captioning spoored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, november 14: a climate deal on coal leaves big questions... and on the road in maine, a first of its kind recycling law turns the tables on who pays... and see what sea level rise looks like on the streets of portland... next on “pbs newshour weekend.” >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. bernard and denise schwaz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the anderson family fund. the estate of worthington mayo-smith. leonard and norma klorfine. the rosalind p. walter foundation. koo and patricia yuen,

committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. barbara hope zuckerberg. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. >> for 25 years, consumer cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. we offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our u.s.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you. to learn more, visit www.consumercellular.tv. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcastin a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viers like you. thank you.

>> sreenivasan: good evening and thank you for joining us. we are reporting again tonight from maine, a state we visited in 2020 to see how residents were coping as they emerged from the covid shutdowns. it's been a year of re-openings and recovery here as elsewhere in the country, but as you'll see tonight not everything maine is facing now is covid-related. we'll report on climate change and sea level rise in the gulf of maine, the arrival of afghan refugees and the people helping them resettle here, and a new law that changes who pays for recycling. our return to maine reporting will begin after the news summary. reactions to yesterday's climate agreement at the u.n. summit are mixed today. the final deal was the first to mention fossil fuels and a reduction in the use of coal, but india and china forced a compromise on coal at the last minute. before the vote yesterday, the conference president acknowledged the change from quote “phase out” to “phase down” of coal upset many representatives.

>> sreenivan: he said today that china and india will have to defend their actions. >> on the issue of coal, china and india, of course, are going to have to justify to some of the most climate vulnerable countries what happened. you heard that disappointment on the floor. >> sreenivasan: tomorrow president biden and president xi jinping of china, leaders of the world's two largest emitters of carbon dioxide, will hold a video meeting. the discussion is expected to include the climate deal, taiwan, trade, and cybersecurity. austria will introduce a nationwide lockdown tomorrow for people not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus as a surge in covid-19 cases strains hospitals. austria's chancellor announced the restrictions which affect about two million people. the move bars unvaccinated austrians older than 12 from leaving their homes except for essential activities including work and grocery shopping. the world health organization reported earlier this month that europe is again the epicenter of the pandemic with some western european countries experiencing increased infection rates and deaths from covid rising in

eastern european nations. in belarus, thousands of migrants remain at the border near poland today hoping to cross into the european union. in response, poland, an e.u. member state, has sent thousands of troops and policeo the area to strengthen security. the refugees, mostly from the middle east, have been camping out in freezing conditions and at least eight people have died in recent days. e.u. leaders accuse belarus president alexander lukashenko of manufacring a migrant crisis in retaliation for sanctions, something belarus denies. today, poland's prime minister said his country along with border nations lithuania and latvia were considering emergency talks with nato to address the border crisis. for more national and international news, visit pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: in august, the world's attention refocused on afghanistan as the taliban

suddenly took control of the capital city of kabul and the u.s.-backed vernment fell. in the chaotic last days of the u.s. presence in the country, nearly 130,000 people were airlifted from afghanistan, including more than 50,000 afghans who will be resettled in the united states. as many as 100 of those afghan refugees are now arriving in maine. i spoke with charles mugabe, a counselor with the non-profit organization catholic charities here in portland, about what the most recent refugees are facing and about his own experiences. what are the kind of first things that you're working on and what's on the to do list for them? >> so our very first to do is to pick them up from the airport. you know, bring winter clothes. if they have a relative here already, we go with the relatives with interpreters and they feel more welcome because they see familiar faces. and they see people that they know and they feel already at home. right after the airport, we take them to a place of their own,

give them orientation of where they're staying. you know, this is the appliances, this is, right... how to use this, how to use that, and help them start integrating the same night. the next thing is to ensure they have documentations, right, that they would need to start work, documentations they would need for schools, right? they complete vaccines record as needed. we make sure they have access to public benefits. >> sreenivasan: what are some of the challenges that they're facing right now, given that they are leaving in such a traumatic way? >> so i would say some of the major challenges for most of them is the fact that they left others behind, because most of them still have extended families, if not immediate families. and so the worry is whether they'll be able to see some of the immediate families who are in afghanistan soon or if they would evene able to, to see them at all, given that they're worried about what's happening there, yeah. >> sreenivasan: so this is an

emotionally difficult time for them. >> it is. >> sreenivasan: on the one hand, they're probably happy that they're out of danger. and then, on the other hand, their relatives are still in danger. >> it is. it is, and they are extremely grateful for being here. as somebody who was a refugee myself, i know what that means, right, to be able to have a fresh start, to feel secure, to feel safe. >> sreenivasan: is that why you're doing this work, that this was personal for you? >> when we came to the united states as refugees, it was difficult. you're coming into a new community, new culture, new language. almost everything was brand new. but i was very much inspired by the work the resettlement agencies are doing. and that's one of the reasons why i was very committed and decided to look for opportunity to do the same for all the others who will be coming because i know they will need help. >> sreenivasan: so tell me what

it was like to flee. what were you running from? what did you do to escape? >> so i am from democratic republic of congo, and that's in africa. there were a lot of killings, a lot of violence, a lot of abuse, lots of rape for women. i was total war, total kills, and we had to flee. the process of fleeing was very ugly. uh, you know, we had to walk. there wasn't any car coming to pick people up, so we had to walk, flee through the bushes until we reached the neighboring country, where we felt a little bit safe and sought asylum there. >> sreenivasan: when you saw what was happening in afghanistan a couple of months ago, what went through your mind? >> what came to mind was that the world will have to prepare to support the victims that will fall under the war, in the conflict in afghanistan. >> sreenivasan: mr. mugabe, thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you for having us.

>> sreenivasan: for decades, americans have been encouraged to recycle. the ubiquitous triangle of arrows can be found on almost everything. for more than a generation, many of us have separated our trash from what goes in those blue recycling bins. but in recent years, there has been a realization that just because that symbol is on the package, or just because you put it in the bin, it does not necessarily mean those products are going to have a second life. in the wake of global changes to the market for recycled material, lawmakers here in maine passed a new law that advocates are hoping transforms the way the state recycles. as in small towns all over maine, residents trickle into the recycling center in ellsworth, throwing boxes in one place; tin, aluminum, and some plastic containers into separate bins.

but as in many places around the country, what is being collected here has changed ilarge part because of a decision made on the other side of the world. in 2018, china stopped taking most recycled material from places like the united states, citing the influx of contaminated foreign trash as an environmental hazard. before that,hina took 70 percent of america's plastic recycling alone. the decision had a huge impact all over the world-- recyclables piled up, and it cost more in the u.s. to process all the material. in 2019, here in ellsworth, it led to a big change. ellsworth stopped recycling glass, several types of plastic, even boxboard like this. and it's not surprising. because according to maine's department of environmental protection, it costs 67 percent more to recycle than it does to throw something in a landfill. >> when china said, "we're not going to take your recyclable materials anymore," it was a real wake-up call.

i think the low cost of sending it to china was propping up a system that really was structurally unsound. >> sreenivasan: nicole grohoski represen ellsworth in the maine house of representatives. she says the recycling change caught this coastal community off guard. >> people had all these bins of materials that they had dutifully sorted and washed, and they came here and they saw signs that said, you know, we can't take ts anymore. so they... a number of them got on the phone to me, sent me emails. >> sreenivasan: other towns in maine decided to scrap their recycling programs altogether after the cost of recycling got too high. >> if you work very hard to sort your recycling and there is nowhere to collect it and then ultimately actually recycle it, then that's a really deflating feeling for people. the outcome is not within the control of you or i as individuals. >> sreenivasan: so representative grohoski sponsored a bill to shift the cost of recycling from municipalities to the producers who decide what packaging they use. >> we can support and restore

recycling programs, and reduce the property tax burden. >> sreenivasan: the bill was signed into law by governor janet mills in july. it's the first of its kind in the nation. >> it's so critical that producers step up and take responsibility because they are the ones who are making the choices about the packaging and packagg is 40 percent of our waste stream. so if we can get a handle on that, we've really done a lot in tackling the entire problem of what do we do with our waste. >> sreenivasan: the policy is known as extended producer responsibility or e.p.r., and here's how it will work: companies that make products sold in maine will be required to pay a fee, based on how much tonnage of packaging they produce and how recyclable that packaging is. those fees will reimburse local municipalities for the cost of recycling. the law will fully go into effect in 2027 and the idea is that by making producers pay, they will have an incentive to produce more packaging that can be recycled. >> we want to do it right and

take our time, but we also, you know, municipalities needed help like yesterday. >> sreenivasan: sarah nichols is the sustainable maine director at the nonprofit natural resources council of maine, and a champion of the new law. >> we're just the first domino to fall in the united states. but we can look to our neighbors. there's five provinces in canada that have had this type of program in place, the entire european union, russia, china, brazil. and the easiest way i can explain how or why it works so well is as an example with my kids. so they're really messy at home. and when they got old enough, i expected them to clean up their own messes. and lo and behold, there's less mess in the first place because they know they're the ones who have to clean it up. >> sreenivasan: nichols points out small businesses in maine are exempted from the fee and many major companies publicly support the e.p.r. concept, including pepsi, coca cola, unilever, and nestle. but there is still some anxiety around whether the law could adversely affe businesses in this small and relatively remote state. >> we are at the end of the supply chain, the end of the

trucking routes. and so i just hope that the businesses continue to service and provide goods to to our storefronts. >> sreenivasan: christine cummings leads the maine grocers and food producers association. she says even though the bill is now law, there are a lot of unknowns for her members. one concern is that individual retailers may need to pay the fee for selling store brand items. and that by packaging a few things like deli food, for instance, a grocery store could face a large administrative burden in complying with this new law. cummings also worries the fee will simply be passed on to the consumer. >> the cost has to come from somewhere. and so where it will boil down and ultimately come from, i don't know that. some initial studies projected a potential four to six percent increase. that is concerning for the consum. >> sreenivasan: are companies just going to pass these costs on to consumers? >> since these programs are already in place all over the world, we can observe their impacts on prices, on recycling rates. and what we've observed is there is no correlation between e.p.r.

for packaging programs and consumer prices. but there's a very direct and measurable increase in recycling rates and taxpayer savings. >> sreenivasan: here in portland, ecomaine processes about 40,000 tons of recycling every year. it's a nonprofit that serves more than 60 maine municipalities. but the state is still nowhere close to reaching recycling targets set more than 30 years ago. kevin roche is emaine's general manager. >> we're capturing 33 percent. what we'd like to our goal is to be at 50 percent, 50 percent of the waste stream is the state goal for recycling. >> sreenivasan: you think you'll get there? >> i think we can get there with this e.p.r. legislation to make more readily recyclable packaging. >> sreenivasan: the material is trucked here from around southern maine as "single stream," meaning cardboard, paper, bottles, plastic, and metal are all together. it takes about three-and-a-half

minutes for this recycling to go through ecomaine's facility. machines separate paper and cardboard, magnets pull away metal, and an optical scanner sees and separates plastic bottles that are zooming by. but the system also relies on human eyes for higher value items, like number two natural-colored plastic. a worker manually separates those items by hand. when china stopped taking recycling, costs went up. but ecomaine did not cut back on what it accepted. >> we paid the price with not having a home for these recyclable materials for an extended period of time. we did not trash the material at all. however, it was very expensive. >> sreenivasan: as recycling markets recovered from china's decision, and more facilities here in the u.s. begin to process recycling, prices for some materials have stabilized, and even gone way up with increased demand. for example, last summer, ecomaine was paying about $28 a ton to have someone haul away mixed paper like this.

today, it's getting paid about $88 a ton. >> landfilling is a forever strategy. so it might be cheaper today, but over 50 and 100 years, it becomes more expensive because the waste doesn't go away, it doesn't disappear from a landfill. so making sure that these recyclables are recycled through all types markets is extremely important, and also to make sure that they're readily recyclable. >> sreenivasan: roche hopes that maine's recycling law will incentivize this: pushing companies to use the kind recyclable packaging that can be easily turned into new products. >> the traditional cardboard box is readily recyclable. the milk jug is readily recycled. the aluminum can is readily recyclable. but when you think of a lot of different products, you're seeing more and more packaging that is not readily recyclable. and that's ending up in the waste stream in landfills. >> sreenivasan: back in ellsworth, representative nicole grohoski says she hopes that maine can spur national change. since the bill became law this

summer, oregon has also passed a similar law and e.p.r. legislation has been introduced in nearly a dozen other states. >> people are saying to me, "when can we get junk mail included in this policy, nicole?" and i said well let's get it underway for packaging. >> sreenivasan: it will still take several years to see how this law works on the ground. rulemaking around details like how fees will be collected and the program will be administered starts next year. and it will be more than five years until the first payments from producers are collected. as sea ice melts and global oceans warm sea levels are rising, presenting grave threats to small, low-lying island nations and to coastal areas here in the u.s. one example is in the gulf of maine-- the ocean waters that stretch from massachusetts to nova scotia. are one of the fastest warming bodies of saltwater on earth. here in portland, the gulf of maine sea levels are expected to rise between ten and 17 inches by the year 2030 compared to levels in 2000.

"newshour weekend's" christopher booker explored what that means for this coastal city of portland, and new efforts to study and adapt to the changing climate. this story is part of our ongoing series "peril and promise: the challenge of climate change." >> reporter: it's difficult to balance the contradiction that is this friday afternoon in portland, maine. november, 48 degrees, light wind and barely a cloud in the sky, but despite a fall day that is as good as they come, the old port is flooding. in the past, portland might see a king tide breach its streets only a handful of times. rt of the natural tidal cycle, these extra high tides coming during full or new moons fall and spring, when the moon is closest to the earth and its elliptical orbit, but as the world warms and sea levels continue to rise, water will be coming to portland's streets with far greater regularity. models indicate that within the near future, high tides will breach city streets as many as 0 times a year.

>> and this is an 11-and-a-half foot tide. we're going to see much, much more than that in the very near future, and it's going to be happening much more frequently. >> reporter: gayle bowness is the manager of the municipal climate action program with portland's gulf of maine research institute. on this day, she helped lead a procession of local residents from the institute for a quick glimpse of the city's future. the journey was simple enough, walk a few blocks, turn onto one of portland's many piers and there, on the street is the day's king tide. >> so in portland, we've seen our tidal levels raise eight inches over the past one hundred years, so it's a pretty gradual raise that rate of rises to steeply increase due to climate change. we'll see what we saw today happen more frequently in 2030, so it might happen every month as opposed to just the fall in the spring season. everything's coming up, not just our high water seasons.

>> we are going to see events like this happening 100 times a year instead of ten. >> getting people to think about climate change in their own communities can be really difficult because climate change can feel like, you know, a distant or far removed issue, whether in space or in time. >> reporter: david reidmiller is the director of the climate center with the institute. encouraging those in attendance to take photos and post to social media as well as an online database tracking seal level rise, reidimiller says the hope i after witnessing the flooding first hand, residents well begin to drive the conversation. david reidmiller: when people can see how this is actually manifesting in their day to day life. they can then go to city council hearings. they can then start writing letters to their senators. they can start calling their representatives, it's really important that people get engaged in it and understand how it affects them, because at once you have an understanding of how it's going to affect you, you're going to be compelled to act and that's exactly what we're

trying. >> reporter: it is striking when you think about the distant projections of arctic ice melts, sea level rise in places like the maldives versus walking down your street and seeing a noontime king tide flood. >> yeah. you know what? what happens in one place in the world really echoes across across the globe. and you know, i think we need to, to listen to one another, to learn from one another. you know, the experience that the maldivians are going to have, that the fijians, the samoans, all of these places are really dealing with similar issues that we have. you know, we're fortunate in one sense, though, that we live in america. we have the resources to deal with a lot of these issues. you know, a lot of these developing countries don't have that ability. >> reporter: before joining the institute, reidmiller worked as a top science advisor for the obama administration, playing an integral role in negotiating the 2016 paris climate accords. next, he served in the trump administration leading the fourth national climate assessment, a congressionally- mandated report that's an authoritative assessment of climate science and the impacts on the u.s. then he came to the gulf of

maine research institute to lead the climate center and help study how rising and warmer waters will change the gulfs ecosystem, economy and, consequently, its culture. >> reporter: what is the gulf of maine telling us about climate change? >> there's a lot of things happening right in our back yard. as we talk about, we've got a living laboratory right here and so one of the biggest things that's happening is that the gulf of maine is warming faster than probably about 95 percent of the world's oceans. arguably the biggest and most climatdriven piece of this is that the gulf stream is changing. the gulf stream, you can think about it as a garden hose, right? that's really right now kind of it at full blast and bringing a whole bunch of heat from the tropics up to the north atlantic, but as climate change unfolds, that gulf stream, you're kind of twisting the dial on that hose from a jet into a shower and so what happens then is you have some spill over of that heat and that warm water into the gulf of maine. >> reporter: what does this

portend for the immediate future? >> you know, we're seeing a lot of species shifts underway. you know, this whole waterfront, this whole coastal community, so much of it is driven by what we can commercially harvest and grow with sustainable aquaculture in these waters. and we need to be prepared for and understand what changes are underway in the ecosystem out there. >> reporter: and these changes are happening not in 30 or 50 years, but right now. and reidmillier says it's crucially important that all of portland understands this. >> and so we need to engage directly not only with the municipal leaders, but the residents, the fishermen, the local business leaders and present them with, frankly, information that they might not want to hear. we don't do sciencfor science sake, right? we do user-driven science. we know what the cause is. we know what the solutions are. and now it's just a matter of mustering the political will to actually make it happen.

>> sreenivasan: that's all for this special edition of “pbs newshour weekend” from maine. for the latest news updates, visit pbs.org/newshour. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. stay healthy and have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the anderson family fund. the j.p.b. foundation. the estate of worthington mayo-smith. leonard and norma klorfine. the rosali p. walter foundation. koo and patricia yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. barbara hope zuckerberg.

we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. additional support has been provided by: consumer cellular. and by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. you're watching pbs.

(alarm blaring) - [sheriff] due to the expansion of the creek fire emergency evacuation ordered in this area. (alarm blaring) (somber music) - [woman] there's the fire. you can see the smoke in the air, all the little pieces of particulate matter. we put all of explosives away from our house, and we have our car over here, that's packed and ready to go. - [jeff] on labor day weekend, 2020, one of the largest wildfires in california's history exploded in the sierra nevada mountains above fresno. - [man] there's a gas station. they don't have any fuel left though. - the creek fire roared through bone dry forests,