Air Date: Week of November 9, 2007

Living on Earth dips into the mailbag to hear from our listeners.

Transcript

GELLERMAN: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Bruce Gellerman. Time now to hear from you, our listeners.

[THEME UP AND UNDER]

GELLERMAN: Our interview with singer Bonnie Raitt didn’t rate for some of you. Ms. Raitt and other musicians created a YouTube video to protest a part of the proposed energy bill that would provide subsidies for nuclear power plants.

‘I like Bonnie Raitt’s music,’ emailed Joshua Cohen, who listens to the show on WBUR in Boston. ‘But I would not turn to her to answer questions she has no qualifications to answer.’

And John Cork asks why Bonnie Raitt isn’t protesting against coal. He works at a nuclear plant in Russellville, Arkansas and listens to us on KUAR. In his letter he says, ‘I am proud to work in an industry that produces vast amounts of electricity with the only appreciable pollution coming from the manufacturing of the plant’s components.’

And listener Steve Stockton of Charleston, West Virginia writes that he’s always skeptical when it comes to musicians talking about energy. ‘I would have been interested to hear how Ms. Raitt powers her guitar, her recording studio, or her amplifiers at her concerts.’

And while some of you wrote in to say you were inspired by our segment on food security in India with activist and physicist Vandana Shiva, Patrick Moore called in to say, he wasn’t. Mr. Moore was a co-founder of Greenpeace and is founder of Green Spirit Strategies. He now lobbies on behalf of the nuclear power industry.

MOORE: I find it very disturbing that you would print the blatant lies of Vandana Shiva about farmers in India committing suicide because they are growing genetically modified cotton. Cotton farmers choose which seeds to buy themselves and a growing number are recognizing the benefits of BT cotton in reducing losses to the cotton bollworm. Vandana Shiva is the enemy of progress for farmers in developing countries who want to lift themselves out of illiteracy, poverty, and short lives.

GELLERMAN: Hydroecologist Sydney Bacchus of Athens, Georgia wrote to say our segment on the record-breaking drought in the U.S Southeast was ‘superb.’ But she writes: we made an error. The University of Georgia is the largest user of municipal water, not state water as I said. Well, thanks, Sydney. Seems sometimes, we’re all wet.

If you want to rain on our parade or praise us to the sky, our email address is comments at L-O-E dot org. Once again, that’s comments at L-O-E dot org. Or put a stamp on it and send it to 20 Holland Street, Somerville, Massachusetts, 02144. And there’s always our listener line at 800-218-9-9-8-8. That's 800-218-99-88.