H1N1 Flu Still Around

  • This fall, the H1N1 vaccine will be combined with the regular flu shot. (Photo courtesy of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention)

You might think the flu season is over, but H1N1 flu is still around. Rebecca Williams reports health officials still want you to get vaccinated against the virus:

Transcript

You might think the flu season is over, but H1N1 flu is still around. Rebecca Williams reports health officials still want you to get vaccinated against the virus:

H1N1 flu peaked in the U-S last October and November.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates through the middle of January, 57 million Americans got sick and 12-thousand people died.

Right now, most of the people getting sick with H1N1 are in the Southeastern U-S.

Tom Skinner is with the CDC.

“We wouldn’t be surprised to see activity continue into the spring and early summer. How much activity we may see moving forward into the fall and winter it’s just hard to tell.”

He says anyone who hasn’t gotten the vaccine should. Especially people with the greatest risk of complications from the flu. Those are pregnant women, kids younger than 5 years old and adults older than 65.

This fall, the H1N1 vaccine will be combined with the regular flu shot.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Behind Big Oil’s Green Motivations

  • The Maryland Science Center is running a pilot project, renting out a handful of bright green battery powered cars to Baltimore residents and tourists. The cars use a battery that employs a special polymer film developed by Exxon Chemical. (Photo courtesy of the Maryland Science Center)

Some well known oil companies
are very publicly getting behind
alternative energy initiatives.
But are these serious efforts
or just a case of green-washing?
Tamara Keith tries
to get some answers:

Transcript

Some well known oil companies
are very publicly getting behind
alternative energy initiatives.
But are these serious efforts
or just a case of green-washing?
Tamara Keith tries
to get some answers:

The first thing oil giants like Exxon Mobil, BP and Chevron would
like us to know is that they’re not oil companies. They are energy
companies. So, they say, investing in biofuels, solar panels and
geothermal power really isn’t out of character… even if those things
only make up a fraction of their total business.

And I guess that’s how you end up with an electric car that says
“powered by Exxon Mobil” on its bumper.

Reiner: “So, you want to go take a look?”

Keith: “Yeah, sure.”

Vann Reiner is the CEO of the Maryland Science Center.
The center is running a pilot project, renting out a handful of
bright green battery powered cars to Baltimore residents and tourists.

Reiner: “Here’s the gas cap.”

Keith: “It’s an outlet.”
Reiner: “It’s an outlet, that’s right. And you see it’s 110 volt
15 amp – so household current.”

The cars use a battery that employs a special polymer film developed
by Exxon Chemical.

“So, you turn the key the way you normally would.”

(sound of car)

Exxon Mobil said it couldn’t make anyone available to be
interviewed for this story.

Reiner: “Nice job on acceleration.”

Keith: “Thank you.”

So I asked the science center’s Reiner what I wanted to ask
the folks at Exxon Mobil. Why in the world is an oil company
promoting an electric car? Isn’t that like working to put themselves
out of business?

“I see it as a technology company who has made a lot of money
in oil, no getting around that. But what else can you do? And
this is a way to insure their future, in my opinion. But I’m just
delighted that they chose us.”

Exxon Mobil also recently announced a 600-million dollar investment
in algae as a future biofuel – and the company is making sure we all
know about it with with newspaper and television ads.

“And they absorb CO2. So they help solve the greenhouse problem as well.
We’re making a big commitment to finding out just how much algae can help
to meet the fuel demands of the world.”

Still, Exxon Mobil is planning for oil, gas and coal to continue dominating
the world’s energy supply for at least the next 30 years.

Alex Yelland is with Chevron, and he says that’s what his company is projecting, too.

“Renewables is currently around 10 percent of the energy mix, and, in the
coming decades, that’s not expected to change a huge amount but from its
current state it’s relative state, it will grow significantly.”

Over the next 2 years, Yelland says Chevron plans to spend 2-point-7
billion dollars on renewable energy and energy efficiency. But Yelland
insists that kind of investment in energy sources other than oil isn’t
counterintuitive.

“For us, it’s about building a sound business for the future and
understanding where global demand is going and how we can meet that.”

“I think it definitely is smart PR.”

Edward Wu is with Cora Capital Advisors in New York. His firm specializes
in alternative energy investing. He says these companies are worth hundreds
of billions of dollars and, by comparison, their green investments are fairly small.

“They’re not going to replace oil, but I think they’re hoping that
they’ll be somewhat economically viable and at the same time definitely
serve a PR purpose right now.”

But Wu says the sprinkling of investments isn’t just about having something
to talk about in their ads.

“They want to have some biofuels in the mix. They want to have some battery
companies in the mix. They’re essentially dipping their toe in the water to
essentially hedge their bets.”

Because no one will want to be an oil company if, or perhaps we should say when,
oil stops dominating the energy landscape.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Interview: Energy Innovation

  • European consumers have been quicker to adopt new technologies, like hybrids and efficient diesel cars. Energy Discovery -Innovation Institutes might change that. (Photo by Michael Pereckas, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Making the shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy will be a long-term, expensive effort. But, there is the opportunity for jobs, energy independence and reducing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. This week a report from the Brookings Institution proposes a way to help get us there: Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes. These institutes would take a big picture view of the change and help researchers and businesses avoid pitfalls and false starts along the way. Lester Graham spoke with a supporter of the idea, Gary Was. He’s the Director the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University of Michigan:

Transcript

Making the shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy will be a long-term, expensive effort. But, there is the opportunity for jobs, energy independence and reducing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. This week a report from the Brookings Institution proposes a way to help get us there: Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes. These institutes would take a big picture view of the change and help researchers and businesses avoid pitfalls and false starts along the way. Lester Graham spoke with a supporter of the idea, Gary Was. He’s the Director the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University of Michigan:

Gary Was: Energy is a very complex topic. It’s a social issue as much as it is a
technological issue. In addition to the technological challenges of coming up with
new energy sources and proving energy efficiency, we also have a lot of social issues
involved as well. The business sector is heavily involved. Economics is a big issue.
Social behavior and social preferences are big factors in our energy use patterns and
our habits.

Lester Graham: Give me an example of that.

Was: Well, one example is plug-in hybrid electrics. There’s a lot of questions to
how these plug-in hybrids are going to function, and whether they’ll be successful. A
lot of that depends upon people’s preferences. The idea of plugging in, when you
can plug in, how long you have to plug in, how complicated or how difficult it is –
can make a big difference. We’ve seen examples of that with diesel. In Europe, half
the cars are diesel powered. We have the same technology here. There are no diesel
powered cars here. It’s a social issue, not a technological issue.

Graham: Steven Chu, the new Energy Secretary, has spent a good deal of his career
in research. What do you expect his reaction will be to your suggestion of tying
together this energy research?

Was: I think it will be quite positive. Dr. Chu has a background both in the
academic setting as well as in the National Laboratories, and I think he appreciates
well the capabilities of each institution. The meat of this whole proposal, and of this
whole concept, is that the National Laboratories alone, or universities alone, or
industry alone – the three principal research institutions in the US – really aren’t
prepared to handle a challenge of this breadth, and depth, and complexity. And that
we need a new paradigm. We need a new way to be able to take basic science,
accelerate it into development, and push it through technology, transfer it to the
private sector. None of these institutions alone can do that really highly successfully.

Graham: What is this going to do require? Is this government money to get this
launched? Is this going to be another scientific layer of bureaucracy when we get
finished? How do you handle this to make sure it’s effective?

Was: One of the problems we have with energy in the country is that, overall,
regardless of these institutes, this institute concept, its terribly underfunded – in terms
of its comparison to the impact on the economy. The energy business is a 1.5 trillion
dollar business in the US. It’s comparable to healthcare. In healthcare, there is
approximately ten times the amount of federal funds going into research than there is
in energy. So in comparison to the impacts on our lives, it’s underfunded by almost
a factor of ten.

Graham: If we’re to invest in these kinds of institutes, and invest in more research
into energy and how we use it, what kind of return might we see on our tax dollars
that we shovel over to you guys?

Was: Well, that’s a very good question. These discovery institutes, these will be
regionally situated, and each one might be on the order of 200 million dollars a year
funding, and so the entire price tag would be maybe 5 billion dollars. So what do
you get for 5 billion dollars? We expect that the transformation will be much more
rapid, it will be with fewer false starts, and left turns, or dead ends, and it will be
much more efficient than we’re able to do right now. Right now, the system is such
that technology advancements tend to sort of diffuse through society in an uncharted
and undirected way. The objective here is to sharpen that diffusion so that we can
pull these technologies out, translate them into useful products much more quickly.

Graham: Gary Was is the director of the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University
of Michigan. Thanks for coming in.

Was: Thanks very much.

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Ten Threats: Coastal Development Pressures

  • Construction along the shorelines can put a strain on natural systems. (Photo by Carole Swinehart/Michigan Sea Grant Extension)

One of the more subtle but relentless threats to the Great Lakes is
coastal development. Condos, ever larger and nicer beach homes
and buildings and parking lots in the watershed all have an
impact on the Lakes. As the population grows and the suburban
lifestyle keeps spreading, the health of the lakes is compromised
in countless tiny ways. Reporter Peter Payette finds those tiny
ways all add up:

Transcript

We’re continuing our look at ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes.’
Lester Graham is our guide through the series. He says the
experts who were surveyed to determine the threats say rapid
development is among the problems affecting the lakes:


One of the more subtle but relentless threats to the Great Lakes is
coastal development. Condos, ever larger and nicer beach homes
and buildings and parking lots in the watershed all have an
impact on the Lakes. As the population grows and the suburban
lifestyle keeps spreading, the health of the lakes is compromised
in countless tiny ways. Reporter Peter Payette finds those tiny
ways all add up:


Greg Reisig is standing at the edge of a 20-acre construction site
just down the street from the shore Lake Michigan.


Below him is a man-made pond a few hundred feet long. It was a
dry summer around here, but the pond is full.


In fact, Reisig says the water level is always the same.


“And that indicates there’s a lot of ground water flowing
here…there’s a lot of water in this pond and you can see what
was a whole big wetland complex…there’s a lot of cedar and red
osier dogwood…all the wetland plants.”


There are no wetlands here now.


The site in northern Michigan was excavated for homes a few
years ago.


But now the Army Corps of Engineers says the wetlands that
were here need to be restored. A few acres likely will be
restored. But Reisig says almost the whole site was wetlands
once. He expects it will soon be a subdivision with not much
more than a drainage ditch connecting it to Lake Michigan.


“What will that do to the amount of flow of water going into the
bay? Because of hard road surfaces, hard driveways, roofs,
buildings and supposedly fertilized lawns. What will happen to
the water and how will that increase the flow to the bay?”


The developer’s attorney says this is nonsense. Matt Vermetten
says this land was heavily farmed and mined for clay.


“There are pockets of quote unquote wetland and those are there
because of excavation for clay. So is this a wetland complex of
the nature we speak of when we typically speak of such a thing? I
think not.”


Disputes like this are becoming more common around the Great
Lakes. John Nelson is the baykeeper with the Grand Traverse
Bay Watershed Center. The bay off Lake Michigan and attracts a
lot of people. But Nelson says development doesn’t have to be a
problem.


He says the problem is people don’t think about the ecology of
the lakes. For example, east of Traverse City, Michigan, resorts
dominate the coastline. Along the beach, thick stands of sedges
and rushes extend out a few hundred feet. But the sections of
dark green marsh alternate with stretches of clean sand and white
lawn chairs.


(birds calling on beach)


Nelson grew up here and says this part of the lake was never a
sugar sand beach.


“They’ve located in a coastal marsh. Instead of celebrating and
dealing with that they’ve chosen to see it as they would like to
have it and then change it.”


The impacts of the changes are cumulative. Fish and wildlife
habitat is fragmented. The natural filtering properties of the
wetlands are gone.


So every time the city gets a rain shower all the dust and grime
and pollution are washed right into the lake.


Census data show people are leaving many of the Great Lakes
coastal cities and spreading out along the coastline. But it’s not
clear how local governments should plan for the growth.


Mike Klepinger studies land use planning for the Michigan Sea
Grant program. He says it’s hard to make direct connections
between a healthy lake and particular land uses.


“We are getting more planning along the shoreline than we had
thirty years ago in the state. The number of counties and number
of townships that have a plan has gone up, for example. But we
don’t know whether those plans are really doing any good.”


And it’s hard to implement good planning on a broad basis. In
any area, dozens of different local governments might have
independent control over development.


Multiply that by the number cities, townships and counties along
the coasts of the Great Lakes… and it’s hard to see how it all can
be managed so that enough coastline habitat is preserved.


For the GLRC, I’m Peter Payette.

Related Links

Suburbs in the City

  • Victoria Park seems like a neighborhood that one might see in a suburban area. But, in fact, it's located in downtown Detroit. (Photo by Nora Flaherty)

Many cities across the nation are looking to re-imagine themselves—they’re trying to become more like dense, walkable cities like San Francisco or Boston. But some people say that some cities weren’t originally designed to be like that. And people don’t necessarily want them to be. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:

Transcript

Many cities across the nation are looking to re-imagine themselves. They’re
trying to become more like dense, walkable cities like San Francisco or
Boston. But some people say that some cities weren’t originally designed to
be like that, and people don’t necessarily want them to be. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:


Aside from the cicadas and crickets, it’s a quiet afternoon in Victoria
park. There’s no one out on the tree-lined street, or on the large houses’
beautifully groomed front lawns.


Jerry Herron is an American Studies professor at Wayne State University. He says that this gated community has everything that people associate with suburbia.


“An artificially wind-y street, some kind of neoclassical details on the houses, a cul de sac at each end, plenty of cars in the garages, basketball hoops, all of the things that people would associate with characterstic life in suburbia. Except it’s in the middle of one of the oldest downtown industrial parts of the city of Detroit.”


Herron says that most urban planners wouldn’t expect to see a suburban-style
cul de sac right in the middle of the city.


“I think because it doesn’t look like one of those pre-arranged ideas of the city, cities aren’t supposed to look like suburban McMansions houses. Well, it turns out that that’s where people want to live, and if you build it in the city, they’ll come and buy the houses and be happy.”


That kind of thinking runs counter to what many urban planning experts might say. In fact, the success of Victoria Park might seem to be an oddity in planning circles, because most planners believe that it’s a specifically urban lifestyle that attracts people to cities, one that involves chic apartments, condos and busy streets, not lawn care and attached garages.


But Jerry Herron says that more suburban-style development is in keeping
with this city’s history.


“One of the important things about Detroit is that seventy-five percent of the people who live here – I believe that’s an accurate figure – virtually since the beginning of the city’s history, have lived in private houses, so that there’s really a dedication to this idea of private property, that they have something good, it has to be mine, it has to belong to me, which makes it very difficult then to imagine as desirable living in something I don’t own, that I have to share with other people, that I may just be renting.”


Regardless of whether they choose to live in private houses or high rise buildings, people who choose to live in the city like being able to spend less time in their cars than they would if they lived in the suburbs.


And they like the cultural attractions and diversity of the cities. And even if it might seem suburban compared to life in other cities, life in this city is still very different from life in the suburbs. Olga Savich grew up in Troy, Michigan a north-west suburb of Detroit. She now lives in a high rise building near downtown.


“I moved to the city because I just needed to get out of the suburbs, I lived
there my whole life, there’s nothing there but the mall, I didn’t
necessarily want to structure my whole life around shopping. So I moved to
the city because it seemed like it was exciting, like a new start.”


Although Savich likes the more traditionally urban aspects of the city, she
also likes the fact that there’s big open spaces, including Belle Isle park,
right in the middle of it.


“I used to walk down on a Saturday afternoon with a book and just sit on the rocks by Shane Park and you can put your feet in the water, you know, it’s really pretty. Going to belle isle, it’s almost like having your own Metropark, you know, right in your own back yard, it’s like a five-minute bike ride.”


And while a lot of people see Detroit’s big, empty urban spaces and abandoned and decaying buildings as the city’s big problem, other people are attracted to exactly those things. Jerry Herron lives in the same building as Olga Savich.


“There’s a lot of room in the middle of a city that’s 300 years old, a lot of green space in the city. And I think that people that are attracted to that kind of revitalization and the presence of significant decay find this a really exhilarating and exciting place. That abandonment attracts people, the way ruins attract people. And people who like it think it’s really unusual and unique and only Detroit looks like that really.”


Like a lot of big cities with decaying centers, Detroit is working hard to bring people in. Experts are thinking hard about what kind of cities people are looking to move to. And Herron says that anyone who’s trying to make a city like Detroit appealing to outsiders would do well to work with what the city already has, rather than trying to make it like other cities with different histories.


For the GLRC, I’m Nora Flaherty.

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Lofts Attract Urban Renewal

  • Lofts are no longer just structures with large windows and exposed brick. Lofts are quickly becoming a symbol of the lifestyle of the young, urban professional. (Photo by Lester Graham)

In cities across the nation, old warehouses, factories and other buildings are being turned into brand new luxury loft apartments, and for many urban areas, those apartments are a big part of trying to get people to move back to cities from the suburbs. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:

Transcript

In cities across the nation, old warehouses, factories and other buildings are being turned into brand new luxury loft apartments. And for many urban areas, those apartments are a big part of trying get people to move back to cities from the suburbs. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has that story:


Abby Cook is taking a tour of the Union Square Condos.


“…finished the dining area, old basketball hoops and signs throughout the building, so…”


The condos are being built in what used to be a high school, and when they’re finished, the apartments will have a lot of the things that lofts are known for. They’ll have high ceilings, hardwood floors, big windows and exposed brick.


“It’s a great use of the building, it’s a neat idea and just the uniqueness, I think of it.”


Cook is excited about the idea of moving to downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. She lives in the suburbs now.


“Location is key, I think. Being that I am a young person, and I go out a lot, being close to downtown, just being close and the convenience is huge, just huge.”


Developers all over are building these kinds of lofts in empty city centers. That’s because lofts are thought to attract a group that’s become kind of a holy grail to urban planners: young, educated, professionals like Abby Cook. They’re often willing to live in neighborhoods that other affluent people shun, and it seems, they love lofts. Julie Hale Smith is with Michigan’s housing development authority.


“Our main target goal was to increase population in our urban centers. When we looked around at other cities in the country that we were emulating, we noted that one of their linchpins of revitalization was the redevelopment of historic buildings or the kind of faux-lofting of new, or newer buildings to provide that kind of lifestyle, that kind of urbanist lifestyle for folks that chose to live in those kinds of dwellings.”


You hear the word “lifestyle” a lot when you talk about lofts. In fact, they’ve become almost synonymous with a certain lifestyle, and not just in the minds of developers and urban planners.


FLAHERTY: “When you think of loft apartments, what words do you think of?”


PERSON 1: “Urban living.”


PERSON 2: “Maybe urban contemporary types, younger…”


PERSON 3: “Young, urban, hip.”


PERSON 4: “Maybe en vogue for city living, kind of stylish…”

But what is it about lofts? Doug Kelbaugh’s the dean of architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan.


“Lofts have a certain cache… they started in London and New York, where older manufacturing buildings or warehouses, in the case of London, were converted by urban pioneers, often artists, into large, open spaces, typically without separate rooms, and now it’s become sort of a lifestyle issue.”


But luxury lofts like Union Square are a far cry from the gritty artists’ lofts of 1970’s New York. They often have amenities like pools, gyms and game rooms.


“What will happen, is you’ll come up this stairway – there’ll be a landing here – and then there’ll be a second stairway that goes up through the roof to your private rooftop deck…”


Developers often like to call any apartment with big windows and exposed brick a “loft.” University of Illinois Geographer, David Wilson, says it’s all a matter of marketing, that developers aren’t just selling an apartment, they’re selling an identity.


“Developers and builders look at them and they see certain physical attributes: high ceilings, large, expansive windows, and so forth, and they seize upon the idea of marketing these physical attributes. And the marketing process hooks up to the notion of, ‘Let’s play to the identity of these people. Let’s make them appealing, let’s make them attractive.'”


So when people see apartments that look like lofts, they don’t think about washing those big windows, they think of having the hip, urban lifestyle that the windows imply. Take Hannah Thurston. She’s a 23-year-old student. She and her husband are putting down a deposit on one of the Union Square apartments.


“I’m hoping that the other people moving in will be great neighbors. Obviously, we’ll have a lot in common being young professionals, obviously there are a lot of nice perks.”


But whatever developers’ motivations, and whatever people might think of them, lofts are succeeding at one thing: they’re bringing at least some new people many of the nation’s abandoned city centers.


For the GLRC, I’m Nora Flaherty.

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Midwestern Refuge Aids Wolf Reintroduction


A Midwestern sanctuary for wolves is helping re-introduce the
Mexican Grey Wolf. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports… worldwide the animal’s numbers had dwindled down to five:

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