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WHAT MAKES OUR LIGHTS GO ON?
The environmental impacts of large dams and reservoirs
Jacques Leslie is a foreign correspondent turned non-fiction writer who once covered the war on Vietnam for the Los Angeles Times. When he did a cover story for Harper's Magazine, entitled "Running Dry: What Happens When the World No Longer Has Enough Freshwater?" he began a lasting involvement with the environmental and political issues of water. What Jacques Leslie discovered when he wrote for Harper’s was that “At the core of every argument about water are dams, the modern pyramids, generators of extravagantly apportioned electricity, water storage, and environmental and social disasters …“

Some dams are so huge that they can be seen from space. Dams have shifted so much weight towards the equator that geophysicists believe they have slightly altered the speed of the earth's rotation the tilt of its axis, and the shape of its gravitational field.
Jacques Leslie http://www.jacquesleslie.com/ is the author of: Deep Water, The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment. He was recorded at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA.

A battle is being fought by independent scientists and those employed by the hydropower industry over the discovery that reservoirs behind the world's dams are a source of global warming pollution. In the case of big reservoirs in the tropics -- where most new dams are proposed -- hydropower can actually emit more greenhouse gases per kilowatt-hour than fossil fuels, including dirty coal.

The worst example studied by an independent scientist, the Balbina Dam in the Brazilian Amazon, had a climate impact in 1990 equal to an astonishing 54 natural gas plants generating the same amount of power.

Patrick McCully is the author of Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Dams and Development Project - and the Executive Director of the International Rivers Network. <http://www.irn.org/> I interviewed him right after his return from the November 2006 UN negotiations on global climate in Nairobi.
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part ONE click HERE
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part TWO click HERE
Code A291CD  To order a one hour CD click here: $10.00
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MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL IN KENTUCKY
What makes our lights go on?
In September 2006 the poet Wendell Berry, in the company of two members of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, came to Marin County in Northern California. Coal companies have destroyed one million acres of mountain land and forests and buried 700 miles of streams in order to strip mine coal. Much of that coal is used to produce electricity.

Part ONE: Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan
Part TWO: Teri Blanton and Burt Lauderdale of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth

Wendell Berry grew up on a farm in Kentucky, taught creative writing in college and returned to farming in 1965. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays. Michael Pollan has written books and articles about food, agriculture, and gardens. He is the author of “The Omnivore’s  LaDilemma” Burt Lauderdale is executive director of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. Teri Blanton works to fight mountaintop removal on their project called "The Canary Project". The event was recorded by Paul Knight for KWMR and sponsored by Marin Organic, an organization committed to turning Marin County into the first all organic county in the country.
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part ONE click HERE  
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part TWO click HERE
Code A290CD  To order a one hour CD click here: $10.00
Code A290tape  To order a one hour tape click here: $10.00

Dangers of Climate Change
Order the three hour set of this six part series
$6 off for THREE CDs click HERE:  $24.00
$4 off for THREE TAPES click HERE $21.00
This SIX-part series is based on audio recordings of the Hadley Centre/MET Office/Exeter/England
In early February of 2005 a headline appeared in the London Independent. It said: "How Mankind Is Sleepwalking to The End Of The Earth; floods, storms and droughts, melting Arctic ice, shrinking glaciers, oceans turning to acid. The world's top scientists warned last week that dangerous climate change is taking place today, not the day after tomorrow." The award winning environmental writer Geoffrey Lean wrote these words.

The conference was called: Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change and it was held by request of the British Government. In order to counter the refusal of the United States to acknowledge the urgency of the issue of climate change they brought together 200 respected scientist from the fields of ecology, glaciology, meteorology, and oceanography.
Find the notes by the Hadley Centre at <http://www.stabilisation2005.com/programme.html>
Find the IPCC at  <http://www.ipcc.ch/> 

Find out about the expose in Mother Jones
As the World Burns, By Bill McKibben, Chris Mooney, & Ross Gelbspan
Think tanks and journalists funded by ExxonMobil are out to convince you global warming is a hoax
http://www.motherjones.com/toc/2005/05/index.html

Douglas Quin recorded the sounds of breaking ice in the Antarctic
http://www.antarctica2000.net/frameset.html

PROGRAM ONE
Opening Address: Professor Stephen Schneider (Part 1 of 6)
Interview with the Director of the British Antarctic Survey (Part 2 of 6)
Professor Stephen Schneider gave the opening address at the Hadley Centre conference on Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change on February 1, 2005. Stephen Schneider is professor of biological sciences at Stanford University. He co-directs Stanford's Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources. He is doing research on ecological and economic implications of climate change; climatic modeling, the carbon dioxide "greenhouse effect", and environmental consequences of nuclear war.
You can see Stephen Schneider's slide show (2.1 Mb) on the web site of the Hadley Centre
http://www.stabilisation2005.com/day1/Schneider.pdf

Prof. Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, <http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/> addresses the accelerated warming on the Antarctic Peninsula and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. That includes news from the breaking ice sheets (Larsen A and B and other) and the melting of the coastal glaciers.
You can see Chris Rapley's slide show (2.0 Mb) on the web site of the Hadley Centre
http://www.stabilisation2005.com/day1/Chris_Rapley.pdf
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part ONE with Stephen Schneider click HERE
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part TWO with Chris Rapley click HERE
code: A268 To order a cassette copy click here: $8.00
code A268CD: To order a CD click here: $10.00

PROGRAM TWO
Global Warming on Greenland (Part 3 of 6)
Possible Collapse of the Gulf Stream (Part 4 of 6)
Is the melting we are seeing today the precursor of a major deglaciation of Greenland or a momentary anomaly. How fast will this process unfold and can deglaciation be stopped if it begins accelerating due to internal feedback mechanisms. Also, according to the Hadley Centre models:  Even after CO2 levels are brought under control the oceans will keep expanding – raising the sea levels around the world - the question is for how long.
With Jason Lowe, Hadley Centre and Jay Zwally, NASA.
You can see Jason Lowe's slide show (1.2 Mb) on the web site of the Hadley Centre
http://www.stabilisation2005.com/day1/Jason_Lowe.pdf

The possible collapse of the Gulf Stream, leading to a dramatic cooling of Europe, was considered a "high impact - low probability" event. Recent data show that there is now a 70% chance of collapse due to global warming. Michael Schlesinger is Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He directs the UIUC Climate Research Group within the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. 
You can see Michael Schlesinger's slide show (1.8 Mb) on the web site of the Hadley Centre
http://www.stabilisation2005.com/day1/schlesinger.pdf
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part THREE with Lowe and Zwally GREENLAND click HERE
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part FOUR with Schlesinger GULF STREAM click HERE
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PROGRAM THREE
The Impacts on Oceans and Land (Part 5 of 6)
The Bush Wars on Climate Science (Part 6 of 6)
Scientist have recently discovered that about half of the man-made carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fuel burning has been absorbed by the oceans. CO2 reacts with sea water to form carbonic acid and that lowers the ph level of the water and makes the oceans more acidic. Today the ph level of the oceans is already 0.1 unit lower than before the industrial revolution. These  changes are accelerating the extinction of marine life from plankton to cod to coral reefs.

Dr. Carol Turley, head of science of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, talks about the impact of the increasing acidification of the world's oceans. She said that the ph level of the oceans had remained incredibly constant for thousands, if not millions of years. Now about 400 billion tons of fossil fuel CO2 have been absorbed by the oceans

You can see Carol Turley's slide show (1.6 Mb) on the web site of the Hadley Centre
http://www.stabilisation2005.com/day1/Turley.pdf

Professor Rik Leemans from the Environmental Sciences Department of Wageningen University in Holland directs projects on global biodiversity. He presents studies of birds, fish, insects, lichen and plants and their struggle for survival under global changes in growing seasons and distribution.

Animals and plants are on the move everywhere. They try to move north or up mountains to avoid warming or they follow the warming trends if they benefit from warm weather. Changes in the oceans are especially fast. Some plankton species have already moved north by up to 1000 kilometers. Some warm-water fish are moving into the warming seas at a rate of 250 kilometers every 10 years. Extinction rates are high among those unable to move and among those who no longer find the other species they depend on in the new environment.
You can see Rik Leemans slide show (3.1 Mb) on the web site of the Hadley Centre
http://www.stabilisation2005.com/day1/leemans.pdf

IS NUCLEAR POWER COMING BACK?
A four-part mini-series based on a briefing, on November 7 and 8, 2005,
by Dr. Helen Caldicott's organization, the Nuclear Policy Research Institute
http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/
You can order single CDs below or get the set of this series at a reduced rate:
TWO CDs with 2 hours of programming click here: $18.00
TWO cassettes with 2 hours of programming click here: $18.00
For a 32 page TRANSCRIPT of the full series PLUS the amazing talk by Noam Chomsky on the
ARMAGEDDON OF OUR OWN MAKING click here: $10.00
Anti nuclear campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott invited scientists, members of the Bush administration, and journalists for a two-day conference to address the following issues:  What is the connection between nuclear power and war, what is the safety record of nuclear power plants, and what is their effect on the people living around them? And what lies behind the claim of the Bush administration that nuclear power plants are being brought back to ward off global warming?

In domestic and foreign policy, in legislation and funding priorities, the Bush administration has begun a major shift towards building new nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel reprocessing sites; technologies that were abandoned in the US decades ago. The energy bill, passed in the fall of 2005,, set aside $8.7 billion for the nuclear, oil, and coal industries while offering only $1.3 billion for alternative fuels. Some have asked why the oil industry, with record high profits needs a $1.6 billion subsidy. Not enough critics have investigated the biggest line item of them all: the unprecedented $4.3 billion to the nuclear industry.


A281/Part ONE:
IS NUCLEAR POWER COMING BACK?
Congressman Ed Markey (D. Mass.)
Rep. Ed Markey on the status of waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, on the Bush administration's violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and on massive subsidies to the nuclear industry.

Congressman Ed Markey was first elected to Congress in 1976, and has fought against nuclear proliferation and for environmental protection. Rep. Markey and Dr. Caldicott are friends and have worked together on the Nuclear Freeze and in the aftermath of the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania.
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part ONE click HERE


A281/Part TWO:
NUCLEAR RADIATION'S IMPACT ON LIFE
Dan Hirsch (Committee to Bridge the Gap), Dr. Helen Caldicott (Nuclear Policy Research Institute), and David Richardson (School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina)
On the efforts of Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to raise allowable exposure levels, and on the biological effects of radiation. We now have ample evidence, gathered in the last 60 years, of how nuclear radiation harms life. All radiation is cumulative; there are no safe levels. Radiation causes cancers in organs, glands, bones and blood.

But this issue is about more than the individual deaths from cancer.  Radiation affects by mutation the genetic heritage each of us carries in our DNA. The future of life is present today within the bodies of living people, animals and plants -- the whole seed-bearing biosphere.  We are now altering these carefully evolved seeds by randomly damaging them, and passing on that damage to future generations.

Dan Hirsch is president and co-founder of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nuclear watchdog group that provides technical and legal assistance to communities near existing or proposed nuclear power projects.

Dr. Helen Caldicott explains in detail how radiation damages life. She is president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and the author of numerous books on nuclear and environmental issues. Her book, Nuclear Power is not the Solution to Global Warming will be published in the fall of 2006.

David Richardson is assistant professor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He specializes in long-term effects of radiation exposure.
http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/
http://www.committeetobridgethegap.org/
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part TWO click HERE
Code A281CD  To order a one hour CD of part ONE and TWO click here: $10.00
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A282/Part THREE
ROUTINE RELEASES FROM NUCLEAR REACTORS
Kay Drey (NIRS), and David Lochbaum (Union of Concerned Scientists)
Very few people know that nuclear power plants routinely release highly radioactive substances into the environment. Even accidents at the 103 U.S. plants hardly ever get reported.

Kay Drey is a Board member of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). Since 1974 she has worked on hazards from so-called routine releases of radioactive gases and wastewater from nuclear power plants. You can find out more about her work at <http://www.nirs.org>

David Lochbaum began his career as nuclear engineer a few months after the Three Mile Island meltdown. For the next 17 years he worked at nuclear power plants in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut. Now he is a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists where he monitors the performance of all US nuclear power plants.
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part THREE click HERE


A282/Part FOUR
NUCLEAR POWER FOR A POLICE STATE
Or: A Police State for Nuclear Power?
Dr. Arjun Makhijani and David Freeman
When David Freeman became the head of the Tennessee Valley authority 30 years ago he halted construction of eight nuclear power plants. Today he warns that nuclear power is a failed technology and that it takes a police state to live with it.

Freeman has dealt with nuclear power plants and public utilities all his life. An engineer and lawyer, he was energy adviser to President Jimmy Carter. He held top positions at the New York Power Authority, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Lower Colorado River Authority and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). During his tenure in Sacramento Freeman initiated the nation's most intensive utility conservation program, including electric vehicle, wind and solar programs.

Dr. Arjun Makhijani holds a degree in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked on plasma physics and controlled nuclear fusion. He is the principal editor and co-author of Nuclear Wastelands, the first global assessment of the health and environmental effects of nuclear weapons production. Dr. Makhijani addresses the issue of nuclear proliferation and why nuclear technologies have spread in spite of the efforts, begun in the early 1960s, to dismantle existing weapons stockpiles.
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part FOUR click HERE
Code A282CD  To order a one hour CD of part THREE and FOUR click here: $10.00
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Derrick Jensen:
BRINGING DOWN CIVILIZATION
Derrick Jensen wrote in his early book: “Listening to the Land”: “We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide --all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity." And he follows that with a question: “Why do we act as we do? What are sane and effective responses to outrageously destructive behavior? What will it take for us to stop the horrors that characterize our way of  being? My work and life revolve around these questions. “

FAST FOOD WORLD:
Vandana Shiva, Wendell Berry, Eric Schlosser, Carlo Petrini & Michael Pollan (3 parts)
Three out of every five Americans are now overweight. Children who eat fast food every day gain an extra 6 pounds every year. It now appears likely that - for the first time in American history - our children will actually have a shorter life span than their parents.
This program about fast food is not just about the fact that grease, sugar, and extra calories make us fat and sick. It is about the giant industries behind fast food that change not only our bodies but the body of the earth and the lives of farmers who traditionally grew our foods.

With a cast of real stars: The physicist and seed collector Vandana Shiva from India, the Kentucky farmer and poet Wendell Berry, Eric Schlosser who wrote: Fast Food Nation, the founder of the Slow Food movement Carlo Petrini from Italy AND Michael Pollan, teacher and author of The Botany of Desire.
http://www.slowfood.com
http://www.vshiva.net
http://www.ecobooks.com/authors/berry.htm
For a broadcast quality mp3 version click HERE
code A240CD: To order a 80 minute CD click here: $12.00
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HOWARD LYMAN AND MAD COWS
His lone fight against some giants of industrial agriculture
(chemical manufacturers and cattle growers)
The Montana rancher Howard Lyman first came to world attention in 1998. He and Ophra Winfrey had been sued by Texas cattlemen and feedlot operators because Lyman had said, on the Ophra show, that mad cow disease might already be in the US. Since Lyman's warning the first case of mad cow disease has been confirmed in the US. In Part TWO Lyman says we are till feeding cows to cows and test less than 1% of slaughtered cows while Japan is testing every cow.

In Part ONE Lyman explains what chemical agriculture did to his farm, his family and himself, and what gave him the strength to keep up the fight against mad cow disease that is only now beginning to surface to a larger public.
After selling the majority of his farm Howard Lyman became an organizer with the Montana Farmer's Union. In 1995 he formed the organization he now works for: Voice for a Viable Future. He is the author of Mad Cowboy.
He was recorded at the 22nd National Pesticide Forum in April of 2004 in Berkeley.
Breaking NEWS: The Organic Consumers Association is beginning a Mad Cow campaign NOW.
OCA Organizing Mad Cow House Parties Across the U.S. this Spring. Check their web site at;
http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/dvd.htm
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part ONE click HERE
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Part TWO click HERE
code A259CD: To order a one hour CD click here: $10.00
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Howard Lyman with Dr. Virgil Hulse
code: H202 To order a copy click here: $8.00
Howard Lyman and Dr. Virgil Hulse discuss whether we can afford to continue our current eating habits. Dr. Hulse was one of the advisors to the Oprah Winfrey lawsuit. He is a family doctor and former dairy inspector who warns of widespread infestation of US cow herds by bovine leukemia and the bovine AIDS virus.

Mary O'Brien on Endocrine Disruptors
code: H203 To order a copy click here: $8.00
Do chemicals that affect our hormones cause cancer? Dr. Mary O'Brien is a public-interest scientist who works on alternatives to chlorinated and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. She spoke at a gathering of Marin Breast Cancer Watch, a group dedicated to exploring the environmental causes of cancer.

Sandra Steingraber on Living Downstream
code: H204 To order a copy click here: $8.00
Sandra Steingraber is called the new Rachel Carson. She is a biologist, poet, and survivor of cancer. Her scrupulously researched book, Living Downstream, describes the growing body of evidence linking cancer to environmental contamination.

Terri Swearingen
code: H205 To order a copy click here: $8.00
Terri Swearingen is a woman of passion, wit, and integrity. She refers to herself as an ordinary housewife and mother. She rose to lead the fight for closure of the nation's largest toxic-waste incinerator, located in East Liverpool, Ohio -- just 1,100 feet from an elementary school.

Dangers of Cell Phones and Towers
code: H207 To order a copy click here: $8.00
The rapid build-out of the wireless communications system and digital TV exposes people to thousands of new antenna sites. Growing evidence links radio frequency exposure to cancer. How can community groups protect themselves? What does the current research show? 50 minutes.