subscribe to this pageSeeing The Numbers: NYC
We continue our series with Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the U.S. Census, on the new Census Atlas of the United States. This week, we look at some of the NYC-specific maps:
Also, Andrew Beveridge, Professor of Sociology for Social Explorer and chair of the Sociology department at Queens College, helps us flesh out what those maps tell us about New York.
Seeing The Numbers: Origins and Diversity
Each Thursday in June, we are taking a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends. Today we look at the changing face of America and an interesting definition of "ancestry."
Seeing The Numbers Each Thursday in June, we take a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends.
Mark Hertsgaard
Letting polluters off the hook
MARK HERTSGAARD: Unlike lead or asbestos, we can't just ban greenhouse gases. That would shut down America's factories and vehicles overnight. But if we put the right price on greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, we'll use less of them.
The easiest way to do that is a carbon tax. That would increase the prices of gasoline, electricity and other fuels. But we could cut payroll taxes to offset any harm to the poor or the larger economy.
Most proposals in Congress, however, favor supposedly putting the market in charge. Under the so-called cap-and-trade system, the right to emit carbon would become a commodity.
The government would issue carbon emissions permits. Big polluters could buy the right to pollute from companies that haven't used up their permitted pollution levels.
We'd reduce the permits over time, giving companies an incentive: the less carbon they emit, the more money they could make by selling their unused quota to someone else.
The trouble is, Congress seems inclined to give these emission permits away for free, rather than have companies buy them at auction in an open market. Most global warming bills contain grandfather clauses that give companies free permits for up to 90 percent of their current emissions.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Carbon credits have some hot air
Many of the European Union's companies are registering carbon dioxide emissions far below their limits. And that's wreaking some havoc with the market set up to buy and sell carbon credits. Stephen Beard explains.
There's money to be made in the effort to halt global warming. One burgeoning business is the buying and selling of "carbon offsets" to American industry and consumers. What are these offset projects and how good are their claims? Claire Schoen reports.
11/21/97
Episode 84
A parable of politics and race in America. The story of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, told on the anniversary of his death. We first broadcast on the tenth anniversary of his death and reran this on the 11th. Washington died November 25, 1987.
Act One. Yesterday. A history of the brief mayoral career of Harold Washington, and its lessons for black and white America, as told by people close to him. Many of them are activists and politicians: Lu Palmer, Judge Eugene Pincham, Congressman Danny Davis, then-alderman Eugene Sawyer. There are people from his administration--Jacky Grimshaw and Grayson Mitchell--and some reporters who followed his story: Vernon Jarrett, Monroe Anderson, Gary Rivlin, Laura Washington (who became his press secretary). Plus a few ordinary voters, and a political opponent of the late mayor. Act One continues after the break.
Act Two. The present and the future. Thoughts about why there are no black mayors in the nation's largest cities today--New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. Plus a visit to a white Chicago ward, to see if ordinary voters have learned any tolerance in the last ten years since Washington's death.
Song: "At Last" Etta James
Ghetto Life 101
Recorded in Chicago, Illinois.
Premiered May 18, 1993, on WBEZ Chicago.
In March, 1993, LeAlan Jones, thirteen, and Lloyd Newman, fourteen, collaborated with public radio producer David Isay to create the radio documentary Ghetto Life 101, their audio diaries of life on Chicago's South Side. The boys taped for ten days, walking listeners through their daily lives: to school, to an overpass to throw rocks at cars, to a bus ride that takes them out of the ghetto, and to friends and family members in the community.
The candor in Jones and Newman's diaries brought listeners face to face with a portrait of poverty and danger and their effects on childhood in one of Chicago's worst housing projects. Like Vietnam War veterans in the bodies of young boys, Jones and Newman described the bitter truth about the sounds of machine guns at night and the effects of a thriving drug world on a community.
Ghetto Life 101 became one of the most acclaimed programs in public radio history, winning almost all of the major awards in American broadcasting, including: the Sigma Delta Chi Award, the Ohio State Award, the Livingston Award, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Awards for Excellence in Documentary Radio and Special Achievement in Radio Programming, and others. Ghetto Life 101 was also awarded the Prix Italia, Europe's oldest and most prestigious broadcasting award. It has been translated into a dozen languages and has been broadcast worldwide.
Reporters: LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman / Producers: David Isay, LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman / Editor: Gary Covino / Engineer: Caryl Wheeler / Additional Engineering: Rick Karr / Funding provided by the Chicago Community Trust as part of WBEZ's Chicago Matters series.
And (Environmental) Justice for All
Robert Bullard, Ware Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University and Sheila Holt-Orsted discuss Holt-Orsted’s family’s fight against cancer and environmental racism as they participate in the nationwide Environmental Justice bus caravan tour taking place this week.