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CARL AZUZ: Hi, my name is Carl Azuz.
Welcome to the show.
Behind China, India is the most populated nation on the planet.
It has more than 1.3 billion people.
And all of them are exposed to excessive air pollution
every year.
This is according to guidelines set
by the United Nations and a report
from the University of Chicago.
Its study says, residents of New Delhi, the Indian capital,
could expect to live as many as 10
years longer if the pollution were
reduced to UN guideline levels.
But doing that, of course, is easier said than done.
Smog is not a new problem for this part of the world.
It hangs thickly over many urban areas, worsened
by industrial pollution, car and truck emissions,
and crop burning, which farmers typically do this time of year
to get their fields ready for their next crops.
It's not just a problem in India.
Pakistan, Southern Asia, Nepal, Bangladesh, these places
are all near India, and they're all among the most
polluted areas in the world.
But in a global ranking that came out a couple of years ago,
India was home to 21 of the 30 most polluted cities on Earth.
And as the nation becomes more industrialized and its demand
for energy increases, there's no single clear solution in sight.
Many people, as you're about to see,
are calling on the Indian government
to take more action to reduce air pollution.
It currently has a clean air campaign in effect
that aims to reduce dirty particles in the air
by 30% between 2019 and 2024.
But despite that, the University of Chicago
report says, the air has actually gotten worse.
So shutdowns, which might help the air,
but might hurt businesses are the order of the day.
VEDIKA SUD: In a bid to bring down toxic air levels
in the National Capital Region, an emergency order
from India's environment ministry panel on air pollution
has directed the closing of schools and colleges
in and around Delhi till further notice.
Six of 11 coal-fired power plants
within a 300 kilometer radius of Delhi
have been temporarily shut down.
The committee has also banned non-essential construction
and operation of trucks carrying non-essential goods
in Delhi and adjoining cities.
The toxic air in Delhi and neighboring states
has residents gasping for breath.
Medical experts say, there's been a spike
in respiratory problems.
According to the World Health Organization,
air quality index between 0 and 50 is considered good.
In the last two weeks, parts of the National Capital Region
have reported levels higher than 500.
Environmental experts say, quick fix
solutions cannot be the answer to North
India's toxic air levels.
ANUMITA ROYCHOWHURY: The challenge of Delhi
is just not challenge of Delhi.
It is a challenge of this region.
If you look at India right now through satellite,
you will find that the entire India
gangetic plain in northern India is
wrapped in a blanket of smog.
And this is because this time of the year
when you don't have integrated plan for the entire region
and aggressive action to address each and every source
of pollution in the entire region, that's where
we have to step up the action.
VEDIKA SUD: According to a report by the University
of Chicago, air pollution levels in northern India
is 10 times worse than anywhere else in the world.
Vedika Sud, CNN, New Delhi.
CARL AZUZ: 10-second trivia.
What is the world's largest known type of sea star?
Necklace starfish, giant spine star, sunflower star,
or royal starfish?
The sunflower sea star can measure
more than three feet in diameter and weigh more than 13 pounds.
It can have anywhere from 15 to 25
arms and thousands of tube feet.
It's a predator that plays an important role
in the ecosystem.
But it's among more than 20 different sea star
species that have been mysteriously
dying off in part of the world.
And scientists don't know exactly why.
One explanation is that a virus, possibly worsened
by ocean warming events like El Nino,
has been ravaging sunflower stars along North
America's Pacific coast.
They're now listed as a critically endangered species.
Starfish die-offs have been observed in the past,
according to the Atlantic Magazine.
And researchers say at least one other species
that was affected by this one has started to recover.
So there's hope the sunflower star will, too.
And some scientists are also attempting
to regenerate its population.
- A lot of people when they think
of top predators in the ocean, they might think
of something like a shark.
And that's exactly what you should
be thinking about when you think about the sunflower star.
It's the largest sea star in the world,
so it eats all kinds of organisms on the sea floor
from shellfish to sea urchins.
Moving their little tiny feet underneath to glide
across the sea floor and then strike
fear into organisms that they encounter.
So when they eat, they actually swallow the entire prey whole.
And it's sort of seems a little counterintuitive
to say that a predator helps to keep more species around,
but that's actually what happens.
And so when the top predators are present,
you have a much more diverse and high functioning ecosystem.
JASON HODIN: My name is Jason Hodin
and I'm a research scientist at Friday
Harbor Laboratories of the University of Washington.
The sunflower star existed along a very, very wide stretch
of the coastline, all the way from Alaska
down to northern Mexico.
Starting in about 2013, there was a syndrome
that started to appear all up and down the West
Coast of North America, where sea stars of all varieties
started to show this wasting syndrome, which
is this horrible effect that causes the sea stars
to essentially melt.
Sunflower stars were really, really hard hit.
And they were down in this region
to probably 5% of their historical numbers.
And in some areas, in the South, like off of California,
we haven't seen sunflower stars for years.
When a predator, that's a key member of an ecosystem,
like sunflower star are, disappears,
you know, there are really, really broad cascading effects.
And that's what we're actually seeing
in places like California, where kelp forests are declining.
And that happened right around the same time
as the sea stars started to disappear.
Kelp is just so fundamental to the health
and well-being of the ocean.
It's a habitat for an incredible number of organisms.
It removes carbon from the atmosphere.
And what we've seen is essentially
a shift in the habitat from this diverse highly
functioning ecosystem with many different kinds of species.
And now, we see mostly barren habitat
with a lot of sea urchins.
And sea urchins eat kelp.
And so right now, the populations
are sort of out of balance.
And we think that one of the contributing factors for that
is the loss of one of their major predators,
the sunflower star.
We feed them exactly once every two days.
So in 2019, I was first contacted by the Nature
Conservancy in California because they were
interested in whether it would be possible to breed sunflower
stars through their life cycle.
We have a new generation of sunflower star juveniles
growing in the lab right now.
Then the next goal after that is to see whether or not,
sea stars at a year-old, whether they
can survive out in the wild.
What we really want to do is in addition to trying to restore
the populations that are there actively,
we also want to maintain the health of the ecosystems
where they exist now.
And you know, that extends to all manner of things
that all of us can do to protect our local waters
and our ecosystems.
They're all connected.
And they're connected to the health of the sunflower star.
And they're connected to the health of our ocean ecosystems
and to our own health.
You know, we're learning something
about an endangered species here,
an information that we hope will inform upon our ability
to be able to preserve this species and others like it
in the wild.
CARL AZUZ: Back in 2016, a woman named Wanda Dench texted
a 17-year-old named Jamal Hinton letting him know
when Thanksgiving dinner was.
The problem is, they didn't know each other.
Wanda sent the text to the wrong number
trying to reach her grandson.
Jamal not recognizing the number asked Wanda to send a selfie.
And then he sent one back, saying, you're not my grandma.
But he asked if a spot at the Thanksgiving table
was still open to which she replied, of course.
That was the beginning of a friendship that's
still going strong with their sixth Thanksgiving together
coming up.
- She welcomed me into her House so that shows me
how great of a person she is.
I thank for people like that.
- It's come from God above.
That He's just using us as tools and vessels to bring a message,
you know, to others.
CARL AZUZ: A story that's fun to feast your eyes on.
The table was set with a not-so secret sauce of friendship,
but seemed easy as pie.
It's stuffed with hospitality, has a gravy kind of love,
makes for a very happy Thanksgiving,
and comes with a heaping helping of tweet potatoes.
I'm Carl Azuz and today's show goes
out to Taunton High School.
It is located in Taunton, Massachusetts.
Thank you for your request on our YouTube channel.
Hope all y'all turkeys come on back tomorrow.
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