Interview: Google’s Green Energy Czar

  • Bill Weihl is currently working on clean energy at Google. Before joining Google in early 2006, he was CTO at Akamai Technologies. (Photo courtesy of Google)

Chances are that you’ve visited the
website google.com. Google is
not only a leader in online tech, but
it’s also investing in high-tech
alternative energy, especially different
kinds of solar power. Lester Graham
talked with Google’s Green Energy
Czar – yes, that’s his real title – Bill
Weihl. His job is not only
to make Google more energy efficient,
but to investigate and invest in new,
cleaner energy use and generation:

Transcript

Chances are that you’ve visited the
website google.com. Google is
not only a leader in online tech, but
it’s also investing in high-tech
alternative energy, especially different
kinds of solar power. Lester Graham
talked with Google’s Green Energy
Czar – yes, that’s his real title – Bill
Weihl. His job is not only
to make Google more energy efficient,
but to investigate and invest in new,
cleaner energy use and generation:

Lester Graham: Last year, a report indicated performing two Google searches from a desktop computer could generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea. How true is that?

Bill Weihl: We think, as, in fact, does the scientist who was behind most of the data there, that that report was actually off – that you, in fact, could do several hundred Google searches, if not more, for the emissions that are involved in boiling enough water to make a cup of tea.

Graham: What is Google doing to reduce energy consumption, or, at least, reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Weihl: We have cut our energy consumption in our data centers – data centers are the, you know, big facilities that contain lots and lots of servers. We have cut the energy usage in those facilities by over 50%.

Graham: Is there anything we can do so that when we do use Google we’re being as energy efficient as possible?

Weihl: If you’re buying a new computer, look for one that’s energy efficient. And in the US that means look for one, at a minimum, that’s Energy Star compliant. Laptops also tend to be more energy efficient than desktops, in part because just to make the battery last long enough to be useful, they have to work really hard in designing them to make them energy efficient. The second thing you can do is when you’re not using your system, when it’s sitting there idle, you can set it so that it will go to sleep automatically, or manually, if for some reason it doesn’t go to sleep automatically, you can very easily tell it to go to sleep. That’s much more convenient, obviously, that shutting it down, having to reboot, and restart everything. And it uses about the same energy in stand-by mode as it does when it’s off – which is, in the order of 1 to 5 watts, far less than it uses when it’s just sitting there idle with the screen on and doing nothing.

Graham: Let’s look beyond the world of computers. Google has invested in research for energy efficiency in cars and electric generation. You have a program that’s called ‘R.E. is less than C’ or ‘renewable energy for less than the cost of coal.’ That’s ambitious. Is it realistic?

Weihl: First of all, it’s hugely ambitious. Secondly, I believe it is realistic. And third, I think it’s absolutely necessary. Today, coal is, by far, the cheapest form of energy, or electrical energy, that we consume, except perhaps for hydroelectric power, which is comparable in cost. But at least in this country, and most of the developed world, we’re not going to be building large amounts of new hydroelectric generating capacity. We’ve already dammed most of the rivers that are worth damming. We are, however, still building new coal plants. And coal is not only very cheap, but also it is, by far, the dirtiest, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of any of the sources of energy that we use. So I think it is necessary, in terms of dealing with the climate crisis that we are facing, to find a way to, over time, replace coal with cleaner sources of energy. And the only way, as a society, I think that we’re going to do that is if it makes economic sense. So that’s why we really started to focus on this initiative we call ‘R.E. less than C’ – to really try to drive innovation as rapidly as possible on the technology for generating renewable power to try to drive its cost down very quickly.

Graham: Bill Weihl is the Green Energy Czar for Google. Thanks very much for your time, I appreciate it.

Weihl: My pleasure. Thank you.

Related Links

Slacker Activism: Slacktivism

  • The "Lil' Green Patch" application on Facebook (Image by Jessi Ziegler)

Getting involved in a social
or environmental cause these
days is as easy as clicking
your mouse. Some people think
grassroots activism is just
changing its face as technology
changes… but other people think
we’re becoming slackers. Rebecca
Williams explores whether we’re
a nation of slack-tivists:

Transcript

Getting involved in a social
or environmental cause these
days is as easy as clicking
your mouse. Some people think
grassroots activism is just
changing its face as technology
changes… but other people think
we’re becoming slackers. Rebecca
Williams explores whether we’re
a nation of slack-tivists:

The other day I met this guy, Patrick Diehl. And I was trying to get him to describe himself.

“Uh, I’m a Pisces and I enjoy long walks on the beach and horseback riding; good sense of humor; still gets pimples.”

Add to that: slack-tivist. That’s a slacker activist. But he was telling me he wasn’t always this way. For twenty years, he was one of those door knocking, envelope licking activists. He worked for a governor. He used to drag his little daughter to rallies. Now he’s just burned out.

“I could get on the phone and call someone about an issue but I choose to sit down on Facebook and hit three mouse clicks and a return and feel good about myself.”

And lately, his slacktivism has hit a brand new low.

(sound of mouse clicks)

“My little green patch is dry. That means I’ve been neglecting it.”

If you’re a Facebook virgin, the Lil’ Green Patch is this application that lets you send plants to your friends’ online gardens. The idea is, the more you play, the more money advertisers will give to save the rainforest.

“Rebecca: “So wait did you actually do this for a while?”

Patrick: “Yeah!”

Rebecca: “And you felt good about it.”

Patrick: “Yes! I thought my spending time on here is leading to something bigger than myself.” (laughs)

But then, Patrick got in trouble. His wife – Anita – said he was just spending way too much time online. Lil’ Green Patch died. He’d rather play another online game, like Mafia Wars.

But you know, at least at one time Patrick was very active. Some people think clicking on a little green patch is their contribution to a better world.

“That’s a trending topic, that’s a trending term, slacktivist.”

Apollo Gonzales works for one of those big environmental groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council. He’s what’s called a netroots manager. You might say it’s his job to get slacktivists off their butts.

“If you measure the one click activism, or slacktivism, against someone who’s visiting their representative on the Hill once a year, then yeah I think it’s on the low end of what can be done. But you’ve got to start somewhere with a lot of these people.”

So, Apollo blogs and tweets and uses online social media to get people talking. Because talking sometimes actually leads to doing something.

“We have a world where we are more connected than we ever have been, and a world where we can share our stories faster and more richly than we ever have been able to. And that’s great for people who are fighting for a cause.”

And there’s actually some research to back this up.

Scott Campbell studies new media at the University of Michigan.

“There have been some studies recently that show when people use text messaging as reminders to go out and vote, we do see significant increases in voter turnout.”

He says cell phones and the Internet are basically giving us more ways to communicate – and that’s good for us as a society. But he says we do have to be a little careful – because if all our online friends think like we do, we can become little isolated e-communities.

Basically, the more Facebook friends you have, and the more new ideas you can share, the better.

So if you want to be a better slacktivist, you might have to make some choices. You could sign a million online petitions. I mean there are 15,000 environment causes on Facebook. And then there’re all those other things, like Mafia Wars, and other distractions that people like Patrick have to deal with.

Patrick: “I’ve been kidnapped to Barcelona but I’m gonna ignore that.”

Anita: “See you just say ignore, ignore it!”

Patrick: “Someone just sent me a slap on the rear end. I’m gonna ignore that. I probably wouldn’t but my wife is right here so I’m going to ignore that.” (both laugh)

With distractions like these… even slacktivism’s getting to be hard work.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Saving Energy in Online Activities

  • Servers at Expedient data center in Garfield Heights, near Cleveland, Ohio (Photo by Julie Grant)

One industry that’s not suffering in the economic downturn is information technology. The demand for IT keeps growing. But that worries some people. Our growing number of internet searches and data storage is using a lot of energy. Julie Grant reports on how some companies are making their IT more environmentally friendly – and saving money in the process:

Transcript

One industry that’s not suffering in the economic downturn is information technology. The demand for IT keeps growing. But that worries some people. Our growing number of internet searches and data storage is using a lot of energy. Julie Grant reports on how some companies are making their IT more environmentally friendly – and saving money in the process:

(sound of an internet search with a tea kettle)

By some estimates, two Google searches create the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling water for a cup of tea.

Most people don’t think about the greenhouse gas emissions caused by their internet use. But there are about 200-million
searches globally each day – and each search kicks a lot of servers into gear. It adds up.

Albert Esser is an IT expert with Dell Computers. He says
in just a few years internet use could use 3% of the nation’s energy supply. That’s a lot of carbon pollution.

“From a global greenhouse perspective, that’s about the same as the airline industry will cost.”

But Esser says computers don’t need to use that much energy. Most computer systems are so
in-efficient today – that they’re wasting more than 90% of the energy they use.

(sound of a data center)

This is a data center. It’s filled with racks and racks of servers.

A hundred different companies rent space here. Each company has its own set of servers – to coordinate its email systems, word processing, online credit card transactions – all kinds of programs its employees and customers use.

But data centers can be real energy hogs. They need electricity to run all those servers. That creates a lot of heat, so they also need air conditioning. One data center can use as much electricity as a good-sized town.

(sound of electricity in the data center)

“You can hear the electricity, in here. The piles of batteries you see are attached to the uninterruptable power supply.”

Bryan Smith is marketing director for Expedient, which runs this and other data centers around the country. His customers want their computers to be fast, and that takes a lot of power.

But Smith says the data center does everything it can to cut down on energy usage.

“It’s obviously in our best interest to be energy efficient, because we’re the ones paying the power bill.”

So, they’ve set up the server racks to make them easier to cool. They’re also building a system to pull in cool air from the outside, instead of using so much air conditioning.

Some companies that use the data center are also starting to use software to create what are called virtual servers.

“This rack here is a virtualization rack, so you’ve for one rack here that has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 computers in it. Right? So each one of these servers is equal to 16 physical servers.”

And so for each of those ‘virtual servers’ they can turn off
15 actual servers.

But, even with all that saved space and energy, Expedient’s data centers are growing faster than they ever anticipated.

This one built in Cleveland only two years ago is just about sold out of space – so Expedient is building another data center next door.

Albert Esser at Dell says the most environmentally friendly way to build data center is not to build one at all.

He says making better use of old centers, with virtual computers and other energy efficiency measures, produces a lot less pollution. And it saves money.

“I think the economic downturn, as harsh as it sounds, is the best thing which could ever happen to green IT. Because the economic pressures will make people think much harder to just build a new data center without changing the way they operate it.”

So IT is learning what a lot of companies are learning – that going green can mean saving energy – and that’s better for the bottom line.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

The Encyclopedia of Life

A new online encyclopedia wants to give all living things on Earth their own
web sites. Even the mosquitoes and leeches. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A new online encyclopedia wants to give all living things on Earth their own
web sites. Even the mosquitoes and leeches. Rebecca Williams reports:


The Encyclopedia of Life is like MySpace for bugs, birds and bottom feeders.
There are bios, photos and videos of 30,000 species on the site. But
the scientists who run the site are planning pages for every species on
Earth. All 1.8 million of them.


Jesse Ausubel helps manage the encyclopedia. He wants you to be able to
pull up the site on your phone or Blackberry while you’re on a hike. Like a
field guide to find out what that funny looking bug is.


“But it’s also for scientists looking for large patterns in nature – if you want to study all plants that have purple coloring or all
animals that live at least 60 years.”


Ausubel says in a few months, they’ll launch the interactive version of the
Encyclopedia. Experts will make sure the science is accurate. But if you
want to blog about your favorite spider, there’s room for that too.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Termite Worries More Myth Than Fact

An email is spreading across the Internet warning about termites in mulch stockpiles from the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast. As the GLRC’s Tana Weingartner reports, the email is more rumor than fact:

Transcript

An email is spreading across the Internet warning about termites in
mulch stockpiles from the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast. As the GLRC’s
Tana Weingartner reports, the email is more rumor than fact:


The email says Formosa termite infested trees downed by Hurricane
Katrina are being mulched and sold off by the state of Louisiana. The
writer warns the infected mulch could end up at your local big box
hardware store.


The Mulch and Soil Council’s Executive Director says that’s just “not
true.” Robert LaGasse says the well-monitored clean up operation and a
preexisting quarantine banning wood products from being shipped out of
the area are part of what keeps the termites from spreading.


“We’ve never had an infestation issue with termites in mulch, in bagged
product.”


LaGasse adds even if the mulch was shipped out of the region, the
chipping and grinding process along with the heat generated by the
mulch would be enough to kill any termite.


The Formosa termite has been a problem for parts of the South since it
was first brought into the country after World War II.


For the GLRC, I’m Tana Weingartner.

Related Links

States Seek to Ban Internet Hunting

  • Live-shot.com is a website providing a "Real Time, Online, Hunting and Shooting Experience." Many states are proposing legislation to ban web hunting, saying that it's unsportsmanlike.

A new kind of hunting has already been outlawed in at least one state… and could be in others soon. Hunters, lawmakers, and animal rights activists say the practice is inhumane. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley
reports:

Transcript

A new kind of hunting has already been outlawed in at least one state… and could be in others soon. Hunters, lawmakers, and animal rights activists say it’s inhumane. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:


John Lockwood has created the web site “live shot dot com.” For a fee, users can control a gun from their computer to shoot animals on his Texas ranch. Critics say it doesn’t allow for a fair hunt.


But Lockwood says it closely resembles an “in-person” hunt because someone is on-site. He says that person sits in a blind with the user-operated gun and acts as the user’s guide.


“The animal still has the same chance of detecting you, you know the human scents as he would in any hunting situation. It’s not like all that’s out there is this inanimate object that’s aiming and shooting. It’s just like if somebody was there hunting.”


Lockwood says he created the site to help people who couldn’t get out to hunt, like the disabled. He says the online hunters must have a valid Texas hunting license.


But lawmakers in several states have introduced legislation to ban the practice.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley.

Related Links

The Dark Side of Bright Lights

  • Most of us are using 125-year-old technology to light our homes. 95-percent of the energy used by a light bulb is heat. Only five-percent actually is used to produce light. (Photo courtesy of the National Museum of American History, gift of the Department of Engineering, Princeton University, 1961)

Many of us say we want to be good environmentalists. But we often make choices based on other desires. One of those choices is lighting. Most of us use lights that are very inefficient… and the trend in home lighting is moving toward using more energy… not less. As part of the series, “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham takes a look at light bulbs… and starts at the beginning:

Transcript

Many of us say we want to be good environmentalists. But we often make choices based on other desires. One of those choices is lighting. Most of us use lights that are very inefficient, and the trend in home lighting is moving toward using more energy, not less. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham takes a look at light bulbs and starts at the beginning:


We’re getting a behind the scenes look at a pretty significant historical artifact. Marc Gruether is pulling back a plastic tarpaulin that covers a row of file cabinets.


Gruether: “We are in one of the storage areas in the Henry Ford Museum. And drawer eleven has this light bulb in it which I will very carefully remove. It’s certainly one of the oldest Edison light bulbs that’s in existence. This is one of the lamps that was used in the December 1879 demonstration at Menlo Park.”


Graham: “Now, looking at it, I can see that it’s got that kind of bulbous shape, I can see the filament, I mean, I would recognize this easily as a light bulb.”


Gruether: ““Absolutely. It’s a recognizable light bulb. You’re exactly right. That all looks forward to the kind of lamp forms that became common and that we’d recognize today.”


And that’s not all that’s the same. Just like the first light bulbs, the incandescent bulbs most of us use in our homes today, waste energy. 95% of the energy used is expended in heat. Only five-percent actually makes light. That means everytime you switch on the light – if it’s an incadescent bulb – you’re wasting 95% of the electricity your paying for. In our homes, not much has changed in the last hundred years or so. But in commercial buildings, things have changed a lot.


Commercial builders and industrial architects learned a long time ago that energy efficiency is important. Most of the new office building and factories built today use passive sunlight and high-efficiency lighting that not only saves energy but uses the right spectrum of light to get the best output from their employees.


Moji Navvab teaches about light in architecture at the University of Michigan. He says you can learn a lot about good energy efficient light too. He says with the wide variety of fluorescent, LED, and spot lighting, you can get the right kind of light for whatever you’re doing and use a lot less electricity compared to a house lit only by traditional incandescent bulbs. It’s about using the right light for the right place. Navvab says, really, it’s pretty simple and you can get a lot of information about proper lighting on the Internet.


“If you really are focusing on healthy lighting or you want to save energy, if you go search on the web right away, you can get the information and then you can go to your local stores and they can match it for you.”


But at the local store, most of the time buyers are not very well-informed at all.


Beverly Slack is a salesperson at Kendall Lighting in Okemos, Michigan. She says unless they ask, she doesn’t push energy efficient lighting. And when she does mention fluorescent lighting, which uses about one-fourth the energy that incadescent bulbs use, customers grimace.


“Right. But, they don’t realize the difference in the fluorescent lamps, how they’ve changed, how the different colors have changed in the fluorescents. They’re still thinking of the old standard cool white so, people don’t want them because of that fact.”


Slack says what customers really want is dramatic lighting, and lots of it. They want trendy, recessed lights and track lights that often use extremely hot burning bulbs in a way that’s interesting, but not often very useful.


“They want decorative, decorative, decorative. I mean, it’s amazing. Because I can just see their light bills going sky high.”


Slack says the trend in home lighting in recent years has been just the opposite of commercial lighting. At home, people are using more light, more fixtures, and less energy efficient bulbs. With the trend in new houses being larger, requiring more lights, and homeowners wanting decorative lighting to show off their big new houses, conservation at home is often just being ignored.


It’s no longer about turning off the light when you leave the room, it’s about lighting up the showplace. And as long as the power bill is lower than the mortgage, it’ll probably stay that way.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

A Lighter, Brighter Christmas?

  • Author Bob Lilienfeld suggests that we find ways to express our love for each other in less material ways. (Photo by Denise Docherty)

The message from advertisers this holiday season seems to be: buy more because you and your family deserve it. Retailers are hopeful we’ll all spend just a little bit more to make the holidays shiny and bright. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham went to the shopping mall with a guy who thinks we ought to scale back our spending during the
holidays:

Transcript

The message from advertisers this holiday season seems to be, buy more because you and your family deserve it. Retailers are hopeful we’ll all spend just a little bit more to make the holidays shiny and bright. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham went to the shopping mall with a guy who thinks we ought to scale back our spending during the holidays:


Bob Lilienfeld is one of the co-authors of a book called Use Less Stuff. As you might guess, he’s an advocate of using fewer resources, including buying less stuff during the holidays. We asked him to meet us at a big shopping mall to talk about why he thinks buying less means more.


Lilienfeld: “I want you to go back to when you were a kid. Think about the two or three things in your life, the things that you did that made you really happy. I guarantee none of those have to do with physical, material gifts. They have to do with time you spent with your family or things you did with your friend. But, it wasn’t the time you said ‘Oh, it was the year I got that train,’ or ‘the year I got those cuff links,’ or ‘when I got those earrings.’ That’s the principle difference. We’re trying so hard to be good and to let people know that we love them, but the things that we love about other people and that they love about us have nothing to do with material goods.”


Graham: “There’s a certain expection during the holidays, though, that we will get something nice for the people we love and here at this mall as we’re looking around, there are lots of enticements to fulfill that expectation.”


Lilienfeld: “That’s true, but we’ve been led to believe that more is better, and to a great extent more gifts is not better than fewer gifts. Quality and quantity are very different kinds of thoughts and we’ve been led to believe economically that quantity is more important. But, in reality it’s the qualitative aspects of life that we long remember and really are the ones we treasure.”


Graham: “Now from the news media, I get the impression that if I don’t do my part during the holidays in shopping, that it’s really going to hurt a lot of Americans, the American economy. $220-billion during the holiday season. It’s 25-percent of retailers’ business. So, if I don’t buy or if I scale back my buying, won’t I be hurting the economy?”


Lilienfeld: “It’s always been 25-percent of retailers’ business, even if you go back 30 or 40 years, and that’s probably not going to change. It comes down to your thinking through what’s good for you, what’s good for your family, what’s good for your friends and not worrying so much about what’s good for the economy and what’s good for big companies.”


Retailers are expecting sales to be better this year than last year. So, that simpler lifestyle that Lilienfeld is talking about is not widespread enough to have any real impact on the overall shopping season. But apparently the economy isn’t strong everywhere.


We talked to some shoppers about their holiday shopping plans and the idea of simplifying things. Many of them told us that the economy was forcing them to cut back on gift buying…


Shopper 1: “Well, because of my limited budget, I have to buy, like – I have a list – and I have to buy one at a time, so, being pretty poor is being pretty simple. I’m kind of already living that way.”


Shopper 2: “I don’t need to celebrate Christmas by buying people gifts. And I can give people gifts all year long. And I — Christmas is kind of sham-y to me.”


Shopper 3: “This year, yeah, my family is like, ‘Don’t get me anything.’ I’m going to do something, but hopefully it will be smaller and less expensive and all that.”


Shopper 4: “Well, I don’t feel compelled to buy something because an economist says it’s my part as an American. And I think people are going to get smarter and smarter about how they spend their money and the almighty dollar.”


With the constant messages on television, radio, the Internet and newspapers to spend, there’s a lot of persusive power by advertisers to buy now and think about the cost later.


Since Bob Lilienfeld is such an advocate of a simpler lifestyle, it makes you wonder about his own shopping habits.


Graham: “Do you ever find yourself in the shopping mall, buying stuff for the folks you have on your Christmas list or your holiday list?”


Lilienfeld: “All the time. But, what I try to do is two things. One is think about the fact that more isn’t necessarily better. But the other thing I really try and do is look for gifts that are what I call ‘experiential’ as opposed to material. Tickets. Things where people can go to plays or operas or ball games so that they have an experience. Same thing with travel. I mean, if I could give my father a gift or if I could help him afford to go somewhere, like to see me and the kids, that gift is probably worth a lot more to both of us than if I just gave him a couple of bottles of wine.”


And Lilienfeld says you don’t waste as much wrapping paper when you wrap up tickets.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Interview: Great Lakes Need Citizen Input

A recent report indicates many of the problems troubling the Great Lakes are due to poor governance of the lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham talked with the chief author of the report, Restoring Greatness to Government: Protecting the Great Lakes in the 21st Century. Dave Dempsey is a policy advisor with the Michigan Environmental Council, which published the report:

Transcript

A recent report indicates many of the problems troubling the Great Lakes are due to poor
governance of the lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham talked with the
chief author of the report Restoring Greatness to Government: Protecting the Great Lakes in
the 21st Century
. Dave Dempsey is a policy advisor with the Michigan Environmental
Council, which published the report:


Dave Dempsey: “Well, we have sick Great Lakes in part because we have a sick governance
system. We have an array of 21st century problems facing the lakes from climate change to
continued degradation of some of our waters with toxic chemicals, but we have a 19th century
system of government that’s trying to protect them and failing.”


Lester Graham: “Now, the International Joint Commission, which is a body made up of
appointees by the Canadian government and the U.S. government, is to watch over the water
quality agreement and the treaty between the U.S. and Canada as to how we treat the Great Lakes.
And the Great Lakes Commission is another group that’s made up of representatives from the
eight Great Lakes states and the two provinces in Canada that surround the Great Lakes. And
these are all 21st century people, I know some of them, and they’re bright folks, they’re doing an
earnest and fairly decent job. What’s holding them back? They’re not 19th century people.”


DD: “No, but the structures and the systems they use are 19th century. There’s two problems: with
several of the commissions, they’ve become very politicized. The International Joint Commission
used to have a tradition of independence from political pressures and looking at the long-term
health of the Great Lakes. That’s been compromised since the ’90’s. But maybe more
importantly, with all these institutions, they’re relying on the old fashioned way of dealing with
public input. We think, in the environmental community, that the way to restore healthy Great
Lakes is to make sure the citizen voice is heard. These institutions cover a Great Lakes basin
that’s hundreds of thousands of square miles, and they’re expecting people to show up at public
hearings, perhaps traveling hundreds of miles to get there. Today, what we need to do is take
advantage in governance of the Internet, and other ways of involving people that don’t require
that kind of commitment or sacrifice because people frankly don’t have the time.”


LG: “How would increased participation of the public help the health of the Great Lakes?”


DD: “Well, looking at the history of the Great Lakes, every time the public voice is heard
strongly in the halls of government, the Great Lakes recover. Every time the voices of special
interests are drowning out the public voice, the lakes begin to deteriorate and that’s what we see
happening now.”


LG: “The Great Lakes Commission has had some success recently in getting more money from
the government for the Great Lakes recovery, the IJC has done a good job recently of working
with the media to bring public awareness to invasive species because of the Asian black carp. So,
are those moves the kind of thing you’d like to see to solve this problem?”


DD: “I think it’s helpful. Both of these commissions can use their bully pulpit to publicize
problems and call attention. But if you took a poll of the average Great Lakes residents, very few
of them would ever have heard of these commissions. We need bodies that look out for the Great
Lakes that are really plugged into individual communities, and that doesn’t exist right now. The
Great Lakes Commission specifically was set up to promote commercial navigation in the Great
Lakes, and while it has broadened its agenda to look at ecosystem issues, it has been an advocate,
for example, for the Great Lakes review of navigation that could result in more invasive species
coming into the Great Lakes by allowing more ocean-going vessels. We need an institution that’s
looking at the health of the Lakes first, not at the health of the industries that sometimes exploit
them.”


LG: “Bottom line, what would you like to see done?”


DD: “I’d like to see a Great Lakes citizens’ commission building on the existing institutions that
plugs into the individual states and provinces around the Great Lakes and brings people and their
voices together so that their vision of healthy Great Lakes can be carried out by government.”


Host Tag: Dave Dempsey is chief author of a report on governance of the Great Lakes issued by
the Michigan Environmental Council. He spoke with the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham.

Related Links

Gardeners Have Hand in Invasive Species Control

  • Centaurea diffusa a.k.a. Spotted knapweed. Introduced in the late 1800's, knapweed can reduce diversity in the region's prairies. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Gardeners have been ordering new plants and digging in the dirt this spring, but if they’re not careful, they could be introducing plants that can cause havoc with forests, lakes, and other natural areas. Gardeners can’t count on their suppliers to warn them about plants that can damage the local ecosystems. In another report in the series, “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Gardeners have been ordering new plants and digging in the dirt this spring, but, if
they’re not careful, they could be introducing plants that can cause havoc with forests,
lakes, and other natural areas. Gardeners can’t count on their suppliers to warn them
about plants that can damage the local ecosystems. In another report in the series “Your
Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Gardening, especially flower gardening, seems to get more popular all the time. Maybe
it’s because the baby-boomers have all reached that age where they’re beginning to
appreciate stopping for a moment to smell the roses.


That’s fine. In fact if gardeners plant the right kinds of plants… it can be great for
wildlife. There are all kinds of guides for backyard natural areas.


But… in some cases… gardeners can unleash plant pests on the environment.


Katherine Kennedy is with the Center for Plant Conservation. She says almost all of the
problem plants that damage the native ecosystems were planted with good intentions…


“I don’t believe that any invasive species has ever been introduced into the United States
on purpose by someone who willingly said, ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be a problem, but I
don’t care.’ They’ve almost all been inadvertent problems that were introduced by
someone who thought they were doing something good or who thought they were
bringing in something beautiful.”


English ivy, a decorative ground cover, is now killing forests in the Pacific Northwest…
kudzu is doing the same in the southeast… and in the Great Lakes region and the
Midwest… pretty flowering plants such as purple loosestrife and water plants such as
Eurasian watermilfoil are causing damage to wetlands, crowding out native plants and
disturbing the habitat that many wildlife species need to survive.


Bob Wilson works in the Michigan Senate Majority policy office. Like many other
states, Michigan is looking at legislation to ban certain problem plants. Wilson agrees
that these plant pests are generally not intentional… but they do show that people seem to
unaware of the problems that they’re causing…


“The two most common vectors for bringing in these kinds of plants are typically
landscapers, who bring it in as a way of decorating yards and lawns, and then aquarium
dumpers, people who inadvertently dump their aquarium, thinking that there’s no
consequence to that. Before you know it, something that was contained is now spread.”


But stopping the import of pest plants is a lot harder than just passing laws that ban them.
With mail order and Internet orders from large nurseries so common, the plants can get
shipped to a local nursery, landscaper or local gardener without the government ever
knowing about it.


Recently, botanists, garden clubs, and plant nursery industry groups put together some
codes of conducts. Called the St. Louis Protocol or the St. Louis Declaration… the
document set out voluntary guidelines for the industry and gardeners to follow to avoid
sending plants to areas where they can cause damage.


Sarah Reichard is a botanist with the University of Washington. She helped put the St.
Louis Protocol together. She says if a nursery signs on to the protocol, it will help stop
invasive plant species from being shipped to the wrong places….


“And it’s up to each of the nursery owners, particularly those who sell mail order or
Internet, to go and find out which species are banned in each state.” LG: And is that
happening?
“Uh, I think most nursery people are pretty responsible and are trying to
do the best that they can. I’m sure that they’re very frustrated and understandably so
because the tools aren’t really out there for them and it is very difficult to find the
information. So, it’s a frustrating situation for them.”


But in preparing this report, we found that some of the biggest mail-order nurseries had
never heard of the St. Louis protocol. And many of the smaller nurseries don’t have the
staff or resources to check out the potential damage of newly imported plants… or even
to check out each state to make sure that banned plants aren’t being sent inadvertently.


Sarah Reichard says that means gardeners… you… need to do some homework before
ordering that pretty flowering vine. Is it banned in your state? Is it a nuisance that could
cause damage? Reichard says if enough gardeners care, they can make a difference…


“You know, gardeners have tremendous power. We, you know, the people that are
buying the plants at the nurseries – that’s what it’s all about. I mean, the nurseries are
there to provide a service to provide plants to those people and if those people have
certain tastes and demands such as not wanting to buy and plant invasive species, the
nurseries are going to respond to it. So, we’re all part of one team.”


Reichard and others concerned about the problem say although agencies are working on
it… the federal government has not yet done enough to effectively stop invasives from
being imported and shipped to the wrong areas. They say it’s up to the nurseries, the
botanists, and the gardeners to stop them. If not, we’ll all pay in tax money as
government agencies react to invasives with expensive eradication programs to try to get
rid of the plants invading parks, preserves, and other natural areas.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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