Plastics are everywhere. Jane Patton, U.S. Fossil Economy Campaign Manager at the Center for International Environmental Law, says, “They're finding microplastics in babies' first poops, which is really dangerous and scary when we consider the full chemical profile.” 

Diane Wilson is a lifelong shrimper in the Texas Gulf. When Formosa Plastics built a factory in her small rural community, the county gained the dubious honor of being named the most toxic in the country. 

Wilson took on the multinational company. She would kayak around the waters surrounding the factory, collecting pollution and water samples. In the process, “I lost my job. I lost my boat. I lost my marriage. I lost friends. And all because I started watching and fighting Formosa,” says Wilson. 

In 2019, a federal judge found Formosa Plastics guilty of being a serial offender of the Clean Water Act. The company agreed to a 50 million settlement and zero future discharge from the plant. But that did not deter the company from its continued pollution. “In the first year [the fine] was $15,000 per day and then it was $20,000, $25,000. Now it's $65,000 per day,” Wilson says. “Since June of 2021, when we really started having a way to monitor their discharge, they have violated it over 600 times and they have been penalized by us over 16 million dollars.”

“To me, the solution is the era of plastic production has to end,” says Wilson.

While the idea that plastics are a blight on our environment is not new, it's becoming clear that plastics are a significant climatethreat as well. The production of plastics alone produces about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

Oil and gas companies see that heightened awareness of climate change is creating an existential threat to their fossil fuel profits. And so they are doubling down on the petrochemical side of their business.  The Center for International Environmental Law’s Jane Patton says, “We know that the industry has for some time been planning to double or even triple the production of plastics by 2050.” 

The industry would like us to believe that recycling is the solution. But only 9% of the plastic ever produced has been recycled. Susannah Scott, chemistry professor at UC Santa Barbara, explains that plastics are not like aluminum cans, which can easily be melted down and formed into new aluminum cans, because aluminum is just one, single element. 

“There are hundreds of different types of plastics and they're all mixed together,” Scott says. And “when you reprocess plastics or polymers, these are organic molecules that actually don't like to be reprocessed. when you melt them, when you stretch them again, they break and the difference in the properties of the recycled material is enough to make it problematic to reuse them for the same purpose.” 

The United Nations recently held the fourth of five planned meetings aimed at hammering out a landmark international treaty to end plastics pollution. Alexis Jackson, Ocean Policy and Plastics Lead at the Nature Conservancy in California, says, “The pace of global production that we're seeing on plastics warrants global action and alignment.” 

Ending plastics production entirely is probably not an option. The medical industry, for example, relies on plastic in countless life-saving devices. And plastic components replacing steel in cars have made them far more fuel efficient. Still, Jackson says, “The solutions that we build have to be feasible and yet still need to be ambitious to ensure that harm, or undue harm, is not done to people and to the environment.”

Ozark Highlands Radio is a weekly radio program that features live music and interviews recorded at Ozark Folk Center State Park’s beautiful 1,000-seat auditorium in Mountain View, Arkansas.  In addition to the music, our “Feature Host” segments take listeners through the Ozark hills with historians, authors, and personalities who explore the people, stories, and history of the Ozark region.

This week, a special road trip episode.  OHR visits Rogers, Arkansas’ Railyard Live Concert Series featuring singer-songwriters Will Gunselman & Ashtyn Barbaree recorded live at Butterfield Stage in Railyard Park in historic downtown Rogers.  Also, an interview with Ozark original Will Gunselman.

Rogers, Arkansas’ Railyard Live Concert Series began in 2021.  Held on the city’s Butterfield Stage next to Railyard Park in historic downtown Rogers, it features live concerts every weekend throughout the Spring, Summer, and Fall.  All of the Railyard Live events are either free to the public or at very low cost of admission.  The concert series features a wide array of musical styles and interests designed to appeal to the diverse population of Rogers and invite them to experience the newly revitalized Railyard Entertainment District.  The Ozark Folk Center State Park and the City of Rogers, Arkansas partnered to bring Ozark Highlands Radio to capture a little slice of this modern Ozark culture.

Will Gunselman is a singer-songwriter from Bella Vista, Arkansas.  Will’s vivid writer’s voice along with his unique style invents an honest and authentic Ozark story.  Honing his art through decades of live performance, Will has crafted a simple sound that is modern and relatable but reveals a rich patina of life lived.  Although plaintive, his music, rooted in folk, country and blues, dwells on the positive nature of experience and seeking joy in the everyday.  Like traversing the river Will ardently describes in his song Buffalo River Run, sitting with a set of his music is a journey bent with scenic vistas of the soul.

Ashtyn Barbaree is an internationally touring gritty Americana singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Fayetteville, Arkansas.  Sweet, soulful, charming and relatable, her lyrics have found their way into the hearts of folks from all walks of life.  She has a smokey, yet silky voice accompanied with harmonies, guitar, tenor 8-string ukulele, upright bass, pedal steel, drums and piano.
https://www.ashtynbarbaree.com/about

In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, OHR producer Jeff Glover offers a 1981 archival recording of bluegrasser Lenny Wallace performing the tune “Take Your Shoes Off Moses,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives.

In this week’s guest host segment, renowned traditional folk musician, writer, and step dancer Aubrey Atwater explores the theme of riddles and trick questions in traditional folk music.

A decades-old lunar mystery gets an update in this week's Planetary Radio. Matt Siegler from the Planetary Science Institute shares his team's surprising findings about the granite formation that might lie beneath Compton-Belkovich, a thorium-rich hot spot on the far side of the Moon. Then Bruce Betts, chief scientist of The Planetary Society, shares What's Up in the night sky.

ClassicalWorks (Episode 182)

The key battle taking place in this American crisis year of 2024 is happening in our heads, according to the master historian Richard Slotkin. He’s here to tell us all that we’re in a 40-year culture war and an identity crisis by now. It’s all about drawing on legendary figures like Daniel Boone and Frederick Douglass, Betsy Ross and Rosa Parks, Robert E. Lee and G.I. Joe for a composite self-portrait of the country.

Richard Slotkin says we’re in a contest of origin stories, in search of a common national myth. His book is A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America. It is the Trump-Biden fight, of course, but with centuries of history bubbling under it. 

The First of May is the Celtic festival of Bealtaine, or Beltane or Calan Mai, which marks the first day of Summer...or, around here, Spring. It was the time to drive cattle to summer pastures, and sacred bonfires were lit. It was time to dance around the Maypole, visit the local Holy Well, and put out offerings to the aos sí, the fairy folk. In the US, especially in the high desert and mountain climates, we'll settle for considering this the start of Spring, as there is still snow on the ground in many places.

The artists this week: John McSherry; Yanks; Sylvain Barou & Ronan Pellen; Matt Molloy; Tom Delany; Mary Beth Carty; Mick Conneely & David Munnelly; Poitín; Lá Lugh; Siobhan Miller; Ranarim; Altan; John Skelton; and Jason O'Rourke.

Our FairPlé score this week: 40