Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome, economic opportunity and environmental
obligation.
Not only is it possible to have both, President Clinton says it's a necessary part of his
climate change plan, we'll have analysis.
Also what else is new in Washington?
Margaret Kelly, director of the EPA Office of Technology and Innovation, says she's trying
to find out.
We feel that providing information on technologies basically fills a big gap that exists.
And so we base compile information and offer it through written documentation that our
it's user friendly, you know, we're not writing 150 page technical reports here.
We're trying to write for the project manager and for the citizen.
The Environment Show and National Production made possible by Hemmings Motor News, the
National Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington, Vermont.
One by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New York, and this is Bruce Robertson.
With the United States a disproportionately large user of energy, it was not with casual
interest that industrialists and environmentalists alike gathered recently on the south
lawn of the White House to hear details of a climate change plan devised by President
Clinton.
The President echoed the comments of Vice President Gore, who in his introductory statement,
referred to global warming as the single greatest environmental threat facing us.
It is a threat to our health, to our ecology, and to our economy.
I know that the precise magnitude and patterns of climate change cannot be fully predicted.
Global warming clearly is a growing long-term threat with profound consequences.
And make no mistake about it.
It will take decades to reverse.
The biggest challenge the President said is to balance our need to provide economic opportunity
for everyone with a moral obligation to preserve the global environment we all share.
I remember so well the sort of shocking but bracing and reinforcing feeling I had the
first time I began to go to New Hampshire, which is what you have to do in this country
if you want to ultimately become President, to find that people just living their own lives
in what was in a very economically depressed state also believed that we could find a way
and that we had to find a way to pursue our economic objectives and fulfill our moral
responsibilities to have an aggressive and responsible program about the environment.
That cannot be done unless we change our attitude about what we put into our atmosphere
and how we respect the air we breathe.
That requires us to meet head on the serious threat of global warming.
You will recall it was the United States as the only major industrial nation on Earth refusing
to sign the treaty on global warming at the Earth Summit.
Last Earth Day President Clinton released a blueprint for a national plan he said would
bring the United States up to and even exceeding the terms of the Earth Summit treaty.
The initiative recently released stands as a clarification of that earlier blueprint.
It targets 50 areas where we as a nation and as individuals should take action.
We have begun the task of linking our economy to the environment today and what I believe
is a truly extraordinary fashion and I think if all of you read the plan in its exquisite
and sometimes mind-bending detail you will see that it is a very aggressive and very specific
first step.
I would argue the most aggressive and the most specific first step that any nation on
this planet is taken in the face of perhaps the biggest environmental threat.
Key to the President's plan aside from the specific proposals is an emphasis on voluntary
involvement.
The task is accomplished primarily by harnessing private market forces, by leveraging modest
government expenditures to create a much larger set of private sector investments and by
establishing new public-private partnerships to bring out our best research and our best
technologies.
This plan takes the environmental debate where it should have been years ago beyond a
confrontation over ideology to a conversation about ideas beyond polemics to real progress.
The broad outlines of the proposal call for reducing greenhouse gases to the 1990 level
by the year 2000.
This will be accomplished in a variety of ways.
There are 50 separate initiatives in this plan, touching every sector of our economy because
the problem frankly affects every sector of the economy.
There are measures to approve energy efficiencies in commercial buildings and to make better
household appliances.
There are new agreements with public utilities to reduce greenhouse gases and new public
private ventures to increase the efficiency of industrial motors.
The plan will make it possible for all Americans to purchase appliances unlike any we own today.
When your furnace dies or your washer breaks, you will be able to go to a local store and
buy a new appliance much more efficient than any you can buy today and one that will save
money in its operation.
This in turn says the president will lower the cost of doing business which will increase
profits in short the proverbial win-win situation.
The environmental community is mixed in its review of this plan.
Daniel Lashoff, a senior scientist with a Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington,
attended the White House ceremony.
I think it was an impressive event.
I thought it was very encouraging to have the president and vice president of the United
States first talking about the importance of dealing with this issue.
And second, laying out an agenda for doing things that we have advocated for a long time
for investing in energy efficiency technologies that have the potential to both clean up the
environment and improve the economy.
And it's something that the president emphasized very strongly and I think a very important
theme for moving forward.
Generally speaking, Lashoff says the plan is acceptable.
Well, I think that this plan represents an important first step in confronting the global
warming threat.
It really is a down payment on a climate insurance policy.
Now, there are many additional steps that will be needed and the administration has clearly
acknowledged that and committed to working in a process to add the additional steps,
particularly raising automobile fuel efficiency standards, which is needed to deal with the
problem over the longer term.
But this plan in itself certainly represents a good start.
Lashoff says the plan indicates action to be taken on most of our energy related activities.
It gets significant reductions in energy consumption from commercial buildings by encouraging
upgrades of the lighting systems and the heating and ventilating systems in large commercial
buildings.
It also targets the residential sector with new energy efficiency standards set at a
more aggressive level than previously anticipated, as well as a program that allows homeowners
to finance energy efficiency improvements as part of their mortgage.
I think that's something that a lot of consumers ought to try to take advantage of because
it's an opportunity to save money and do something for the environment at the same time
because the idea behind that program is that you have somewhat higher interest payments
on your mortgage, but that that will be more than made up for by lower energy costs.
In a transportation sector, where again, we note that additional steps will be needed
over the next year.
The initial step here is to require labeling of tires so that consumers know whether they're
buying tires that will keep their car running as efficiently as it was designed to do with
the original tires.
The fact is currently most people who buy tires want their original tires wear out, aren't
aware of the fact that they're buying tires that actually reduce their fuel efficiency
from what was originally intended.
There was an additional program that will apply to many consumers that says that if your
employer pays for a parking space for you, they will be required to offer you the cash
value of that and let you take the option of continuing to drive or finding an alternative
way to get to work and taking that value of that benefit is cash.
Those are the broad outlines.
As we heard, each of the 50 points covered goes into what the president said is exquisite
detail.
While lash-off is hopeful, reserved, but hopeful, as you might expect, there are other
interpretations of this plan.
Basically, it seems that the plan is currently constructed is a lot of hot air.
Stephen Kretsman, director of the Energy and Climate Campaign at Greenpeace.
What's happening is the administration is asking industries to volunteer to combat climate
change.
Unfortunately, these same industries are the ones that are out of the other sides of their
mouth saying the climate change doesn't even exist as a threat.
It seems either exceedingly naive of the Clinton administration or perhaps the Clinton
administration has once again slipped, flopped on an environmental commitment just to
please take business.
Kretsman says the basic objection to the plan is that there does not seem to be any really
bold, sacrificial moves.
Every action is cushioned so that we never really get the full effect of how dangerously
we are courting disaster.
They have counted what is called carbon sinks or forests towards offsetting CO2 emissions.
The basic theory here is we can continue to drive our cars and produce as many fossil
fuels as we see fit as long as there are forests to absorb carbon dioxide.
It's a very shaky science behind this theory and people really don't believe at this point
that it's really going to make the difference.
I guess in terms of the large picture here, the administration is doing one thing while
they're saying another.
They may be saying they're going to combat climate change, but on the other hand, we're
still giving over $30 billion a year to the fossil fuel industry and the nuclear industry,
both of which create huge amounts of greenhouse gases.
By comparison, energy efficiency and renewables, those which can combat greenhouse gases, get
only about 2 billion currently from the Clinton administration and are going to get only
250 million more under this supposedly new plan.
You also have the administration at the same time proposing new initiatives to bolster
the domestic oil and gas industry.
They're actively seeking to drill off the coast of North Carolina's outer banks and
off the coast of Florida.
They're actively seeking to drill off the coast of Alaska.
Obviously, this is not part of any major effort to combat climate change.
Basically, what Grimpiece would like to see is a recognition and in fact the geologic
record supports this that we have enough reserves on hand now to begin a full scale phase
out of the use of fossil fuels.
We have the technology available now to begin seriously implementing energy efficiency
and renewable technologies into the mainstream in our society.
Steve, what is the right in your opinion with this document?
The only thing that I can look at and say is right is we're a step further, a small step
further, a step nonetheless further than we were with the Bush administration, which
says we recognize the problem and there's a problem.
There's a lot of good rhetoric and our character is only as that rhetoric.
In the beginning of this document, which recognizes global warming as the major environmental
problem facing our plan today, obviously that's a big step forward.
However, to not do anything about it is absolutely unconscionable at the stage considering
that they obviously recognize the scale of the threat.
So there's really not a whole lot on this plan.
Stephen Kretsman, director of the Energy and Climate Campaign at Greenpeace, clearly
displeased with the President's plan.
Daniel Lashoff, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, is more accepting.
The plan reportedly calls for nearly $2 billion in federal monies, $60 billion from industry.
Clinton says most of the federal money will come by shifting allocations.
It is hoped the private sector money will come from marketplace generated profits.
Finally, the President said this plan is by no means set in stone.
It will be adapted and modified through the years to take advantage of new technology
and new science.
And to help keep track of all this, the President will set up a new commission in the White House.
This is Bruce Robertson.
The environmentally balanced way to keep the pest bug population to a minimum around your
home is to have a healthy and diverse bird population.
They eat bugs, lots of them.
But as we all know, birds migrate in the winter.
Well, this works out though because winter is not known for its bug problems.
But what about next summer?
How can we be sure the birds will come back?
For that matter, what about the birds that don't leave in the winter?
They don't have bugs to eat?
Larry Sompke, the environmental gardener, not one to ruffle anyone's feathers, has some
timely advice.
Hey Larry, how are you doing?
Pretty good, Bruce.
I can't get my hands full here.
Yeah, you're right me that the song from the Mary Poppins movie, Feed the Birds, here.
Is that right?
Yeah, I'm following a bird seed, bird feeder.
Trying to fill it, I think I'm one of those kind of guys that get about half of it all
over the ground.
I've never been here.
Over the years I've tried to find little funnels.
But I always lose those.
But it's fall and it's a good time to start.
If you haven't already started feeding birds, now's a good time to get the food out.
So you don't want to wait until the day of winter January or sometime when the birds are
starving.
They don't know where your bird feeder is.
You know, you can actually feed birds all year round.
And they will come and they will stay.
And they will also eat a lot of buds.
That's the most wonderful thing about birds.
Besides their beauty, and it's fun to watch.
It's like having your own little TV set out here.
But they birds eat enormous amounts of insects.
And I've got this gray sunflower seed, or black sunflower seed.
And that's what I'm just feeding to them straight.
As I found that my birds are finicky up here.
They like the kind of birds that I can attract, nut hatch, and chickadee, and cardinal, and
some other birds, junko.
Those are all good insect eaters.
And they stick around all year round, and they stick around in the winter.
And they just seem to really enjoy this black sunflower seed oil in this feeder.
This is an easy feeder they can get to, and they have no problem at all.
Then I have this other feeder that's kind of tall and...
It's a cylindrical, clear plastic.
It's got little purchase on it, and it's got little teeny tiny holes.
And I will fill that up with some real teeny tiny bird food, like a millet or something
like that, because that's what finches seem to like.
And finches also are good bug eaters.
And I have those little redhead finches around here all year round, and the gold finches.
And I like to put the food out for them and keep them around.
Larry, a lot of people do feed birds.
And at the same time, managed to also feed a really fairly sizable squirrel population.
How do you deal with squirrels?
Well, I realize that I have some sort of symbiotic relationship with squirrels.
I know that I can't control them.
And I try to...
I find with the squirrels that the birds come, and they'll knock some of the food off of
their little perch here, off their little bird feeder, and it'll fall on the ground.
Enough of it is on the ground, that the squirrels will be happy to stay on the ground.
I rarely ever see the squirrels out actually getting into my bird feeders themselves,
because there's enough of it on the ground.
But just from experience, let's go...
I'm going to get this thing hung up, let's go over here and hang it up.
From experience, I found that there's really not much you can do to control those pesky little squirrels.
So basically, you just leave them be and what they eat, they eat, and if you can try to keep a full bird feeder,
then you'll work on me.
Right, it doesn't hurt you to feed the squirrels a little bit too.
Cats, though, I do try to keep away, because if you have cats,
you're not going to have too many birds around.
And you know, as a bird feeder, you don't really have to have an exotic bird feeder.
It's wonderful to have an exotic bird feeder, and I all power to you.
But when I lived out in Boone County, Missouri, once, Columbia, Missouri,
we just had a little wooden plate like this, just a little flat little board,
that we just tacked up to the side of the house, put bird food on it,
and the birds came and ate it.
So if you can find an old scrap of lumber and attach it to your house or to a tree,
or a porch or something, and put the food on it, the birds will come.
So just a recap here.
It now is a good time to put out bird seed to encourage the birds to stay around through the winter.
And then to find your place.
You find our place, right?
Get them custom-defined in your place.
I found that it always takes them about a week to find me.
So go ahead and get out there, get things started, get the birds custom-
to come into your house, and then you'll have them all winter long.
Okay, well, good for you Larry.
Talk to you next time.
All right, take care.
Bye-bye.
I'm back here now.
Larry Sampke, the environmental gardener, author of Beautiful Easy Gardens.
His feathered friends stay around his house in Hollowville, New York.
And this is Bruce Robertson.
Like a student taking a final exam, we have skipped over the hard questions to answer
the really easy ones first.
Now we have to go back and really test our brain.
This is what Margaret Kelly is helping us to do, through her position as head of the Office
of Technology Innovation at the Federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The Technology Innovation Office is really filling a new role for EPA in that we're advocating
the use of innovative technologies to clean up contaminated soils.
These are contaminated sites, so it'll be soils and groundwater.
We're trying to move away from established technologies such as incineration and solidification
and containment.
Although those technologies would still be used certainly and certainly have merits, we
feel for reasons of cost and cost effectiveness that we have to identify a whole new set
of options to basically clean up sites.
What are some of the new innovative ways that we are approaching, dealing with hazardous
waste disposal and cleaning up soils and contaminated water, especially in light of what many
would consider the biggest failed program, Federal Government Program, the Superfund?
Well, I wouldn't term Superfund failed.
We have been at it for quite a few years.
Underused maybe?
Yeah, the fact is that when you're dealing with subsurface contamination, it's just, it's
technically a very difficult problem.
And I think we did not realize that when we basically started the program about 13 years
ago.
It's not like you air emissions, which you can see coming out of a stack in which you
can monitor or effluent coming out of a pipe.
This is contamination in the subsurface.
Sometimes it's extremely deep in the soil and in the groundwater.
And so I want to be fair to the program.
I mean, you have people working very hard to find remedies.
However, there are technologies that are in various stages of development and use.
Things you see already being used and selected for Superfund cleanups are soil vapor extraction.
So basically where you are pulling off from the soil through some type of vacuum contaminants
that are volatile.
So you pull them off and you can collect them and then treat them separately.
What else is on the horizon?
Well, you have other technologies that are actually in use now, thermal desorption, which
is where you heat up basically your soil to volatilize contaminants.
So it's not in scineration where you're actually destroying the chemicals, but you're
volatilizing, pulling them off, collecting them and then treating them separately from
your larger soil matrix.
We use separation technologies also, such as soil flushing, which is basically streaming
water through your soil and collecting it.
And anything that's water soluble, it's in the soil.
Any contaminants that are water soluble come off.
And then you can collect them separately.
And then there are technologies that are really cutting edge.
They're farther away from commercialization of great interest.
They're membrane technologies, electro-asmosis, electro-kinetics.
You know, just very interesting thing.
You're talking about filtering processes.
Well, some of it is filtering, but some of it is basically trying to selectively capture
certain contaminants and separate them out from the larger matrix.
And membranes would do that.
Supercritical fluids is another basically compounds like carbon dioxide that would be normally
in gas at room temperature and pressure.
You increase the pressure.
It becomes a fluid.
It becomes a very good solvent.
And certain contaminants will dissolve in that.
And then again, separate it out from the larger matrix and collect it.
So things like that are more cutting edge.
They're not necessarily in use right now, but have a lot of promise.
Kelly says her office acts as a sort of information clearinghouse, though there are some EPA laboratories
doing research.
For the most part, her office keeps track of the research others are doing.
One of the biggest problems in getting people to use new technologies is lack of performance
and cost data.
What's inherent in the definition of innovative is that these technologies have not been used
full scale in the field very much.
And so we're very much interested in providing potential users of remedies of these technologies
with cost and performance data.
And we're interested in getting this data developed.
Whether it's private sites or federal facilities and putting together groups of people to work
cooperatively and share the cost and the risk of this development.
And basically just trying to provide information.
We feel that providing information on technologies basically fills a big gap that exists.
And so we base compile information and offer it through written documentation that our
users are friendly.
You know, we're not writing 150 page technical reports here.
We're trying to write for the project manager and for the citizen so that they can understand
what technologies, innovative technologies have to offer.
Margaret Kelly, Acting Director of the Office of Technology Innovation at the Environmental
Protection Agency in Washington, hers is a civil service position not affected by a current
administration.
This is Bruce Robertson.
Well, that's our report on the environment show this week.
Thanks much for joining us and be sure to tune in again next week.
We had helped this week from Tracy O'Connell, Audio Portions of President Clinton's White
House Ceremony on Climate Change, provided by C-SPAN, the Cable Satellite Public Affairs
Network.
Marcus set copy of this program called 1-800-767-1929, asked for the Environment Show Program
Number 199.
The Environment Show, a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its
content, Dr. Alan Shartock, Executive Producer, this is Bruce Robertson.
The Environment Show made possible by the J.M. 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, a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its
content, the National Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington, Vermont.
The Environment Show, a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its
content, the National Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington, Vermont.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0