The Environment Show #380, 1997 April 12

This is the Environment Show. It's about our stewardship of the earth and the beauty
and mystery of life in all its forms. The Environment Show's and National Production
made possible by the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Turner Foundation,
the J. M. Kaplan Fund and Heming's Motor News, the Bible of the Collector Carr Habby,
1-800-C-A-R-H-E-R-E. Your host is Peter Burley.
Coming up on this week's Environment Show, the climate is getting warmer and humans are
to blame. Under Secretary of State Timothy Wuerb and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry discussed
the proposed climate change treaty. We talk green about solar energy. Today we generate
most of our electricity from fuel which causes the climate to warm, is solar a solution.
And in the Earth calendar, Grunjams follow the moon to mate on the shores of Southern California.
These stories and more coming up on this week's Environment Show.
Global warming has been called one of the most important environmental issues of our time.
At the end of this year, the world's industrialized nations will meet in Kyoto, Japan with hopes
of signing a treaty to limit some of the gases believed to cause global warming. But the
road to the treaty may not be smooth. There are many ways to approach the subject and some
corporations have mounted strong opposition to the treaty saying it will hurt the economy.
This climate needs to be stronger. Environment Show producer Thomas Lalley has this report.
According to an overwhelming number of the world's scientists, human activity is changing the climate.
Some industries say there are doubts about this, but most scientists disagree.
Henry Kendall is the chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a professor of physics at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I think the consensus in the scientific community now
is clearly that there is a human influence on the environment. We also ought to take some
insurance steps also in case the worst of the projections comes to pass. But even if that isn't so,
there are many things we should be doing now. It's quite an urgent problem.
Why should we care about a rise of only a few degrees in the global temperature?
Kendall says global warming may lead to a rise in sea levels, stronger and more frequent weather
events like hurricanes and droughts and a spreading of tropical diseases.
Since the entire globe is affected by climate change,
cutting back on carbon dioxide and other gases will take action from all the world's nations.
And this September in Kyoto, the world's industrial nations are expected to sign a climate change
agreement. Timothy Worth is a U.S. undersecretary of state and the lead U.S. diplomat on climate change.
He says the U.S. is supporting a complex set of strategies to combat climate change without
upsetting the economy. Well, the United States believes we should have a Senator Chafee said a kind
of flexible but binding target. By that, we mean not one that's focused on a particular year,
but that averages years. For example, you have a lot of differences between in a five-year period
or a 10-year period and we think you ought to have averages. We think the countries ought to as
they change their technologies be able to borrow against the future, you know, with limitations.
But to say we're going to make this major change like the British changed dramatically from a
coal-based economy to a natural gas-based economy. And countries that are doing making that kind
of significant change ought to be able to anticipate that and be rewarded for doing so.
We ought to have a flexible program that allows emissions trading between countries and that ought
to have allowed joint implementation, which is projects that would be implemented jointly by a
company in the United States and a company in Brazil, for example. The challenge now is getting
support for the treaty. Senator John Kerry is a Democrat from Massachusetts. He says the treaty
will have to satisfy several conditions if it's to have congressional backing.
Well, I'm hopeful, but it will depend on a number of factors. Number one, it'll depend on the
comprehensiveness of the treaty. The treaty needs to bring in all countries and reach some
means of getting the non-developed countries to join into the process efficiently that the
developed countries don't feel like they're the only ones biting the bullet. Secondly, it will have
to have fixed goals that can be measured. And thirdly, the science is going to have to be very
clearly defined in a way that convinces some of your reluctant participants that there really are
downsides that merit taking investments and taking the time to change over our standards.
Thus far, only developed nations like the US, Japan, Europe, and Australia are expected to
sign the Kyoto Treaty, even though developing nations like China and India admit just as much
greenhouse gases as developed nations. But these gases last hundreds and even thousands of years,
and most of it has been put there by industrial nations. Senator Kerry says the US and its allies
will act first, but action from other countries must follow. By Kyoto, I think you've got to bring
in everybody. I think you all got to sign it. I think that if we, you know, I don't think you're
going to get the US Senate particularly excited about having India and China left out since
they're the number two and six greenhouse gas emitters respectively. The treaty will require
a major shift in our economy, away from coal and oil, and towards cleaner energy technologies
like natural gas and solar energy. But worth says the treaty will lead to more, not less economic
opportunity. There was recently a major letter that came out from the hundreds and hundreds of
members of the American Economic Association. These are economists of all stripes, liberal conservative.
Everybody you can think of who said that the impact of a climate negotiation and a stabilization
of greenhouse gas emissions will hardly be felt in our economy, and in fact many feel that
an aggressive and good program on greenhouse gas would be beneficial for our economy.
And of course, what we do is going to be beneficial overall for the environment and long term,
that's going to be beneficial for the economy. Those who assume that there is no relationship
between the economy and the environment are living in a 30 or 40 years ago economic view of the world.
I think now again most people looking at the future of the world understand that the environment
and the economy are closely intertwined, whether we're thinking about support systems,
water, clean air, oceans, whatever it may be, that we have got to care for our environment.
If in fact we're going to be able to sustain our economy.
For the next eight months, negotiations will take place around the world, culminating in Kyoto
in December, where a treaty is expected to be signed. Signed to say action now is critical.
They've been able to look back 20,000 years at the climate through air trapped in ice cores
and found that during the ice age there were about 200 parts per million of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere. During warm periods there were 280 parts per million. Today there are 360 parts per
million and if we continue on our current track they expect we'll hit 700 parts per million
within a century. For the Environment Show, I'm Thomas Lalley.
As concern over climate change grows, nations are focusing on energy. The industry
overwhelmingly responsible for greenhouse gases. Scientists say that technology is here to produce
our energy much cleaner than we do today. But it's still expensive and so new that we don't know
how to use it to its full extent. Of all the clean energy technologies, solar energy may be the
most promising. Its fuel is sunshine and it produces no pollution. John Thornton is with the US
Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He says solar energy which uses
photovoltaic solar panels is slowly and quietly becoming more common. But most Americans are unaware
of that since 75% of US photovoltaics are sent to overseas markets.
Sales of photovoltaics have been growing at about 15% per year. For the manufacturers are having trouble
actually keeping up with the demand. And there are about 2 billion people in the world that have no
electricity at all. And they're only possible source of electricity as photovoltaics and in those
markets we can beat very well. So solar energy is growing but many question whether it can fulfill
our energy needs and whether it will do so in time before climate change really takes its toll.
Stay tuned, we'll be talking green about solar energy next.
We're talking green in the environment show and I'm your host Peter Burley. Today we're talking
about photovoltaics or using the sun to make electricity. We want to hear from you. Our number is 1-888-49-green.
That's 1-888-49-green. Our guests today are two experts. One is John Thornton. He's leader of the
photovoltaic markets and applications team of the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy's
Laboratory and John Osborne. He is project manager for the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District
otherwise known as SMUD. Again we're talking about making electricity from sunlight and John Thornton
let's start with you. In a nutshell what is the process or simply how do you make electricity from
sunlight? Well with photovoltaics sunlight strikes the surface of a photo of a semiconductor device
completely passive the semiconductor device just stimulated and generates an electric current
which then is used in a normal manner. It generates a direct current which you can use directly
or you can invert it and use it AC power much like comes off your outlet from above.
These are the panels that we've seen sometimes on roofs or sometimes on somebody's hand held
calculator. That's the device itself. That's correct. Did you see it very commonly in road signs,
call boxes, uncalkulators, stop signs, traffic lights and so forth? Well that seems understandable.
Traffic lights, handheld computers and so on. Don Osborne how does the city of Sacramento
make use of this to meet what I assume is a much broader demand? Well Peter, we've installed
over five megawatt of photovoltaics here in Sacramento. And again for the layman how much
how many houses does a megawatt light? Well five megawatt would provide enough energy for
something on the order of 1,500 homes. Wow. So you're you can light 5,000 homes with what you've
got in place. Right. And how have you done that? What we've done is how can we accelerate the
commercialization of photovoltaics for grid connected applications so that their price will come down
faster and become cost effective sooner for our needs. So if you need to point out that for many
applications today, PV is already the cost effective choice. And again PV meeting photovoltaics.
Now have you done this by hanging grids or these panels up around the town? How does how does
Sacramento make it work? Well we have them in a number of locations. First off we have over 400
customers, residential and commercial who have permitted us to put PV systems to support the grid
on their roofs. And so we have a couple of megawatts which is actually rooftop photovoltaics
taking use of those roofs which are sitting there soaking in the sun and collecting the energy
that would otherwise be wasted. We also have PV at some of our substation facilities and we have a
large photovoltaic system just being completed over one part of the parking lot at the Sacramento
International Airport. So in this case in this case you're putting it right into the grid system
that supplies electricity to everybody. It's not simply supplying the building that it happens to
be sitting on. Right under our current program, those systems are all feeding into the grid for
the benefit of all the customers in Sacramento and Smud is paying for installing and operating
these systems. And can you make any money doing this? Is this cost effective? Right now PV is about
twice or two to three times more expensive than it needs to be cost competitive in these applications.
But by doing this large scale program on a year by year basis and continuing it, we have seen
prices drop tremendously and in fact have just are just completing a multi-year 10 megawatt
procurement which will result in PV both being manufactured in Sacramento for the economic
development and cost by the year 2002 which begin to be self-sustaining, self-supporting in the
retail markets. So okay well let's go to the phones. We have a call from Jim in Washington. Our
number is 1-888-1888-49-Green. Jim welcome to the environment show. We're talking about photovoltaics.
Hi yeah thanks. It all sounds very promising. I guess the question that I would have is
how practical can it be and does it really have the legs to go beyond the even the promising
dimensions that have been described. In other words can this really do the job over the long term?
That's the question I have. Okay well let's ask both our guests on that. John let's start with you.
Over the long term where are we going? I think over the long term there's an enormous potential
for photovoltaics. As much as we manufacture in the United States and the rest of the world,
the world demand for it is increasing at a more rapid rate and that means that we virtually sell
everything we make for right now almost per cost effective purposes. As the price continues to
drop however we can expect to see larger and larger penetrations of markets in the United States
and I think that in the early part of the 21st century you're going to see a huge contribution
in the residential and commercial sectors throughout our country much more than people currently
think about. As far as being practical it's very very practical. The lifetime of these units is now
in on the order of 20 to 30 years you can actually get warranties with a system that will guarantee
parts of it for 10 to 20 years with batteries in the power conditioning system somewhat less but
they're extremely reliable and in fact that's one of our biggest assets is that we operate in crises
where the normal utility grids and all else fails. The photovoltaics systems keep on working.
Thanks for your call Jim. Let me ask you both a question. I think a lot of
folks particularly in the US think it would be great if they could have some gadget on the roof that
generated electricity and then when they weren't using it or weren't home it was running their meter
backward and they weren't worrying about batteries and storage and all that sort of thing.
Will we get to the stage when that's an alternative that homeowners will fund attractive and useful?
Well we're already there. In California as well as a dozen or so other states there are what's
called net metering laws or regulations. That's where the utility when someone puts in a photovoltaic
system the utility must provide for that system to when it's generating excess power beyond what the
homeowner requires to allow the power to flow back into the grid and literally turn the meter backwards.
And is that working? Can you do that and don't need the batteries and all that stuff that goes with
a normal application when you're not hooked up to the grid? For grid connected applications
yes indeed that's happening and that does work. Okay let's go back to the phones. Our number is
1-888-49 green and I'm talking to Tom from Massachusetts. Thank you Peter for the intro. I'm
greetings to Don and John as well. I'm with the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association so we are
familiar with this technology and my question is basically one of timing. Many times I'm asked by
people if this technology for making electricity from the sun is here why is it taking it so long to
get into the marketplace? I have a hard time responding to that question and I wondered what
your your guest thoughts might be and in particular how Smudge recently announced 10 megawatt
PV project will advance the utilization of PV and all renewables. Okay Don how do you respond?
Well hello Tom and first of all I'd like to say there's plenty of opportunity for use of
portable tanks in the Northeast. The popular conception is that there's no sun but and they're not
usable but I have personal experience that says it's very very applicable. Tom did you ever see the
sun this this winter? Oh absolutely. I think it was a long winter of the North Waste. As a matter of
fact after this recent storm that we just had in Boston last weekend the day after was one of the
nicest days you could have imagined and a lot of people were without power at that time.
John let me ask you something or do you see technology on the way in your role at the
National Renewable Energy Lab that will make this even more efficient in the future or have we
hit the technology peak and now it's a question of application and marketing? No I think that research
has a long way to go. The conventional currently available portable tanks works quite well in
even making substantial improvements in that but over and beyond that there's experimentation with
new materials and new types of devices. For example the one that is somewhat here today but is
definitely will be a big part of the future is thin film photovoltaics. The thin films are very
amenable to mass production. They use about one three hundred of the material of a crystal and
solar cell they use about one half to one third of the energy the manufacturer and you can
imagine the effect on manufacturing cost and then therefore the price can come down. So this
is what's inside the paddle of a thing that actually soaks up the sunlight is that it? That's right.
The semiconductor layer is million sub-inch thick instead of thousand sub-inch thick and it may not
sound like a whole lot but it makes an enormous difference as far as the manufacturability and the
less material used. There are products and development right now shingles for your house where you
lay down whole strips eight foot long strips of shingles and you shingle your roof just like you
would with an asphalt shingle. There's other kinds of blade flat on the roof. Very many exciting
projects just products coming off the out of the lines right now and they should be commercially
available by the year 2000 in some quantity. So I think you can look forward to some very dramatic
improvements in the technology. Okay well I'm afraid our time is up we've been talking green on
the environment show about making electricity out of sunlight and my guests have been John Thornton
from the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy's Laboratory and Don Osborne from the
Sacramento Municipal Utilities District known as SMUD. Gentlemen thank you both we really appreciate
your joining us on the environment show. We want to hear from all of you our number is 1-888-49
green and I'm your host Peter Burley.
And now it's time for the Earth calendar. April marks the peak of the Grunnan run on the beaches of
Southern California. The Grunnan is a non-descript silvery fish seven or eight inches long that is
found only on the coast of Southern California and Baja California. The interesting thing about them
is that on the nights after the highest tide they come out of the water to spawn and on some beaches
they number in the thousands. In fact people say sometimes they're so thick you can smell them.
We spoke with John François Bertram he's an educator at the Bridge Aquarium of the
Scripps Oceanographigans to the La Jolla California. Well this is the spawning season for Grunnan
and what these fish are doing is at night after the high tide while it's still dark outside the
Grunnan are rushing up on the beach with the waves that are rushing up on sandy beaches and the
females are digging down into the sand above the water line and the males are joining them and
they are laying their eggs in the sand above the water line on beach of the round here.
And then do the males fertilize the eggs after they've been laid? Yes what the female does is she
will sort of corkscrew her way down into the sand and the males normally the few males to
per female will sort of wrap themselves around her body and as she slowly turns depositing her eggs
the males will release their milk which will run down the size of her body and fertilize the eggs
under the sand. And how deep in the sand are the eggs planted or laid? Well the female will
the fish themselves are only about six to seven inches long so the female only deposits them
maybe five inches below the sand but one of the characteristics of tides of the the rising
and lowering tides is that as the tide goes down it deposits sand on the beach so
these Grunnan will lay their eggs after the peak of the tide after the peak of the high tide as
the tide is beginning to go down and the as the tide goes down it will deposit more and more sand
on top of these eggs so the eggs end up being buried about eight to ten inches below the sand.
And the eggs are being laid now how long does it take for them to to hatch?
Well the eggs will take about fifteen days to hatch and that is actually the time until the next
high tide and just as as the tide goes down it deposits sand on the beach as the tide rises it
scoops sand off so two weeks after the high tide where the eggs were laid the tide will again be
approaching its peak height and as this tide rises it will wash away the sand that covered up these
eggs and with the agitation of the waves these eggs will hatch and the baby Grunnan will
swim out into the water column. J.F. Bertrand is an educator at the Scripps Ocean
a graphic institute at the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, California.
The Grunnan's tell us that for them at least being a fish out of water is an essential part of
the life cycle so if you feel like a fish out of water sometimes maybe it's not so bad provided
it's on a night after the high tide and nobody is running around trying to catch you in their bare
hands. Thanks for listening this is the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley.
This is the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley. Still ahead, stop. We use a lot of it. Can we make
stuff using less stuff? Parks are being created in Italy as fast as the Lamborghini speeds around
the track. Our ear to the ground Linda Anderson rescues turtles in southern California.
Orangutangs help build a solar energy system in Kalaman, Tantanga and singer-songwriter Victoria
Parks declares she's going solar. These stories still ahead on the Environment Show.
In every serious discussion of the environment people conclude that we need to reduce consumption
if there's to be enough to go around in a world of increasing population. Put in simpler terms
we have to use less stuff. But how much stuff do we really use? It turns out that we use a lot
more than we realize. John Ryan describes it. He wrote a book with Alan Durning called Stuff
which analyzes things we consume every day. A lot of us start out our day with a cup of coffee which
is a fairly innocent seeming part of our lives but it like other objects we look at in the book
and there's a whole array of kind of secret story secret impacts behind the scenes to make that
cup of coffee. If you take say a pound of coffee beans from the store for every pound of coffee
of ordinary coffee about half a pound of fertilizers has been used up to fertilize the coffee trees
that grew that coffee and maybe two pounds of coffee pulp from the berries that surround the coffee
beans were dumped probably into some river where they caused pollution at harm fish life.
And of course to get the coffee from where it came from some farm maybe Columbia or Brazil to us
there are all sorts of other consumption that happens along the way from energy used to dry the
beans to roast them later energy to transport them energy to build say the tanker ship that might
have brought the beans from Columbia up to New Orleans where they were then trucked in another truck
that got maybe six miles per gallon to bring them up to wherever we drink it. So even though it
seems a very simple object when you look at the whole life cycle of it there's all sorts of
environmental impacts all sorts of consumption that's happening that we don't ever see unless we
dig deep and do a little research on it like we did for this book. John Ryan is with Northwest
Environment Watch in Seattle. Meanwhile a joint research project involving the World Resources
Institute in Washington DC the Dutch Ministry of the Environment and researchers from Germany
in Japan has been underway to determine just how much we really do consume. I spoke with Alan Hammond
program director at the World Resources Institute about his study. As you collected these numbers
what surprised you? Well I think one thing is the sheer magnitude we're simply not used to thinking
in these terms I mean the we all know that solid waste and disposal of it is a problem in many
communities and that's three quarters of a ton of person a year. We're talking about more than
a hundred times that much as the total natural resource use that really supports our lifestyles
and that we just aren't aware of. Let me understand that the individual creates three quarters of
a ton of solid waste right but to permit the individual to consume enough to do that you say there's
a lot of life style and the services and the electricity and everything else exactly there's
a hundred tons of stuff that gets used up to produce about about 85 tons per person per year
so more than a hundred times as much as the garbage. We spend in the United States about
$200 billion a year cleaning up waste and pollution but we don't spend very much at all trying
to prevent it in the first place. So for example if we could use metals more efficiently then we
wouldn't need to mine as many in the first place or if we recycled more of them and we wouldn't have
to pick up a junk that gets discarded when it's over. That's right. So it's partly sort of paying
attention to not just what happens after we've used stuff but to think about it sort of from the
very big time we take it out of the earth. I mean you can almost think of it and you know we
take natural resources in and we put waste and pollution out and clearly if we want to have less
of the latter it might be useful to have less of the former right. Hemenfound that if you put all
these materials in shopping bags weighing 12 pounds each every man, woman and child in the US
the Netherlands and Germany goes through 300 bags of natural resources every week. He describes
what's in them. We've organized it into six broad categories. One is food and fiber for our clothes
and of course the soil erosion that happens when we grow them. One of one of the categories
is construction. Metals and mining and including taking off all the overburden to get at the oars
is a big one. We move around a lot of earth and other materials when we build infrastructure like
highways or dredge out the ship channels and then of course the biggest is all the energy we use.
Fossil fuels like coal and oil and natural gas. What happened in his collaborators have developed
is a new way of measuring things that would take a count of natural resources like topsoil that do not
have prices attached to them. Dr. Albert Adrian's senior counselor to the minister of the
environment of the Dutch government says this will also lead to an understanding of what's
happening in the developing world. I was surprised that then of course this in the Dutch case comes
in generating in a great many developing countries we are getting our commodities from.
Does this say anything about the sustainability of the Dutch economy and other European
economies as we know them today? I think so. It first of all tells the message that in the case of
the Netherlands we have a rather very obvious situation that we are vulnerable in that sense that
we are depending so much on let us say the imports from developing countries concerning the natural
resources we use for our own economy and to maintain our economy at the present level.
Adrian says the Dutch government will make reduction of consumption a major goal in its new
environmental plan and the European OECD countries adopted a factor 10 principle last February.
That means they will set as a long term goal reduction of resource use to 10% of what it is today.
In the end what they are saying is that the objective is to use less stuff to make stuff.
Most of us think of the European Economic Union or EEU as an instrument to run trade and
facilitate financial dealings between European countries and other trading partners.
In addition it's having an impact on the European landscape. In Italy a major effort to create
new national parks is underway spurred by an effort to meet standards set by the EEU. Paul Brey
and Attorney specializing in environmental and planning law from Albany New York has just
returned from Italy where he was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
Well there's a lot of exciting developments going on in Italy. They've gone from a country in 1991
that had five national parks to one that now has 18. They're trying to reach the European standard
of having 10% of their landmass be parker protected area and they're going from a 1% where they were
in the 80s to that 10% goal and there's some place depending on who's doing the calibrating
in at about the 5% level. Are these anything more than a line around the map? They've been managing
people in nature since the Roman times and before. Well in some cases that's what they are is a
line around the map and some of these parks are still what they call paper parks. They have not
come down to actual management reality but I experience a number of them where the management
efforts very they're very complex and they're very difficult but yet they're going forth and I
think in some respects a lot better they have much more of an urbanistic sense and a much better
sense of involving in some cases the the the local population in the park effort which has allowed
them to do things that for example we have been unable to do we there's been talk of it reintroducing
the wolf to the outer undex and despite the fact that the outer undex is 6 million acres more than
2 million of which is public land there's no consensus on that over here whereas in the
Arbrutsel park which is 100,000 acres and and a number of sort of medieval communities along the
basin they sustain a population of 50 wolves. How has that been done and how have local folk
felt about that? Well initially they were not too happy in fact the rumor was that in the 1970s
that the park director was flying over the Arbrutsel in a helicopter at night dropping wolves
when I asked him if that was a true story he said yes but they also said I was dropping vipers.
Today the wolf is very much part of the culture of the communities there's a wolf museum in
one of the medieval towns it is part of the sort of folklore almost instantaneous folklore that was
created in this community and they did it by educating they educated the educated the young folks
they brought the museum into the community which created a tourist attraction which helped
businesses within that community and they did a lot of of sort of education and social
work in developing acceptability and the wolf is now again sort of part of the proud culture of
a small community. You've done a lot of thinking about parks and urban cultural parks in the United
States based on what you saw in Italy what do we have to learn from them and what do they have to
learn from us? Well I think we're both sort of have a lot to learn from each other and again
that's how do you how do you integrate the needs of people and an economy with with natural
and cultural goals and it's much easier to say than to do any de- Italians obviously because
of their long history really understand urbanistic issues and urban culture much more than we do
and they sort of understand how to you know despite the fact that some of them are much more driven
by the values of biodiversity and protecting wildlife and having natural parks they they have a
much better grasp of how to work with the local populations so I think we can learn from that.
Brace says conflicts between local and national interests present real challenges to the
establishment of national parks. Sardinia is an example. One of the interesting stories that I
heard over there are situations is the National Park Proposal for Sardinia which is driven from
Rome which wants to protect the coastline except the local people are shepherds and their culture is
more oriented towards the mountains and they don't value the coastal resource as much as the
national environmental groups so if you leave it to the local indigenous population they have a
different set of values but their concerns are yet still important and if they're going to reconcile
and make a Sardinian national park work they're going to have to find a way to make sure that the
the the concerns of the shepherds and the local population are recognized and have some degree of
protection at the same token there's got to be a balance at the local level with meeting the
national and the overall European standard. It's not easy but it's I think there's less of a
standoff and less of a standoff and more of an attempt to deal with this and I've noticed in some
of the conflicting areas in the United States such as the Eterondex or let's say the greater Yellowstone
area. As the world's population becomes increasingly urbanized the need for park space increases.
Efforts now underway in Italy driven by standards set by the common market may show how parks can
be created that mix historic sites open space and wildlife with people and this is happening in
communities that have been settled for thousands of years.
I'm Linda Anderson and this is ear to the ground with stories about people affecting change in
the environment. This week American tortoise rescue turtles and tortoises are slow and steady
and against the hare the tortoises tenacity proved it was a winner in the end but in today's
world being slow is not a very winning quality because of their pace turtles and tortoises
become easy targets for hunters illegal pet traders and cars. American tortoise rescue founded in
1994 serves as a shelter and national clearinghouse for information about the care, feeding and
rehabilitation of endangered and captive bred tortoises and turtles. Located in Los Angeles the
organization was co-founded by Marshall Thompson and Susan Tellum a husband and wife team who foster
humane treatment of all animals but in particular. The husband and I decided that there was a need
because there are so many rescues for nice warm and fuzzy creatures but really reptiles are unique in
that there aren't as many people who love them as do dogs and cats. Turtles and tortoises confiscated
by authorities neglected sick or found wandering around make their way to American tortoise rescue
through word of mouth newsletter veterinary clinics or animal shelters. Many of the turtles or
tortoises that make their way to American tortoise rescue were bought as pets Tellum explains.
It's common in large cities particularly New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles for vendors to sell
little tiny turtles, little hatchling turtles which are which is illegal and in the United States there's
a regulation that you cannot sell turtles and tortoises under four inches. A lot of people buy them
for their kids which is the second mistake since they do carry some anela and then after they
find out that the turtles don't do much they just sit in a little container they get bored with them.
So if a turtle was fortunate to have escaped being flushed down the toilet American tortoise
rescue will put it up for adoption. Rehabilitation is not an option Tellum explains due to state regulations
that forbid the return of turtles or tortoises taken from the wild. This she says is because often these
reptiles carry diseases which can contaminate wild populations as has been the case with the desert
tortoise in California. Tellum says this tortoise population is now dangerously low because of a
respiratory disease. Tortises and turtles face problems all over the world and that's why American
tortoise rescue works as a team with other national and international groups. Whether it be finding
volunteers to help with the sea turtle restoration project in Costa Rica, aiding with an international
effort to enforce use of devices that prevent turtles from getting snared and fishing nets,
or cracking down on turtles slaughtered for food in the Asian markets. American tortoise rescue
is in the race to save the lives of turtles and tortoises. With ear to the ground, I'm Linda Anderson.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burling. We want to hear from you.
On future shows we'll be talking green about environmental justice and also about chlorine.
So join our discussion by calling our toll free number 1-888-49-green. That's 1-888-49-green.
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As we heard earlier in the show, the technology to generate clean energy from the sun is here.
The challenge now is implementing it, but in Kalamantantanga, it's already happened.
That's where the Orangatang Research Center is located deep in the rainforests of Borneo.
20 researchers there once relied on a diesel generator for their power, but the noise scared the
animals and it created significant pollution. The fuel also had to be shipped in over long distances.
So when it broke down for the last time, volunteers from the Department of Energy came in to set up
a solar energy system which today powers the entire research center. The materials were donated
by over 100 American companies and labor came from volunteers at the Department of Energy as well
as from some local inhabitants of the forest. John Thorden is with the DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab
in Golden, Colorado. He spoke with Environment Show producer Thomas Lalley.
We put a one kilowatt portable tank system at an Orangatang Research Station in South Central Borneo.
It's unique in that there's no electricity anywhere. As one of the newspaper reporters from Denver
said the problem is electricity. There is none at this outpost five hours up the river past the end
of the earth and that was really true. It was a very interesting project. Research stations operated
by Orangatang Foundation International which is a nonprofit. It supports about 20 researchers who
live their year around who are dependent on either candles or flashlight batteries. For light,
they used to have a diesel generator but it broke down and wouldn't work right and pollution from
the diesel fuel was a big consideration as well as it made noise. It scared the animals.
One of the interesting things about this project was that while we were setting up the PV arrays,
the Orangatang actually helped us set them up and we had a unique experience of having
these animals sit there and saw boards in half and unscrews, screws and handle tools and open
toolboxes, hold measuring tapes and help us things like that. It's not huge intelligence on
their part. It's just things that they see humans do and they imitate that but we have many
photographs with us sitting there in the ground putting things together with the help of an
Orangatang and an Indonesian person and one of us and things like that. What did the area look like?
It's heavy rain forest, poison snakes, poisonous sap losing plants, malaria, 200 inches of
rainfall a year, spider-sized, dinner plates, a real interesting place but the system has been
in operation now the better part of a year and is working just fine. It has the ability if they
manage their loads correctly, it has the ability to operate for about 20 days and provide them
the power they need to charge their batteries and so forth during the rainy season and in
Borneo sometimes it'll rain for a week without nonstop or so it has the ability to go through
long periods of time without getting sunlight to recharge. The solar panels or photovoltaics had to
be enclosed in cages to keep the Orangatangs which can weigh up to 400 pounds away. Thornton says
it was hard work but something he'll never forget. He says the only way to get around in that part
of Borneo is by boat and every night he and his colleagues would travel down river to reach where
they were staying. After a long day of work Thornton would lie on the deck of the boat and savor the
view of the stars. He says the local people were happy with the project although they may have
felt differently if this had been 25 years ago. The people that lived up the river where we were,
were X, DX and about 25 years ago they were active headhunders which they don't do anymore.
They were very pleased to learn about photovoltaics. For some of them it was the first time they'd
ever really experienced use of electricity although they have seen it other places but first time
they ever had a chance of doing it themselves. It set a great example for the population
in and around the area of what remote power applications can actually do for them and we got
very enthusiastic support from the local people. Terrific support and the combination of
Orangatans, Americans and Indonesians was unbeatable. We had a great time. It was one of the best projects
I've ever done as well as being one of the weirdest. Solar energy is most cost effective when used
in remote locations like Kalaman Tantanga. It provides the benefits of electricity without
requiring fuel or power lines while creating no waste. It's an even better deal if you get free
labor from Orangatans. Maybe for a next project we'll get one to host the Environment Show.
Sur 32
By now you've heard that even orangutans are getting into solar energy.
The market is growing and the need is greater than ever.
It's enough to make you want to sing.
Victoria Parks is a folk singer from Columbus, Ohio.
We hear I'm going solar from our 1995 release, Sure Feels Like Home, on Appropole Records.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I'm cutting out my losses.
I'm cutting out the middleman.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
It's just between the sun and me.
And that's the way it's going to be.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I want to keep me money, don't want to give it to the man.
Simplicity is good for me.
I'll still have electricity.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I won't be a punditur while using my computer.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I'll be the power company.
I'll make them buy it back from me.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I won't need your strip mine, your hydroelectric dam.
I won't need your uranium.
Illegally mine from Indian land.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I'd rather keep the mountains, the rivers and the streams.
I'd rather keep the rainbows living in our children's dreams.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
There's lots of greedy suits and ties, scheming up a scam.
They want to steal me money, but I have got another plan.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I'm cutting out new losses.
I'm cutting out the middleman.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
I'm going solar just as soon as I can.
It's just between the sun and me, and that's the way it's going to be.
I'm going solar.
Victoria Parks singing I'm Going solar from her album Sure Feels Like Home on Apper Po Records.
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show.
I'm Peter Burling.
For a set copy of the program called 1-888-49-Green and asked for show number 380.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible for its content.
Dr. Alan Chartuck is the executive producer, Thomas Lale is producer, and Stephanie Gorgeman is the associate producer.
The Environment Show is made possible by the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Packard Foundation, and Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Collector Carhovy, 1-800-CAR-H-E-R-E.
So long and join us next week for the Environment Show.
Thank you.