This is the Environment Show. It's about our stewardship of the Earth and the beauty
and mystery of life in all its forms. I'm Peter Burlead.
Coming up, organic chemicals are concentrating in the breast milk of Eskimo women. They're
put in the atmosphere thousands of miles away and are used in pesticides and manufacturing.
Are red maples taking over Northeastern forests? If so, why? Scientists disagree.
Irrigation in the Northwest has created new rest areas for migrating sandhilt cranes.
And on the Earth calendar, organically grown cucumbers are being picked in Southern California.
It's part of a great American harvests. These stories are more coming up on the Environment
Show.
You're listening to the Environment Show. I'm Peter Burlead.
Eskimo and Inuit natives of the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic are accumulating persistent
or organic pollutants known as pops in their bodies, even though the sources of those chemicals
are thousands of miles away in Mexico, Southern Canada, the lower 48 states in Russia.
Pops include DDT, PCBs, and many other pesticides and industrial chemicals. Arctic native peoples
are exposed to greater concentrations than populations far to the south. Since the chemicals
move north in the atmosphere and come to rest in cold places where they no longer volatilize
through the warmth of the sun. Also, the chemicals bioaccumulate, which means they're retained
by whatever it eats them. Thus a polar bear carries all the pops that were in the fish
today, which in turn are laden with the pops in the organisms that fed the fish in the
first place. Sheila Watclucci is the Canadian head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.
She explains why pops are a particular concern to her people. Her native language is Inuititut.
Since most of her listeners have not mastered Inuititut, I asked her to continue in English.
What has happened is that these persistent organic pollutants have come from far away and
have ended up in the Arctic sink. As a result of that, have ended up in the food chain.
Our food chain, we are avid eaters of what we call country food and country food being fish,
caribou, a lot of marine mammals, and that's where the problem lies with especially our marine
mammals such as seal and whale.
Scythe say the impact of pops on human beings are not fully understood, but much of the
data that has been accumulated is disturbing.
It is starting to show up in many tests of mothers breast milk, in fetus growth, and so
on that there's going to be long-term effects to this kind of pollutants ending up in our
food chain and as a result in our bodies. In particular, with our children, anything
from playing havoc with the long-term effects of intellect and so on with their children
with what you call the endocrine disruptors, immune systems, lowering of immune systems,
there are many effects that could be happening.
Coping with pops contamination in the Arctic raises difficult questions. Mike Bradley,
epidemiologist for the Alaska Native Health Board, located in Anchorage, Alaska, says
40% of the calories consumed by Alaska natives come from natural food. He's involved in research
efforts to help determine how people should deal with pops.
What we're trying to do is to find out just exactly what those effects may be and we're
studying different groups primarily infants and mothers to see if we can detect subtle
effects from low-level exposure to these agents. One of the problems we get into is that
traditional diets are very, very, very healthy. The problem is that if people are concerned
about contaminants in food, they may not eat as much traditional food, which we believe
could be a mistake. So what we want to try and do is really find out what is in food
if there is a potential problem and if there is maybe to make some recommendations about
what people may want to eat, may not want to eat, and levels that they can eat, and still
use traditional foods which again are very, very healthy.
To make the scientific puzzle even more complicated, Dr. Bradley says some natural foods also
contain substances which help combat toxic chemicals.
One unique situation here in Alaska is that we think that some of these foods, like for
example foods that have saline and may actually be protective against some of these things
like mercury. So much of the research around the world somewhat applies to Alaska, but there
may be other factors here in Alaska.
Dealing with pops in the Arctic emphasizes the conflict between Western science and native
knowledge. The observations of subsistence hunters and fishers on the land are significant,
but perhaps not quantifiable in Western scientific terms. Nevertheless, the EPA has funded a project
to gather native observations. Amy Craver is research associate for the Alaska Native
Science Commission and has been interviewing elders in Alaska about environmental change.
People are noticing that especially the subsistence animals that they're hunting, that there's
a lot of abnormalities that people are noticing in the fish that they're catching, in the
caribou and reindeer and mousse, that they don't remember noticing before.
A global effort to take pops out of the environment is now underway. Delegates from over 100 nations
have been meeting under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program. To produce
an international treaty which would ban or limit pops discharges into the environment.
Sheila Watcloski has been a participant. She wants a strong, enforceable, and verifiable
convention. It would be designed to hopefully, first of all, stop the processing of some of these
contaminants and pollutants that end up. And then I think what it's real plan to do is to help
to find developing countries, find alternatives. First of all, because we understand fully
the struggles that other developing countries are having in the sense that many of them are
trying desperately to survive for themselves. The industry is important for many of them,
as well as the pest control to save their own children. Malaria, for example, is a major cause
of issue. But we're saying is that the mothers of the world, the mother, the inuit mothers of
the Arctic and the Mexican mothers, for example, should not be the ones that are having to tackle
this kind of issue. And we're hoping that the governments will be very open to creating a strong
convention. For the negotiations on a pops convention are scheduled and the process is supposed
to be completed by the end of the year 2000.
If you've ever seen a red maple tree, you know what a beautiful species it is.
It's bright red spring colors give way to scarlet purple and gold hues in the fall.
More and more, red maples are popping up in many parts of the country today.
And one forest ecologist goes so far is to say they could literally take over forests to the
Eastern United States. But as the Environment Show Stephen Wescott reports, this theory is not
taking root with some tree experts. We're talking about a tree that can totally change the character
of the Eastern forest. This is why I think it's such a big story. Mark Abrams is professor of
forest ecology at Penn State University. Well, that's the really amazing thing about red maple if
that it's increasing almost throughout the entire Eastern deciduous forest. And this includes
large areas of New England, the lake states, the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic region, and even part of
the South East. Red maples are a native species that traditionally were found in wet or swampy
areas. Prior to European settlement, Native Americans used fire as a means of clearing land
and regenerating growth. But as more settlers came, Native customs died out. Professor Abrams says
the lack of fire is changing Eastern forests of the United States. We had a lot of fire in the
history of the Eastern forest and red maple having relatively thin bark and being fairly shallow
rooted is quite sensitive to fire. And it is my belief that the recurring fire in the Eastern
forest up until about 1900 kept red maple in the wet and swampy areas where the fire would not
get to. And then when we started to suppress fire in the Eastern US about 1900, this is called
the Smokey the Bear Syndrome. This has allowed red maple to move out of the swamps and invade most
of our upland forests. Besides fire suppression, Professor Abrams says there are other factors
contributing to the increase of red maples. Historically, parts of the Eastern forests have been dominated
by oak and pine species. Professor Abrams says deer tend to eat more oak seedlings compared with
red maple, which means there is a greater number of red maple trees that can take root. Abrams
believes this change in the forests may not only affect flora, but fauna as well. The acorns and
the seeds that are produced by things like hickories and oaks and walnuts are very, very important for
many bird species and small mammal and deer. And the loss of these mast producing species as we
call it, I believe is going to have a dramatic impact on the population size of certain birds
species and mammal species that depend on this mast. And we don't know whether these species can
survive just eating the red maple seeds. Some insects lay eggs on trees with rough bark. Red
maples have a relatively smooth bark, which leaves Professor Abrams wondering whether this will
adversely affect insect populations and the birds that prey on them. But not everyone agrees with
Professor Abrams' assessment of the rise of red maples in the eastern forests. Red maple is not
taking over the eastern United States. That would be that's really an exaggeration. Dr. Don Leopold
is distinguished teaching professor at the state University of New York, College of Environmental
Science and Forestry in Syracuse. He is a dendrologist, someone who studies trees.
There's certainly a lot more of it today than there was 200 years ago, but that story is very
similar to dozens of other tree species around the eastern United States. Tree species which are
much more abundant today and in 200 years ago were probably some of our rarest trees, but because of
land use changes are now some of our most common trees. Red maple is just one of many that has
undergone that big change in abundance. Dr. Leopold says there are more important issues facing
trees in the eastern United States, such as the problem of invasive species. We have over the
last 50 hundred years brought a lot of trees into the eastern United States to serve as shade trees,
lawn trees, urban trees, Norway maples a good example about a quarter of a lot of street trees
throughout communities of the east are actually Norway maple. Beautiful tree, but it produces a
tremendous number of seeds every year and those seeds will enter natural stands of forest
and because Norway maples is one of the most shade tolerant trees in the east,
those trees can actually out compete, can get rid of the native trees and shrubs that are
very important for wildlife habitat and for aesthetic purposes. It's no small matter what's
happening, this is becoming a very serious concern throughout the east of the United States.
One thing is certain and that is that forests are constantly evolving and only time will tell
whether the red maple evolves into a dominant tree in the eastern forests of the United States.
For the Environment Show, I'm Steven Westcott.
We welcome three new stations who join the more than 200 now carrying the
Environment Show. They're WPBZ FM in West Palm Beach, Florida, KWAB AM in Boulder, Colorado,
and KZNZ FM in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Environment Show is a national production,
it's made possible by the W.Alton Jones Foundation, the William Bingham Foundation,
the Turner Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund and Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the
collector CarHobby, www.heming.js.com
We want our new listeners and everybody to know that we expect to hear from you.
Our comment line is 1-888-49-Green.
Email is green at wamc.org. If what you say makes sense, we might broadcast it.
If not, we might broadcast it anyway.
Virtualy every action by humankind affects the planet.
In the mid 1970s, the small town of Othello, Washington began receiving irrigation water from Columbia River's Grand
Cooley Dam. The massive amounts of water enabled them to grow a wide variety of crops,
from corn, sugarbeats, and potatoes, to alfalfa and wheat. With a stable population of about 3,000
people, other than a recently acquired McDonald's, it didn't look like things were going to change
much around these parts. But in the late 70s, 25,000 sandhill cranes began descending upon Othello's
fields and pastures. The cranes are migrants of Alaska and Siberia, and stop
off during their spring and fall migrations to feed on crop residue.
Now, hundreds of people from all walks of life are migrating to this tiny town,
to celebrate the arrival of this large flying bird here at the 2nd annual Sandhill Crane Festival.
Well, I'm Jackie Alcourt, this is my husband Ted, and we're from Spokane, and we saw the
Sandhill Crane Festival advertising the paper. Are you birders? Not really, I just wanted to see him.
David Miller's family grows Killing corn here in the Columbia River Basin. They make it into popcorn
being sold to cream watchers today. I asked him if he was an Othello native. Actually, I'm the
outsider. I'm married. My wife is born and raised here in Othello. The families had dairy farms
and farms here for 40, 50 years. Do they still have dairy farms? We've got an uncle that still has a
dairy farm. My father-in-law sold his farm about 15 years ago, and now it works in this full time.
During the popcorn? Yes. So as far as the Sandhill Crane Festival, is that bringing a lot of,
I don't know, famer recognition to the area? I think so. I've talked to several people here today
who come from as far as Olympia, to come and view the wildlife in the area.
There are six subspecies of Sandhill Crane's worldwide. The 25,000 annual migrants to Othello are
mostly lesser Sandhill cranes. But Washington has 16 resident pairs of greater Sandhill cranes,
which are listed as state endangered. Randy Hill is a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
He believes the festival helps foster appreciation for the visiting cranes and...
I think mainly it's appreciation for the birds that are here. And also it may add a little appreciation
to the local farming situation because the cranes are pretty much dependent on the farms farming.
Sandhill cranes have survived on earth 60 million years. Their bones have been found next to
dinosaur fossils. Sandhill cranes made for life and usually lay only two eggs. When the chicks hatch,
they immediately fight for dominance, a bablin which one usually parishes. One of the most interesting
behaviors of the Sandhill Crane is its mating dance. Many ancient cultures admired the bird's
movements so much, but they incorporated them into their own dances. A local author here at the
festival wrote about the Sandhill Crane in her book Young Julius the Dancing Crane. It's
opened a lot of people's eyes to these birds, like Nicole Garza. Well it's about this young Julius
Crane and he talks about when he's in the egg and when he gets out, you know how he breaks out
of the egg type thing and he meets this other girl Crane and really likes her a lot and
ends up doing a dance for her kind of mating kind of dance for her and they talks about some
flying around, you know, just a lot of, to me it gives a lot of detail which is really interesting
because I didn't know Crane's dance until I read the book and I was like wow you know I even learned
something just for me this little story coloring looked like thing it was just really really kind
of a little love story for you know like Cinderella's what I thought of you know.
With urban growth a looming threat to farmers who are struggling to survive,
Othello residents like Terry Piper who's a member of the Central Basin Audubon Society are
working to educate the public about the Crane's habitat needs. You have to be careful of development,
excessive development when people are doing things around water areas they have to be careful
that they're not impinging on the wetlands and destroying wetlands. A lot of people times people
won't even know that they're destroying the wetland and they don't mean to so they have to know
that that's important. Other things education is very important. We work with kids groups do a lot
take kids on field trips to the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge. We have other things where we have
a habitat that we have developed at a local grade school. 20 years ago irrigation brought
Sandhill Crane's to Othello and a surprising love has developed between the cranes and the farmers
like Irvella Hayford. I think it's been official both to the bird people and to the farmers to have
a better understanding of both the protection environment and food supply. Now this might be a
dumb question but do you have cranes on your field right now? We have had lots and they are
they circle over over our place every day. You hate to see them go? We enjoy them. I enjoy them.
They get used to us and we're real gentle with them is the way we move around them and they're
not afraid of us and I enjoy them very much. Currently Sandhill Crane's number well over half a million.
As irrigation water became available greater numbers of Sandhill cranes have become visible.
It's a case where the influence of man has helped a species but while the Kool-Edaam on the
Columbia River has helped Sandhill Cranes by providing water to farms in central Washington,
salmon populations have suffered one of the many trade-offs that come with human development.
For the Environment Show, I'm Nancy Wilson.
And now it's time for the Earth Calendar. As we speak,
cucumbers are being picked in southern California. It's part of a great American harvest.
Scott Basin is general manager of the Palm of Alley Organics, a 110 acre organic farm located
north and east of San Diego, California. He says a six-man crew picks the 20 acres of cucumbers by hand.
He tried to get them about eight inches long, eight to ten inches long and we packed them 36
cucumbers to a box. He can feel packed them and they look clean so we don't have to pick them,
bring them in wash them and then pack them so we're not handling them more than once.
Scott says most of his organically grown cukes are sold to brokers or co-ops with a very small
percentage going to local health food stores. Mason suffered a setback this year when an early
frost destroyed eight acres. Fortunately, he was able to quickly replant those areas which had been
lost. The growing process begins in February when the seeds are started in greenhouses. Then
they're transplanted outdoors by the second week of March. And we get the ground ready before that,
we put about five to 15 tons of compost down for acre and then we put three tons of compost
of chicken manure down and incorporate that into the beds that we make. And then we've also found
so we can feel packed, we've laid out plastic moths that we plant the cucumbers into. And what
that does, that helps the cucumbers from getting muddy from the watering from the, you know, when we
irrigate. And it also helps with the weed control. Because the cucumbers are grown organically,
no chemicals are used. Organic farming, there's a lot more to it than just the dollars. It's helping
the soil ground, healthier food, helping the planet, sustainable agriculture has got to be the way
to go if we want to save this planet. And I think that people are starting to see that trend.
I would like to see in the future nothing but organic, like grown produce is so much healthier for
your children. Scott describes his business as excellent and he believes the organic industry will
continue to expand as people become better educated about the food they eat. While some organic
supermarkets are beginning to sell more organic produce, Scott says consumers who prefer organics
need to tell retailers they should be allocating more space. Some organic cucumbers become organic
pickles. Some of us get pickled but organic whiskey is hard to come by. You're listening to
the environment, Shallah. I'm Peter Burley.
You're listening to the environment show and I'm Peter Burley. Still ahead. You have heard
the ancient forests of giant redwoods and fir trees. But forests of kelp of similar size grow in
the oceans off California and around the world. They form some of the most productive ecosystems
anywhere. We talk green about environmental stress and conflict. Do wars start when the
environment gets bad enough? Author Gary Ferguson takes us to the red desert of Utah with a ghost
of ancient piety peoples and their gods taught adolescents who have ghosts of their own. Stay with us.
Picture yourself sitting on a sandy beach in San Diego, California. As you gaze across the
Pacific waters, you see a sailboat, a surfer catching a wave and a seagull looking for its next
meal. What you can't see though are large lush forests that lie beneath the blue coastal waters.
They're giant kelp forests that run from Baja, California north to Santa Cruz. Next to Karl
Reves, kelp for us to some of the most productive ocean ecosystems in the world. But as Steven
West could report, human and natural forces are putting pressures on these biologically important
areas. Kelp is the largest of the seaweeds. It's a brown alga which forms extensive forests on
rocky bottoms off the west coast of the United States and some other areas of the world as well.
And it grows from depths of, oh say, 8 meters out to 25 meters and grows all the way up to the
surface and then once it reaches the surface, spreads out and forms a surface canopy.
Mia Tegnar, research marine ecologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla,
California, has studied kelp forests for the past 25 years. They are found all over the world
from the United Kingdom and Scandinavia to China, New Zealand and Australia. Tegnar says the
kelp forests of California's coast are home to more than 1200 species. One of the reasons
the kelp forests foster such high biodiversity is because of all the physical structure. The
whole path looks like a tangled root mass. More than 150 species of small animals of sponges,
crabs, copepods and worms live in the whole path. Other animals settle on the fronds of the
kelp directly. Still, other animals like to use the kelp as something to orient in the water column.
Fishes, for example, like to cluster near kelp forests. By the 1950s and 60s, the dumping of sewage
was disrupting these fragile ecosystems, and it wasn't until the 1980s that the problem was
addressed. Mia says today, natural forces are having the biggest effect on California's
kelp forests. Ocean upwelling normally brings colder waters that are rich in nutrients,
the kelp and other species rely on the nutrients for food health and stability.
But since the late 1970s Tegnar says there has been a decrease of La Niña events, which
create cold waters in the Pacific, and an increase in Al Ninos. Scientists say between 1951 and 1993,
the average sea surface temperatures of California's coastal waters increased two to three degrees.
The warmer the water, the lower the nutrients. What Al Ninos do is bring in warm water
and depress the thermocline. The combination greatly reduces the nutrients available for kelp.
As a result, the canopy deteriorates and we can get considerable mortality of the plants
themselves. So then all the animals that depend upon the plants. And here we're talking about
fishes that shelter among the fronds, about snails and fiertions and avalones that eat the kelp
directly. About other species that use the kelp as a physical habitat. All of these species are
affected by these oceanographic changes. Tegnar says the kelp forests are slowly recovering from
the effects of the most recent al Nino. But ads, scientists are not really sure why more al Nino
events are occurring. Some theorize it may be due to global warming. This change since 1977
may be a change that will flip back to cooler temperatures in a few years. Or maybe we are looking
at insipient indications of global warming. It will take many decades to really know the answer to
that. But if the warming that's going on is an indication of how things will change with global
warming, we can say that they are going to be very harmful for near-shore productivity.
California's kelp forests are home to many fish species such as rock fishes, kelp bass and
senior eaters. A fish called the sheep head has been a favorite of commercial fishermen who
Tegnar says have been taking too many. Sheephead are important because they feed on sea urchins which
live near the kelp forests and can be harmful if their numbers are not kept in check.
When drift kelp becomes limiting for whatever reason, sea urchins will leave their
reefs, their protected rock piles and ledges where they normally live and go forage for food.
If they get hungry enough they will attack plant and they can mow through kelp forests this way.
Tegnar and others are calling for tougher fishing restrictions along California's coasts
to protect fish like the sheep head that are important to the health of giant kelp.
Today kelp is harvested for use in many common commercial items such as toothpaste, beer and
pharmaceuticals. They are also favored areas for recreational divers and others who enjoy the beauty
of these ocean ecosystems. But without proper management Tegnar says California's giant kelp forests
will remain threatened. For the Environment Show, I'm Stephen Westcott.
Where talking green and I'm Peter Burley. Today we're going to be talking about the
environment and why people go to war. Our focus will be on environmental stress and whether it
leads to political instability. If it does or we headed for more conflict is growing global
population makes greater demands on resources like fisheries and forests and open space.
Or do the forces that make people want to fight one another stem from ethnic and ideological
conflicts unrelated to the environment. My two guests have thought a lot about this. Chris Bright
is senior editor for World Watch magazine and research associate with the World Watch Institute.
He's just published an article titled The Nemesis Effect, The Discussive Stress and Environmental
Degradation. He's in Washington. Also with us is Bill Futrell. He's president of the American
Law Institute. I'm sorry the Environmental Law Institute. It's a nonprofit group of lawyers and
scholars who tackled international and local environmental legal issues. Bill has been involved in
looking at the law and the environment for over three decades. So Chris from World Watch,
let's start with you. Is political instability around the globe going to get worse as the global
environment continues to deteriorate? Well you know it's so difficult to
respond in a very general way but I would say that as various environmental stresses begin to
accumulate you see a sort of narrowing of the possibilities for maintaining political stability
especially in many areas of the developing world where things are already a little
well they're difficult for one reason or another. For instance some population growth in some of the
mega cities in the developing world as those cities get larger. It seems to me the likelihood
of instability is liable to to increase. Well Bill Futrell from the Environmental Law
Institute. I've heard you say that no matter how bad things get with respect to the environment
it's ethnic and ideological differences that drive people to take up arms against one another and
the environment really isn't a factor there. Well that's overstating my position. That's true in the
1990s E.L.I's largest project this last year was owned the Environmental Consequences of War.
And for a year and a half we work with scholars in the field and convene them at the Smithsonian
Institution and we fully looked at this question of environmental stress and violent conflict.
It's been case histories. We looked into the case of Rwanda and the most prominent writer on that
was Thomas Homer Dixon who felt that though environmental factors were significant development
issues that environmental scarcity had at most a limited aggravating role in the conflict between
the tutus and the Hutzzi. In another project done by the same Toronto think tank on Pakistan he
reached the same result. We view that environmental stress rather than being the trigger for conflict
is an opportunity for peace building. Currently Ecuador and Peru have a disputed border that they
have exchanged shot zone. There's been armed conflict but they are taking the disputed area and
have entered into negotiations on an international park. And we could come up with four or five other
examples during the last three years where environmental stress has been the means for datant rather than
trigger than the trigger for conflict. Chris your essay talks about a lot of environmental stress that we
stagger into without realizing what was going on. I was particularly interested in what you had to say
about the Danube, a river of some interest now since as we speak we're blowing the bridges off
at one after another. Tell us a little bit about that and how that may relate to further stress
in the Balkans. Sure perhaps I should say though that most of my work hasn't really focused on the
social issues. I don't think I would necessarily disagree with anything that the other gas has
really said thus far. As far as the Danube is concerned I was looking at how a number of
stresses placed on the Danube and the Black Sea ecosystem tended to compound with one another and
cause the type of changes that probably no single one of those stresses would have caused by itself.
Run those by that's quickly because that struck me as a classic example of what happens when you
don't do decent environmental impact analysis before you start building projects.
Right okay well there was a large dam that was put on the setup on the Danube called the Iron Gate
which had the effect of reducing the amount of silicate that was being brought into the Black Sea.
Meaning Sam, right? Right yeah very very tiny pieces of sand and the effect of that was to cap
the amount of algae, a certain type of algae that could grow in the Black Sea.
And once those algae populations were suppressed to some degree then we began to see other types of
algae competing types of algae began to bloom and some of these were red tide organisms,
the Dynophagolate Red Tide algae which secrete potent toxins.
In the early 1980s there was an accidental release of a kind of jellyfish into the Black Sea,
a jellyfish that is native to the Atlantic coast of the Americas and the jellyfish had the
effect it underwent a sort of population explosion and it ate all the little animals that
normally prey on the algae and this allowed the algae to sort of grow even more the red tide organisms
to become even more prominent. And that of course had an effect on the fisheries.
The fisheries were already suffering from other unrelated stresses over fishing and other types
of pollution and so forth. So here you see a whole complex of pressures sort of convening
on each other and creating an effect that you probably wouldn't have anticipated if you were
just thinking of of of these pressures in isolation. Well let's look at that for a moment.
Bill, one of the advances of American environmental law which is now spilling elsewhere is the now famous
environmental impact statement required by NEPA. In theory projects are supposed to undergo analysis
so that they are fully understood from an international perspective. Is there any comparable process
that comes to bear in places like the Balkans? Through the banks. We did a great deal of legal
assistance work in Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall came down through foundation funding
and a lot of the work that we were doing were advising Hungarians, Poles and Checks on environmental
impact assessment. Simply because E-Bird the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
had the requirement for an environmental impact assessment on its loans. The World Bank has the same.
However Serbia I don't think is too interested in dealing with E-Bird or with NATO.
And indeed we've come a long way when I was environmental commissioner of the state of New York
more than 20 years ago I had 40 people doing environmental impact analysis and the World Bank which
was operating worldwide had four. So I guess the bank has come away but let me ask you something.
Once you do that analysis particularly with respect to the bank and I would suppose if it doesn't come
outright they might not fund something. Does it really have an impact of people pay attention to
this to the banks not fund projects today when it appears that the environmental impact may be disastrous?
There is a long process of job boning and negotiations and there is a very well organized
non-governmental organization environmentalist organizations groups here in Washington DC that are constantly
reviewing the bank's work. Mr. Wolffinson has elevated some of these people to positions inside.
Now the question is the loan is probably going to go through but the projects are revised.
The same happens with highway construction in the United States. We all know highway designs that
have been modified and even drop because of the impact analysis and public response.
I guess the question though is that with respect to the United States if you turn the
Department of Transportation around nobody else is going to build the highway. We had a guest
of the environment show not long ago that was doing environmental impact analysis for the World Bank
in a project in Laos where there a dam was being built and one of the things that he said was that if
the bank didn't finance it then there were private sector organizations that were going to do it anyway
and they had no respect for the environment at all. Do we really have as much leverage on some of
these big international projects by greening up people like the World Bank as we think we do?
Well it's better to have the World Bank greened up and not greened up and three gorgeous dam is going
forward without the World Bank money. Chris what are some of the areas where you saw
integrated disasters occurring as a result of not having thought some of these things through first?
Well they tend not to be disasters in they tend not to be quite so spectacular.
There are a lot of places where you can see the this sort of convergence for instance you can see
it in global amphibian decline as you probably know all over the world there are different species
of frogs and toads that are either going extanked or that are experiencing a very drastic reduction
in their populations and this appears to be do again to a whole bunch of different pressures
sort of coming together pollution and disease and habitat loss and so forth. So we have things like
that we have things like the co-incidence of certain types of pollution with the movement of
these things are a little bit hard to describe very quickly but with the movement of exotic species
for instance in the Great Lakes there's some evidence now that zebra mussels are beginning to
resurrect some of the toxic organoclorine material that had settled into the muck there and once the
zebra mussels ingest this stuff it can go back into the food web. So I guess what it tells us is
that much as Emerson said we are in a spiritual kindergarten trying to spell God with the wrong
blocks these things are so complex that we're just not getting on top of them. Bill from a legal
standpoint and an international legal standpoint is there any better way to do this than through
environmental impact analysis what kinds of things do we have to do to fine tune our whole
global system to avoid some of the real problems that we've gotten into by not understanding what
we were doing. Well we need a lot of tools in our toolbox and the environmental impact analysis
is only one of them. One of them the Nemesis Effect article that Chris wrote is a highly recommended
reading and the theme is very strong on the need for systems analysis and a whole cat's cradle
of strings are tied together here and what we want to do is we want to intervene at many points.
We're doing a lot of our work in India this year and as I return each time from India I think that
it is not the poverty it is the the abject status of women in northern India and the refusal to
educate women and to give them rights especially in certain and and and and really it's only in
a minority of Indian states that that's one very important intervention point education education
information access to information are the tools. Okay on that I'm afraid we have to close. My guests have
been Chris Bright from the World Watch Institute and Bill Futrell from the Environmental Law Institute
and we've been talking about environmental stress and it's impact on the world as a whole.
We'd like to know what you think give us a call our number is 1-888-49-Green. We've been talking green
and I'm Peter Burling.
We have some neat things on our website you can answer a questionnaire and tell us what we really
should be talking about you can also hear the environment show go to our website it's www.enm.com-env-show.
This is the special to us for some of the city street for others it's deep in the wilderness.
For author Gary Ferguson it's the red desert of Utah where the beauty and craziness of today's
youth parallels that of ancient myths. In this portrait of place Ferguson reads from his book
shouting at the sky troubled teens and the promise of the wild. The middle of Utah's red desert
2-maybe 3 in the morning. Light from a full moon is spilling all over the place. Down the
shoulders of Cainville reef across the long flat sweeps of sage and rabbit brush in Greece would.
Through a thin braid of dry nameless washes onto the faces of 17-age girls scattered across the
ground at the edge of a box canyon hoping for sleep. Lisa and Jenna are having weird dreams again
twitching and mumbling setting off on what seemed to be conversations passing off a slur of words
and grunts even instructions not that way Jenna is saying go left it's over there I'm trying
to remember it all give the words back to them in the morning on the off chance they might hold
some kind of meaning a few feet away in anancy is poking Trisha in the ribs trying to get her to
stop snoring and beyond that under the only tree within a half mile is the new girl Brenda the
one who just went on suicide watch such a strange routine for her now the drawstring taken from
the hood of her sleeping bag the laces pulled from her boots just in case a blue tarp spread tight
across her bag with two staff lying on the outside edges one on either side of her that better to feel
every move she makes so much craziness and on one of the most beautiful nights I've ever seen
the kind of desert night that feels like a gift delicate the air filled with a smell of juniper
and sage desert holly and cliff rose sandstone and alkali dust and out beyond camp hundreds of
saggle lilies one to a stem their ivory blooms glowing in the wash of the moon lying awake
through these wee hours I'm thinking maybe all this wouldn't be so hard to get my head around
wouldn't seem so filled with contradiction if my culture hadn't spent the last hundred years
thinking of the wilderness mostly as some kind of tonic sedative blood pressure medicine speed
the wild as the place we go to smell the pine in the rain dangle by ropes from the chins of mountains
it's been such a long time since deserts and woodlands were places of confrontation
stages on which to wrestle with shadows and cry for visions holy lands hiding strengths
that go unsuspected in more common hours the old people of this place the piety new full
well that beauty and craziness would be found together like this standing hand in hand piety
creation myth tells how long ago the earth was danced by two brothers coyote and wolf wolf
with this perfect wholesome vision of the world a creator who never wanted anything more than an
abundant life for the people a life free of anguish free even of death and the younger coyote spoiled
mischievous the glib talker who time and again pulled his older brother away from those plans
for perfection and how after a time wolf went away leaving the world to unfold according to
the imaginations of coyote we cast our fate with coyote said the piety and so our lives are driven
by this strange mix of urge and shadow by schemes going out into the world meaning to be clever
coming back full of pain now the smudged sweat stained girls kids who never knew of or
cared a damn about the piety's brother gods lying here in the shadows of these same ancient canyons
wrestling with coyote things of their own with their habits of crack and speed and crystal
meth with late night trips to the police stations to the streets to the suicide wards early in the
afternoon with girlfriends at school in the toilets throwing up lunch that was author Gary Ferguson
reading from his book shouting at the sky troubled teens and the promise of the wild it's published by
Saint Martin's press
thanks for being with us on this week's environment show i'm peter burlitt if you call 1-800-323-9262
in order show number 491 we'll send you a tape how else can you go to Alaska the New England
forest washing it for a crane migration the cucumber patch the ocean off california and the desert
of Utah all at once no we do not award frequent flyer miles the environment show is a national
production which is solely responsible for its content Alan Shartock is executive producer
Stephen Westcutter's producer Ray Graff is post-production engineer and the show is made possible
by the w-alton Jones foundation the William Bingham foundation the Turner foundation the jm capplin
fund and Heming's motor news the monthly bible of a collector car hobby www.hemmigs.com be good to
be good to be here and join us next week for the environment show
thanks
