Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome.
A campaign that lasted well over a year is over.
The change could last a lifetime.
Commentator Harvey Wasserman looks ahead to the Clinton-Gore administration.
Also this time, Wood Stoves are good for the environment, right?
Saves fossil fuels, right?
Wrong, says an EPA official.
Only if they're operated properly, says Wood Stoves expert and author Stephen Bushway.
And don't just watch where you're going, look up.
Only about one person in ten really would know what the sky looks like.
People will see the sky when it's vivid.
That's like saying you can only taste your food if it's loaded with Tabasco sauce.
The Environment Show is a national production made possible by Hemmings MotorNews, the national
Bible of the old car hobby, monthly from Bennington Vermont, and by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New York.
This is Bruce Robertson.
The Earth indeed breathed a sigh of relief as the ballots came in on election night,
says environmental activist Harvey Wasserman.
Wasserman says it's been a long wait.
We reached him at his home in Columbus, Ohio, where he spoke to us on just a few hours sleep
the morning after.
It's been a long and one might say even interminable 12 years for protection of the planet and
our natural support, life support systems.
I think people who watched in, who were up wait and saw Governor Clinton's essentially
acceptance speech on the podium there in Little Rock were greatly reassured to hear him
mention the first two issues he mentioned for his new administration were AIDS and the
environment.
We know the George Bush had talked about being the environmental president, but he was
to put a mildly and immense disappointment on that score.
People who work on the environment have great reason to be enthusiastic, certainly about
the vice president, a lack of Al Gore, and to really hope, I think, with good reason
that there will be major changes towards the environment coming from Governor Clinton.
Harvey, an observation made during the campaign that many made this year was that we really
did not have any Boston harbors, no environmental symbols flashing before us in the advertisements.
Why do you think this happened?
Well, it was actually, I think what happened was that the Bush forces conceded the issue
and they were very clever in 1988 as you'll remember George Bush went to Boston harbour,
although actually the commercial was not filmed at Boston harbour.
They used the place fittingly enough that they said was Boston harbour, but they actually
attacked Michael Ducakis for being a poor environmentalist.
By 1992, the Bush administration really had no way to stand on it.
They all but essentially conceded the issue and really allowed whatever specifically environmental
vote there was to go to Clinton without much of a fight.
They didn't really, the only attacking that Bush did on the environment was to talk about
the pollution that had come out of the Arkansas chicken industry and then of course at the
very end to label Al Gore, Mr. Ozone and the Ozone man, but it was a losing strategy clearly
because the Bush administration where it had a clean slate and was trying to instill some
hope in 1988 had really nothing left to fall back on.
Looking ahead now Harvey, in the last days of the last congress, the energy bill was finally
passed and now has been signed by President Bush, what are you looking to come out of the
Clinton administration right from the start?
Well, the biggest immediate legislative battles will occur in the energy field and the
appointments that will be watched most closely, I believe, by the environmental community will
be the appointment to the Secretary of Energy and Energy related, of course, environmental
protection and interior will be key also.
But the real battleground in the early days of the Clinton administration will be energy
primarily because the nuclear power industry is at a major crossroads right now and it's
run out of steam with its first generation of nuclear plants and you're seeing a $20 million
national advertising campaign to promote a new generation of nuclear plants and frankly
if the industry doesn't get that in a short term it's going to be out of business, they're
basically out of steam.
And in the past, really dating back all the way to 1970, Governor Clinton, now President
of the West Clinton, has been very opposed to nuclear power particularly on economic grounds
and the energy bill that did pass just prior to this election was a very pro-nuclear energy
bill.
There were some features in it that had to do with energy conservation and increased energy
efficiency.
But primarily they streamlined the licensing process to benefit the nuclear industry.
They cut out citizen participation from that and from the sighting of a nuclear waste
dump in Nevada and handed a very large subsidies to the nuclear power industry.
The environmental community is going to be working very hard in the early days of the
Clinton administration to reverse much of that energy bill, at least as it refers to
atomic power.
And we have had from Governor now President of the West Clinton strong acknowledgment that
he has said basically we have heard him say we have him on tape saying in New Hampshire
that no new nuclear plants would be built on his watch and we will be working very hard
to keep him true to that pledge.
The thoughts and evaluations of environmentalist Harvey Wasserman speaking to us from his
home in Columbus, Ohio.
We expect to hear from him from time to time with commentary on the state of the environment
as seen from Ohio or wherever he may be next time.
This is Bruce Robertson.
So winter begins December 21st, the heating season begins whenever you get cold enough
to turn on the heat.
For most this means turning up the thermostat on a furnace burning oil or natural gas.
For many however this means going to the wood pile to stoke the wood stove.
Wood burning really became a concern of environmentalists in the early 80s after the oil shocks
of the late 70s.
We saw an increase in stove sales up to 1 to 2 million units a year.
Robert Labans is an air quality specialist with the environmental protection agency overseeing
wood heater performance standards.
To those who heat by wood thinking it is economical and environmentally acceptable, Labans suggest
this.
In some regions or air shed as they are known of the country, wood stoves are known to
be a major source of air pollution.
Particularly in the western United States and the northwest and the Rocky Mountain States
saw an increase in air pollution caused by residential wood burning.
In fact it was determined by some air shed studies there that pollution from wood stoves
was actually greater than pollution from industrial sources.
These are sources that had spent considerable amount of money to control their particular
pollution.
As a result of this condition, Labans says the EPA followed the state of Oregon, the first
in the nation to develop standards, and promulgated a series of standards to which wood stove
manufacturers now must adhere.
In the case of the federal regulations there is a separate standard for catalytic stoves
and non-catalytic stoves.
Just to give you a rough idea of how these new stoves compared to the old stoves, the
standard for a non-catalytic stove is 7.5 grams in hour compared to the conventional pre-certification
stoves which had emissions of about 30 grams in hour.
So there is a significant improvement in emissions of the certified stoves compared to the older
stoves.
So gone are the days of the smoke drifting lazily from the chimney indicating a fire
on the home hearth.
At least that is the plan.
However, Labans says the regulations are long term and it will be some time before all
the older more polluting stoves are relegated to the scrap heap.
One deterrent, the cleaner burning stoves are also more expensive than the old pot-bellied
Franklin style stove.
There is a lot of misnomer to the environmental impact of wood burning.
Stephen Bushway, speaking to us from Plainfield, Massachusetts, Bushway is a chimney sweep
and author of a brand new book, The Woodburner's Handbook, a guide to safe, healthy and efficient
wood burning.
Wood is something that absorbs CO2 during its lifetime and then whether it rots on the
floor of the forest or is burned in a stove, it gives off carbon dioxide.
But over the long haul, the balance is maintained burning wood.
The particular matter issue is another concern and it has been taken on by the wood stove
manufacturing industry.
Indeed, as we have just learned from the EPA, but whether you are burning wood in a brand
new state of the art stove, or one 10 years old, Bushway suggests ways you can improve
both your comfort and your economy.
First, a note about the wood itself.
I think the important thing for people to remember, Bruce, is that wood be seasoned that
the moisture that's in wood when it's first cut is given a chance to be driven to just
evaporate out of the wood.
Hardwoods burn longer than softwoods in their more dense so they have a greater heat
content.
Softwoods are also burnable if they are mixed with hardwoods and are faster burning and
are good for starting fires.
What really is the true and optimum definition of seasoned?
Well, most of the stove manufacturers now are saying that wood should be no greater than
20 percent water content by weight.
It may sound like a lot, but when wood is first cut it's around 50 percent water content
by weight.
So that is the optimum amount of moisture you want to have in wood.
And it takes usually six months to a year after the wood has been cut and split.
It is difficult to estimate, let alone know for sure, the percentage of water content.
To be sure, Bushway recommends getting the wood at least a year ahead.
That way, regardless of anyone else's claims, you know the wood will be seasoned by the
time you need it.
Tell tale signs are...
Um, seasoned wood has radial checks on the ends of the pieces.
In other words, checks that radiate out from what would have been the center of the
tree.
It also is noticeably lighter.
And if you strike two pieces together they'll have a little bit of a resounding fudge
to them.
All effects of the new cleaner stoves will not be gauged until all the older dirtier
models are offline.
On the other hand, says Bushway.
Much of the dirty burning that we associated with the earlier stoves was actually more
on the stove operators parts and on the stove's part.
You have to keep a certain amount of air, allow a certain amount of air to get it to the
stove so that the wood is burning with a vigorous flame and all the gases are being consumed.
So you're saying a slow burning stove may conserve the fuel but it actually is burning it
less efficiently?
A slow burning stove is not even burning more, is not conserving the fuel because what
happens is the hydrocarbons that are being driven off the wood are not combusting but going
up the chimney.
The only thing that's achieved is more convenience for the stove user and that he's going to find
coal in the stove.
And not have to refill the firebox quite so frequently.
How slow you can go with your stove depends on the design of the stove and weather conditions
outside.
Hot air rises you remember.
The colder the air outside the faster the hot air will rise up the chimney, drawing
a stronger column of air into the stove from the room inside.
The colder the weather therefore the stronger the draft and the more you can cut down the
air supply going into the stove thus burning the wood more slowly.
Either way says bushway you want to maintain an operating temperature of 650 degrees Fahrenheit
on catalytic stoves for non catalytic stoves slightly higher, use a thermometer for best
results.
Now the real question, is it practical to heat an average sized family home using wood
as your fuel?
It's even bushway.
If the rule I don't recommend or I don't feel that wood burning is probably best done
alone as a home heat source, I think it makes a good complement to some kind of central
heat source.
Robert Labans of the EPA.
In a conventional, uncertified stove, the emissions a particular matter are probably 100 times
higher than those emissions from a gas furnace and maybe 200 times higher than emissions from
an oil burning furnace.
Certified stoves of course have much lower emissions but they're still dirtier than those
other heating sources.
So are we, how are we gaining by burning wood?
Well, I'm not sure that there is a gain.
People of course argue that it's a renewable resource on the other hand, it is a fairly polluting
resource.
So we are back to where we started.
Except for this, from Richard Heady, Director of the Energy Program at the Rocky Mountain
Institute.
He would provide the United States with much energy as nuclear power does today, even though
nuclear power is far more heavily subsidized.
But back to the issue of environmental emissions and other environmental matters.
Well, turned of heating fuels also impact the environment very dramatically.
I don't have to look for it.
And for those, the Excalind Valdeus oil spill and I left it to realize that burning oil
for a general electricity or for burning oil directly in your heating system has environmental
implications.
Not only to the smoke stack of the heating system but also out in the environment, in the
drilling fields and transportation systems in the pipeline systems as well.
The point Heady drives home is the cost we pay for our distributor of a delivery of home
heating oil or the fee we pay included in our utility bill to cover the costs of generating
electricity do not include the full cost of bringing you that energy.
The cost of exploring for the oil, drilling for it, piping it or trucking it to the refinery,
trucking the gas or oil to regional distributors and then getting it to your home.
Neither the financial costs nor the environmental costs, the amount of energy used to get you
that energy.
So only when we pay the full cost of oil, coal, natural gas or nuclear energy shall
we compare the real benefits of turning up the thermostat versus stoking the fire.
Richard Heady is director of the energy program at the Rocky Mountain Institute Old Snowmass
Colorado.
Robert Labans is with the office of air quality planning and standards of the EPA.
Stephen Bushway is a chimney sweep and author of the new Woodburners Handbook available
from Story Communications, Pound over Mutt.
This is Bruce Robertson.
Stop for a moment and think about the last time you looked up at the sky.
Can you remember what the sky looked like?
If you're like most people, you don't look up much.
Your eyes are usually fixed on the road, trees or passers-by.
Jack Borden spends most of his time trying to change our point of view.
He runs for spacious skies, a nonprofit educational program in Lexington, Massachusetts.
He says most people are not sky-aware.
If you walk over to people on the most interesting sky day, I mean assuming that there's no rainbow
or no vivid sunrise or sunset and put your hand over their eyes, gently visors silence
they, how would you describe the present appearance of the sky?
They won't know.
Only about one person in ten really would know what the sky looks like.
Well we'll see the sky when it's vivid.
That's like saying you can only taste your food if it's loaded with Tabasco sauce.
A retired television reporter, Borden admits he himself did not discover the sky until
1984.
I was almost 50 years old.
I had been in the Appalachian Mountain Club.
I traveled around a lot by air, frequent hiker.
I don't even want to tell you all the opportunities that I had to really see the sky but I never
really saw the sky until I was turned onto it.
I was by accident when I was 49 years old.
What I became aware of was my previous unawareness of the sky.
I saw more of the sky in a millisecond than I had seen in my entire life up to that point.
Well I can't expect that everybody is going to have this kind of sudden type experience
but you can lead people to it.
They have to keep looking at it and as you look at it in a prolonged way, especially
through art.
People can see that people can see the sky, the sky, the sky, the sky, the sky, the
sky, the sky.
They will begin to become sensitized to it and see it's many colors, tints, hues, shapes
and all that.
And they will begin to understand how interesting it is and how much you want to look at it all
the time because there's always something going on up there.
It's a great way to teach people about everything from mathematics to music.
Fifteen thousand teachers around the nation use his educational booklets in their classrooms.
It can also be found in scout troops, graduate classes and in prisons.
Gerald Abelman is a fifth grade teacher in Green Valley School outside of San Francisco,
California.
She says the sky works as the underlying theme in her classroom.
Every child has a state, we chart the weather.
We show the weather throughout the state.
So we're learning about the weather.
We're learning about the states.
We charted the weather, what the weather was like in November and 1620 when the pilgrims came
over.
So you're incorporating social studies.
We do science.
We make spectroscopes and sundials.
We graph on a sundial.
We will graph the shadow.
And then the child will measure the shadows and then graph the shadows.
We make books.
The child keeps a daily journal on what the sky looks like.
They're writing from the very beginning of the school year through the end of the school year.
Develops creatively.
Many people ask Abelman why she uses the sky as a theme as opposed to other natural wonders.
She argues the sky has special significance.
Yes, you can use the ocean and yes, you can use the forest.
But the thing that's so special about the sky is that you don't have to go anywhere.
You can go outside and look up and it's always there and it's free and it's ever present.
And so it's like you don't have to go on a field trip to the ocean to see what you have to see.
All you have to do is look at a window.
Abelman says many students do extra work on their own.
They bring in drawings or poems they write after school.
And the program's influence is evident on a deeper level as well.
A Harvard University study found students in the program greatly improved their test scores for basic skills.
They also became proficient in the visual arts, writing and literary comprehension.
Borden compares these students to what he calls real environmentalists.
A real environmentalist is a person who feels it deeply.
They feel that relationship to the world, that relationship to nature, to living things, to rocks, to the whole of creation.
That is what this produces.
It produces a love of the sky.
It produces a deep emotional bonding with the sky.
And from that emotional bonding will spread, it will spread out to virtually every foot.
First, develop an emotional bond between the child and the subject and then the kid will ask for factual information.
With results like that, Borden cannot understand why four spacious skies is not in every classroom in the country.
He admits there are some skeptics.
He has to convince teachers and parents about the program before he even reaches the students.
The problem, he says, is that his solution is too simple.
It's purely a matter of common sense.
And I find that too many people who have trouble with this are people who have what one could consider a vested interest in complexity.
They see the world in such a kind of left-brained, technical way that they can't understand the common sense of four spacious skies.
But we certainly have enough teachers and parents and kids out there who can testify to the value of this.
Borden offers some tips for those skeptics who still do not know what he's talking about.
Start making a point of watching the sunset just to see where the sun goes down every night.
A lot of people don't even know how long it takes for the sun to go down.
From the time it touches the horizon to the time it disappears.
They don't even understand that the sun isn't always going down in the same place all the time.
Another thing you do is paint or sketch the sky.
Another thing you do is you keep a sky journal.
You write about what you saw in the sky.
Anything that will draw a part, attract a person's attention to the sky.
Get them looking at the sky in a more prolonged and conscious way.
We'll do the trick.
Jack Borden, director of four spacious skies, a nonprofit educational organization based on sky awareness.
He says his message is basically simple.
Anyone who walks outside, lies down in the grass and gays into the sky, we'll understand.
This is Bruce Robertson.
And that's our report on the Environment Show this week.
We hope you enjoyed the program.
The Environment Show is a program about the environment, the air, water, soil, wildlife, and people of our common habitat.
If you know of something happening in your area that you think we ought to know about,
or if you have a question about this week's or any week's Environment Show,
drop us a line, address both your questions and your comments to the Environment Show.
318 Central Avenue, Albany, New York, zip code of 1-2-2-0-6.
For a cassette copy of this program, call 1-800-767-1929.
Ask for the Environment Show program number 149.
That's 1-800-767-1929.
The Environment Show program number 149.
Our thanks to Karen Kelly for four spacious skies.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its content.
Dr. Ellen Chartock Executive Producer.
This is Bruce Robertson.
The Environment Show is made possible by the JM Kaplan Fund of New York.
And by Heming's Motor News, the National Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington, Vermont.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its content.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its content.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its content.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its content.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its content.
