42% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US are related to everything that goes into creating the food and products we use, and then throw away. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
More than 100 world leaders are
in New York today talking about
climate change at The United Nations.
A new report from the U-S Environmental
Protection agency says a big chunk of
greenhouse gas emissions can be pinned
on how we use land and resources.
Tamara Keith has more:
Transcript
More than 100 world leaders are
in New York today talking about
climate change at The United Nations.
A new report from the U-S Environmental
Protection agency says a big chunk of
greenhouse gas emissions can be pinned
on how we use land and resources.
Tamara Keith has more:
Some EPA scientists say greenhouse gas emissions are not just about tailpipes and smokestacks. They say you have to look at the big picture.
42% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US are related to everything that goes into creating the food and products we use, and then throw away. So, they say more reduce, reuse and recycle. And, a lot of emissions are caused by urban sprawl. We have to drive everywhere.
Brigit Lowery is with the EPA. She says there are ways to reduce those emissions too.
“Encouraging compact development, such as promoting smart growth. But also reducing development pressures on green space, such as redeveloping formerly contaminated properties.”
Lowery said she knew going into it that land use and resource management contributed to climate change. But she was surprised by how much.
An artists rendering of the solar cells on Babcock Ranch in southern Florida (photo courtesy of Babcock Ranch)
A former NFL player wants to build the world’s first 100-percent solar-powered city. He’s billing it as the world’s most sustainable city too. Rebecca Williams visited the planned site of the new city to find out how green real estate can get:
Transcript
A former NFL player wants to build the world’s first 100-percent solar-powered city. He’s billing it as the world’s most sustainable city too. Rebecca Williams visited the planned site of the new city to find out how green real estate can get:
Syd Kitson used to be Number 64… an offensive lineman for the Green Bay Packers. Now… he’s a developer… with a even bigger dream for fame.
He bought a 90-thousand acre ranch in Southwest Florida… called Babcock Ranch. He sold more than three-quarters of it back to the state as a nature preserve. The rest will become a city of 45-thousand people.
(video clip)
“It’s a place where business, education, technology, energy, transportation, and safety all merge into an exceptionally livable, environmentally sensitive community.”
It might sound like he’s packing a lot in… but the plans don’t end there. The video tour shows you a glittering utopia. Little animated people glide by on sailboats and Segway scooters. You’d get to work in your electric car, and plug it in while you’re at work. You’d be harvesting rainwater. You’d go camping on the nature preserve. And pretty much everything would run on the sun.
Syd Kitson says what’ll make the city even greener… is that it’ll meet all of your needs.
“The whole idea of Babcock Ranch is that you don’t leave. That you have everything you need in Babcock Ranch. That’s not to say people aren’t going to go to Disney World or the beach but for daily needs, go to work, shopping, normally have to get in their car and drive an hour, or 20 minutes – they can do that right there in their hometown.”
Kitson’s proud to say he’s won over a lot of local environmental groups. But his city of the future has its skeptics.
The Florida Sierra Club sued to stop the sale of the land. Kitson and Partners ended up settling the lawsuit… and the deal went forward.
Frank Jackalone is with the Sierra Club. He says he does like the plans for solar power… and the city looks pretty well-planned out. But he says once development starts it usually doesn’t stop.
“Even the best planned community could be swallowed up by a sea of urban sprawl… of roads, of shopping malls, of poorly planned development that surrounds it that creates the very nightmare that environmentalists fear the most.”
Jackalone says it’d be better to invest in older cities and retrofit for solar power. He says it’d be better to keep the land intact for Florida wildlife – like bears and panthers.
Syd Kitson says he does respect that point of view.
“And we hope at end of the day they’ll look at it and say you know we would’ve loved to have it all preserved but they did a great job here.”
The solar city is supposed to get underway within the next couple years.
But reality is blocking the dream. Right now… Babcock Ranch is still just a ranch with grazing cows and watermelon fields. The huge 75-megawatt solar plant that would power the city hasn’t been built yet. The Florida legislature still has to approve it.
And of course… there’s the little issue of the recession. The solar city’s planned in a county with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation.
Kitson says these are just temporary hurdles.
“It’ll take time but we think eventually the housing market will come back and this’ll be a place we think people will look first to live.”
In fact… he thinks all developers are going to have to build in a greener way.
“I think if any developer, any builders who aren’t thinking about doing it in an environmentally responsible way are really going to miss the boat on what’ll be happening when we come out of this recession.”
But as Kitson himself has found… even the world’s most sustainable city is still a city. There will always be opposition from someone who thinks the greenest kind of city is rebuilding our old cities.
The statement sites urban sprawl as one of the main causes of childhood obesity because often kids can’t walk to parks or schools (Photo courtesy of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)
Turns out there’s more to childhood
obesity that junk food and bad genes.
A national group of doctors places
some of the blame on urban design.
Jennifer Guerra has more:
Transcript
Turns out there’s more to childhood
obesity that junk food and bad genes.
A national group of doctors places
some of the blame on urban design.
Jennifer Guerra has more:
The American Academy of Pediatrics puts out so-called ‘policy statements’ all the time. Usually they’re for other doctors to read.
But this time, the doctors group is taking aim at lawmakers.
The group issued a statement in Pediatrics Magazine that basically says urban sprawl is one of the main causes of childhood obesity because often kids can’t walk to parks or schools.
June Tester is the lead author. She says the statement was a little controversial within the group.
“A lot of time, physicians are too busy or feel uncomfortable about being in the role of an advocate. But it’s a shame, because when physicians are actually motivated enough to speak to legislators, it can actually make a big difference.”
Tester says the response from the urban planning community has been really positive. Now she hopes lawmakers keep the research in mind when it comes time to vote for legislation that will affect a community’s design.
An endangered holiday darter. Darters are among the most threatened Southeastern fish; they have been likened to aquatic canaries. (Photo by Noel Burkhead, courtesy of USGS)
A new study shows things are getting
worse for fish in North America. Lester
Graham reports water pollution is the problem:
Transcript
A new study shows things are getting
worse for fish in North America. Lester
Graham reports water pollution is the problem:
The U.S. Geological Survey finds nearly twice as many kinds of fish are now listed
as imperiled today than just 20 years ago. 61 types of fish have gone extinct.
Howard Jelks is the lead author of the study.
He says the decline in fish is because most streams, rivers, and lakes are in worse
shape because of sprawling development, farmers’ chemicals, and pollution washed
off parking lots and streets.
Even if you don’t go fishing, or really even care about the fish, Jelks says there’s a
reason you should care.
“You know, at a certain point, it’s a quality of life issue. If it’s not good enough for
some of these fish, it’s probably not good enough for your kids to swim in.”
And the experts say that means we all have to think about what’s going down the
drain and what chemicals we’re putting on lawns, and on farms.
Where is it?! Oh! There it is - up in the corner - eeek! (Photo by Tom Wojnowski)
Bats like our homes as much as we do. (Photo by Tom Wojnowski)
Tom Wojnowski and his wife, Brenda Hines, moved into a new home and discovered they had wildlife neighbors. (Photo by Kyle Norris)
Tom Wojnowski lives in the suburbs but on the edge of a natural area. Like a lot of suburban homeowners, he struggles with the damage to his house caused by wildlife. (Photo by Kyle Norris)
A woodpecker damaged Tom Wojnowski's house. He's learning to live with his wild neighbors. (Photo by Kyle Norris)
More and more people are moving into areas that are natural habitats for animals. And a lot of people are finding that the animals don’t want to move out of the neighborhood. Kyle Norris reports that this can make for some interesting interactions:
Transcript
More and more people are moving into areas that are natural habitats for animals. And a lot of people are finding that the animals don’t want to move out of the neighborhood. Kyle Norris reports that this can make for some interesting interactions:
Get this: woodpeckers want to live inside Tom Wojnowski’s house.
“There’s a hole. And when you’re in house here’s what you hear, you hear this: (knocks) and you know you’re being attacked!”
Wojnowski is not so keen on sharing his house with the woodpeckers. He managed to scare that one away, but then another woodpecker made a pretty good-sized hole on the other side of the house.
Wojnowski put up one of those menacing plastic owls, you know, to scare the woodpecker away – and he thinks it’s working. He’ll probably even buy another plastic owl. You know, with those cute eyes, all wide.
Wojnowski lives in a suburb, but it’s sort of out in the country. There are dirt roads, and lots of trees. And lots of wildlife in the area.
Wojnowski started having problems with animals pretty much the day they moved into the house. Actually, he can list off his problems to the ABCs.
“Well let’s start with A. Ants haven’t been a big problem. There’s been a few but none in the house and they’re out there so I leave them alone. B. You have bees and bats.”
Ok, this could go on for a while… so I’m going to jump in here.
Bats were living in the attic. Carpenter bees chewed holes in the siding. So, for “D” you’ve got deer. The deer ate pretty much all the landscaped plants. Ok so now, let’s jump to “F.”
There was this fox. It had been living in Wojnowski’s drainage ditch. And it would bury its kill in the lawn—things like dead, smelly skunks. Yeah.
So, one day Wojnowski was getting his mail and the fox came strolling out of woods. And they locked eyes.
Wojnowski noticed the fox was small and red… and beautiful.
But he was tired of dealing with it.
“So I took this rock and I put it in front of the drainage ditch hole. And he watched me do that and it was almost like ‘what are you doing to me here?’ So then he went next door and went to their drainage ditch.”
Wojnowski is not the only guy who’s battling it out with the wildlife.
As people keep moving into areas near wildlife, there are problems. I mean at a certain point it starts to feel like…(Boxing announcer: in this corner, with acres of ravaged lawns and gardens to their credit, we have the wildlife. (applause and boos) And in this corner, with a hoe, live traps, and a BB gun, we have the human homeowners…” (applause and boos and the ‘ding’ of the boxing bell)
But experts say it does not actually have to be ‘us’ versus ‘them’.
Jennifer Kleitch is a wildlife technician with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
She says people need to realize that they’re part of the problem.
Dog food outside is a free meal for coyotes. People who mow their lawns all the way to the edge of their pond create paradise for geese: short grass near water.
And then there’s this kind of thing which can happen with raccoons:
“If we leave out our garbage and they get into it, we get mad and they’re being a nuisance. But we are in essence responsible for them being there and being drawn to it.”
She says people tend look at it as if animals are the problem. But… the people moved into the animals’ neighborhood.
Stephen Vantassel says we’re conflicted about wildlife. He’s a wildlife damage educator with the University of Nebraska Lincoln Extension office.
“We tend to have the Disney effect with wildlife. We have these rather pastoral images of a person walking through a deep forest and seeing the deer in the distance. And then that attitude can change dramatically when they see that same deer ravaging a plant they paid $500 for to have put in their backyard.”
He says when people start thinking of wildlife as “evil” (As in, “that thing that tore up my flower bed is ‘evil’”) well, that can be bad.
The animals are not the enemy… they’re part of the environment… the same environment that people want to live in.
So… Tom Wojnowski? You know, the ABC guy?
Well, he says his perspective has changed a little over time. He still thinks if animals are destroying his property… yeah, well then they’ve got to go. But he’s starting to realize there are things he can do to discourage wildlife from damaging his property… without waging war.
He’s kind of getting into it actually. He’s started reading up on different animals. He says he likes and respects animals… even the mole tearing up his lawn. He thought it was a whole colony. Turned out… it was just one mole. But one heck of a hard-working mole.
Experts say there are plenty of cheap, simple things you can do just to prevent problems.
Like modify bird feeders to guard against squirrels. Chimney caps discourage uninvited guests from dropping in. And people can fill in the cracks and crevices around their home to stop things like bees and mice from sneaking in.
But the experts say that the best thing you can do is cool your jets. Stop viewing the animal as the problem. And realize that the animal is just trying to do its thing.
As for the wildlife around Tom Wojnowski’s place, well, they’re stalled at the letter W. Which is the first letter in his last name. The animals are still trying to learn to live with him.
Audra Brecher, who lives in Manhattan, says the city lights are her stars. (Photo by John Tebeau)
Brecher works in an architecture firm, "recycling" buildings from more than 120 years ago. (Photo by Mark Brush)
Brecher shops at a farmer's market, where she can buy fresh fruit and vegetables from Hudson River Valley. (Photo by John Tebeau)
Big cities have skyscrapers, smelly subway stations,
and people from all over the world. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to the
environment, Kyle Norris talks with one big city
resident who says that the people and places of New
York City connect her to the world:
Transcript
Big cities have skyscrapers, smelly subway stations,
and people from all over the world. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to the
environment, Kyle Norris talks with one big city
resident who says that the people and places of New
York City connect her to the world:
Audra Brecher wears her chestnut hair in a Louise
Brooks bob. Actually, she’s a dead ringer for Louise Brooks,
that silent film movie star. She’s stylish
and snazzy.
Audra lives in Manhattan. Her apartment is above a
pizza parlor on a bustling avenue. She says in the
evenings, she hears blaring taxi horns and the thumping
techno music from the clubs on her block. But she
loves everything about the city: its sounds,
its architecture, and its people.
I once asked her if she ever missed nature. She said,
“The city lights are my stars.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything. I don’t
feel maybe such a romantic feeling about stars, the
night sky. I feel maybe the same excitement when I
see the city lights and when I walk across Lexington
and I look north and I see the Chrysler Building lit
up and those beautiful, starry chevrons of the
Chrysler Building. I think maybe the feeling I have
looking at that, is what other people feel when they
look at the night sky.”
So here’s the deal. When I think of someone connected
to nature I picture a state park ranger. I picture a crunchy-
granola type. I do not think of someone who wears
fashionable clothes and wines and dines in the city. I
do not think of Audra. But Audra says she has a
better connection to the natural world than people in the
suburbs:
“I go to the Union Square market on Saturday and I
buy varieties of apple that have come from the
Hudson River Valley and I know my parents, who
live in the suburbs in Florida, they go to the grocery store
where they buy everything pre-packaged and already
cut up fruit. I feel like my experience is actually closer to
nature even though I’m in heart of Manhattan.”
Audra works in an architecture firm. She’s a historic
preservationist, and she’s studied architecture all over the
world. But she grew up in the Florida suburbs. And
what she saw there – the sprawl and development –
seemed wrong to her:
“What led me to do what I do is noticing how
unhappy I was with a suburban existence. Having to
get in car to drive somewhere, or looking at
expanses of parking lot in strip centers and
subdivisions with gated communities that are named after
the natural feature they replace. Like ‘Eagle’s Nest.'”
Those new developments seem wasteful to her. She
likes the idea of re-using materials. And this
connects her to nature. At her job, she’s always in
close contact with old buildings and old materials:
“Yeah, I love the materiality of them. I mean, I love
an old brick from 120 years ago. I love the building
materials and the craftsmanship from that time. I
love the idea of taking something that has been cast
aside and might not be used and giving it a new
purpose, giving it a new vitality. Taking a building that
somebody has abandoned and giving it a new life.
To me, that’s the ultimate recycling.”
Audra says although she’s not walking through the
forest and communing with nature, she feels
ecologically responsible in different ways. She either walks or takes public transportation to get someplace. She never drives a car.
“I’m not asking so much of the world in terms of
water and energy and resources and I feel like when
live in dense environment you are allowing for those
things to remain protected and safe. And pristine. So
I feel like a responsible citizen living in Manhattan
in many ways.”
This stylish city-slicker may not be the person
who pops in your head when you think of someone who’s connected to nature. But Audra’s
deeply connected to the world around her in her own way. She’s also aware of how we can use natural
resources in better ways.
Landowners who are opposed to the beltway say no matter which route it follows, it'll be cutting through prime farmland. Proponents of the beltway say the highway is needed to support the already fast-growing suburbs.
(Photo by Rebecca Williams)
As suburbs grow, politicians and city planners often promote new highways as a way to ease congestion and encourage more economic growth. Rebecca Williams reports on the struggle between local officials who want to encourage that growth and people who worry a new highway will fuel more sprawl:
Transcript
As suburbs grow, politicians and city planners often promote new highways as
a way to ease congestion and encourage more economic growth. Rebecca
Williams reports on the struggle between local officials who want to
encourage that growth and people who worry a new highway will fuel more
sprawl:
The Census Bureau says commutes to work are getting longer in the nation’s
biggest cities. Demographers say that’s because people are moving
out farther and farther from their jobs in search of more house for the
money or a quieter way of life. More people moving out to the fringes of the suburbs
means more pressure on two-lane roads and more congestion.
New highways are one of the tools local officials reach for when traffic
gets worse. People living in the fast-growing suburbs west of Chicago have
been debating a proposed new highway nicknamed the Prairie Parkway. The
four-lane beltway would connect these outer suburbs.
Jan Carlson is the Transportation Commissioner for Kane County, about 40
miles from downtown Chicago. He’s been looking forward to the beltway since
plans were unveiled five years ago:
“If you listen to the complaints, as I do, of people stuck in traffic and if
you consider the many economic advantages that moving that traffic brings to
us, it appears to me that the greater good is to move forward with the
project.”
Carlson says he knows new highways can rapidly speed up development in an
area, but he points to census data that show his county and others nearby
are already among the fastest-growing in the nation without a new highway:
“I am not one of those who subscribes to the theory that if you don’t build
it, they will not come.”
Jan Carlson says the new highway will make the local economy stronger,
bringing in much needed jobs to the suburbs, but many people are strongly opposed to the
beltway. Marvel Davis lives on a farm that’s been in her family for 170 years. Some of
her farmland lies within a corridor that the state has set aside for the proposed beltway.
“I tell people that’s the way sprawl happens. You think, well I’ve lost
that field to the farm, so the first guy that comes along and offers you
$50,000 an acre, your temptation is going to be pretty great, isn’t it?”
Davis says even though construction on the beltway isn’t expected to begin
until 2009, she’s seen a lot of new buildings spring up. She says it’s true
the area’s already growing, but she thinks the prospect of a new highway
might be encouraging more growth:
“So which comes first, the chicken or the egg? If word goes forth this
road’s going to happen and you come in with all kinds of developers, it’s
almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
And urban planners agree it really is a chicken and egg relationship. It’s
hard to say which comes first. Highways speed up the pace of growth. And
growth causes a need for more highways.
Bill Klein is the director of research with the American Planning
Association. He says new highways do ease traffic congestion, but only for
a short time, before those highways get packed with people driving out to
their new homes in the suburbs.
“It’s very difficult to build your way out of sprawl. The more highways you
build, the more sprawl you get. Intellectually we’ve known this stuff for a
good long time but sometimes the political will to do anything about it is
the bigger problem.”
In the case of the Prairie Parkway, there is a political heavyweight in the
parkway’s corner. US House Speaker Dennis Hastert has been promoting the
concept of an outer beltway in his district since he went to Congress in the
late 1980’s. Just last year, Speaker Hastert earmarked 207 million dollars
for the beltway in the federal transportation bill.
Landowner Marvel Davis suspects the beltway might not go forward if it
weren’t for the Speaker’s support. She says if someone could show her the
beltway was in the country’s best interest, she’d support it.
“But if I’m going to lose my farm and my community to make a few people
multimillionaires then I’m not willing to do it.”
Marvel Davis says she knows she could make a lot of money if she sold her
land to developers, and she did actually sell more than 100 acres recently.
But she sold it to her county’s forest preserve for half of what she could
get from a developer.
Even though it’s years away, the promise of a new highway is sharply
dividing these communities. Whether or not they see growth as a good thing,
almost everyone agrees a new highway will speed up the pace of that growth.
Religious groups are suing local governments across the country for denying permits to build religious buildings. Part of the reason is that many churches are building bigger buildings that take up acres of land. And many of the disputes are between rural neighborhoods, and so-called mega-churches, with buildings over 50 thousand square feet. A federal law limits the power of local governments to say “no” to buildings designed for religious use. The GLRC’s Linda Stephan reports:
Transcript
Religious groups are suing local governments across the country for denying permits to
build religious buildings. Part of the reason is that many churches are building bigger
buildings that take up acres of land. And many of the disputes are between rural
neighborhoods, and so-called mega-churches, with buildings over 50 thousand square feet.
A federal law limits the power of local governments to say “no” to buildings designed for
religious use. The GLRC’s Linda Stephan reports:
Bay Pointe Community Church prides itself on a contemporary worship style.
(Sound of singing, “Show your power, oh Lord our God, oh Lord our God”)
Members believe it’s their job to reach out to the world, and to the local community.
(Sound of singing, “to Asia and Austrailia, to South America and to the United States.
And to Michigan and Traverse City”)
But some people in the community think the church would be a bad neighbor. Right now,
the church in northern Michigan meets in a high school auditorium. But members have big plans for a
building of their own. It’ll be 58-thousand square-feet. That’s plenty of room for
Sunday school classes, a gym/auditorium, and even space enough to rent out to a
charter school on weekdays.
A year ago local township officials shot down those plans. They said the building’s
“too big,” that it would clash with the area, and that it would cause too much traffic.
Then the church sued, claiming religious discrimination.
The church has some unhappy neighbors in the rural area where it plans to build.
At a public hearing, resident Brian Vos told local officials NOT to back down,
regardless of the lawsuit.
“This isn’t about a church, this is about future development. Heck, Wal-Mart
could come in on East Long Lake. And if they had church on Sunday, you’d have to approve it.”
But, rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending itself in federal
court, the township settled out-of-court. It agreed to let the church build its building,
and even to let it expand to more than 100 thousand square feet within a few years.
Many residents are NOT happy with the deal and they’ve threatened to recall
the entire township board.
There are similar cases across the country. A recent federal law limits the ability of
zoning boards to say “no” to churches and other religious groups who want to build,
or to expand. Jared Leland represents the Washington-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
The group is bankrolling lawsuits on behalf of churches across the nation. Leland says
the law was created because zoning boards have used bogus arguments to deny permits
to religious groups they don’t like:
“For instance, a Buddhist meditation center was being restricted from existing in a
particular district because they would generate too much ‘noise.’ They
were silent meditation Buddhists. There would absolutely be no noise coming from such.”
Leland says because of the law, today, a municipality needs a
“compelling government interest” to deny a religious building project.
That’s a serious issue that has to do with health, safety, or security.
He says municipalities are usually worried about how a building will look,
or about parking. And he says that’s not enough:
“For instance, if they say, well, something this large is gonna generate too
much traffic, it’s gonna cause parking concerns in the residential district,
those are not compelling government interests.”
But some say putting a mega-church in an area where the community
wants to preserve farmland or keep sprawl away from greenspace should be enough.
“The question is: What is valuable to Americans?”
Marci Hamilton is an expert on church-state law at Cardozo Law School in New York City.
She argues that residential neighborhoods should have some say about what’s being built
next door, through their local government.
Hamilton says the law that Congress passed, RLUIPA, the Religious Land Use and
Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, is an unprecedented Congressional power grab
from local governments. She says people expect local officials to protect their
neighborhoods from problems like traffic, and noise.
Hamilton says since just the threat of a federal court case is often
enough to force a settlement, there’s an incentive for churches to sue
local governments. Even where the case has no merit under RLUIPA:
“What we’re seeing is almost anything appearing on the mega-church campuses.
We have one in Texas that has a McDonald’s on campus. We have a mega-church in
Pennsylvania that has an automobile repair. I think it’s hard to argue that
those largely commercial activities appropriately fall under RLUIPA.”
Hamilton says she believes the Supreme Court will eventually rule
that the law violates state’s rights. But the High Court has yet to hear a
land use case under this law.
The Great Lakes Myth Society's songs cover all aspects of living in the Great Lakes region. (Photo courtesy of the Great Lakes Myth
Society)
The Great Lakes Myth Society is a rock band with a clear sense of place. As
you might expect from their name, the band’s debut album is full of songs
about Great Lakes folklore. But their music is also infused with a subtle
appreciation for Great Lakes nature as well. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Dustin Dwyer has more:
Transcript
The Great Lakes Myth Society is a rock band with a clear sense of place. As you might expect from their name, the band’s debut album is full of songs about Great Lakes folklore. But their music is also infused with a subtle appreciation for Great Lakes nature as well. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dustin Dwyer has more:
James and Timothy Monger grew up in what they call the “former small town of Brighton, Michigan.” While strip malls and fast-food joints sprung up around them, the brothers held on to a sense of respect for the natural world.
“We were taught when you drive down the road with your parents, and you see a bunch of cranes, you stop, and you look at them until they leave.”
“…And when you see a lilac bush in someone’s yard, you stop and cut off several and you drive away quickly.”
On their debut album with the five-man group, The Great Lakes Myth Society, James and Timothy turn their stolen moments of Great Lakes beauty into songs about the region’s culture, history and nature.
(Sound of song)
“When the cold stars work overtime to impress you, and the Northern Lights rise up from the coral, And your bed is on your back…”
But while many of James and Timothy’s songs for the Great Lakes Myth Society are full of awe for Great Lakes nature, the songs don’t include any overt environmental messages. James says that’s intentional.
“I’m not a big fan of musical political statements. I think it’s extremely narcissistic to me to use your music as a platform unless you’re out there doing something behind it.”
James and Timothy say they prefer a more subtle approach.
“It’s always good to come up from behind people and imply.”
“We whisper in their ears.”
“Yes we do.”
So he and his brother often use personal experiences to draw the environmental connections. Like this song James wrote about his college days at Central Michigan University. It’s called “Isabella County, 1992” On the surface, the song has nothing to do with the environment.
“And it’s an Indian summer, and the tap water’s brown sand ‘cause the lamprey are crammed ‘neath the Chippewa dam.”
But in a song that’s essentially about the drinking scene at a state university, James includes a line about how sea lamprey affect the tributaries that drain into the Great Lakes.
“I think I may be the only person who ever used a sea lamprey dramatically in a piece.”
“I think you’re right.”
James says he worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for a summer cleaning fish traps at the Chippewa dam in central Michigan.
“We would just get up early, get some donuts, pull up the traps, pull out three hundred crawdads, count weird riverfish like chubs. I liked the horny head chub a lot. That was my – and the Texas hogsucker. You learn a lot about your state when you know all the names of the fish that come through.”
And if James is about the gritty, sometimes overlooked details of Great Lakes nature, Timothy is more about the beauty of the area. He’s more likely to write songs about the northern night sky.
“‘Neath a radio of stars, on every band unravel cars. In the distance, Old St. Ignace, beneath a radio of stars.”
“Across the Bridge” is Timothy’s love song to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
“We played a Chicago show directly after 9/11, like a couple days after. Like so many people, we were almost frightened going into a large city. I’d been writing about the U.P. and it kind of occurred to me that that was about the safest place, you know. Sort of in the event of a hurricane, you’d go to your cellar, I’d go to the U.P. in case anything bad was going down.”
Timothy says he just felt safer up north, where society and sprawl have yet to take over. He says it’s one of the few places he and his brother can still go to simply appreciate the Great Lakes – not to be advocates or fight for a cause, but to recognize and appreciate the nature that surrounds them. A place where the only intrusion from the civilized world is the music playing in their headphones.
The town of Elburn, IL is working to preserve their small town feel in the face of sprawling development headed their way. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Bulldozers prepare the site of the new train station in Elburn, IL. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Planners are hoping the new train station and denser development will save Elburn's rural character. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Rural towns on the edge of big cities often see encroaching suburban development as a threat to their way of life. One small town is feeling those pressures too. And it’s taking a page from its past to fight them. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this report:
Transcript
Rural towns on the edge of big cities often see encroaching
suburban development as a threat to their way of life. One small town
is feeling those pressures too. And it’s taking a page from its past
to fight them. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee
has this report:
Eric Gustaffson is a young guy who works at his family’s drug store. He says he plans to stick around because he likes his small town – Elburn, Illinois – just as it is. It’s still got a working grain elevator and animal feed stores. It also has a real town center, a strip of shops that people can walk to.
But like a lot of his neighbors, Eric’s bothered by some of the sprawling subdivisions that are popping up nearby. He doesn’t want to see that that kind of development come to Elburn. He says it would become a place where neighbors live too far apart and everyone has to drive to get anywhere. He does have hope, though.
“I really think that the plan that Elburn has set in place will work a lot better and will control how things grow a little bit more instead of just things from popping up in random places.”
So, what’s the plan? Well, it turns out Elburn’s looking to its past for help. Residents used to catch passenger trains here for day trips to Chicago. The passenger service died out decades ago, but now Elburn’s bringing in a new train station. It will be part of the region’s Metra commuter rail system.
By next year, commuters will be able to avoid the congested roads that lead to Chicago, but the town also wants the station to be the center of a new neighborhood, a cluster of new shops, smaller homes, and even apartments.
The idea’s to get people to walk to stores and the train instead of driving to them, all of which is very different from what’s happening in nearby subdivisions. Those are pretty much isolated tracts of big houses and little else.
There is some danger in Elburn’s plan, though. The proposed development could double the population, and the train station will attract extra car traffic to its parking lot. During our drive to the construction site, I ask the mayor, Jim Willey, whether this plan might kill the town while trying to save it.
“I get the impression sometimes people wish that we had some secret sauce we could spray on the town and keep it just the way it is. It’s sad, but you can’t do that and change happens, and we have to deal with it.”
(Sound of heavy machinery)
At the site, construction machines pack down a couple of acres of dirt. It took a decade, a lot of political will, and a hundred and forty million dollars to start the project. But Jim says that was the easy part.
It will be harder to resist the temptation to stray from the plan, and build only big, single family homes here. He says a compact mix of stores and housing will be good for the region, not just Elburn. If there’s enough housing here, maybe there’ll be less pressure to build houses on the nearby farms.
“You can’t go anywhere in the world and find finer farmland than where we’re at right now. So the least that we can do is, when we’re going to convert this to housing, is let’s think about what we’re doing, let’s try to make some intelligent decisions.”
There are towns that look like Elburn’s vision of the future. Last century, commuter towns with compact development sprung up along the country’s commuter rail lines. But they all got their start in the days before interstate highways and long car commutes. So, is it possible to mimic those towns now, in the post-automobile age?
Well, I put that question to Dave Schulz. He’s with the Infrastructure Technology Institute, a federally-funded transportation research group. He says it’s hard to keep projects like Elburn’s on track; homes are clustered close to shops, what planners call high-density. He cites Glenview, another Illinois town with a commuter rail station.
“Basically, a number of members of the Glenview board who were voted out of office for approving a townhome development that was judged, apparently, by voters to be too high density near the train station. I think we have a situation where people in the suburbs fear density.”
Schulz says it’s hard to change that attitude. But to fend off the sprawl of suburban development, towns like Elburn need to stay the course. Otherwise…
“If all you’re gonna do is build a bunch of stations in the middle of the cornfields with giant parking lots to allow people to drive to the station from wherever they choose to live, I think a fairly strong argument can be made that you’re not fighting sprawl, but you’re in fact facilitating sprawl.”
Dave Schulz says places like Elburn could be onto something. Maybe its plan for compact development will attract people looking for something different from typical suburban homes. If Elburn can keep its small-town feel, maybe newcomers won’t mind giving up their spacious yards and extra cars.
42% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US are related to everything that goes into creating the food and products we use, and then throw away. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
