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 Burlitt, coming up. Building an incinerator
to burn nuclear waste can create opposition in any neighborhood, but try it near Jackson
Way Omen, where celebrities are joining local residents that are saying not in my backyard.
The state of the world, 2000, as many people are overfed as are hungry, and economic prosperity
is coupled with a deteriorating global environment. A green tip on Detroit's new concept cars.
listeners comment on the sale of Great Lakes water and labeling of genetically modified foods,
and on the Earth calendar, hellbender salivanders have hatched in southern Indiana. Papa guards
the babies, but he can't resist eating a few. These stories and more coming up on the
Environment Show. You're listening to the Environment Show, and I'm Peter Burlitt.
Residents of Jackson Way Omen are waging a battle to try and stop the federal government
from building a nuclear waste incinerator. The government wants to put the facility
at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab, or INEEL. It's in Idaho Falls, Idaho,
80 miles upwind from Jackson and Yellowstone Park. As the Environment Show's Mark Brody reports,
the battle is getting intense and includes some big names. Actor Harrison Ford has given $50,000
to the cause, while others have given $50. The group of people trying to stop the energy
department from building the incinerator is as diverse as the environment in the Rocky Mountains.
Environmental groups, including the nonprofit Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free,
have filed a lawsuit to stop the incinerator from being built.
Bert Hirschfield is the president of Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free.
We're saying incineration is not the route to go. It is unhealthy, it is very dangerous,
and potentially lethal. But the waste has to be dealt with. So while this is in a stable condition,
figure out a way that is not going to be so detrimental to people's health, to the wildlife
health, to just the quality of life that people all over the country and world. I mean, obviously,
this affects the people closest to the plant most, but the air just travels all over and we're
putting this into the air. There are about 65,000 cubic meters of waste to be treated.
Most of it is stored at INEEL, where the incinerator will be built. Much of the waste has been
stored in excess of 30 years in containers that weren't made to hold radioactive waste that long.
Incinerating waste, even plain municipal waste, evokes strong opposition wherever it's proposed.
But even still, Beverly Cook, the manager of the Energy Department's Idaho Operations Office,
says despite public opinion incineration is the best way to get rid of this particular nuclear
waste before it becomes unstable. We went through very detailed studies on methods for
disposing of things like PCBs. As I said, the current environmental regulations require that they
be incinerated. There are other thermal treatment processes. Other things that also involve
heat. Many of them are very early in their developmental stage. The thorough study of all of those
techniques which the Department of Energy has done and has been reviewed both by the public and
also by other experts have indicated that not only is this the best way to do it in the most
well-developed technology, but it also is a safe technology to use to take care of this material.
The waste is contaminated with plutonium and is called trans-juranic waste, meaning it falls
in between low and high-level nuclear waste. The majority of the waste will be compacted and
then shipped to the waste isolation pilot plant in New Mexico for permanent disposal. The remaining
22% or so will be incinerated in several stages, which will break up and destroy PCBs and other
hazardous chemicals. What comes out of the stacks at the end of the process is one of the bigger
debates in this controversy. Proponents of the plant say emissions will be safe, but Attorney Jerry
Spence, who is representing the group, suing to stop building the plant, says he and his clients
have problems believing the Energy Department and British nuclear fuel limited who will build and
operate the plant. He says the groups have misled the public before and feels they're doing it again.
Spence believes emissions from the incinerator could have dire consequences.
There are 43 toxic substances that they admit will be that will be coming out of that incinerator.
They say, well, we'll catch them with our filters. We'll filter them out, but the government
overview office is afraid of the filters. The filters fail. Human beings fail. They'll have enough
plutonium in there to make 150 at any particular given failure to make 150 Nagasaki kind of bombs.
And given the right failure at the right time, this entire area could be turned into a Chernobyl.
Spence's claims are disputed by both the Department of Energy and British nuclear fuel limited.
BNFL spokesperson Ann Rida-Cell says all that will come out of the stacks is water vapor and carbon
dioxide, neither of which would pose a threat to people or the environment. Rida-Cell puts the
emission levels into perspective. An easy way to give you kind of an idea of what that is.
The site weight limit of 10 mAh per year, that's what a person gets having a chest X-ray is 10 mAh.
And then our facility, the .1 Miller M, is about the equivalent of what a person would get
flying about a one hour long airline flight. The environmental groups are also concerned the plant
was rejected at other sites before INEEL was chosen. Keep Yellowstone, nuclear freeze per
Hirschfield says the plutonium incinerator was most recently rejected at another Energy Department
lab, the Lawrence Livermore site near San Francisco. The DOE scientist said the Cardinal principle
of dealing with radioactive waste to contain it, not incinerated. These are DOE scientists,
and given that we believe with them that it should be contained, not incinerated.
That's sort of the part of the mythology that has grown up around this particular facility.
Energy Department spokesperson Brad Bugger.
DOE decided to build a treatment facility at the INEEL because the vast majority of the
trans-eranic waste within the whole DOE complex is located at the INEEL. Other DOE sites had looked
at incineration as potential treatment technologies for their particular waste streams and made the
decision that incineration was not the best technology for their particular waste streams.
Their waste streams are different than our waste stream. Bugger says the Department of Energy is
confident the incinerator will be safe and will not pose any risk to public health or the environment.
A district judge in Wyoming has refused to block work on the incinerator but has agreed to hear
the lawsuit brought by the environmental groups and Jerry Spence. If the incinerator is allowed to
be built, the Energy Department expects to start construction in the spring and have the facility
up and running in 2003. Reporting for the Environment Show, I'm Mark Brody.
Each year, the World Watch Institute produces a volume titled State of the World.
It's an annual report on progress toward a sustainable society.
Lest your brown president of the institute joins me to talk about State of the World 2000.
Lest you've just released the new State of the World report, what is the State of the World?
Well, as we were working on the State of the World report in the summer and early fall,
we were struck by the sort of the contrast between the economic news, the rather euphoric economic
news of the Dow Jones hitting new highs of the growth in the economy, the longest sustained expansion
in history, and the excitement about the information economy and what it was doing.
Now, it's true that the information economy is going to affect every facet of our lives in
this century. But we see the environmental trends which are almost all headed in the wrong directions,
being the ones that are going to shape the 21st century. When you talk about environmental trends,
what are you thinking about? We're looking at DeForestation, which is moving fast or now
at any time in history. We're looking at the potential loss of plant-manual species, which is
the largest since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. The differences,
that was probably an asteroid of some sort colliding with the Earth, and now it's us. We're the ones
that are responsible. Falling water tables would be another collapsing fisheries. One can go down
the list and almost all of the environmental trends. The Earth's vital signs, if you will, are headed
in the wrong direction. And somehow, if this century is going to be turning, is going to turn out
to be the kind of century we want for our children and grandchildren, we're going to have to get some
of these trends turned around. And interestingly, though, there are some things in the state of the
world report that I haven't seen in previous years. One has to do with hunger and the opposite.
Tell me about that. Well, this year, for the first time in analyzing the data, we discovered that
the number of people in the world who are overnourished and overweight, rival to the number who are
undernourished and underweight. The symptoms of being overweight and underweight are the same.
Increased susceptibility to illness, reduced life expectancy, and reduced productivity.
In the United States, just to sort of dramatize the extent of obesity. Last year, there were 400,000
liposuction procedures performed. That is surgical procedures to sort of vacuum out the fat,
the body fat under the skin. This, to me, says that something is wrong with our lifestyles. That is to
say, our caloric intake is far exceeding our caloric expenditure. But in this great balance of food
and humanity, if the same number of people are obese as are starving, more of the obese
folk probably live in the United States, but not all of them. So this is an issue in places that
are perhaps not as well off as we are. The obesity problem is very substantial in the United States,
in Russia, in Germany, but surprisingly in developing countries now, countries like Brazil and China.
It is not uncommon for 10-15% of the population to be overweight. And this is new, because there is
a new sort of middle-class emerging in many of these countries where they have exactly the same
problems with excessive caloric intake that we do. Now, another thing that the report deals with
is tremendous changes that are going on in the world of energy, its distribution, its generation,
and so on. What are you seeing there? Well, there's a revolution underway in the world energy
economy. I don't think most people are fully aware of it yet. We see, for example, enormous growth
in the use of wind power to generate electricity, Denmark getting 8% of its electricity from wind,
Nevada, the northern state in Spain, an industrial state, getting 22% of its electricity from wind.
And in the United States, where the strong hold for winds has long been California, we're now seeing
rapid growth in states like Minnesota, Iowa, Texas, Wyoming, Oregon, all of which have
brought online new wind farms in the last year or two. And Lester, just to close, you've been
writing state-of-the-world reports now for a couple of decades, is the world as we look forward,
likely to get less healthy and less sustainable. When we published the first state-of-the-world
report in 1984, there were a number of trends we were concerned with, shrinking forests,
eroding soils, collapsing fisheries, disappearing species, for example. But we find now, 17 years later,
as we did the research and writing on state-of-the-world 2000, that there are a whole series of new trends
beginning to merge, rising temperature, dying coral reefs, falling water tables, melting glaciers,
more destructive storms. So we're beginning now to see some of the second order effects of the
original trends we were concerned with, rising temperature, for example, is beginning to affect
the snow ice back in the mountain ranges of the world. Lester, I want to thank you for joining us.
I've been speaking with Lester Brown, who is CEO of the Worldwide Institute, and has just released
their new state-of-the-world report, state-of-the-world 2000. Peter, I've enjoyed it very much.
We welcome two new stations and middle listeners to the Environment Show, your WMUH FM in
Allentown, Pennsylvania, and WKAR AM and FM in Michigan State University in Lansing, Michigan.
The Environment Show is a national production, which has been 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 a collector car hobby,
www.hemmings.com
Does the Environment Show inspire you, educate you, or make you angry? Let us know. Our email address
is green at wamc.org. That's green at wamc.org. You can write us at 318 Central Avenue,
all but in New York 1-2-2-06.
This is Green Tips, tips on how you can save the world and your everyday life.
At this year's Detroit Auto Show, one of the concept cars contained a large array of
computer screens at lieu of a dashboard. It was reported that this would allow the IQM to do
just about anything. Watch movies, talk online, explore the Himalayas, shop, choreograph a new
balay, or prepare a gourmet meal to be cooked in the on-board microwave. The car, of course,
will drive itself. This sounds like Detroit's solution to the problem it is creating by putting
millions of more vehicles on the roads every year. It won't matter if you spend the day in a
traffic jam on a freeway because you could do everything in your car that you would do when you
arrive at wherever you are going. The green tip is get one of these machines as soon as they come
on the market, park it in front of where you live and don't drive it anywhere. Get into it,
tell the electronics to produce a simulated traffic jam and spend the day inside. You and the
machine can do your thing all day long. After the simulated drive home, you can emerge in time for
dinner. You've burned no gas, created no congestion, and not exposed yourself to the risk of a
traffic accident. It's the environmentally sound way to commute and work and keeps the love of the
automobile alive. As an alternative, you could use mass transit. With tongue firmly in cheek,
that's our green tip for this week.
We continue to receive comments from many of our listeners.
Environment show producer Stephen Westcutt reviews what some of you were saying.
A listener by the name of Mary emailed us a while back after hearing a discussion on the bulk
sale of Great Lakes Water. Last year, a private Ontario company created an international debate
when it said it wanted to sell millions of gallons of water from the Great Lakes to markets in Asia.
She says, quote, congratulations on the Great Lakes Water issue program. It was a fine,
enlightening, even uplifting program on a subject that is a profound concern to us all.
End quote. A listener by the name of Alana recently answered the online questionnaire on our website.
She says we should consider doing a series on the introduction of non-native species to solve
problems. Alana says, quote, Rachel Carson was among those who advocated the use of biological
solutions for pest control. But she was reacting to the senseless use of chemicals. Since her time,
biological controls have succeeded and failed, and it's probably as good a time as any to explore
what we've learned. End quote. Finally, we received a lot of response to a debate on whether foods
should be labeled to say that they contain genetically modified products. One listener stated that
the issue of GMOs was presented, quote, as a Jerry Springer event in which the combatants punch
each other out verbally and fury signifying nothing. She went on to say the larger implications of
this issue were largely ignored. The kind of information about relevant political activities that
could have been given to your listeners was totally absent. In response to our debate on the labeling
of goods made from genetically modified products, Sonia had this to say, I definitely think that we
should know about food that has been genetically fixed. We still don't know what the results are,
and therefore we should know whether it's good or bad depending upon years of scientific
exploration about this. We need to know all the things about our food because we're the ones that
ingest it and we're the ones that have the consequences if they are bad. So we need to know.
We appreciate all comments, questions and suggestions. You can reach our comment line by
dialing 1-888-49-Green. That's 1-888-49-GR-E-N. For the Environment Show, I'm Stephen Westcott.
Hello operator, I want you to be mine. Please pause it all you love and put me on the line.
I'm this to done lonely, lost and seen the smoke.
I'll direct things to my heart and feel me for the call.
And now it's time for the Earth Calendar. Just recently, hellbender,
salamander young hatched in streams and tributaries of the Ohio River in southern Indiana.
The young hatched into a larval stage, the latter of the two egg phases.
Brent Fisher is a non-game aquatic biologist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources
Division of Fish and Wildlife. He says the larvae are about a centimeter long when they hatch.
They do have legs and a tail. They pretty much look like the adults,
just a miniature version of the adults, except for one major difference. And that's that during
their first year or two of their life, they have external gills that come out just behind their
front legs. And that helps them get oxygen out of the water. Now they start to mature and transform
to about two years old. They lose those external gills and they actually form lungs.
And at that point, then they do surface occasionally to gulp air, although they can still take
some air in oxygen in through their skin. Besides developing lungs, young hellbender salamanders
undergo changes in their skin, skull, blood, and eye pigment. Fisher says the reproduction process
began in the fall when females and males engaged in external fertilization.
The female will lay eggs and she's laying the eggs. The male will fertilize them as they're
being released. And they tend to do that underneath a large rock. The female can lay up to
more than 400 eggs under a rock. And after they're fertilized, the male will actually stay with the
eggs and guard the nest until they hatch out maybe about six weeks later. And he's guarding them
against other hellbenders, eating them and other animals eating them. And he's also protecting them
as his own food source because he will eat a few as he's guarding them. In the first stage of incubation
or the pre-hatching stage, the young receive nutrition from the yoke of the egg. After hatching,
they enter the larval stage. Brad Fisher says hellbender salamanders will spend their entire
lives in the water, which may be 30 years. He says they're normally gray and brown on top with a
belly that's lighter in color. Their color tends to change so they very much blend into the substrate
or the rocks and stuff that are on the bottom of the river stream they're found in. They pretty
much look like any other salamander you would see except they're obviously much bigger. They have
very wrinkly skin all up and down their sides, a lot of folds in their skin. And that's mainly to
increase surface areas to get more oxygen through their skin. That helps it with that. You know,
they have very small little eyes. They're very large mouth on a very flattened head. The head is
very flattened down and the mouth extends almost all the way around the head. And they're very flattened
mainly because of the where they're usually found. And that's usually on a very large rocks. And so
the very flies pick and really squeeze in a very small hole to hide under the rocks.
Reaching lengths of two and a half feet, hellbenders are the largest salamanders in North America.
They can be found in fresh waterways from southern New York State to Mississippi.
Where this salamander got its name remains a mystery. One source says it may have originated in the
1800s in Virginia. Folks there believed the contortions of a beast resembled someone burning
in hell. Another theory has a fisherman likening the salamander from hell where it is hellbent
on returning. Whatever the source, you have to admit that a two and a half foot long salamander
is one hell of a salamander. You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley.
This is the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley. Still ahead. Despite the rumble in Seattle,
American trade with foreign nations is a major part of our economy and trade has a huge impact
on the environment all over the world. We talk green about trade, our future and the prospects
for a healthy planet. Computer chip plants sound like clean industry compared to old-fashioned factories,
but one community objects to being put on the fast track for chip plant construction. Stay with us.
We're talking green and I'm Peter Burley. Once a year I take the opportunity to chat with
members of the advisory board of the Environment Show about what has happened and what the future holds.
So today we continue our talks with some thoughts about environment and trade.
Trade has always had an impact on the environment. It was trade in whale oil that almost eliminated
that mammal and trade brought the Dutch Elm disease to the United States. The recent
Roccasin Seattle has also demonstrated that management of global trade is linked with management
of the environment. So today we're joined with advisory board members Brewster Denny.
He's Professor and former Dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington
in Seattle. He's in Seattle. Also with us is Michael Robbins, former editor of Audubon magazine
and president of the Veranda Media Company. He joins us from Brooklyn, New York. Also with us is
Professor John Worth. He's Guildred Professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of History
at Stanford University. He's also president of the North American Institute. He joins us from Santa
Fe, New Mexico. John Worth, let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about the forces that led
environmentalists to Seattle. Well, of course the fascination for environmentalists is the
opportunity to have an impact on the WTO and to make the explicit the trade environment linkage.
And there are varieties of opinions as we all know as to how that linkage should be made.
But the inescapability of the environmental conversations that have to go on with trade
is something that all of us would agree on even if the means to do that
has still highly disputed so that the meeting in Seattle, whatever one thinks of the actual outcome
of the event itself, did I think establish in the public mind something that environmental
ists all believe which is the trade in the environment are now inextricably linked and can't
be dealt with separately. So, Richard Denney from the University of Washington, over the next
few decades, where does all this take us do you think? Well, I think the internationalization
of focus on the environment which we environmentalists have always known understood and seen coming
and engaged in going way back to whaling treaties and so on as you suggested. I think that's a big
feature and I think the new part of it and I think the WTO meeting clarifies that or highlights
that I should say is the role at new international institutions of enforcement and new forms will
take place. I mean typically we looked after these matters with treaty agreements between nations
now which of course in reality is what WTO is but I think we're seeing more and more the need for
some sense of an international system of enforcement of environmental norms. Well, Mike Roveans as an
editor and a journalist, is this something anybody is going to care one quid about after the dust
settles than we look forward? I think so Peter. It strikes me that any time, for me what Seattle,
the disputes in Seattle highlighted, were that any time you were now talking about world trade,
there are two issues that are embedded in that discussion and have to be embedded in that discussion and those are
human rights issue that is the issue of exploitation of the workers and exploitation of the environment.
And those two issues very quickly now emerge I think in any discussion of trade and they were
linked up in a way that in Seattle in a way that I think is has certainly caught the attention of
the World Trade Organization itself and I would argue the attention of the world.
Johnworth, do you see this linkage and these forces really playing a substantial role in the
beginning of the 21st century or are we still going to have this kind of compartmentalized debate that's
going on in the past? I think the linkage is inescapable now and it's also actionable in the sense that
these selective boycotts which have been employed very effectively against Nike and Victoria's secret
tempering practices in British Columbia have pointed the way to green power of a very effective
kind that links consumers in and this is a new kind of politics and a coalition building kind of
politics but it plays right in to stiffening an institution to have this civil society linkage and
I think this is really a fascinating new form of international action that has great potential
and potential for working in to the institutional base of the UWTO.
I think you're right something that really does bring a different force that may reshape it
in the 21st century. I interviewed a young woman at the bus station leaving Seattle after she'd
spent a week demonstrating and she said you know the WTO is irrelevant now it's all us on the
internet and we're going to do all this stuff and change the world just by getting everybody
mobilized the act as a block that may be unrealistic but Brewster is one who has looked at
governmental institutions internationally and nationally do you see a drive for different kinds
of institutions coming out of this as we again end of the new millennium? Well we see it
rather excitingly in the in the human rights area and and I think growingly in the environmental
area that that instead of the absolute dominance of the nation state over these issues even over
their administration when there is some kind of international agreement on it we are now seeing
a broad movement towards some intervention in the internal affairs of countries of sovereign
countries by the international community. Now of course Bosnian, Kosovo are very good examples of
that and those things are related because that is a growth that's happening in law you see it
increase and I think a lot of attention between the WTO concept which is sort of the old way of
doing that kind of business and the environmentalists and the human rights folks that were on our
streets here as was I is because I live there is that they really are saying hey wait a minute
we have some institutions and why can't we find ways to put our policies and our ideas through
them and I think that's it's a very slow growth actually environment is ahead in many ways in this
that given how long we've had international environmental undertakings. John Worth as one who's
looked at trends do you see this happening more rapidly and more aggressively than other trends that
have pushed American and I'm thinking about the American continent American history in the past.
Well if you and I are both on the NAFTA and environmental commission and we've both seen North
America as sort of a leader in one ways of doing this and I would like to see one particular trend
close at hand looked at and furthered in that's the whole concept of trade corridors that are linking
our three countries together here and if the wide range of planning and and coalescing that needs
to take place to make these effective it really really occur it'll be a world beacon of how to do
something on a sub regional basis rather than a globalization a way of looking at things per say.
So I think we have a tremendous capacity to lead here and we seem to lack the political well to
take the credit and the and the leadership that the opportunity presents.
What about this notion and Mike here thoughts would be interesting here that perhaps the leadership
is going to come from all these folks out there on the internet which says a lot for people
in your business too as a as a communicator on a journalist. Yeah I think that although I wouldn't
totally agree with the person you interviewed in Seattle it's certainly the globalization of
what you might call personal or small group communication has certainly is certainly changing
or has the capacity to change the rules of the game in terms of how the issues get discussed
and how they get resolved I think we've seen that in many instances in international situations in
China and in Bosnia and I do think it's a factor and I think we're into a you know I think that
what happened in Seattle indicates that we are into something of a new of a new game or at least
new rules for the game and one thing I was particularly struck by there is the alliance
of trade union organizations and environmentalists and and although some commentators like Charles
Krahm or we're staring at that as a sort of festival the old left I think that's completely
missing the point I think the point is that is seen here is that there is a conjunction of
interests between environmentalists and worker groups one has only to think of the conditions
along the Rio Grande Valley where their workers have been in an exploited situation in many cases
and the environmental environment has suffered enormously and these things come together with
questions about water quality and industrial pollution and I think that's you know those are the
terms I think in which a lot of this discussion is going to take place on the internet or elsewhere
but one thing that I'd be interested in all of your views on is we tend from the point of view of a
US environmental community say okay we want environmental standards here and we want the US to push
them harder together with good labor standards so that at least is some kind of a minimum
criteria for playing in world trade that means you're not exploiting people in the environment
and we object have a fact that the US didn't do more of this and yet when the US floated it however
chemirously it may have one of the groups that pounded us the hardest were the underdeveloped
countries were saying don't tell us what to do because we just want to get like you are so how does
that conflict ever get resolved until everybody is at our profligate level of consumption
with too many cars too much too much stuff how do we resolve that issue or does it get resolved
well I think we're going to have to invest very heavily and very rapidly in major technologies
for example in energy technologies such as fusion which may be out of date now but
and sort of what I would call the post internal combustion engine era and because those
developing countries if they develop with essentially the same kind of power sources for both
general energy and for for transportation as we did the future of the world is hopeless
so but you're saying brishas I'd take it then that if the technology is there this linkage between
the environment and trade or well-being if you like will be made by developing countries john
worth as a historian is there any validity to that proposal yes I think I think there really is
what they want is recognition of the fact that they must develop and I think this is this was one
of the real advances that came out of the real meetings in 1992 that the environment was put on
the table by the rich countries and the need to develop was put on the table by the poor country
and the question of social equity so that the advantages of this gets spread around also floated
into that and this is the big agenda which we all have to work on and this idea however of
developing countries escaping the environment for a while while I develop is a pipe dream because
consumers are not going to put up with that and consumer standards in the rich countries are going
to accelerate environmental protection in the developing countries but in turn the technology
and the investment money and the understanding of their need to get out of poverty has to be
front and center as part of the bargain and so you're really saying that this idea that pushing
environmental standards is a function of Western imperialism or US dominance and so on may or may
not be but the consumers are going to define it whether the developing country likes it or not I really
think so and with this internet power what we saw with the population conference in Cairo was really
the first time this surface this tremendous power of NGOs linking up together and really defining
the agenda when the Vatican could not hijack it as they hope to do and I know this is another
type of issue but it was a very interesting demonstration of what we've been talking about
of the power of civil society on an international formation to really make an impact for the first
time and I think we'll be seeing that kind of coalition pushing environmental causes and
certainly in the next few decades. You know there's any real result from the Seattle thing that's
positive after we clean up the whole thing and so on and play the brain game for a while which is
what we're engaged in heavily now is what will come out is that I think the the pressure for
transparency which is a popular word or for opening up the doors will become very strong
and I don't think that WTO or any international organization or even the delegations of these
countries that work at these are going to be able to get away with a closed door approach to
stuff you know to doing their work. Let's look forward 50 years. What do we'll start with you
my province? What do you see the environment trade question looking like and do you see any
institutional changes that will have been made and I say I'd like to hear from each of you on that?
Mike what do you think? Well I think that the you know surprisingly sort of the talk of the internet
is really that's really the factor that's going to change everything and I think the shape that
the institutions are going to be in whatever it is is going to be determined by the lightning quick
pervasive communication that we are now on the brink of. Okay Brewster I think the technologies
will make a huge difference and especially if they get developed quickly but I agree with what
Mike just said and that really is another role of saying that the that transparency that will
force by the information resolution is going to have a profound effect on where we are. And John
what do you see the world looking like 50 years from now? Well I like both those points but I
think we should we should underscore it with the expectation that the forces of democratic openness
and openness in civil society continue a group of fascists or some kind of authoritarian
governments would upset all of this and cause just cause havoc havoc and hell in the plan with
the unlabeled. Yeah I totally agree. And just as a post-cript are the fascist forces likely to
win out in a few places in the next? Now they're on the run but that's the fascist itch is with us
and there'll always be people who want to do that for a variety of reasons and it's it has the
flame of democracy has to be tended and that's where of course the Kosovo and Bosnia examples are
so so pertinent. I want to thank my guests. They are members of the Environment Show Advisory Board
Professor John Worth from Stanford Michael Robbins, journalist and editor and president of
our end of media company and Bruce Judenny from the University of Washington. Trade in the
environment is something that you must have ideas about as you eat kiwi fruit from New Zealand
and drink a cup of coffee brood from beans from South America or Africa. So share your views with us.
Our number is 1-888-49 green. We've been talking green and I'm Peter Burley.
You can talk to us here on the Environment Show electronically. There are two ways to do it.
Green at WAMC.org. That's green at WAMC.org or through our website www.enn.com slash ENV SHOWW.
That's www.enn.com slash ENV SHOW.
As the technological revolution continues more and more communities across the country are hoping
to become the next Silicon Valley. Some states and localities are trying to lure computer-related
industries that will contribute money to the tax base and create jobs in their regions.
But some environmentalists don't see computer companies such as those that manufacture computer chips
as assets to their communities. They believe environmental quality may be compromised in exchange
for economic prosperity. Katelyn Kim prepared this report.
The community of North Greenbush in upstate New York stuns state leaders when the town council
voted not to continue with plans for a shallow ready chip fabricating plant in Brenzler Technology Park.
The argument for this site was it would bring economic growth. Something other regions of the
country have experienced with a production of computer chip facilities. The high tech manufacturing
has got to be the future of this region. Kevin O'Connor is president of the Center for Economic
Growth in upstate New York. If we're going to stop the drain of the educated and talented people
that we educate every year in our colleges and universities we have got to have these kind of
jobs here. We'll just lose these people. These shovel ready sites are a part of a New York state
initiative to attract high tech industry and its dollars to the state. shovel ready sites allow
companies hoping to locate a chip fabricating plant at a site to go through the permitting
process faster than usual. Despite the law of economic prosperity, job growth and a larger
tax base citizens of the town expressed concerns about water usage, pollution and traffic that a
chip fat plant would bring to the bucolic town. Appearing at a public hearing to voice her
opposition to the proposal resident Shannon DeSell says she doesn't want to see the same environmental
degradation that some regions of the country have experienced from chip fat plants.
And those were due to leakage of chemicals and the chemicals leaking into the water supply.
So basically that's my main focus and the fact that it's being located in an unspoiled
land area located along the Hudson River. This goes beyond far beyond the community. Our
community's ability to handle this type of structure. Environmental worries are something that
Silicon Valley toxics coalition knows something about. The organization formed in the wake of
environmental concerns caused by the rise of high tech industry and Silicon Valley in California.
There's new Silicon areas growing up all around the world. Coalition Executive Director Ted Smith.
Of course it's being touted as the solution to the jobs problem. It's being touted as
the economic savior as well as the technology savior up the next century. What we've been able to
document however is that along with economic growth coming enormous problems both environmental
problems as well as other kinds of problems we now have more US EPA toxic superfund sites here in
Silicon Valley than any other place in the country as a result of the rapid high tech growth here
back during the 70s and 80s and that's a pattern that has actually become a footprint for high tech
development and many other parts of the world. According to Smith the chip fab industry uses
thousands of gallons of water a day and large amounts of energy and chemicals of all kinds.
There are very serious concerns about the health of the workers. There have been three epidemiological
studies conducted so far and of the women who work in these plants and largely the assembly
workforces women and all three of the studies have shown very high rates of miscarriages and we're
right now trying to persuade the industry to do much longer chronic health studies looking at
cancer and birth defects because we know that anecdotally at least there are very large
clusters of people and not only just Silicon Valley but elsewhere who have been working in these
plants who have experienced those kinds of health problems but beyond that when a chip plant comes
in there are enormous other needs that come along with it for one thing there are a whole
series of suppliers that need to be available the chemical suppliers the water suppliers there
needs to be hazardous waste facilities built or else you're going to have to truck in and out
the chemicals in the waste. Aside from trucking and supplies in most cases workers would be driving
to and from the plant adding to the traffic already on the road. This issue of sprawl was brought up by
many of the citizens in north green bush and Ted Smith says it's also a problem in Silicon Valley
where the official rush hour lasts for four hours in the morning and four hours in the evening.
So what advice would Smith give to a community considering locating a chip fat plant in its
borders? Well I would sure want to put it through very careful scrutiny to make sure that these
concerns are being addressed. I've been very concerned about this whole effort from New York
State where they're advertising in the national media now that they have, quote, shovel ready,
unquote, sites available for chip plants to just move in and set up without having to worry about
any of the permitting issues but it also means that the local community gets cut out of any of the
planning process and I just think that's enormously important that people are involved in the
planning process and we've been very concerned about that that initiative because it we think it's
going in the wrong direction. We think there needs to be very careful planning and that the people
who would be affected by these decisions need to be involved and need to have some significant
say so in the final decision. In your opinion has the industry gotten cleaner? Oh there's no doubt
that there's been significant improvements. They they have acknowledged that some of the chemicals
that they have used in the past are serious reproductive toxins, serious cartonogens and have
phased them out and one of the great success stories was that the industry used to be one of the
largest polluters of CFCs which are the chemicals that are destroying the ozone layer but
one for the industry got serious and looking for alternatives they were able to make a quite rapid
transition and are now basically using soap and water and instead of CFCs or in some cases they're
using an extract from citrus fruit as a substitute. So that has happened it is possible to happen
but the real problem is that they use hundreds of different chemicals and they're changing their
processes quite frequently and the people in charge of trying to protect health and safety
are always playing catch up themselves trying to figure out what are the impacts of these
new chemical processes. Still the Center for Economic Growth's Kevin O'Connor is not giving up
on the idea of a chip-fab plant in North Greenbush, New York. Neither are state leaders. O'Connor
thinks the law of an economic boom and jobs will outweigh any potential environmental impacts.
In addition he says the defeat of this one site in New York will not affect the ability of the
state to attract chip-fab plants to the other sites under review. For the Environment Show I'm Caitlin Kim.
Thanks for being with us in this week's Environment Show. I'm Peter Burley. You can order a copy of
the show by calling 1-800-323-9262. It's show number 525. The state of the world 2000 says the
planet is not yet sustainable even though everybody wants a nuclear incinerator or computer chip plant
next door to scare away the hellbender salamanders. The Environment Show is a national production which
is solely responsible for its content. Alan Shartock is executive producer, Stephen Westgood is
producer and the show is made possible by the W. Walton Jones Foundation, the William Bingham
Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund and Heming's Motor Doves, a monthly bible
of the collector car hobby, www.hemmigs.com. Be good to Vera and join us next week for the Environment Show.
