Tag: green

Billions for Better Rail Service

  • High speed trains may be sprouting up across the country in light of the recent initiative. (Photo courtesy of Black Leon)

The U.S. government is spending billions of dollars to improve the nation’s railroads and passenger train service. But those billions will be just the beginning of the cost of updating rail service. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The U.S. government is spending billions of dollars to improve the nation’s railroads and passenger train service. But those billions will be just the beginning of the cost of updating rail service. Lester Graham reports:

New investments in higher-speed rail are making passenger rail supporters almost giddy. Eight billion dollars from the Recovery Act is seed money for new high-speed routes in California and Florida and improvements for existing routes in other regions.

At a recent National Press Club panel discussion, Amtrak’s Joseph McHugh said Amtrak is not getting any of that money… but it’ll improve the freight railroads on which Amtrak operates its trains.

McHugh: And that means higher speeds, reduced trip time, additional frequencies, improved facilities, and a higher level of reliability for our services all around the country.

Beyond that first eight-billion dollars, the Department of Transportation’s so-called TIGER grants mean a few billion dollars more for further upgrades railroads and depots that tie into commuter rail, light rail and other mass transit.

Supporters of rail are expecting big things from the investments.

But others see spending billions upon billions of dollars on passenger rail as wasted money. They don’t see the utopia of transportation in better, faster trains. Many online comments from readers of stories on higher-speed rail indicate they don’t want the government to subsidize rail projects. They see it as stealing from necessary highway and bridge improvements. Others are more political, saying the government is trying to imitate the high-speed rail of Europe when –they feel– Americans are more independent and prefer cars.

So the debate sometimes devolves into — car versus train. Or individuality versus socialism.

Susan Zielinksi heads up the Universtiy of Michigan’s SMART transit project. She says that’s the wrong way to view it.

Zielinski:I think we get ourselves stuck in the polarization and this isn’t about getting rid of cars.

She says better passenger rail and tying it in to better mass transit gives more people more choices. She notes not everyone has access to a reliable car.

Environmentalists add… the train is just more environmentally friendly. Howard Lerner is with the Environmental Law and Policy Center.

Lerner: On a per-passenger-mile basis, rail is about three times as efficient as travel by car in terms of fuel efficiency, six times as efficient as travel by air. So, there are pretty substantial pollution reduction benefits, both in terms of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants when it comes to traveling by rail.

But the investment of billions of dollars during the Obama administration is generally considered just the down payment on the cost of bringing U.S. passenger rail service into the 21st century. Just a couple of years ago the Bush administration tried to zero-out the Amtrak budget. A future president might do the same.

Susan Zielinksi at the University of Michigan believes the improvements in rail service we’ll see in just the next several years will prove this investment is worth it.

Zielinski: Congress is not going to be able to go backwards on this. This is going to usher in a whole new set of industry opportunities, of economic development in communities, of new opportunities for jobs.

But even people who like the idea of improved passenger rail service say if this doesn’t result in the trains arriving on time… doesn’t fix the problem of having no transportation once they arrive at the depot… doesn’t spiff up the drab Amtrak train cars… and keep train ticket prices reasonable… it’ll be hard not to keep piling into the car or cramming themselves into an airline seat.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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New Houses Get a Little Smaller

  • Huge houses are on the decline. (Photo courtesy of Brendel Signature)

The American dream of home ownership has become a trend of bigger and bigger houses. The square footage of new, detached houses crept upwards for decades even though families shrank. Recent economic troubles have stopped the big house trend. Shawn Allee reports:

Transcript

You might not know it but the American dream of home ownership has translated into bigger and bigger houses.

The square footage of new, detached houses crept upward for decades, even though families shrank.
Shawn Allee reports recent economic troubles have stopped the big-house trend.

Housing stats kinda say it all.

Just after World War II, brand new single-family detached homes were about 1100 square feet.
By 2007, they were twice as big.
One builder, Andrew Konovodoff, says 2007 was the peak.

Konovodoff: My analogy is, you go to McDonalds, you can up-charge or supersize your meal and get a couple hundred extra french fries.

Alee: People did that with homes?

Konovodoff: Yeah. Money was available. People bought more home than they needed. Now, I think people have trended back the other way.

Konovodoff’s right.
The U-S Census bureau says brand-new homes shrank for two years straight, and home builders say they’re going to build smaller for at least another year.

That hasn’t happened in decades, and builders like Konovodoff are adjusting

In the smaller square footages you won’t see a formal dining room … you’ll have an eat-in kitchen. We’ve pushed out the formal dining room.

Konovodoff says he’s considering even smaller designs.
He says it’ll be trickier to make a good living, so he’s not exactly happy with the trend.
But there are people who are glad houses are getting smaller.

One of them’s Alex Wilson.
He edits a magazine called Environmental Building News.

Wilson: In building a house, we need lumber, new windows and a whole range of building materials. It’s just common sense that a smaller house will use less materials. Even with any material, a so-called green material made from recycled content, there’re still impacts from manufacturing that product and shipping it to the job site. So, when we use less, we reduce environmental impact.

Wilson says the size of new homes has dropped just a bit … maybe the equivalent of a big closet or a tiny, tiny dining room.

He’d like homes to see homes get even smaller, but that won’t happen until our heating and cooling bills jump higher.

Wilson: I think if we were paying five dollars a gallon for gasoline and equivalent prices for natural gas and heating oil, then we would see a much more dramatic drop in house size.

Wilson says most of us won’t demand or build small houses until we truly fear a life-time of high utility bills.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Being Green and Being Bad

  • Researchers find, for example, being a green shopper might lead to some not so green behavior. (Photo courtesy of USDA)

We might think it’s virtuous to
buy things that are environmentally-
friendly: recycled paper saves trees,
natural cleaners cause less pollution.
But new research finds that when we’re
good, we sometimes use that to excuse
being bad. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

We might think it’s virtuous to buy things that are environmentally-friendly: recycled paper saves trees, natural cleaners cause less pollution. But new research finds that when we’re good, we sometimes use that to excuse being bad. Julie Grant reports.

Nina Mazar wants more people to buy green products. She’s a marketing professor at the University of Toronto business school. And she thinks people should spend money on things that aren’t harmful to the environment.

But Mazar had some concerns. Research in other areas shows that if people do one thing they define as moral or virtuous – say, helping others or being politically-correct – they are more likely to transgress in other areas.

Mazar wanted to see if the same was true for buying green products.

“In our society, it seems at least, that green consumption is being moralized. And we thought, well, if it’s being moralized, maybe it can have some negative effects.”

That’s the key: if we moralize one behavior, Mazar says, we’re more likely later to do something negative.

So, first they did a survey, and found that, yes, people believe that consumers who buy environmentally-friendly and organic products are more likely to be ethical, cooperative and altruistic.

Then they tested it. They gave money to two groups of college students – one group was asked to buy products in a regular grocery store, the other in a store with mostly green products.

Afterwards, Mazar and her team set up a computer game. The students could see how much money they were making as they played – and they could easily cheat . When the game was over, they were told to take the amount they’d won out of an envelope.

“And what we found was that people who purchased in the green store, as opposed to the conventional store, cheated more on that particular subsequent task, and they actually took out more money out of the envelope than they were supposed to. So not only did they cheat, they also stole money from us.”

If students were totally accurate, they could have won $2.07. Those who had purchased green products went home with $2.90 in their pockets.

Mazar says this finding about green consumption fits right in with the theory called moral regulation or licensing.

“Whenever we engage in virtuous behavior, whenever we had done a good deed, we get a boost in our moral self worth, which will license us further down the road to transgress.”

This has been studied for years in the opposite direction. People who do something bad subsequently do good things to cleanse themselves.

But researcher Sonya Sachdeva says lots of new evidence is coming in that moral cleansing works both ways. She’s a PhD student at Northwestern University. And says she noticed this in herself when she started taking the bus to school.

“And at first, when I would take the bus, it took forever and I just wasn’t used to it. But the fact that I thought that I was doing this really good thing made me feel morally licensed.”

Sachdeva says each person has different things that make them feel this way.

Everyone in the green consumption study was a college student. Sachdeva says they might not be used to buying green products, so they get a boost of self worth when they do. And then might feel morally licensed to transgress: to cheat and steal.

But she says people who buy green and organic products all the time might not get that same boost of self worth and so might not have the backslide. In the same way her attitude toward riding the bus has changed.

“But over time, now that I’ve been taking the bus regularly for the past couple of years, I no longer get that same kind of warm glow feeling, because I’m used to it and my reference point has changed.”

The researchers say there is something practical we can learn from this. If we want people to be more environmentally friendly, the message should not be that be that this will make us better, more virtuous people. But it’s simply what we should do.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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The New South, With a Tinge of Green

  • Some are calling Alabama the future 'green hub of the South.' (Photo source: Wikimedia Commons)

When Forbes Magazine ranked states
by their “greenness” the usual
suspects topped the list – Vermont,
Oregon, and Washington – all progressive
states known for their environmental
movements. Maybe not surprisingly,
seven out of the ten “least green”
states were in the South – the land
of coal mines and timber plots.
But as Tanya Ott reports,
there’s a growing environmental
movement down south and some of
its members might surprise you:

Transcript

When Forbes Magazine ranked states
by their “greenness” the usual
suspects topped the list – Vermont,
Oregon, and Washington – all progressive
states known for their environmental
movements. Maybe not surprisingly,
seven out of the ten “least green”
states were in the South – the land
of coal mines and timber plots.
But as Tanya Ott reports,
there’s a growing environmental
movement down south and some of
its members might surprise you:

(sound of cars driving past)

I’m standing in a vacant lot in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. I see overgrown weeds and closed businesses, but James Smith sees something entirely different. He’s President of an international company called Green Building Focus. When he looks at this lot, he sees an uptapped market. He wants to build an eco-industrial park here.

“There are many companies out there in other parts of the country who want to have access to the southeastern market, they realize it’s one of the fastest growing markets in the country. And if you draw a 500 mile radius around Birmingham you hit every major developing area in the southeast. It’s really the ideal location geographically to become a regional manufacturing hub for sustainable products.”

Alabama, a green hub of the south? This is the land of mega-churches and Republicans, not environmentalists.

“The federal trend over the last 10 years, longer than that, no doubt has been if you’re a Republican you can’t be an environmentalist.”


That’s Gil Rogers. He’s an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. He says nationally Republicans get a bad rap for denying climate change and trying to roll back the endangered species list. But at the state and local level, things are often different in the south.

“We have a lot of republican champions, as an example, in the Georgia legislature that are Republicans in terms of wanting lower taxes and less government intrusion into a lot of aspects of life. But then will go and realize that there needs to be more done in the way of environmental protection of water resources or of air quality. That those have real public health impacts.”

Rogers says these leaders often have strong ties their own piece of nature – maybe a stretch of land or a river.

“I’m a tree hugging, liberal – I mean a tree hugging conservative, Republican! (laughs) which I know some people may say is an oxymoron. But (laughs)”


But Charlie Houser loves Magnolia River.


(sound of boat motor)

He fires up his pontoon boat to give me a tour. Houser grew up here in Magnolia Springs, Alabama. When he moved back to retire, he worried about what he saw.


“I didn’t see the sea grass. We lost blue crabs, we lost pike.”

He blames agricultural runoff full of chemicals. So, Mayor Houser and the mostly republican town council passed really tough land use rules. All new buildings have to set back 75 feet from the river. New subdivisions have to keep their run-off on site. And it’s working. The brown pelicans are back and the river is less cloudy. The state has named Magnolia River an Alabama Outstanding Waterway.

Gil Rogers, with the Southern Environmental Law Center, says there are still big environmental threats in the south. Coal mining, timber, and other industries. But he’s optimistic.

“People have started to recognize that there’re some real threats from population growth, poor development patterns. So I think there is a movement here going on and it’s unique to the south, I think, in a lot of ways.”

Certainly, it’s creating some interesting alliances – like environmentalists teaming up with hunters. Rogers says, at least in the south, he’s seeing more cooperation than ever.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

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New White House Energy Plan

The White House is pushing
a new clean energy plan as
a way to deal with reducing
greenhouse gases. Mark Brush
reports this new plan might
help future climate legislation:

Transcript

The White House is pushing
a new clean energy plan as
a way to deal with reducing
greenhouse gases. Mark Brush
reports this new plan might
help future climate legislation:

The White House says this new energy plan is all about green jobs. There’s more money for so-called clean coal, and for biofuels, like ethanol.

The government had limited using corn for ethanol. The thinking was using food to make fuel was probably not such a great idea.

But the industry has not been able to move away from corn ethanol as quickly as hoped. So now the Administration is saying, corn ethanol can be okay – if the refineries are more efficient.

Lisa Jackson is the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“So this really unlocks the door for advanced biofuel producers, including advanced corn ethanol producers, to make investments and create jobs.”

Allowing more corn to be used for ethanol and investing in new technologies to clean up coal could win the White House some support if and when a climate change bill comes up for a vote.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Greening New Year’s Eve

  • The numerals for the New Year's Eve celebration on Times Square are brought in by pedi-cab. Just one of the many things that organizers say make this year's celebration more green. (Photo by Samara Freemark)

Tonight, thousands of people will
gather in Times Square in New York
City to ring in the new year. But
with all those lights and all that
confetti dropping, some people
are concerned about all that waste.
Julie Grant reports on efforts to
make the party in Times Square
a little greener this year:

Transcript

Tonight, thousands of people will
gather in Times Square in New York
City to ring in the new year. But
with all those lights and all that
confetti dropping, some people
are concerned about all that waste.
Julie Grant reports on efforts to
make the party in Times Square
a little greener this year:

(sound of pedicab)

When the seven-foot tall numerals 1 and 0 were delivered to Times Square earlier this month, they weren’t driven in on big gas guzzling trucks. They were pedaled in by human power – on pedicabs – which look more or less like a rickshaw.

That’s just one of the symbolic changes making new years greener.

The numerals themselves are saving energy.
There are more than 500 bulbs in the numbers. This year, the 40-watt halogen bulbs have been swapped out for 9-watt LED lights.

Susan Bloom is spokesperson for Phillips lighting – the company that made the switch. She says the numerals will shine even more brightly.

“Now they will deliver 80% greater energy efficiency, so, if you will, the times square ball numerals have gone greener than ever.”

Organiziers say the power for those lights is also greener – it’ll come from people pedaling stationary bikes in Times Square. Power from the bikes will be stored in batteries to light up the new year’s lights.

Oh, and about the ball.

In recent years, it’s been dropping its energy usage. Bloom says since 2007 they’ve doubled the number of lights, but since those are LEDs, the ball is still 80% more efficient.

Tim Tompkins is President of the Times Square Alliance. The Alliance is one of the event organizers. He says the time is right for the iconic celebration to go green.

“Times Square is always this place that’s kind of this mood ring for America that reflects whatever is going on. And certainly, in recent years, the country and world is getting greener and so it makes sense and is consistent with history that Times Square is going green in the way that the country is going green.”

There are a lots of other big entertainment events trying to reduce their environmental footprints.

Allen Hershkowitz is with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He’s been helping to green the Grammy’s, the Academy Awards, Major League Baseball’s World Series, and lots of other big events.

“When we talk about greening an event, like the Times Square event, New Year’s Eve in New York City, or the Oscars or the Grammy’s, we go category by category. Every category of operations, every purchase made, engenders an environmental impact.”

Hershkowitz looks for ways to reduce those impacts at each event – everything from finding fuel efficient transportation to get there, to buying paper products for the event made from recycled materials, to serving locally grown food. They’ve even started using recycled plastic to make red carpets.

But sometimes these efforts draw criticism. When the Democratic National Convention tried to go green in 2008,
press photos afterwards showed piles of trash outside the convention hall. People wondered if the recycling and other efforts really made any difference.

Hershkowitz says big events, such as the DNC or New Year’s at Times Square can make some environmental improvements. But their real impact is in the ideals they represent.

“Frankly, I think the biggest thing that Times Square can do on New Year’s Eve is what they’re doing – publicizing environmentalism. Saying, ‘hey, that ball is made with energy efficiency lighting’ to the 1-point whatever billion people that are watching that show.”

Hershkowitz hopes people look at that symbol and make changes in their own lives in 2010.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Greening the Golf Course

  • Audubon International estimates the average American golf course uses 312,000 gallons of water a day. (Photo source: Easchiff at Wikimedia Commons)

This time of year, golfing might be
the furthest thing from your mind.
But during the off-season, golf course
managers get to strategize how to best
treat their million dollar turf. Some
golf courses have a bad rap with
environmentalists. But, as Tanya Ott reports, there’s a budding
green movement in the golf industry:

Transcript

This time of year, golfing might be
the furthest thing from your mind.
But during the off-season, golf course
managers get to strategize how to best
treat their million dollar turf. Some
golf courses have a bad rap with
environmentalists. But, as Tanya Ott reports, there’s a budding
green movement in the golf industry:

Golf courses take knocks for using too many chemicals and too much water. Audubon International estimates the average American golf course uses 312,000 gallons a day.

Gil Rogers is with the Southern Environmental Law Center. He says that’s a boatload of water.

“In Georgia, they’re defined as agriculture – which doesn’t make any sense – but that allows them to use a lot more water than they would otherwise be able to.”

That can be a problem, especially in places with water shortages. Places like Atlanta, where a federal battle over water rights might soon leave the city high and dry.

(sound of rain hitting metal roof)

Of course, on this day, water doesn’t seem like much of a problem. It’s been raining all night. I’ve come to the Stone Mountain Golf Course, just outside Atlanta, to talk to superintendent Anthony Williams. He won golf’s highest environmental stewardship award this year.

(sound of power screwdriver)

Technicians raise the reels on the mowers to help protect the wet turf. Williams says it’s been a tough fall. In October, a big storm – they call it the 500 year storm – dropped 16 inches of rain on Stone Mountain in one day. Williams says the only thing that saved his course were the acres of native plants.

“When that flood – literally – came into the property, those plants did exactly what nature created them to do. They fluffed out. Fanned out and really just acted like a sponge.”

When Williams took over a few years ago he ripped out the non-native ornamentals and replaced them with native perennials that don’t require any additional watering. Just rain.

(sound of rain on roof)

Stone Mountain isn’t just using less water. It’s also using fewer chemicals. Williams’ crew is creative. Take, for instance, one of their big problems: wild geese. They can do a lot of damage to million dollar turf.

“We refer to it as the in-and-out damage. The ‘in damage’ is when they’re actually eating the grass and physically tearing the green up. The ‘out damage’ is as they’re walking, well, (laugh) the eaten grass becomes, well, goose droppings and then the cleanup is very, very difficult.”

Conventional golf courses spray foul-tasting chemicals on the grass or light fireworks overhead to scare the geese. But at Stone Mountain, their secret weapon is a 13 year old hound dog named Cushman. When the geese see Cushman coming, they think he’s a predator. Williams says it works like a charm!

This focus on environmental stewardship is paying off financially. Anthony Williams says they’re using significantly less fertilizer and insecticides. He estimates they’ve saved nearly $50,000 on chemicals in the last two years.

How confident is he about the health of his golf course? I asked him if he was willing to put his course to the test. Apparently, some old-school players still lick their golf balls to clean them. Not a good idea when there’re pesticides on the grounds. Would Williams do it now?

“There’s a lot of things in nature that you probably wouldn’t want to eat or put in your mouth. So the golf ball’s going to encounter a lot of those along the way. I would definitely line up with the ‘do not lick your balls.’ I’m gonna be on that side of the fence.”

More golf courses are starting to look at their environmental impact for the first time. They’re planting different grasses.

And nearly 1,000 US golf courses use recycled or reclaimed water. Another reason not to lick your balls.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

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Hanukkah’s Green Messages

  • President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama watch as a child lights the Hanukkah candles at a reception in the White House on December 16th, 2009. (Photo by Samantha Appleton, courtesy of the White House)

A lot of people worry that we make
too much waste during the holidays.
But some religious leaders are trying
to change that. Julie Grant reports
on one rabbi who wants people to see
Hanukkah as a holiday about sustainability:

Transcript

A lot of people worry that we make
too much waste during the holidays.
But some religious leaders are trying
to change that. Julie Grant reports
on one rabbi who wants people to see
Hanukkah as a holiday about sustainability:

Jewish people light candles each of the eight nights of Hanukkah – a tradition dates back 2200 hundred years – when the Jews reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem from the Greeks.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow says they needed oil to light the temple.

“They lit the menorah with just one day’s worth of oil, and, according to the legend, it lasted for eight days, until the new oil was ready.”

A few years ago, Rabbi Waskow realized this is an environmental message for people today.

“This could be seen as the conservation of oil.”

So Waskow wants people to see Hanukkah as a time to conserve natural resources in their own lives – and in public policy.

He’s encouraging people to drive less,
to support biking, railways and walking paths, and
to rest more, so we emit less carbon.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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O Christmas Tree

  • Lauren and her potted tree. It will stay outdoors until Christmas Eve, when it will be brought in for 14 hours. (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

It’s the holidays… which for some
of us means time to deck the halls
with boughs of holly and, oh yeah,
pick out a Christmas tree. We sent
reporter Jennifer Guerra to find out which tree is greener –
real or artificial:

Transcript

It’s the holidays… which for some
of us means time to deck the halls
with boughs of holly and, oh yeah,
pick out a Christmas tree. We sent
reporter Jennifer Guerra to find out which tree is greener –
real or artificial:

Lauren Northrop and her husband Tom are big fans of Christmas.

“We love celebrating it, I love decorating, but we always have this dilemma: what do we do about a tree?”

They didn’t want a plastic tree because it’s, well, plastic. And they didn’t like the idea of bringing a live tree into their house, only to have it die and then drag it out to the curb to be recycled.

So they skipped the Christmas tree thing altogether for the last four years. But then, their son Will was born in January.

“We decided that we have to have a tree because it’s, like, his first Christmas, and we want to have those family videos of him having his Christmas morning by the Christmas tree and opening his gifts, and just the whole experience because that was important to us growing up and we always had that.”

They bought a live, baby Christmas tree with its roots still intact. That way, when Christmas is done and the ground thaws, they can plant it in their backyard.

“I was planning to keep the tree inside until December 25th so that we could decorate it and put lights on it. When we went to buy it they said if you do that, it probably won’t survive. So keep it outside so the temperature is more consistent, bring it inside only for a short period of time. (Like how short?) As in December 24th. Will goes to bed, Tom and I are gonna be up decorating that tree and bringing it inside for about 14 hours.”

That’s probably way too much hassle for 14 hours of Christmas cheer. So a lot of people go for real, cut trees. Pat Fera would love to have a real cut Christmas tree in her house.

“But I’m very afraid of them. I had a friend of mine, this was back in the 60s, and she and her mother had gone to midnight mass and her father was home and he was sleeping on the couch and what woke him up was the sound of the tree just going wooosh.”

Apparently the TV shorted, it ignited the tree, tree caught on fire and the dad just made it out of the house. Fera says the ceiling was charred black and the whole place was smoke-damaged.

“Well yeah, if you’re not careful that’s certainly, yeah, a real tree is a hell of a fire hazard!”

That’s Bob Schildgen. He writes an environmental advice column for the Sierra Club called Hey, Mr. Green. So I called him up and asked him…

Guerra: “Hey, Mr. Green. Which is more environmentally friendly? Why don’t we tackle one at a time: let’s go with plastic trees. What do you think about those”

Schildgen: “Well, I don’t think they’re environmentally friendly for a number of reasons. One is that they’re made out of materials that use petro chemicals and metals and so forth. They get eventually tossed in the landfill, they have a life of about 9 years and then they’re tossed. They can’t be recycled.”

And since most plastic Christmas trees are made in places like China, they have to be shipped a very long way to end up in your family room.

So plastic is out.

Schildgen does like the idea of live bulb trees, but their survival rate once you plant them in the ground isn’t that great. So he says – aside from the fire hazard mentioned – real cut trees are a much greener option than plastic. With a real tree you’re using a renewable resource; the trees are raised on tree farms, so you’re not contributing to any deforestation. And they’re completely recyclable.

“I think another feature that I like about them is that, and this is not exactly an obvious environmental issue, but I think it’s very good for children to see something fresh, green, real, alive, and then watch it cycle as the needles fall off and it goes into its natural demise. I think that’s good for people.”

Schildgen says some farmers use pesticides on their tree, so if you’re concerned about that, you should look for local organic trees.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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Trying to Speed Up Green Tech

  • The US Patent Office is working through 25,000 green tech patents. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

It takes time for green technology
to develop. The US Patent office
has one idea to speed things up,
but Shawn Allee reports
that probably won’t solve the problem:

Transcript

It takes time for green technology
to develop. The US Patent office
has one idea to speed things up,
but Shawn Allee reports
that probably won’t solve the problem:

The US Patent Office is working through 25,000 green tech patents for things like better solar panels.

The office wants to give preferential treatment to 3,000 green tech patent applications. That could save a year of waiting time for approval.

But not everyone thinks a Patent Office backlog is the problem.

Stuart Soffer is a patent analyst in Silicon Valley. He says green tech just takes time and money.

“It really takes an investment, infrastructure and R and D. We can make a little wind mill that will generate power in your back yard, but scaling that to power cities is a different problem.”

Soffer says sometimes, patent delays are companies’ fault, not the government’s. So, speeding things up at the Patent Office might not get green tech in the marketplace any faster.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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