he can to drive home the peril that we’re in.

Lester Graham: The Center for Public Integrity reports that there are more lobbyists in Washington than ever before, working on supporting or blocking or somehow reshaping climate change legislation. How does a grassroots effort, such as 350.org, compete with the big moneyed lobbyists at work?

McKibben: Well, we can’t compete with them in terms of money. There are, I think, 2800 lobbyists that industry has hired to go to – which gives you some idea of what a bad job being a Congressman is. Each Congressman has 7 people devoted to making sure that they toe the line on fossil fuel. We can’t compete! Exxon Mobile, last year, made more money than any company in the history of money, okay? So, in that currency, we’re sunk. The only currency we’ve got is bodies and commitment. And that’s why we’re finally trying to organize a real movement around climate change. It’s not enough to depend on the fact that the science is on your side, and that any rational system or person would be doing everything they can to try to deal with this biggest problem we’ve ever faced. Our system, in that sense, isn’t rational. It’s dependent on power and pressure. And we have to accept that, and we have to accept the challenge of building those kinds of movements.

Graham: What do you think of the legislation on greenhouse reductions, greenhouse gas reductions as it’s shaping up in Washington?

McKibben: It’s in grave danger, if it hasn’t already, of turning into a sort of piñata filled with goodies for each special interest. Each Senator now is saying, ‘yes, but in my state we need a lot of money or whatever to do this, or, ‘we have to exempt this industry,’ or whatever. These guys don’t get the degree of danger that we’re in. They’re still using it as just one more political game to play. It’s why Obama’s gotta step up to the plate. He can’t let happen what happened with healthcare – just Congress take all of this on its own, let it drift, come out with some mediocre thing, and call it a victory.

Graham: What would you like to hear President Obama say that would compel people to say, ‘oh my gosh, we’ve got to do something about this!’?

McKibben: I’d like him to do what leaders around the world now – partly at the behest of 350.org – have been doing over the last few weeks. Saying, ‘here, in my country, are the grave dangers that we face.’ That’s the kind of leadership that we’re not seeing out of Obama, unfortunately.

Related Links

Seeing Abandoned Buildings Through a New Lens

  • Artist Julia Christensen peers through the ceiling of an abandoned auditorium in Gary, Indiana. (Photo by Anne Barnes)

We often take the buildings around us
for granted – that is, until those factories,
schools, or big retailers close shop and
people around town are left wondering –
what’s going to happen to that place?
One photographer’s making a career out
of documenting the surprising ways
people deal with this. Shawn Allee met her in the heart of America’s Rust
Belt:

Transcript

We often take the buildings around us
for granted – that is, until those factories,
schools, or big retailers close shop and
people around town are left wondering –
what’s going to happen to that place?
One photographer’s making a career out
of documenting the surprising ways
people deal with this. Shawn Allee met her in the heart of America’s Rust
Belt:

I meet Julia Christensen in Gary, Indiana.

She’s here for an art project: She’ll photograph buildings in Gary and ask people how they could be re-used in the future. I’m supposed to be the chauffer.

Christensen: We’re going to 5th avenue.

Allee: Where is that, exactly?

Christensen: Right. Uh…

Well, I’ll get to her current project in a sec but with all these wrong turns – I’ve got a chance to ask about her artwork in general.

I mean, what’s the point of documenting how people re-use buildings?

“Looking at use of urban space. It’s a structure we all share. No matter how you interpret it, there it is on he ground in front of you.”

Christensen’s got plenty of examples. She’s done photo exhibits of buildings in several cities, and she wrote this book called Big Box Reuse. It’s about how people reused buildings abandoned by Wal-Mart, K-Marts and other big retailers.

She photographed one big box store that got turned into an indoor go-cart track. Another became a school. And one store turned into a museum dedicated to the canned meat, SPAM.

“What it did was create this niche tourist industry. Over 10,000 people a year come to the SPAM museum and they spend money in the town, and it’s actually done something toward revitalization of this city, you know.”

Christensen says the point is that when big box stores get abandoned, they’re often a blight – kinda like one-building ghost-towns with enormous parking lots.

She found people assumed they were the only ones facing this problem.

“They’d be like, ‘huh, that’s interesting. You mean other people are dealing with this? How did they deal with those glass panes and those central pillars?’ And I became story-telling person who had information about big-box re-use.”

Christensen says she’s got a new art project. She’s interviewing people about old industrial sites, commercial buildings and homes. She’ll write stories about how these buildings could have totally new uses thirty years from now. Then, she’ll put photos and text together for art exhibits or maybe a book.

“It’s like an exercise to take these photos and write a caption for them in the context of the next thrity years, so it’s a little more exploratory.”

Right now, Christensen’s touring Rust Belt cities that are dealing with abandoned buildings. Gary Indiana is just one stop.

“So, we’ll turn left at Broadway.”

Christensen got a tip about a closed building.

“It is a closed performing arts school. It’s closed a few years ago when the city had to consolidate the schools.”

Christensen and I meet a young man named John. He lives nearby and he tells Christensen the closed school’s kind of an open wound.

“Kids just running through there, trust me. You see how the windows broken in?”

But Christensen asks John, What about the future? What could it be?

“I always thought of this being a recreational center for the kids. People can be indoors and play basketball and stuff all year round, stuff like that.”

Christensen notes all this and takes some snapshots of the building.

She’ll do this again and again in Gary and other Rust Belt towns. Christiansen says she wants to return some day – maybe with a book or photo exhibits. She wants people talking about what could happen to these places.

“People can come to arts and access a photo or a sculpture or a creative website from across the board, so I see the arts as central in the conversation about what our future is going to look like on the ground.”

Christensen says documentaries or art can’t solve all the problems people face with abandoned buildings but maybe it could be a good place to start.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

School’s Back, Sans Textbooks

  • Several universities are testing out the new Kindle DX, hoping to save money and paper on printing (Photo source: K.lee at Wikimedia Commons)

This fall, six colleges and
universities are throwing out
a lot of their textbooks. Rebecca
Williams reports they’re testing
out the idea of students using
electronic readers for some
classes instead of textbooks:

Transcript

This fall, six colleges and universities are throwing out a lot of their textbooks. Rebecca Williams reports they’re testing out the idea of students using electronic readers for some classes instead of textbooks:

The schools are Case Western, Arizona State, Reed College, Pace University, The University of Virginia’s business school and Princeton.

They’re all testing out the new Kindle DX – it’s got a large screen that the text of textbooks will be loaded into.

Cass Cliatt is with Princeton. She says the University prints out 50 million sheets of paper a year – even though a lot of course material is online these days.

“So the irony is that the availability of digitized text has lead to an actual increase in printing because people don’t like to read a lot of text on computer screens.”

But she says these are different. The new Kindles let you highlight stuff and take notes the way you might in an actual textbook. So in theory, students won’t need to print.

Cliatt says they’ll be testing that theory to see if universities can save paper and money on printing.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Book Machine to Curb Paper Waste?

  • The Espresso Book Machine prints paperback books in about three to five minutes. (Photo by Suzanne Chapman)

Books are changing. Just like the music industry, books are going digital.
There are already those digital books you can read on a little handheld
device. Now there’s a machine that will print the book you want from a
digital file while you wait. Rebecca Williams reports the machine’s creators
say it could transform the publishing industry by making it a lot less
wasteful:

Transcript

Books are changing. Just like the music industry, books are going digital.
There are already those digital books you can read on a little handheld
device. Now there’s a machine that will print the book you want from a
digital file while you wait. Rebecca Williams reports the machine’s creators
say it could transform the publishing industry by making it a lot less
wasteful:

The makers of the Espresso Book Machine say it’s like an ATM for books. It
prints paperback books in about three to five minutes.

It’s a big metal and glass contraption with lots of little robotic parts on the
inside. Maria Bonn at the University of Michigan Library is showing me how
hers works. With a click of a mouse, she’s chosen a book file, and the thing
kicks into action.

(sound of a printer)

“This is standard laser printing on both sides of the paper… (TAP TAP TAP)
That tap, tap you hear is pages being lined up and put all into place.”

Everything happens so fast. I mean, I blink and it’s already printed the color
cover. Then the pages get rolled over this pot of orange glue, stuck to the
cover, and the whole thing gets trimmed down.

“You have to catch the book (SND of book dropping out) oops, which I
failed to do, and there’s your book!”

And just like that, I have my very own copy of “Stories of Ye Olden Time”
from 1895.

“It’s pretty indistinguishable from a paperbound book in a book store.”

And that’s exactly the idea.

Dane Neller heads up On Demand Books. It’s the company that makes the
machine and the software system behind it.

“Our overall vision is a radically decentralized marketplace where these
machines will be installed – could be coffee shops, libraries, bookstores,
cruise ships.”

There aren’t a lot of these things around yet. Just about 15 libraries and
bookstores have the machine. But there are about a million book titles
ready to go. And– if the book’s under copyright, the system automatically
sends off royalties to the right people. Dane Neller says these machines
could make the publishing industry more efficient.

“Most of the book industry is wasteful in that publishers built into their
model an oversupply of books because they factor it into their sales price.
Especially on the trade side, the bestsellers and books the general public
buys – typically that represents a 33 to 40% return factor.”

That means about 4 out of 10 books don’t get sold at bookstores. So they
get shipped back to publishers. Then they might get shipped out again to
somewhere like Costco, or Sam’s Club, or recycled – but they’re often
thrown away or burned.

Dane Neller says the book machine can stop all that extra printing and
shipping and waste – because you only print what you sell.

But he says bookstores will always need lots of copies of the big bestsellers
on hand.

“It will not replace centralized production because there will always be a
need to produce large quantities of single titles, the Danielle Steeles, the
large romance novels, that’s still much more efficiently done centrally. But
everything else can be done decentrally.”

So, when I walk into a bookstore in the future, there might be big stacks of
bestsellers, and then a few book machines – but not a lot of other books to
look at.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I don’t know what I want when I
walk in. I like to see what catches my eye.

Cynthia Ransley manages the Shaman Drum Bookshop. She says maybe the
book machines will help her industry make more money and be more
efficient.

But she says she can’t imagine not having a physical store where you can
spend hours just looking around.

“I think the book as an object is still a tangible part of people’s lives and
that’s where bookstores like ours really, you know, we have tons of
beautiful books and the way cover art has been improving and it becomes a
piece of art in and of itself.”

And that might never change. But what if you really need a book and it’s
out of print? Sometime in the near future you could go to a bookstore, do
a search, and just print it out.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Books With a Green Ending

  • The reporter's husband reading "I Can Save The Earth" to their daughter. (Photo by Charity Nebbe)

Book publishers have always had
a close relationship with trees, mostly
dead ones. Now many publishers are trying
to make nice with the planet by introducing
green books on environmental themes and
often on recycled paper. Charity Nebbe finds this trend has reached the
children’s section of your local bookstore:

Transcript

Book publishers have always had
a close relationship with trees, mostly
dead ones. Now many publishers are trying
to make nice with the planet by introducing
green books on environmental themes and
often on recycled paper. Charity Nebbe
finds this trend has reached the
children’s section of your local bookstore:

(sound of reading)

That’s my husband reading to our three year old daughter. They’re reading “I Can Save
the Earth: One Little Monster Learns to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.” It’s a new book
from a new division of Simon and Schuster called “Little Green Books.” Simon and
Schuster is not the only publisher trying to take advantage of the modern green
movement.

Melanie Rhodes is a children’s book buyer for Borders.

“I would say, for Fall 08 rolling into 09, I would say this is the one new trend. We’re
seeing Green product, recycled with soy based ink, or a lot of detail on the product saying
it’s planet friendly.”

Rhodes decides what will be on the shelves at Borders for babies and toddlers.

Ruta Drummond buys for the older kids – picture books for 3-7 year olds. The green
books she’s getting are on environmental themes, rather than on recycled paper.

“I’m starting to see titles: “That Litter Bug Doug”, “Michael Recycle”, “We Are
Extremely Very Good Recyclers”.

She’s also seen a few publishers try to claim the green mantle without really earning it.

“There was a publisher with a classic white book, and they said, ‘oh, well, we have a
green version. And they made the cover green. It was a green version.”

Literally green – the content was unchanged, the paper the same. Of course publishers are
in the business to sell books, so they’ll do what they have to do.

Parents who buy the books have another goal in mind. Presumably they want to raise
environmentally aware and responsible children. Can a book help them do that?

Elizabeth Goodenough teaches a course on Children’s literature for the Residential
College at the University of Michigan. She’s not a fan of books specifically designed to
teach kids a lesson.

“We all know that when someone is trying to teach us something, it’s a tough message.
We resist it and it usually backfires, and children don’t get the message that we’re trying
to convey.”

In spite of that, Goodenough does believe that books can influence children as they
develop their worldview – but the most important element of any book is its story. If
nature and the environment play an important role in a great story the kids will get the
message.

Which brings us back to bedtime at my house with “I Can Save the Earth”. The book
may be preachy, and it is, but it managed to capture my daughter’s imagination. This is
her favorite part.

(sound of reading)

The result? I’ve found toilet paper strewn all over the bathroom three times in the past
two days. The book has certainly had an environmental impact in my house and tonight
we’re gonna read something else.

For The Environment Report, I’m Charity Nebbe.

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Hemingway’s Paradise Lost

  • Students do 'the Hemingway thing' (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

A good book has the ability to transport
you to different times and places. You can travel
to far off exotic countries or cities nearby. You
can also visit places that aren’t so easy to get
to – mostly because they don’t really exist anymore.
Places like Hemingway’s wild north woods. Jennifer
Guerra reports:

Transcript

A good book has the ability to transport
you to different times and places. You can travel
to far off exotic countries or cities nearby. You
can also visit places that aren’t so easy to get
to – mostly because they don’t really exist anymore.
Places like Hemingway’s wild north woods. Jennifer
Guerra reports:

Say what you want about Ernest Hemingway’s writing, the man loved his North Woods.
Up until his early twenties, he spent almost every summer up north at his family’s cottage
in Michigan.

And it’s there where most of The Nick Adams Stories take place.

“They were walking on the brown forest floor now and it was springy and cool under
their feet. There was no underbrush and the trunks of the trees rose sixty feet high
before there were any branches. It was cool in the shade of the trees and high up in
them Nick could hear the breeze that was rising.”

This is Nick Adams country in the early 1900s. The Last Good Country, Hemingway
called it. Filled with cathedral-like forests and streams swimming with big fat trout.

Now, it’s said that some of The Nick Adams Stories are based on Hemingway’s own
experiences in the north woods. Especially the parts in the book about hunting and
fishing.

“That was one of his favorite things to do.”

Valerie Hemingway was with the author when he wrote The Nick Adams Stories. Before
she married into the family, she was Hemingway’s secretary and occasional fishing
buddy. She says Hemingway used to go on and on about the good old days back in
northern Michigan.

“He taught me how to shoot a gun, told me about the river fishing – and these were
things that were initially associated with Michigan. And I think Michigan
represented the freedom in his life.”

But if Hemingway went up north today, he probably wouldn’t recognize the place.

“I think we’ve done our share of damaging it. And I’m sure there are areas where we
can still find something that he found, but it would be few and far between.”

Mary Crockett just finished The Nick Adams Stories. She read it as part of a state-wide
reading project put on by the local chapter of the National Endowment for the
Humanities. The reason The Nick Adams Stories was chosen for the great state read was
because of its obvious ties to Michigan and the north woods.

But Adam and Eva Colas
just read the book in a high school writing class. They’ve lived in Michigan their entire
lives, and they can’t relate to Hemingway’s North Woods at all.

“It doesn’t feel really representative of Michigan to me, cause it’s not the Michigan I know.”

“Cause even if you go to
Lake Michigan now for camping, there are specific pits for bonfires and specific cabins and all
these designated areas that make sure you don’t get lost or hurt, and you don’t have
to do anything for yourself.”

Their teachers thought that might happen, so they came up with the next best thing. An
outdoor classroom where the students can talk about the stories while doing what Adam
and Eva Colas call ‘the Hemingway thing’.

“The nature, hiking, canoeing. We can’t do the hunting/fishing thing, but just sort
of experiencing nature as nature.”

“Michigan as it was back in the day when this takes
place.”

See, that’s the beauty of a good book. Virginia Murphy teaches a class on Environmental
Literature at the University of Michigan. She says just because the students can’t
experience Hemingway’s world as it was back in the day, doesn’t mean they can’t learn
from his words.

“It allows them to see an environment that they’re not necessarily exposed to on a
daily basis. Most of us live in cities, drive our cars, work in buildings. And so it offers us a
perspective that we don’t have.”

So even if you never got to experience the north woods with all the big open spaces and
virgin forests and clear blue streams, well, there’s always the public library.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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