>> a panel on the world's water situation. it features mark kurlanski, howard robert earnes and professor emeritus of the environment from duke university and author of requesting the rising feed ." this is an hour. mpact and that excited to hear from you all today. i will now turn it over to mark kurlansky who will be our moderator for the panel. today on the world's water. thank you very much. >> thank you. is a pleasure to be here.

i write a lot about fish. [laughter] one thing i find in all of the debates about what's going on with fish is there are two things that nobody really likes to talk about very much: pollution and global warming. fishermen tried to talk about these things and environmentalists say perhaps inadvertently making this bad pun and say they're just trying to let themselves off the hook. [laughter] so i'm very happy to be on this panel with a couple of guys who want to talk about pollution and global warming. >> you have an order? >> howard, why don't you? >> sure, think very much, it's a pleasure to be here and an honor to be on this panel with these

two distinguished authors. you have to forgive me in it fancified talk alas. i have hundreds of people to offend and a short time to do it. [laughter] so i'm going to get right to the heart of the matter. i want to talk a bit as they do in this book about the environmental community or as my good frid, refers to them as this: he calls it the cozied dysfunctional group masquerading as environmental community. in the chesapeake bay area its 692 environmental groups. each one of them divided themselves differently saying that their tactics are better than the others' competing for membership, competing for resources and competing in a way that isn't necessarily a very profitable or productive. chief among those in our area, of course, is the chesapeake bay

foundation which for a regional environmental group is a phenomenal success. if you forget that the chesapeake bay is in disasters shape. 200,000 members and bring in 30 million a year, a full-time staff of 165 employees and so on and so on. so in this book i ask a basic question: how would these groups be 692 environmental groups behave if they believed that clean air, clean water, vibrant natural resources was a human right? if they thought this was a civil right? not just another civil rights but the civil-rights movement of our generation. if, in fact, this was our summer of 1968, what would they be doing? how much urgency would they bring to the issue? what kind of moral indignation when they bring to this effort? where they engage the political process as fully as their legally allowed to?

would endorse candidates? advertise the voting records of candidates? with a march on places like southbury maryland with a chicken processing plant or with a large and other places may be at the maryland homebuilders association which constantly fights to water down the state's storm water regulation? would they engage this process with all the tools and other civil-rights leaders have in the past? and i think the answer is, yes, there probably would but they don't. so here's the problem. the problem that i outlined in the book is not a chesapeake bay problem, is a human problem and go something like this. we are going to die and we know about it coupled with the race to improve ourselves in a short time that we're given a and usually define improving ourselves as becoming wealthier or growing our wealth. added to the fact that we can easily escape the environmental impact of our short lives, leads many of us to grant -- adopt

what i call it renters' mentality and rhianna with the ranchers mentality is. the ranchers put a premium on short-term economic benefits, they make it very difficult to envision ever mined plan for a future beyond the next year or very best election cycle but certainly not a generation or millennium. given a choice between living in a world of renters and a world of owners we would probably all jews to live among the owners, but we are given that choice. and the role of government whether we like it or not is to force us to act like owners, to force us to act as if we were going to live on the land we currently occupy for the end of time. that environmental bureaucracy is the property manager that none of us like that we all quite frankly can't live without and our job is to make sure that our government acts like a wine steward of the enrollment rather than a greedy slumlord.

what i was undergraduate at went to an engineering school and in that school i had a political science professor who was fond of saying that earthquakes don't kill anybody. he was a nobody was never shaken to death by earthquakes. [laughter] then he would go on to say that engineers kill people. imagine how popular he was. [laughter] the attention is buildings are of inappropriate and fall on people and that's how they died here and i'm here to tell you the chesapeake bay is not dying from pollution. the chesapeake bay is dying from politics because we have a political system that allows the cycle of pollution to go on unabated in unacceptable manner. i've come to believe that environmental politics represents an irreconcilable conflict. it's a conflict between those with the values of owners who believe that to environmental protection is worth the cost and environmental restoration is also worth the cost and those with the values of renters. renters benefit from exploiting

the bay in one way or another. they exploit as a cheap and giving a place to expose of unwanted byproducts and what economists and political scientists would call externalities'. chicken latourette, pollution from sewage treatment plants, what ever it might be. and exploited by over harvesting the bay's natural resources. those resources that live within certain natural laws weather over harvesting oysters, crabs, rock fish, shad, sturgeon, whenever it might be. i don't argue that these renters are evil or ignorant, i don't believe that. i believe that acting like a rancher from a business perspective is often the only rational choice and that the business of business is to minimize production costs so as to maximize profits and that's the responsibility of business leaders. taking steps to reduce your externalities' voluntarily can increase the production cost of a day from a business and make them less competitive in the

march -- larger market. in rental programs were cheap or if they were profitable we wouldn't be here today because we would be implementing them. no amount of wishful thinking can overcome this basic fact and the thousands and thousands of conflicts that its bonds. restoration is a continuous effort to change human behavior and there's nothing more controversial and unpopular in been trying to do that. it's an attempt to make as i flight owners and my friends it is a political problem. the basic question that guides my research goes like this. how can it be that the chesapeake bay has so much support in the general public based on more than 40 years of environmental education programs and have to be the chesapeake bay is so deeply supported by our elected officials, every one of them regardless of party or pro chesapeake bay, ask them and they remind you come november.

how can it be that we know so much about the chesapeake bay from a size perspective? is often been said we know more about the chesapeake bay than any other body of water and the face of the earth. the truth is we know more about the chesapeake bay than human beings have ever known about any body of water the on the face of the earth. huckabee that we have so much wealth? huckabee that we have all the pieces of the puzzle wealth and environmental ethic and will from our elected officials, guidance from our environmental scientists and yet the chesapeake bay is in such miserable miserable shape? make no mistake, the bay is a colossal disaster. i can go through all the usual numbers but they won't mean much to you. ..

and the chesapeake bay and every one of its tributaries are listed as impaired bodies of water of after 30 years of the nation's premiere restorationest, but none of that means anything to anybody. because the bay isn't dying today. the fact of the matter is, the bay is down right gross and i want to make a point. so last summer, there's a ph.d. biologist in hi area and she tests the water quality up and down our river. she does it because our local officials don't do it very well and i asked this person, i said sally, on the day you collect the samples, if i give you three additional samples, will you test them. i didn't tell her what the samples were. the first sample was from my not so clean toilet, the second sample was from my not so clean toilet that had had feces in it and my third sample was from my

toilet that had feces that sat there for an hour that i swirled around a bit. all three of the samples came back with readings that were less than the readings from the river, the average reading from the river for that week, and by the way, all three of those samples were 1 the e.p.a.'s levels of acceptable swimming levels. that's gross and that's the state of the chesapeake bay and that's a major, major problem. how did we get in to this disaster, how did this unfold? and i make the argument in the book, if you want to understand this dysfunctional coalition that we call the community and i make which recall the environmental community. and i make a distinction between the light green to the dark greens with other groups group that people commonly referred to as cornucopia. i want to owlet and very, very quickly. first are the dark greens. darkrooms believe we are in a web of connections with nature. the distinction between nature and man are official and of

ultimately touch up pencil to both man and nature. they believe that a world without wilderness is a world diminished, diminished for human beings. they are writes pace group at heart. the belief we have a way to clean air, clean water and fiber natural resources are public spaces. another way to say this if they believe nobody how powerful or profitable have the right to bear our public water, our public air or the natural resources that are public spaces. and they insist that these rights deserve the same protection as other human rights, even if protecting them is expensive or inconvenient. they believe the role of science is to identify that the carrying capacities nature from the limits of nature in the public policymakers have to play with those limits and we cannot compromise because those limits are not able to be compromised. and i have a central tenant of their understanding. it's called polluter pays approach. polluters holzman are responsible for the pollution

that they create, not the public, not anybody else. on the other side of the environmentalists section are grouped by called for the light credence. their responsibility-based approach. they believe that we have a responsibility to protect the environment. as a gardener may protect your garden path. they are the favors that save the manatee, save the oceans and yes of course save the day. they believe involuntary consensus. they believe we don't need rules and regulations. but we really need our goals informed by science and promulgated through the education system. they believe that compromises a good thing because compromise the two steady progress. the darkrooms of course reject this approach. they believe that environmental advocacy must move way beyond environmental education and moral arm-twisting. they insist the environmental must use every legal tool at their disposal in order to fight

this fight and certainly must use the tools that the industries are using that i so often find themselves in conflict with. their model for action is not dr. seuss's heartless for experts martin luther king and it's a civil right movement of the 1960 in the 1970 this sense of urgency@@@ @ 3

all greens are nothing more than close the socialist and you are use it as an increase of government control over your lives and that's what you really want by the way. they believe that government's environmental programs are bad for business, because more often than not, government's environmental programs are expensive. they also are a rights-based approach, but they don't prey upon the altar of environmental rights, they prey been the altar of property rights and they believe your property rights trump my environmental rights. their holy trinity is that of technology, free markets and economic growth. they believe that the free market can give us more quickly and more efficiently what the government promised us and often fail to deliver, which is a clean environment. they believe that pollution is simply a phase and we're going to outgrow it, and that the trick to environmental protection is growing our economy. that we will somehow grow ourselves green. the dark greens reject this. they reject it out of hand.

they believe that no industry has a right to pollute pour environment, even if that pollution is temporary, though they seriously, seriously doubt that it's temporary. they point out that should the whole developing world go through its dirty phase, that the cornucopians talk about, it would be devastating for the planet, balls the bulk of the world's population is still in that developing stage. the dark greens live in a world with limit, that cannot sustain the consumption habits of the west. the dark greens point out that the west with its advanced technology and its efficient markets have not solved its environmental problems. we still grapple with clean air, with water, not to mention carbon emissions and they also point out we haven't solved our pollution problems, we've simply exported them to the developing nations and they consume the bulk of the world's limited resources. i'm going to wrap up by just asking the obvious question. the answer is who's right, the dark greens, the light greens or

the cornucopians. it doesn't matter. the dark greens bring a sense urgency and outrage that is fundamentally necessary and by the way, missing from the bay restoration effort. the light greens serve as the diplomats, the middleman between the dark green and corner copy i can'ts. what has made the chesapeake bay the ecological zombie that it is today, not quite alive but not quite dead is the triumph of the right greem paradigm. by marginalizing the dark greens, the light greens have guaranteed a series of sub

optimal policies that might be able to slow the base general and slow decline, but are incapable of reversing the downward trend. the trick to environmental restoration, not just for the day, but for the country or the globe as a whole is to change the political course of least resistance, that the chesapeake date and rivers flowed this rake politics while. imagine where an elected official care about absolutely nothing but reelection. not that difficult to imagine. [laughter] what's harder to imagine is that politicians voting in favor of good environmental policies, not because he cares deeply, but because it's in his political interest to do so. when we have a situation, we will have hope for the chesapeake date. that will require a dark green awakening that quite simply hasn't happened here yet. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you aired while you're all trying to decide which category your blog and, [laughter] was speaking of sub optimal solutions, you're in the chesapeake bay have given up a solution in much of north carolina that is a disaster for our shoreline. you haven't been here in maryland a type of shoreline stabilization called living shorelines, yeah. and living shorelines does a very good thing for producing a salt marsh behind a rock revetments and if allows for a decade or two or three. but after a decade or two or three, but those that do not have left are the revetments and no salt marsh. so we're trying to stop desperately your invention here, but no one is funding us to put in more living shorelines. so at any rate, i came here to talk about the sea level rises.

sea level is rising additional controversy about this or at least there shouldn't be. we can measure it in a number of ways. nothing is happening now that hasn't happened for several billion years. we have just 18,000 years ago, the sea level was 100 feet below what it is today and it came up to about where it is today, about four or five dozen years ago and now it's rising underneath of an inch per year. but what was in eighth of an inch per year, who cares? it looks like sea level rise is accelerating and a number of state involved of experts on sea level rise have concluded that they've all concluded just about the same thing, maybe it's kind of a bandwagon, i'm not sure. but it every day concluded with a 50 or 2183-foot sealevel rise, a minimal three-foot sealevel rise. right now the sea level is rising at about a foot, close to a foot and a half% jury rate and

the evidence for this is we have 150 years of measurements that shows us pretty well what's happening. for the last 18 years, we've had a satellite measurements and both come up with exact or very close to the same sea level rise rate. we can also look in nature. we have a lot of dead trees along shoreline and especially abba moral, south atlantic on the dead tree and old marsh is said they weren't eroded away. they were there and i haven't fallen in. they've just been downed by sea level rise. we have a cemetery and portsmouth island, north carolina, which is a fascinating one that is sitting in a salt marsh when other people didn't bury their dead in a salt marsh. however, i should point -- the tombstones have fallen in now due to shoreline erosion.

why is the sea level -- why the sea level rising? it's rising because the main sea level rise right now is the thermal expansion, the expansion of sea water as it warms. but coming on board here and according to the intergovernmental panel on climate change and most agree with this, the big players in this 21st century will be deny she's peered at the potential of 29 feet of sea level rise. producing more water now than the west antarctic ice sheets, which has the potential of 16 feet of sea level rising. in user in the east antarctica sheet coming of the total potential of 220 feet of sea level rise. that's not likely to happen. i'm not claiming that's going to happen by any means, there just gives you an idea what's happening. the green ice sheets started melting about 1995.

melting is a difficult thing to determine or contribute to monitor the sea level rises difficult because you have to know how much is coming every winter, how much is being done at an outcome how much noise has been produced and how much ice is an lost every. so it's not a simple thing to measure. west antarctica jesus probably became important in 2,542,006, something like that appeared in 2090 of the first technical paper that seem to show that the east antarctica sheet, the big ones, besides that the united states is reducing -- is starting to produce its starting to melt enough loss of water. the ramifications of this rising sea level are first thing and the canaries and the mind which are the asphalt and particularly carbonite asphalt husband abandoned which are the two adult nations that people are slowly moving to new zealand

have a first-rate australia and been turned down. the indian ocean has more 100 of people are debating what to do. they've have the same government council meetings where everyone is worried subic are signing documents, pointing out, making the point that the sea level is rising and they recognize they have a very severe problem. in the marshall islands, sea level rises and they'll problem is validation and start something site that. they're now going across the 50 l. in droves where they put the soil into the drones. drums left over from world war ii, both by the japanese and the american spirit in the arctic along the coast of siberia and the north slope of alaska and in parts of northern canada and also scandinavia, we have a different problem. we not only have sealevel rise,

but we have melting permafrost. so the beach is becoming more easy. the sand is looser and more easily with by race because of the melting permafrost during the summer and then we have a much longer summer, ice free summer along the shores of the goshen. and that means the waves are striking the shorelines that and much higher rate. and for a much longer period of time. so we have a very severe shoreline retreat problem in these places that are going to require moving villages back, but they're no longer live in an igloo is where they're no longer -- although they are such system societies and match cases, they require sewer, water and everything else we required in our houses. in fact of the federal government insists on not. what around the world, in and bangladesh to a 14 million people living below one meter,

below three feet so to speak elevation. but the country that has the most to lose in terms of the percentage of population, that will have to be moved when the three-foot sealevel rises is vietnam on the mekong delta and the river delta, in large part of the population was there and a large part of their rice production is there and that will have to be removed. in the u.s., we have the most -- the most attended by image by far of the barrier island and we have 3400 miles depending on how you measure the mass of area from the south shore of long island all the way to the mexican border. a three-foot sealevel rise means that barrier island development is toast. there is no more barrier island development unless you build a massive seawall around both sides of the island. but the problem there is at the

time of the barrier islands are threatened and they really need to do something, that the same time that manhattan is spreading and so forth. so who's going to get the money? we have manhattan, boston, philadelphia, d.c., miami at who's going to get the money to say that? is it going to be the ocean city maryland or manhattan? of course it's going to be manhattan. at the barrier islands, and excite the barrier islands will be in trouble. development will be in trouble and we should be responding to this now. one thing we can do immediately is not to build any more high rises to high rises take away all flexibility and any possible response to sea level rise. miami is the most an arresting situation all. in a u.n. study of sea level rise impact, it takes use it as a measure the amount of property that will be flooded by

three-foot sealevel rise if you don't do any thing, and miami leads the world. there is no sea that is more valuable property that under three feet in elevation. but miami has two serious problems. number one, they're sitting on top of the miami limestone, which is a very porous rock. so was palm beach and sewer hearts of fort lauderdale acting. the problem is you can measure this in some of the ponds in the city of miami. they can actually measure a very slight pie in freshwater ponds in the city. that means that there's a lot of porosity. that means you can build a massive levee from the ocean they are on the floor line plus skates at the entrance to the among the less the, but it would make any difference because the water can discover it up and flood the city, not to mention

what's going to happen from behind. the second problem that miami has, the mayor doesn't believe in it. the most political system in miami is really lagging behind in getting on board is a really, really serious problem for the city. but a serious problem for many cities. while typing to sum it up and think we don't have to look at this as a catastrophe. we can look at this as a hugã that's a little higher than a foot. say we should plan for that in terms of putting buildings up, in terms of put willing infrastructure roads and so forth, so i think to sum it up,

the few fewer is very exciting in terms of sea level rise p. [applause] >> ok. well, i'm certainly very excited to learn that we're not going to have to worry about the florida vote for much longer. couple i just want to ask each one of you a question and then much better questions will be asked. i one might care about stuff up to the microphone and i'll take your questions. let me just ask you, oran, i'm going to make you ayatollah of the world you can do whatever you want and you're not an elected official.

you can anger everybody. what are you going to do about this problem? >> zero man, what i like to do that. >> who wouldn't? >> yes, politeness buildings. i first of all would do some studies on how to do math and destruction on buildings of barrier islands in florida were the hundreds of miles, hundreds of miles of highways and shoreline. >> and what exactly is the problem with the high-rise? >> good question. the problem of high rises you can't move them. you can move them but it's far too costly. at a flight house cost $12 million to move it 12,000 feet. in many places there's no place to move the high rises. yes, i would definitely plan on moving. i would definitely plan on moving back. and i would try to do this mercifully as they could to my subject. like, i would not allow

rebuilding. they always claim that come you know. i would not allow reconstruction after a storm. notice the assumption of this when hurricane hugo came by and they just couldn't do it. it was just too hard to do it. a lot of wealthy people who lost their houses, so they made a rule if you can find the roof of your house, will consider to be rebuilt. so everybody explained the rules of course. so we have to move and it's going to be difficult. i think we have to recognize that we're not going to hold the shoreline a place in any event. we can put a gauge, like the dutch have done. the dutch but it gave. they're a very small country all sitting on the delta and at a very adult elevation, much below sea level. overnight holland. and when it comes to the mississippi delta i would move

back east communities. get new orleans out of their and move back east communities on the lower delta that louisiana is so important. well, they are important, but you're not going to save them. we can save them ultimately and were talking about billions of dollars and we should not be spending billions of dollars for small communities in louisiana. i can say more, but -- >> okay, howard, i wanted to go legalistic on this notion of right. now, i think you could make it pretty clear case that a lot of environmental issues ultimately have to do with their survival. and we have a right to survive if we make it comes to shell argument about it life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. at least two out of three. but what i wanted to ask you is

beyond survival, because we supposedly have a level of environment in degradation that is not for survival aired and is there an intrinsic, is there an intrinsic right to be saved from any abuse of the environment? >> i'll put it this way, that yes there is. but the problem is that every day we determined that it's not. and so, right now there is somebody in the epa that doing a mathematical equation trying to figure out what the value of a human life is. if you don't believe me that they do this, they absolutely do this. and so they want to do a cost-benefit analysis may want to say what is it going to cost of upgrade the brand ensures power plant in glen bernie right down the road from here? i say will cost a billion dollars. though how many human lives are

required to extend? , it will be saved by doing not admit to figure out what the value of human life is in order to figure out if it's good to do that. i am outraged by that question. you're given to polluting industries a permit, which equates to a right to kill. and i don't think anybody has that right. i like to look at the other way, not that we have rights. i want to know whether or not these polluting industries have a right to reduce the life expect to have my children. and the answer is no. >> why is there no one at the microphone? they are not believing me. [laughter] i can go on and ask the questions. if think you need to go to the microphone because they're being filmed and they will pick up your voice unless you speak into a microphone. >> thank you for taking my

question. i know in the environmental community there's an idea of value being the ecological value and they're doing it right now. they're doing a scientific study to say how much it would cost to set the value of using weapons for getting redneck church in and they put money on values like clean air. , tried a cost to clean the air? inputs and economic value. i want to be a dark green, i really do. but i think unfortunately i'm a light green because you have two -- everybody doesn't put instead of having number one on the bill of rights, the bill of rights having another one saying freedom of speech. i went for a bill of rights number one. if you can't read indicator in the water, you don't have anything to say.

so i'm just saying if you put economic value on their habitat and how much they're worth and how much will the dollar value based. you can say they protect from hurricanes, whether, clean the water, they would be habitat for fish. i mean, there's ways to put a value wanted him to put into dollars and cents. i wish life wasn't this way. so that's my question. i mean, do you think that's a possibility? perhaps we should just stop funding any kind of federal insurance on flooding. good i don't want to pay for it. i mean, somebody is putting on the outer banks in florida and people that live on florida on the main peninsula really are annoyed with the people in the outer banks. it's always the people want the barrier islands because they want -- they want bridges and

make it wiped out every year by a hurricane. and what happens, the entire peninsula is pained because they live on the water and have their beautiful view. and who wouldn't want to live there, but you should pay for it yourself if you live there. what about you, question, but it's mostly a question about putting them dollars and sent in making everything in terms of that. i mean, you put the price of clean-air, it would be too expensive than tupelo. >> is a classic light green perspective. congratulations, you are a light green. [laughter] i don't entirely disagree with that, but i don't buy it entirely as well. i'll give you an example of how it can work. right now the chesapeake date we have this little disgusting fish but nobody catches. and it's valued economically is relatively small. its value ecologically is phenomenal because without the fish you can't have a vast

population. [inaudible] and it falls at the last for the chesapeake aa. and so we do a cost-benefit analysis right now, the simple approach is to say, you know, how much should we spend to restore the men hated and we don't take into account the ecological value. you're saying we should. flipside of that is in a aroma county, where worsening right now there's a prohibition against women in the spotters for 48 hours after he won a train event. info, rmi tuned officials will calculate the cost of what is off. and that's how they're going to do it. the little place like sandy point parkway have to go one of those that were with the average person pay to go into that part? well, maybe if tunnelers dicarlo. how many people go in a day? okay, 100 people.

they run their numbers and they say the value of being able to serve in public hard-faced but we just calculated. so if you can't go in the water after a rain, they'll say that's okay as long as the cost of fixing that is greater than the economic loss of actually being able to swim. and i say no, we have a right to swim in water, not just when it not raining, but when it is raining. we have a right that our rivers and streams don't become as dirty as the toilet bowls. [inaudible] >> until you get at their people look at dollars and cents. how was he going to get it solved? my dog got sick from sort of the river. [inaudible] >> when you apply a value to something, relates to your personal values. what it's worth for clean water and cleaner to me is far greater than for some of your people.

and so was value do we look at? we look at my value? you know, what's the value of being able to catch a striped bass are not having to work kevlar gloves because it's infected with disease. economically it's a very small value because if you cook the fish you can still eat it. they tell me is relatively safe. but you know, you have to tell your 7-year-old child not to handle the fish. at the end of the day, those people have a right to diminish those things or they don't have a right. and that's what it comes down to. [inaudible] >> my children don't remember. i swam on the day my entire life. when i was a kid i wear white bathing suit. there were seagrass everywhere. it's not that way. now their memories are lost or they don't have a memory of having a normal ocean and city. it's the artificial beach. it's not the white sand.

[inaudible] >> exactly. but heidi make it work? 3% of the population votes for the environment. if you look at the voter's comments 3% double vote for the environment. until you get the last of the world living like uni -- [inaudible] >> i would take exception to the 3% because i studied this stuff. in more than 50% of americans today will describe themselves as having an environmental ethic, has been an environmentalist heard and even beyond that i studied statewide issues for my dissertation i want to look at environmental initiatives that cost people money, right, but bring in an environmental good. a billion dollar bond in california for high-speed trains, semicommercial netting in the state of florida, having humane treatment of chickens in california and so on. the highest passage rate of any type of initiative well over 60% were environmental initiatives, regardless of whether it costs money. the public has an environmental

sentiment that is far greater than that of elected rituals today. >> and it cuts across politics, too. there's conservative environmentalist. >> absolutely. >> people forget about teddy roosevelt and that it was richard nixon that gave us both the epa and clean water act. you know, it wasn't until ronald reagan that environmentalism became coming to know, you dirty work among conservatives and that is kind dirty or interfere with global warming. but it is not be that way. environmentalist your dealership stewardship to be based on whatever you want. the left-wing -- >> how do you get the chesapeake a foundation to be darker green? of >> i've been poking them in the eye for nine years now. last night how do you get the

chesapeake a foundation to be more dark green? steady pressure gently applied doesn't hurt. and now, they're like any other group. they@@@ @ ,p2p,

and it shouldn't by the number one strategy for the environmental community. >> another question for howard. i -- you really got me, do they have a right to shorten the life expectancy of my children. no. you're exactly right. and that's what kind of mood we over into the dark green, yes, we must think in terms of rights, which cannot be violated and compromise is the wrong word, violate is the wrong word, but then let me draw on your imagination. of i don't have enough imagination to see then, as a dark green, when i have an idea, that there are rights that cannot be violated. how much have you just ruled out, what have we just undone. i heard warren talk about deconstructing and removing thousands, i suppose, of high rises on hundreds of miles of shoreline. your program has to be more

extensive an oren's, doesn't it. >> it's not a matter of if my program comes into existence, it's when. at some point, we have to achieve a sustainable existence, whether it comes to shoreline development, whether it comes to carbon emissions or whether it comes to living in the chesapeake that we don't poise on ourself. so it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. why not now rather than later. does to mean we'll pay more for food? yes. does it mean we pay more for energy? yes. is it going to be that we have to make these sacrifices. yes is the public willing to do it, i don't know because they've never been asked by our elected officials, so let our elected officials say these policies continuing down this course is going to lead to the death of the chesapeake bay and all these things and we have a choice, you can pay more and go down this course and it's going to be a kiss. we're not given that choice. what we've been told is an

illusion. we were told for 20 years that the bay restoration was making steady progress, that we were improving, that we were moving along in the right direction. when my first book came out in 2003, the chest meek bay restoration was championed around the globe as the world's premiere restoration effort. that's been debunked, thank goodness, i hope i had some part in that, because better sooner than later. the changes we have to do are expensive. it's billions of dollars for storm water, billions of dollars for sewage upgrade. we know exactly what needs to be done. there's never been a bigger gap between what we know needs to be done or what we're doing. that's the unfortunate thing. >> we consider this an environmental right and we fight like hell. >> i have a question for dr. tilke. right at the beginning you mentioned the problems with living shoreline, which i think i understand there are the long-term problems, but my

understanding is they were an improvement on bulkheading. so how would you solve the living shoreline problem, instead of living shore lines. >> my solution to the eroding problem would be friday to exon struck marshes without the bulkhead, put a foundation down there without the rock that left. or do some -- use some oyster shells or something like that, or use some biodegradable wood out there instead of the rock, which is a permanent feature. something that takes, that looks 30 years into the future and maybe could be -- and maybe could be altered 30 years from now, but building big rock revetments out there is a permanent thing and it's a wrong move to make in a time of rising sea level. those rock revetments in 50

years will be under water, most of the ones i've seen here. so i think the thing -- the salt marsh is so important. we think it's important, in terms of value to larvae and various marine organizisms, and there's even some question of whether the salt marsh behind the rock revetment is a real salt marsh as no rock revetment. >> i would like to answer something about this question on barrier island. eye getting the federal government off the barrier islands. if we got the federal government off the barrier islands tomorrow, much of the problem would disappear. we are maintaining shorelines with beach nourishment, for example, which has increased the number of high rises and the corps of engineers brags about it or used to brag about it p until they realized that wasn't quite the right thing, but -- but getting the federal government off the island would be a good first step. p.

we tried that with the cobra system, where we does the needed certain barrier island segment as we would have no federal presence on the segments. well, as soon as the storm comes by as happened in what council beach, north carolina, everybody felt really sorry for them and also we had a very powerful senator in jesse holmes, so we just been in there and fixed everything, even though we were not supposed to be federal money. so these things are difficult. fundamentally, i think what howard is saying i really agree with. we can do something at least in my -- on the coast. we can do something now in a strategic way or we can do the same thing later in attack at full way. records respond to a natural disaster. but if we do something now, we don't have to necessarily respond to natural disaster. >> professor orrin, four years

ago lake erie was a disaster. there were fires on the lake i gather. today you hear that they cleaned up. i don't know scientifically how well, but arthur series of lessons that can be drawn from what happened there? >> they benefited from a species called the zebra muscle. i'll be honest it's what cleaned up the water more than any other fact weird to cuyahoga river caught on fire and has gotten better. everything we know needs to be done is clearly identified by the scientific community today. in fact the we know most of us that for about 15 years. you reduce nitrogen can reduce phosphorus, the oxygen bubbles in the day will come back and make sure the sediments don't inundate the day and you harvest no no more resources that will replenish themselves in any given year. a social scientist like myself can understand that. are we capable of doing it, you know, in our political system? will see.

i hope so. >> so you're seeing there was no political deal or arrangement with lake erie. it was the buckles and other fact your. >> yes. it was not enlightened management. >> there is also a decline of industry in cleveland. [laughter] >> the black sea has refined it but it wasn't because of management there either. >> okay, we have time for maybe one more question. there's actually a mike -- sure. >> hi, howard come i read your book and it's great and i recommend everybody here read it. everybody in that they should read that and i consider myself a dark green. i've always said please don't call me a liberal, commie anything else but a liberal. a socialist come a communist is okay, but not a liberal.

[laughter] anyway, when you mention the price of the cleanup, i'm heavily involved with storm water. the billion dollars would just be the one county. we could spend millions in the community. but here's the question, i know one of the ways they can get the money and that's by stopping spending it on all the wars in afghanistan and iraq. [applause] and that's the monster in the room that nobody's talking about here and we're spending all this money on stuff instead of making our world a better place with water we can drink in soil and another we can breathe. were we to make killing people and destroying the environment on the other side of the world. and i think your comment on that. thank you. last [laughter] >> ray finally, someone asked the question.

my comment is i appreciate your perspective and i share much of your concern. you have to look at where the money in a federal budget is spent. the adults really say you showed me your budget and are also showing me your priorities. a great deal of money spent on the military. a great deal of my is also spent on social security and medicare and medicaid and other vital services that our government provides. so the question ultimately is is your government reflecting the values? from her question i suggest that it doesn't. >> the military to meet is basically don't live up to the laws that we have evoked to the rest of us to go by and environmental care of the land, it never appeared in fact, i read a number of places are considered the biggest polluters in the world, such things as airplane cleaning fluid with waters down and was it for the june or camp lejeune in north

carolina. and you consider that to be of the problem is that we allow them basically a pass on these environmental things? >> the law of the land is that the federal government is exempt from state laws. right? and the supreme court has ruled that the ability to even tax the federal government is the ability to destroy, therefore, they're exempt from even taxation. thousands of acres in the chesapeake bay region are controlled by the federal government. and many of those properties aberdeen proving ground and others are highly contaminated and very dangerous places for decades and decades of military training including chemical weapons training and other things. aberdeen proving ground by the way is also the largest bald eagle nesting site on the atlantic coast. it might not be safe for us to walk around but, you know, bald eagles prefer bombs going off periodically than living in an urban area. [laughter] >> my experience has been this.

military officials are very good at following orders and instructions, right? they are. and if they are instructed to do the right thing, they'll do it. but they have a mission which is different from or not entirely consistent with environmental protection. that they have a training mission and they have other missions and it puts them at odds with environmental protection and it's a balancing act. and it's a difficult thing. >> okay. thank you all very much. >> thank you, howard, orrin. i think we're going to be signing books over there. thank you all for your questions and for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> here's aook at some upcoming book fairs and festivals over the next few months.

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