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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  President Obama announced today the U.S. is changing course on a controversial defense system. The Bush Administration had planned to build an anti-missile shield in Poland in the Czech Republic.  It’s said the system would protect Europe and the U.S. from Iran.  But Russia viewed it as a direct threat.  Today, President Obama says the new plan puts missile interceptors on ships.  The World’s Jason Margolis begins our coverage.

JASON MARGOLIS: President Obama said today that he approved the new anti-missile system following the unanimous recommendations of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Our new missile defense architecture in Europe will provide stronger, smarter and swifter defense of American forces and America’s allies. It is more comprehensive than the previous program.  It deploys capabilities that are proven and cost-effective, and it sustains and builds upon our commitment to protect the U.S. homeland against long-range ballistic missile threats.

MARGOLIS: Marine General James Cartwright spoke after the President. He said the first phase of the new plan will be the deployment of radar and tested missiles aboard ships.

GENERAL CARTWRIGHT: That system we have started to deploy to the Eastern Mediterranean already, and we will begin to deploy that in larger numbers.

MARGOLIS: Cartwright said phase two will contain improved, land-based missiles that could be placed in Europe. That stage will be ready in about six to seven years.  President Obama emphasized that the change in strategy had little to do with Russia’s protests against the Bush Administration’s defense shield.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: We’ve also repeatedly made clear to Russia that its concerns about our previous missile defense programs were entirely unfounded.  Our clear and consistent focus has been the threat posed by Iran’s ballistic missile program, and that continues to be our focus and the basis of the program that we’re announcing today.

MARGOLIS: Steven Pifer at the Brookings Institution says the change of course wasn’t a matter of diplomacy.

STEVEN PIFER: My understanding of talking to people in the administration is that this was first and foremost about how do you deal with the Iranian threat in smart way?  And it was informed by an intelligence assessment that said the Iranians are actually making more progress than we thought on shorter-range missiles.  And they seem to be making less progress on longer-range missiles. So the question is how do you defend those parts of Europe, such as Turkey which are close to Iran, against a threat that’s today, as opposed to worrying about the threat that may emerge 10 years down the road?

MARGOLIS: Some analysts say the president should have extracted something politically from Russia for changing the plan.  Former U.S.  Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, says that’s ridiculous.

JACK MATLOCK: That’s naïve.  If you do it in your own interest, you can’t expect somebody else to pay you for that.

MARGOLIS: Matlock, who was appointed ambassador by Ronald Reagan, says the new missile defense plan is strategically far superior to the Bush Administration’s proposal.  Matlock adds, the new system removes a wedge in U.S./Russian relations.

For the World, I’m Jason Margolis.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Well, so far reaction in Russia and in Europe to a change in course ranges from approval to disappointment.  The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN: The farther east in Europe you go, the greater that disappointment.  The Bush Administration had pressed both the Polish and Czech governments to host the missile shield system, and those governments in turn sold the plan at home.  Now they’re not only losing the system, they’re also losing face with voters.  Today, the Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer tried to put a positive spin on the news.

JAN FISCHER: [In Czechoslovakian]

HADDEN: He said we expect that the US will cooperate with the Czech Republic in the future on agreements on scientific and military cooperation, including financing concrete projects.  He said, “I asked for that in my telephone conversation with President Obama, and he assured me the U.S. will not change its approach in this matter.”  Eastern European countries are wary of a resurgent Russia.  But just what form any future U.S. military cooperation might take remains to be seen.  Poland reacted more strongly to today’s news.  Today is the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland at the start of the Second World War.  One top Polish defense official called Mr. Obama’s decision not to place missiles on Polish soil “a failure in long-term thinking.”  On the other side of the continent, Western European countries had long been skeptical of the missile shield, questioning its technology, and its destructive effect on relations with Russia.  Russia complained that the shield represented a direct threat to its own defense capabilities.  Today, senior Russian M.P. Konstantin Kosachev said his country welcomes America’s decision to abandon the shield.  He suggested the Bush Administration had been tone deaf when it came to Russia’s concerns on key issues.

KONSTANTIN KOSACHEV: [In Russian]

TRANSLATOR: We never doubted that Russia was justified in standing up for a more objective assessment of the situation in Iran and a more serious and responsible attitude to the strategic dialogue between Russia and the United States.  In both these positions the Bush Administration categorically did not understand us.  As far as I can judge by today’s decision the Obama Administration is beginning to understand us.

HADDEN: Analysts say it’s too early to tell just what Russia might offer the West in return for scrapping the shield. Michael Emerson is with the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels.  He says he doesn’t expect Russia to concede much.

MICHAEL EMERSON: Russia may consider this a great diplomatic victory which will embolden

them to pursuing further their policies of more or less aggression towards near or abroad country.

HADDEN: Not against Eastern Europe or NATO members, Emerson says, but closer to home against Ukraine or Georgia, both anxious NATO candidates.  For The World I’m Gerry Hadden

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Jonathan Marcus is the BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent.  So, Jonathan, despite all the changes announced today, the Obama Administration says it’s still seriously committed to missile defense.  What has really changed.

JONATHAN MARCUS: Well, it’s a fundamental recasting of the Missile Defense Program, really to re-orientate it towards existing and very near-term threats.  That’s Iran’s short and medium range ballistic missiles, and away from what many people regarded as simply a virtual or abstract threat, which was the idea that Iran would any time soon be able to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.  The Americans believe that they have re-assessed their intelligence picture.  They believe that Iran’s real effort is on short and medium range weapons and they, of course, also believe that America has the kinds of defenses it needs to deal with that type of system.

WERMAN: Right, I mean, as far as Iran goes, though, I mean, it’s interesting that this is being announced, and yet during the campaign, President Obama was talking about engaging with Iran.  What’s the signal for Iran?

MARCUS: Well, I think the signal is that the Americans want to engage but equally they want to take precautions if that engagement fails, and one has to say that I don’t think even though we expect talks between the Europeans and others and the Americans and the Iranians quite soon, maybe as early as next month, I don’t think anybody is expecting dramatic changes there.  I think many people look at the domestic political situation in Iran and wonder if the Iranians are in any position to start making the sorts of concessions that the Americans in western countries want.  So I think the Americans are hedging their bets.  They’re trying to engage with the Iranians, but it’s very clear that their new missile defense plans are directed as much at a potential Iranian threat as the earlier plans were of the previous Bush Administration.

WERMAN: As you said, the U.S. says that the system works well, but many skeptics say that the missile defense shield emperor has no clothes.  Does any of this stuff really work?  Has it been proven in real time?

MARCUS: Well, I think some of it has been proven.  I think the problem is essentially this, that if you want to defense a relatively small area against a threat that you are aware of the nature of the threat and its particular characteristics, then you have a pretty good chance of shooting things down providing that the attacker just doesn’t simply swamp the defenses with large numbers of missiles.  When you look, for example, at a country like Israel which is thought to have really pretty capable anti-missile defenses that Israel is a pretty small country.  Defending something like the territory of the whole of East and West and Central Europe that is maybe another problem.  Nothing is foolproof but I think in terms of the shorter and medium range missile threat, the technology is much more advance and that’s one of the reasons frankly why the Obama Administration has decided to make this shift to deal with a threat that actually exists with technology that is already tried and tested.

WERMAN: But does this shift, the news today, suddenly cast Obama as hawkish on missile defense do you think?

MARCUS: I don’t think it casts him as hawkish.  I mean, there will inevitably be politics surrounding this and there will be politics at home back in the United States.  There will be a lot of politics in Europe.  I think this is a pragmatic and realistic approach by the new administration.  He says, after all, that the defenses against the much longer-range missiles that Iran might have one day, ten, fifteen, twenty years ahead, that sort of research will slowly continue.  So the Americans aren’t abandoning that altogether.  But I think, you know, there is an important European dimension to this, and that is in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe there is a growing sense of unease about America’s degree of attention toward their concerns.  They see a rising Russia.  They see the buffeting of the financial crisis, problems with Democracy in a number of Eastern and Central European countries.  And I think what we heard today from the Americans despite the shift of gear in the missile defense plans was a very strong message, particularly from the Defense Secretary Robert Gates that Europe’s security remains a key concern for the United States, and that may go some way towards reassuring some of these Eastern and Central Europeans.  So I think we’re worrying that the Obama Administration just didn’t’ get Europe, that they thought that Europe was done business, that they’d moved onto the Middle East, to the Asia-Pacific Region relations with China and so on, and the Eastern and Central Europeans in particular were saying, “Hang on. We’ve still got problems here back on the old continent.”

WERMAN: The BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent Jonathan Marcus.  Thank you, Jonathan.

MARCUS: A pleasure.  Thank you.

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MARCO WERMAN: Here in the U.S. the federal government continues with the program to secure our southern border.  You may remember that it calls for a fence hundreds of miles long between the U.S. and Mexico.  The Fence Program was championed by the Bush Administration.  It’s continuing under President Obama and it’s expensive according to the Government Accountability Office.  A GAO Report released today says the fence will cost taxpayers six and a half billion dollars to maintain over the next 20 years.  That doesn’t include the nearly two and a half billion dollars it will cost to finish building it.  That is one pricy fence.

The GAO also found that out that as of mid-May there had been over 3,000 breaches in the existing barrier.  Each one costs more than a thousand bucks to repair. While the cost is becoming clear, the fence’s effectiveness is not.  The GAO says the government can’t tell yet whether the barrier has helped control the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S., and it adds the much publicized new technology intended to monitor the border has yet to materialize.  Well, we recently noticed a far less techie issue that’s cropped up along the border, a plant, Carrizo cane is a tall river weed that provides easy hiding places along the border’s riverbanks.

It also jeopardizes border officials’ safety.  It gets them tangled up, and it doesn’t belong here in the States or in Mexico.  It came from Europe several hundred years ago.  In Mexico the weed is known as “the water thief”  because it takes much-needed water away from native plants, and hardly anything eats the stuff.  “Carrizo cane,”  “elephant grass,” whatever name you use, it might be the one thing that fence-lovers, fence-haters and scientists all agree ought to be kept out of the border region.  The governments of Mexico and the United States are now collaborating on a program to introduce a species of wasp into the area.  No prizes for guessing its favorite food.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  Israel is facing a land crisis, one that doesn’t involve settlements and territories.  It’s running out of space to bury its dead. Daniel Estrin reports from Tel Aviv on one possible solution.

DANIEL ESTRIN: The Israeli government produced this infomercial for shock effect.

[INFOMERCIAL SOUNDS]

ESTRIN: In the opening scene, some kids are flying a kite. The camera follows the kite as it soars high in the sky, for an aerial view of what’s next door.  It’s Tel Aviv’s Yarkon cemetery and it’s colossal, about the size of 105 football fields. The complex was built 18 years ago to make room for more graves. Today, it’s almost completely full. Thousands of white gravestones are packed together like sardines.  Cremation might seem to be the answer.  But in Israel, it’s not really an option. Jewish law forbids it, and even for many non-religious Israelis, it’s too reminiscent of the Nazi crematoria. So Tel Aviv architect Tuvia Sagiv came up with a creative solution. It’s a burial design inspired by the way most people live in Israel in multi-level apartment buildings.

TUVIA SAGIV: If it’s possible to live one above the other, why not die one above the other?  That’s the solution.

ESTRIN: Israeli burial societies have begun to encourage spouses to double up in graves.  But to solve the problem on a grander scale, Sagiv took a cue from the ancients.

[INFOMERCIAL SOUNDS]

ESTRIN: This is part two of the government-produced video. It shows images of rock-hewn burial chambers in northern Israel, dating back to the first century.  Hundreds of niches are carved into the walls, where Jews were buried one on top of the other.  Sagiv and an associate designed a modern version, which they built about ten years ago in Tel Aviv. It’s a four-story cement building, where bodies lay inside chambers in the walls.  But here’s the catch. Jewish law dictates that the deceased must be connected to the earth. So the architects designed a sophisticated grid of holes and dirt.

SAGIV: This is the magic of the solution. You see, the body is here, the earth is here.

ESTRIN: The body is really surrounded by earth on all sides.

SAGIV: All sides.

ESTRIN: Basically kind of like a chess set.

SAGIV: And the earth is connecting to the original earth. That’s the point.

ESTRIN: Even if a body is buried on the fourth floor, the network of dirt inside the walls and columns connects it to the ground.

SAGIV: Here is the entrance to the elevator.

ESTRIN: What a concept, to take an elevator up to visit your loved one.

SAGIV: Yes, why not? It’s very close to God, no?

ESTRIN: Well, it depends how you look at it. For some, “high-rise burial” sounds like an oxymoron. That’s why Sagiv designed the building to resemble a green burial mound. You don’t see the graves from the outside, just cement tiers lined with shrubbery.  Sagiv says it can accommodate four times as many bodies as a traditional graveyard. But his designs weren’t an easy sell. He and his associate first had to get the approval of the Chief Rabbinate.

SAGIV: At first they didn’t want to hear us. Rabbis say It’s reformic? “What are you doing?   What are you talking about this nonsense?”

ESTRIN: Today, the rabbis give their thumbs up. And now that Tel Aviv’s Yarkon cemetery is nearing capacity, pressure is rising. A government-appointed committee is working on a plan to require every cemetery in Israel’s urban centers to offer multi-level burial options. It’s expensive, four times more than the cost to dig a normal grave.  And so far, only a few multi-level structures have been built. Still, the Israeli public seems to be warming to the concept.

ESTRIN: At the burial chambers in Tel Aviv, two brothers pay their respects to their late mother. They jokingly refer to the niche in the wall as “mom’s apartment.”  They say that they didn’t see a problem burying her this way. If it was good enough for the ancient Jews, they say, it’s good enough for her.   For The World, I’m Daniel Estrin, Kiryat Shaul Cemetery, Tel Aviv.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: A web video has caused a big stir in Denmark.  In it, a young Danish woman holds a baby on her lap and looks into the camera.

KAHN: My name is Kahn and I’m from Denmark, and this here is my baby boy. His name is August.  Yeah, I’m doing this video because I’m trying to find August’s father.   So if you’re out there and you see this then this is for you.

WERMAN: As the woman explains, she met a tourist a year and a half ago.  They were together for just one night, then he disappeared.  Now, she says, she just wants the baby’s father to know.  The video’s gotten hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube but it’s not real.  It was actually produced and put on the web by Denmark’s Tourism Bureau.  Anders  Lindemann is a journalist with Danish Broadcasting.  What this video conveys to me, Anders, is not even an ad for Denmark  but kind of weird testimonial from a young woman who had unprotected sex with a foreign tourist.  What message is the Tourist Board actually trying to convey?

ANDERS LINDERMANN: Well, that’s a big question that everyone is trying to answer here in Denmark.  The Director of the Visit to Denmark, the Tourist Bureau, has said that the story shows the Kahn is a Danish woman with dignity and she lives in a free society, and this society gives her the space to make the choices that she as a woman wants to make in her life.  And the Director of Visit Denmark feels that she markets Denmark as a free place where there’s a lot of space and she’s very happy that the video on YouTube has gotten so many hits around the world.

WERMAN: When the video first showed up on YouTube, was it even clear that it was from Denmark’s Tourist Board?

LINDERMANN: No, the ordinary Danish guy or girl most of them first got aware of it when the media picked the story up, but now, of course, the Tourist Bureau who posted this video plays it as the proof that the video worked because now Denmark has gotten the publicity that was first intended.

WERMAN: Well, apparently the Tourist Board took the ad down.  Maybe they’ve realized that they made a mistake.

LINDERMANN: Of course, them and some politicians that thought that this video promoted Denmark as a country where the women were notoriously promiscuous.  I think that has been the whole core of this debate about this video posted by Visit Denmark.

WERMAN: At one point in the ad, the woman mentions the word “hygge.”   Let’s hear this part.

KAHN: I do remember though that we were talking about Denmark, and the thing we have was here with hygge that foreign people always ask about. So guess I decided to show him what hygge is all about because we went back to my house and, yeah, we ended up having sex.

WERMAN: So first of all she’s a really good actress, and second of all what does hygge mean?

LINDERMANN: Well, hygge directly translated means coziness.  It’s like when you go to the summer cottage and you make a fire and everything.  You’re with your family and friends.  That’s just coziness.  That’s hygge.  But hygge also has another meaning.  Among young people in Denmark hygge can be like a cocky pick up line if you want to get a girl or a guy and you’re partying.  Some people come over and say, “Hey, do you want to hygge?”   And that could mean, you know, in a cocky way, “Do you want to have sex?”

WERMAN: So, you know, in the end, Anders, do you think this was just some misguided attempt by the Tourist Bureau to be hip and kind of plugging into the social network scene?

LINDERMANN: Honestly, I can’t tell you.  All I can say is that this has been a very controversial way here in Denmark to promote Denmark to foreigners.

WERMAN: Do you think they’ll do it again?

LIEBERMANN: No, I don’t think so.

WERMAN: Anders Lindemann, a journalist with Danish Broadcasting.  You can see the Danish tourism ad on our website at theworld.org.  Anders, thanks so much.

LIEBERMAN: You’re welcome.

WERMAN: We have a little something to straighten out, too.  Yesterday, we spoke with John Sheils from the Lewin Group.  We described the group as a non-partisan healthcare management consulting firm.  The Lewin Group does describe itself as non-partisan, but the firm is owned by a subsidiary of healthcare giant United Health Group.  Several listeners wrote to say that we should have pointed that out. Thank you and you’re right.  We should have.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH-Boston.  A high profile international legal dispute that’s been dragging on for three years may be about to be settled.  The dispute involves a multi-national trading company called Trafigura.  It’s been accused of illegally dumping toxic waste from a cargo ship in the West African nation of Ivory Coast.  Fifteen people are thought to have died, and as many as 100,000 claim they became ill after being exposed to the sludge.  Here is one Ivorian man the week after the 2006 dumping, talking about how it affected him.

IVORIAN MAN: I have headaches and I cannot breathe properly and I have another disease on my skin.

WERMAN: Trafigura denies the waste was dangerous but it did pay almost $200 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the government of Ivory Coast.  Now the BBC reports that a second lawsuit on behalf of victims and their families about to be settled as well.  The BBC’s Liz MacKean on the story, and Liz you’ve been covering this story for quite a while now.  Remind us what happened back in 2006.

LIZ MACKEAN: Well, it was one night in August three years ago and the ship, the Probo Koala had arrived at Ivory Coast from Europe.  And on board was waste which the company Trafigura said was simple ship slops, and they wanted to have it taken away. So they hired a local company Tommy.  Now the trouble was that the waste wasn’t just simple slops at all, and the company Tommy had no license and no facilities to handle chemical waste.  So what they did was they filled up twelve lorry loads and they took it off all around the city and dumped it.  And almost immediately people were overwhelmed by a foul smell, and they started reporting a range of very similar symptoms like the one we’ve heard; breathing difficulties, sickness, and in all it’s estimated that in the weeks that followed the dumping some 100,000 people reported to local clinics for help.  And a number of deaths have been reported.  The figures vary.

WERMAN: So if it wasn’t just slops, what was it?

LIZ MACKEAN: Well, we have some knowledge of what it was.  Before the waste was taken to Ivory Coast, Trafigura had attempted to off load it in Amsterdam.  But because of the hugely powerful smell, an emergency happened at the port.  The emergency services were summoned, and a sample was taken.  Now this found there were levels of hydrogen sulfide.  This can be very fatal to humans, and also a variety of sulfa compounds in the waste.  Again, they can be dangerous. We know from emails at the time circulated to and from between Trafigura executives in London that they knew that the waste could be hazardous and they were struggling to find someone to take it off their hands for them.

WERMAN: Well, Trafigura had been disputing the nature of the waste that was on the ship, and yet today the U.N. Special Rapporteur into the tragedy, Okechukwu Ibeanu, had this to day,

OKECHUKWU IBEANU: We did not see any evidence that it may have been caused by other things. There were no particularly big events that could have happened before or around that time to create that kind of panic, that kind of report of illnesses and so on.

WERMAN: Okechukwu Ibeanu, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Trafigura incident in Ivory Coast.  Liz MacKean from the BBC also today Trafigura said a new and second so-called global settlement is being considered and compensation is likely for victims of this dumping.  And yet Trafigura says the U.N. report threatens to prejudice the legal action in the U.K. and the Netherlands.  Are they trying to avoid an even more costly settlement?

MACKEAN: No, Trafigura have signaled very clearly that they aren’t happy with the report, but in terms of the actual settlement, this is separate and we got news of this, a global settlement. It’s being put to the claimants at the moment, and they’re settling it just before the case was due to go to court.  It would have been one of the largest class actions ever to be heard in London, and it was due to go ahead next month.

WERMAN: Trafigura apparently is also suing journalists who have been covering the story.  What’s that about?

MACKEAN: Well, Trafigura have used the services of a law firm known to be very tough on libel law and, in fact, my program News Night is facing a libel suit.

WERMAN: Which is pretty significant because News Night is widely viewed in the U.K.  It would be like Night Line getting that suit here.

MACKEAN: Well, exactly, and the BBC has just entered our defense against the claims.  So we wait to see what the next moves are.

WERMAN: BBC journalist Liz MacKean.  Thanks very much.

MACKEAN: Thank you very much indeed, Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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MARCO WERMAN: Imagine a Chinese economy three times the size of today’s powered almost entirely by coal.  That is a climate change forecaster’s nightmare scenario.  It’s a picture of skyrocketing CO2 emissions that virtually no one including the Chinese wants to see come true.  That’s why China is pouring billions into the development of carbon-free power sources like solar and wind.  China hopes to get 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by the year 2020.  But according to a study published in the current issue of Science Magazine, China could be thinking even bigger when it comes to renewables, a lot bigger.  Michael McElroy is the lead author.  He’s a professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard University.  Professor McElroy, your studied looked at the potential for wind power in China.  What did you find?

PROFESSOR MCELROY: Well, what we found essentially is that China has abundant sources of wind, and the opportunity to use those wind resources to supplant coal in the future is very significant.  China is projected to require essentially twice the amount of electricity today in 20 years time.  So we looked at the question of could China in fact supply all of its electricity with wind, and the answer is yes.  And we also looked at the economics of that.  I mean, could it be done and what would the price be?  Essentially, the price to do that would roughly comparable to the retail price of electricity in the United States.

WERMAN: So in principle it could do it and they’re really interested in developing.  Why the gap in getting there right now?

MCELROY: I’ve had the opportunity in the last number of years to serve on a council called China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.  And so I’ve had the experience of talking to the Chinese Premier for half a day, and I’m enormously impressed with the commitment to really try to do it well.  But also with the complexity of the struggle and the dilemma they face.  I mean, you can’t retain such a large system on a dime.  It requires some significant temporal opportunity to do so.   I mean, the way we sort of finished up here was to say, okay what would be realistic to think about in terms of a target?  And we said it would be realistic in our view for China to take steps to save 30% of what would otherwise be generated using coal, and consequently to save the corresponding amount of CO2 over a 20-year period.  And we submitted an estimate of what that would require. I mean, the estimate of the capital cost required to accomplish that objective would be something of the order of less than a trillion dollars, 900 billion U.S. Dollars.  And given the size of the Chinese economy, that’s not an exorbitant amount of money especially since you’re thinking about it being invested over a 20-year period.

WERMAN: It sounds almost like you’re saying China could potentially be a world leader when it comes to renewables if they make the strategy right.

MCELROY: I think there’s no question that China could be a world leader if they do it the right way, and rather than thinking of a world in which there’s a competition between the major players, I think it’s more productive to think of a world in which, in fact, there are opportunities for everybody to do a better thing.  I think the real challenge we have here is we’ve relied for a hundred years on fossil fuel.  We’re now beginning to see the problems of that reliance.  And so, the time is right for a new century and a new dependence and a new energy system.  And I think everybody is going to be a winner if we do it the right way.

WERMAN: How will your paper, your study inform policy makers, do you think, going into the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen?

MCELROY: Clearly, there’s some political dimension to it.  I mean, the world community is going to go to Copenhagen in a few months’ time to negotiate a new climate treaty, and I think everybody knows that China is now the largest emitter of CO2 and greenhouse gases, and the government of China is under significant pressure to remake a commitment.  I mean, not to simply say that we’re a developing country, and you have to go first and we’ll go later.  So I think it’s fairly clear that to the extent that this paper is suggesting that China actually has a different way to go, that it could have a political dimension as well.

WERMAN: Michael McElroy Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard and lead author of a report in the current issue of Science Magazine on the pursuit of renewable energy sources in China.  Good to talk to you.

MCELROY: Thank you.

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MARCO WERMAN: The border between Maine and New Brunswick, Canada is normally a very sleepy place, but in recent months a low intensity war of words has broken out in the region.  As Murray Carpenter reports, the International Dispute Center is on a small and once-plentiful fish.

MURRAY CARPENTER: All looks well on the shore of Passamaquoddy Bay near St. Andrew’s, New Brunswick.  Gulls chatter, seals dive and lobster boats bob. But at the office of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, biologist Fred Whoriskey says looks are deceiving.  He says the bay’s ecological balance is of whack, due to a dearth of alewives, half-pound herring that are born in the river above the bay.

FRED WHORISKEY: Neat little fish, these river herring. They’re extremely productive. They come down to the ocean as small fish. As they’re heading on their way out they are feeding all sorts of larger fish that are present in the river system.

CARPENTER: The annual alewife migration used to provide food for hordes of other local species, including gulls, eagles, osprey, otters, cod, salmon, and lobster.  And Whoriskey says in this region, alewives and the ecosystem they support are a shared resource.

WHORISKEY: The St. Croix River is the border between Canada and the USA.  So we have an active stake in this one, and Passamaquoddy Bay that comes down here, to a large extent the fisheries there depended on what would comes down out of the St. Croix.  And when you eliminate that, you are having an impact on Canadian fisheries.

CARPENTER: Alewives have been in mysterious decline in their range along the Atlantic coast farther south. But the decline here is no mystery.  Maine has locked the fish out of the St. Croix River on purpose.  A little more than twenty years ago, two million alewives a year navigated fish ways like this one in Milltown, New Brunswick.  Improvements to the fish ways in the early 1980s had allowed alewives better passage around paper mill dams on the St. Croix, and by 1987 the river’s alewife runs were by far the largest in the region.  But the return of the alewives didn’t sit well with Maine fishing guides who work miles upstream, in a chain of border lakes.

LANCE WHEATON: My name is Lance Wheaton, I’m a sporting camp owner and a guide at East Grand Lake, Spednik Lake, St. Croix River Chain.

CARPENTER: The St. Croix lakes were long ago stocked with prized small mouth bass.  Right around the time the alewives returned in the 1980s, the bass population crashed.  The guides blamed the alewives, and they convinced Maine lawmakers to close the St. Croix fish ways.  As a result, the runs currently average only 7,000 fish.  Conservationists argue that the native alewives weren’t responsible for the decline of the non-native bass. The Maine Department of Marine Resources agreed, based on several studies. But Wheaton doesn’t trust the science.

WHEATON: So a problem that took 20 years to create, and that biologist knew all the answers in a couple of months? Kiss me again. You know, kiss me again.

CARPENTER: Last spring, the Atlantic Salmon Federation and 50 other organizations from both sides of the border appealed on behalf of the alewife to the International Joint Commission, a bi-national agency charged with resolving water disputes on the US-Canada border. In July, the IJC responded by urging Maine’s governor to reopen the river.  Lance Wheaton wants none of it.

WHEATON: If the IJC makes this commitment to open the river, will the IJC be responsible for what happens?  The minute the guide can’t work and the sporting camp can’t keep full, and the little store can’t make a profit anymore, are they going to pay the little store?  Are they going to pay the guide?  Are they going to pay the sporting camp?

CARPENTER: Wheaton believes that restoring the alewife run would destroy the inland bass fishing economy.  But the alewives support an economy as well, downstream in the marine environment that Maine and New Brunswick share.  And Maine governor John Baldacci has asked the IJC to call a meeting of all stakeholders to forge a compromise that would bring the fish back to at least some parts of the border river.  Baldacci says that with the IJC now involved, it’s clear that inaction is no longer an option.

JOHN BALDACCI: Our hope is that the IJC convenes the meeting, we all participate, we come out with a consensus. I think the underlying sense is that if we’re not able to do that, then I think the IJC will then go ahead and move on its own.

CARPENTER: That would mean issuing a ruling that would be binding on both sides under the 100 year-old US-Canada Boundary Waters Treaty.  Back at the Atlantic Salmon Federation in New Brunswick, Fred Whoriskey says if it comes to that, it’s clear how the commission should rule.

WHORISKEY: You have an international accord between Canada and the United States.  We have an International Joint Commission that is supposedly managing that through a consensus between Canada and the USA, and this decision on the part of Maine has violated that agreement.

CARPENTER: Whoriskey says he hopes that one way or another, the issue is resolved by May.  That’s when the few remaining St. Croix River alewives will return and try once more to swim upstream along the US-Canada border.  For the World, I’m Murray Carpenter, Chamcook, New Brunswick.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.