05/13/05

LC050513

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

California needs more jobs, but is adding more ships, trucks and
trains the way to do it?

Angelo Logan>> The ongoing noise, lights and pollution all day
long. In the past, it wasn't always like that, but because of
the added capacity, it just continues to grow and grow and grow.

Val>> And then, do you have to scrape off labels? Can garbage
ever be too dirty? A short course on the intricacies of
recycling.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> It is the biggest polluter in Southern California. It's
also one of the biggest employers. We're talking about the
ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Together they handle more
cargo than any other port in the country, including New York.
So there was keen interest when Governor Schwarzenegger
announced a multi-million dollar plan to expand the harbor. The
question is, can we create new shipping jobs without also
creating more pollution and traffic? Kevin Smith went in search
of some answers.

[Film Clip]

Kevin Smith>> Many believe that cargo moving through these
ports will be the engine that creates new jobs in California.
But others are concerned about a different kind of engine, the
diesel engine in trucks and trains belching more pollution into
Southern California's already dirty air as they haul the cargo
away from the ports.

[Film Clip]

Kevin Smith>> Now Governor Schwarzenegger wants to expand
California's cargo, or goods movement industry as it's called,
and by no small amount. Over the next twenty years,
Schwarzenegger's plan calls for tripling the amount of goods
going through these ports. Wally Baker of the Los Angeles
County Economic Development Corporation says that would bring
more than a half million well-paying jobs to Southern
California.

Wally Baker>> They are good jobs and they actually pay a little
bit better on average than manufacturing which I think we all
have agreed a long time ago was a great middle-class set of
jobs. So these jobs are middle-class jobs. They are in the
forty thousand a year range. They're not just forklift
operators.

Jesse Marquez>> What we have between the two ports are over
forty thousand truck trips a day.

Kevin Smith>> But the jobs themselves will come at a cost. The
port is already Southern California's biggest polluter and
people like Jesse Marquez say it will get worse. Marquez has
been fighting noise, traffic and air pollution in communities
near the ports for years.

Jesse Marquez>> Communities like San Pedro and Wilmington that
border the ports, we suffer the consequences. It's our children
going to school. We're the ones that have the highest rates of
asthma in our children.

Kevin Smith>> He says the plan would also triple the number of
truck trips in and out of the port to 120,000 every day.

Jesse Marquez>> So now we're talking about additional pollution
that comes from the diesel fumes of the trucks. Then we're
going to have additional truck traffic on the freeways. There's
going to be two hundred trips of ships coming a year more. Each
ship puts out one to three tons of air pollution a day.

Kevin Smith>> The Schwarzenegger administration says port
business will double anyway over the next twenty years even if
there is no plan, so it's better to embrace the job
opportunities it offers. Goods movement already accounts for
one out of every seven jobs in California. A representative of
the Longshoremen's Union who didn't want to talk on camera said
these were just about the only good jobs left, that all the
well-paying manufacturing jobs have gone overseas. Wally Baker
is sympathetic.

Wally Baker>> We have lost historically manufacturing jobs.
Aerospace has decreased over the years and trade has taken its
place as the job creator over aerospace of the last twenty or
thirty years. So going forward, we need to understand the
industry, nurture it and make sure that, yes, the industry
understands what's at stake for them too. Because if you make
communities unhappy, you're in big trouble.

Kevin Smith>> So the real question is, can cargo shipping
increase without spewing more pollution into the air? Marquez
says it's possible, but calls for a moratorium on any expansion
until some major changes are made.

Jesse Marquez>> The ships, the trains and the trucks can switch
over to a low-diesel fuel, low sulfur diesel fuel. Some trains
can go electric. The ships can be electrified so, when they
come into the port, they plug in electrically and they're not
putting out one to three tons a day of air pollution.

Kevin Smith>> Baker agrees, up to a point, over a longer time
frame.

Wally Baker>> Telling the people who manufacture the ships that
this is how you're going to manufacture ships in the future that
come into the ports, that's very effective. So if you're
willing to look at this over the next ten or fifteen years, I
think you can get to a very, very low level of pollution.

Kevin Smith>> The governor's proposal calls for spending forty-
three billion dollars to build and improve roads, bridges and
rail facilities needed for goods movement, and another two to
four billion dollars to reduce the environmental impact.
Marquez is skeptical.

Jesse Marquez>> It is not sufficient. One of the things that
we've asked for them to do is conduct detailed cost benefit
studies.

Kevin Smith>> Both the benefits and the burdens of the goods
movement industry are not just limited to the areas around the
ports. At the risk of stating the obvious, goods movement means
the goods have to move somewhere else after they get here and
the trucks and trains that do the moving create another set of
problems further inland.

Problems in places like the city of Commerce where residents
feel the city has gone overboard in living up to its name. This
is the destination for many of the trucks leaving the ports of
Los Angeles and Long Beach. It's an enormous complex called an
Intermodal facility. Here is where the goods are transferred
from trucks to trains and, from here, the trains deliver goods
all over the country. Unfortunately for many residents, the
train yard is right in their back yards.

Angelo Logan>> The train operation doesn't stop. This facility
does not shut down. I think it shuts down one time a year and
that's during Christmas Day.

Kevin Smith>> Angelo Logan heads a community group trying to
put the brakes on goods movement.

Angelo Logan>> The Intermodal equipment is all driven by diesel
engines, so therefore we have diesel exhaust. So our area is
saturated with diesel exhaust and it's ongoing noise, lights and
pollution all day long.

Kevin Smith>> The facility is fed by trucks heading up the 710
Freeway from the ports. An estimated fifteen percent of all
containers arriving in the United States travel along the 710
Freeway.

Angelo Logan>> And the impact to the community has been
detrimental. A lot of our community members have been diagnosed
with lung and throat cancer, bronchitis and asthma.

Kevin Smith>> While recognizing the impact on communities like
Commerce, supporters of the expansion plan say that, when it
comes to choosing between trucks and trains, trains win.

Wally Baker>> What you find out is that every train you create,
you create the space for about 720 cars on the freeway. So if
you add one more train, you take about 250 trucks off the road
and you also add the space for about 720 cars.

Kevin Smith>> To take some truck traffic away from cities like
Commerce, a plan is underway to build a new Intermodal facility
down at the ports. But if cargo shipments triple as proposed,
there wouldn't be much relief and the ports themselves would be
far busier. Marquez says the time to take mitigating steps is
now.

Jesse Marquez>> If these can be done such as all ships using
low sulfur diesel fuel now, then let's do it now. We don't need
to make out a plan and then, in five years, let it kick in.

Angelo Logan>> What we're trying to say is let's put everything
on hold right now, fix the problem that exists and then, from
there, if need be, then let's expand the industry in a healthy
way that's suitable for everyone.

Kevin Smith>> But supporters say any plan must allow the goods
movement industry to grow quickly while addressing environmental
concerns at the same time.

Wally Baker>> But at the end of the day, you have to know that
we need the job base. We need a clean environment and you have
to take that on a parallel track. You can't say jobs are more
important than the environment and you can't say the environment
is more important than jobs because you've got to pay for the
environmental change too.

Kevin Smith>> The governor's representatives are now holding
hearings around the state to identify which of these
infrastructure and environmental projects will get top priority.
They'll decide how to fund these projects later on. Supporters
say they're serious about tackling the environmental concerns,
but critics want to make sure that the promise is not just
another smokescreen. I'm Kevin Smith for Life and Times.

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Val>> You know you've turned fifty when the AARP Magazine
suddenly appears in your mailbox. But the AARP is one of the
most influential organizations in America. Influential enough
to take on President Bush and his social security plan. So who
is head of the AARP? His name is Bill Novelli and, before he
came to the AARP, he ran an anti-tobacco campaign and had his
own PR firm. Today AARP has thirty-five million members and
some big challenges ahead. I talked with Novelli at the
Biltmore Hotel where he was a guest speaker for Town Hall Los
Angeles. One of the big questions that you're asking here today
and hopefully answering is can America afford to grow old?
That's a huge question. What are the big challenges?

Bill Novelli>> It's one of the biggest questions of our times.
I mean, we have an aging society. Everybody realizes that, and
we have to recognize first of all that longevity is a great
human achievement. We're all living longer, men and women, so
what are we going to do about it? Will it be a benefit to
society or will it be a drag? Of course, AARP's position is
that we can afford to grow older and that we can benefit from it
as a society.

Val>> So what do you see as the biggest challenge to affording
to grow old? What's the big thing that would have to change?

Bill Novelli>> Well, we think that there are three big
opportunities here. The first one is retirement security and
the issue of helping people to get their assets together to make
good decisions. Of course, social security is an absolutely key
part of that. But that whole area of retirement security is
very important especially with the savings rate in America being
so low.

The second thing is our health care system. When you look at
Medicare and Medicaid and some of these other big programs,
what's really driving the problem is high health care costs for
everybody. These health care costs have got to be brought under
control and there are ways we can do this, many ways. Focusing
more on prevention, just to give one example. Focusing more on
chronic long-term care. So there are ways that we can deal with
this.

Then the third way is to help people live in their communities
independently and this has to do with mobility, it has to do
with proper housing. So those are the big challenges and
they're challenges that our country can meet.

Val>> As you mentioned, social security is on the national
stage right now. Bush wants to do some reform, including
establishing personal accounts. What's your position on that?

Bill Novelli>> Well, first of all, we're grateful that the
president put it on the national agenda. This is a big
opportunity to have a national debate and to fix social security
now for future generations, so we're in a good spot right now as
a country. Secondly, what the administration is calling for is
taking money out of social security and setting up private
accounts.

Val>> What's called carve-outs.

Bill Novelli>> It's sometimes called a carve-out. We think
that a carve-out is a bad idea because it introduces risk into a
safety net system where there is no risk today. Secondly, it
would be hugely expensive. And the third thing is that it's not
even necessary. It won't do anything for solvency and there are
moderate ways we can step in and look at the social security
situation and make change.

Val>> You say that you don't believe that this kind of reform
is necessary? Elaborate on that.

Bill Novelli>> Well, first of all, social security is solvent
today, but it won't be some years down the road. So we have to
think about our children and our grandchildren and we have to
prepare --

Val>> -- from how many years from now?

Bill Novelli>> Well, it depends on how you want to count.
Around 2017 or 2018, more money will begin to go out than comes
in, so that's a start of a problem. If we take steps now, there
will be a lot less pain than there will be later. So what we
need to do is to figure out how to make the system solvent and
we can do this. As somebody once said, social security is just
math. I mean, the two parties could get together around a table
and they could do a variety of things. Maybe tweak the
benefits, maybe enhance the revenues. They could end up -- and
this has been done before-- with solvency and that's what we
need to do. So we need to think about solvency, we need to
think about adequate benefits and we need to think about raising
the national savings rate.

Val>> Now Bush, of course, says that private accounts will give
people control, that they might even earn more by being able to
invest in their own way. Is that not true?

Bill Novelli>> Well, it is possible that these private accounts
might earn more over time, but somebody likened it to buying
stocks on margin. It's sort of like the government gives you
money now, lends you money out of social security, you invest,
hopefully you make enough money later and then you give back
what you borrowed from social security plus inflation plus three
percent.

Val>> How do you give back what you borrowed?

Bill Novelli>> Well, the government would take it back. That's
the scheme. You have to say to yourself, well, where's the
safety net in all of this? Now there is room for private
accounts. We have them now. 401(k)s are a very good example,
but not everybody has access to them.

Val>> IRAs?

Bill Novelli>> IRAs are another good example. So what we need
to do is, we need to keep the safety net and make it strong. So
many people depend upon social security, and then have accounts
on top of that that people can take risks with, that they can
invest with.

Val>> Now it's been said that our health care system needs
reform a lot more urgently than social security. Would you
agree with that?

Bill Novelli>> Absolutely. We have a broken health care
system. We need to transform our health care system and we need
to do it as soon as possible. This is not something that nobody
understands. So we need to get information technology into
health because it's still a twentieth century system. We need
to focus on prevention. We need to really focus on chronic
disease management instead of acute care, long-term care issues.
There are a variety of things that can be done to bring costs
down, bring quality up and to insure all these forty-million
Americans who have no health insurance.

Val>> But we've been trying to fix our health system before. I
mean, we've been saying that it's broken for decades. A huge
number of people are uninsured, people getting older and needing
more and more health care as they get older. It's so complex.
Where do you start? What's the one thing you'd like to see
happen?

Bill Novelli>> Well, first of all, Congress had got to deal
with this. I think two things are going to galvanize Congress
into doing so. One is that the boomers are coming into
retirement, into aging. They're going to need more health care.
The second thing is, corporations in our country can't compete
any more with these enormous health care costs that they have to
carry, so they're shifting it onto the employees, they're
cutting retirees' benefits. This is not going to work. So I
think that Congress is going to be pushed into dealing with it.

Val>> Are you talking about universal health coverage
ultimately?

Bill Novelli>> Well, it could be universal. Right now, I don't
think there's a big appetite for that in the Congress, so we
might have to take it in a few steps. But there are a variety
of things that we can really do and I believe that we're going
to do it.

Val>> And your final priority was allowing older people to live
more independently for longer years. How are you going to go
about that?

Bill Novelli>> The most important thing people can do to stay
independent, to stay healthy, is physical activity. So we're
promoting that as hard as we can. Secondly, we live in such an
automobile society --

Val>> -- especially in Los Angeles (laughter).

Bill Novelli>> So what we have to is, when people can no longer
drive safely, we have to make sure that they don't get socially
isolated. They've got to be able to walk to church, walk to the
drugstore, those kinds of things. We really need to focus on
our communities, and then to go along with all that is housing.
People can modify their homes or, if you're a boomer, modify
your parents' home so they can live longer independently. This
can be done. All these things need to be addressed and we are,
as Americans, flexible enough to do it.

Val>> Well, Mr. Novelli, you have a big job ahead, but more and
more of us are getting older, so hopefully we'll be around to
help.

Bill Novelli>> Thank you very much.

Val>> Bill Novelli was a guest of Town Hall Los Angeles. If
you'd like to learn more about the organization, you can go to
their website where they have information on future speakers and
special events.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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Val>> Americans have been recycling for longer than you may
realize. New York City built its first recycling plant back in
1898 and, during World War II, Americans recycled one-third of
all their paper. Yet, after all these decades, we still have
some questions, so we opened up the Life and Times Vault and got
some answers from comedienne and avid recycler, Paula
Poundstone.

[Film Clip]

Paula Poundstone>> I realize this is going to help the world,
but okay, when I don't throw my can in the right place, I think
to myself, but my neighbor never does. My best friend, they may
as well just put like a big -- Green Peace should just come put
a net over her. She's terrible. I've actually chosen to live
in a neighborhood where people don't recycle very well so that I
can feel better about myself.

[Film Clip]

Paula Poundstone>> I've assembled a bag of mystery items to
bring to the recycle house. You know, the things you have no
idea you'd normally just leave in your closet because you're not
sure if they should go in the trash can or in the recycle?
Here's one. I use cardboard to line my bunny cage so it doesn't
hurt their little feet in the cage. But once the bunnies have
pooped on the cardboard, I don't really feel comfortable putting
it in the recycle. It's an ugly picture. It's going to turn
out that bunnies destroy the earth. Okay, we're almost there.
Let's pretend we walked.

[Film Clip]

Paula Poundstone>> You guys, this is John Root, the waste
reduction coordinator for the city of Santa Monica. John, I
brought a bag of mystery items.

John Root>> Okay, let's take a look at it.

Paula Poundstone>> All right, okay. Here's what I refer to as
unmarked plastic. It just has no thing on it, doesn't say a
number, doesn't have the arrows chasing each other.

John Root>> Well, let's see. Actually, this one does have the
arrows.

Paula Poundstone>> Oh, yeah.

John Root>> Number six, polystyrene. We don't take that here
at the recycling center. Out it goes into the trash.

Paula Poundstone>> Okay. This is cardboard, but I used it to
line my bunny cage so there's plenty of poop all over it.

John Root>> Oh, wonderful. Well, it doesn't look like there's
too much bunny poop on that. It looks pretty clean, so, yeah,
we would go ahead and take that.

Paula Poundstone>> All right. So they can use the cardboard
from a fairly healthy bunny.

John Root>> We'll take that.

Paula Poundstone>> If your bunny is stressed out, you're
probably going to have to throw it away. Would there be a point
of no return maybe?

John Root>> Absolutely. I mean, if this is just totally
saturated with some kind of food waste or other kind of waste
product, that would have to be pitched out, but this is fine.

Paula Poundstone>> Okay, all right, okay. Here's one. Paint
can. I kept these in the closet for I don't know how many
months because I wasn't sure what to do with them.

John Root>> Well, you've done a good job on emptying this out.
We would absolutely take this. Now if there was some residue in
it, that would be a problem, but there's really no residue.
It's perfectly dry. We'll put this in with the steel cans.

Paula Poundstone>> Okay. Now if I had a can that had some more
paint in it, then you wouldn't want it?

John Root>> Well, in Santa Monica, what we'd want you to do is
bring it in to our hazardous waste facility where they would try
to pour off what residue was in there.

Paula Poundstone>> Okay, so you have a couple of appointments
with your can before it got to its destiny. Okay. Say, for
example, and I'm not going to tell you that I do, but say I had
a plastic recyclable container that has a label on it. I scrape
the labels off after soaking them for a period of time in a
tepid bath.

John Root>> I think you've got too much time on your hands
(laughter). Don't worry about doing that.

Paula Poundstone>> I'm telling you, I'm going to have a lot of
-- this is one of the happiest days of my entire life. These
were in my pocket because I snuck them. The bread bag?

John Root>> Bread bag, okay. This looks like an LDPE. It's a
film plastic and we will take this. This will go in with the
film plastics.

Paula Poundstone>> That had been one that I was almost sure I
was wasting my time and it was just getting thrown out.

John Root>> That one, you'd be wasting your time. I don't know
what kind of plastic this is, but pretty miniscule, pretty
insignificant. Throw it out in the trash.

Paula Poundstone>> I'll just hold on to it for a while. I'm
sure another center somewhere will have another interest.

[Film Clip]

John Root>> What we have here is a buy-back and drop-off
recycling center. We're actually standing out in front of the
drop-off bins. People here can bring the materials and drop
them off. They don't get any cash back. They're just doing it
because they want to do it.

Paula Poundstone>> This is a gesture of love?

John Root>> Exactly. But on the other side of the fence here,
that's where they do it for the big bucks. So if you want to go
ahead and take a walk in there?

Paula Poundstone>> All right.

John Root>> Really, the first stop is coming over here to the
scale. They list the prices for what they pay. Aluminum cans,
glass bottles, plastic bottles, and it's important to remember
that, when you bring materials into this recycling center, they
want it fairly sorted.

Paula Poundstone>> This is the time when all the townspeople
join in for the harvest and the feast afterwards, when the PET
materials come in. Now my friend Isaac says that, in his
community, if you make a mistake and they don't tell you what
the mistake is, they just put a little -- you get ticketed or
you get like some sort of checkmark by your name and they don't
take any of your things.

Then my friend Sharon lives in Pasadena or something and she
said that there you have to make a half hour appointment to
bring your batteries somewhere because apparently there's a
debriefing involved. Ours, you separate into three bins and my
friend Nicole said they just put everything in one bin. There's
no one answer, right?

John Root>> A little confusing?

Paula Poundstone>> Yeah, yeah, good.

John Root>> All the cities do it differently. There's not one
right way or one wrong way. It's just the way these programs
have evolved.

[Film Clip]

John Root>> In Santa Monica, we pick up cans, glass and
plastics co-mingled. If you tried to bale all this up and sell
it to somebody, we'd say you're crazy. This isn't of any value
to us. So where do we go from here? Well, we've got people
there that are hand-sorting. They're pulling out -- this is
Number Two, HDPE plastic. That's going to go in one bin. We've
got here Number Two HDPE, but it's colored. That's going to go
into another bin. We've got the Number One PET. That's going
to go in another bin. Aluminum cans there. So you can see that
it's fairly labor-intensive.

Paula Poundstone>> Is there anything that I'm missing that you
should tell us that we need to know?

John Root>> Hopefully, you've gotten a good overview of how the
recycling program, the recycling center, operates here. It's
just important that people not lose sight of what they as
individuals can do. First and foremost, you can think about
your consumption habits. Do I need it? Do I need to take that
bag at the store? Do I need all this excess packaging? Really
be aware of that it ends up somewhere. You throw it out, but it
doesn't just disappear. I mean, it comes here first, but it's
going to end up in somebody else's back yard.

Paula Poundstone>> It seems to me what the guy was saying was,
no matter what you're doing, probably close enough, you know?
Put the stuff in the bin and send it off. They are either going
to sort it out there, if it's the wrong thing, it'll go in the
trash. Basically, you really can't do it wrong so long as
you're doing it on some level. And besides, even if I do my
plastic bottles wrong since I know I do my cardboard correctly,
my environmental bank account is full. Good news, guys. We can
re-use that cardboard.

Val>> And interestingly enough, by the time I finish this
sentence, thirty thousand new aluminum cans will have been made.
And if you toss it, it will still be an aluminum can five
hundred years from now. And that's our program. I'm Val
Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching.
We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.