NARRATOR: Until recently the United States' sense of national security was dominated by the danger of nuclear war with Russia. With the decline of the "Russian threat," the United States is now focusing on other dangers. Americans now feel threatened by the poisons in their water, land, and air, and by a multitude of other environmental hazards. New partnerships between the government and private companies are emerging to deal with this threat. This collaboration creates an environmental-industrial complex that stimulates the economy and creates jobs. The question is: Will society benefit from this expanding complex?

The United States is integrating non-military concerns into its definition of national security. Among these concerns are environmental dangers, including depletion of natural resources, environmental mismanagement, and the toxic legacy of the Cold War.

Abroad, environmental problems heighten ethnic and religious tensions that often lead to conflict. The result is a sense of the need for "environmental security," the idea that cooperation among nations can solve environmental problems and increase economic and political stability in strategically important regions.

Michael Renner is senior researcher for WorldWatch Institute.

RENNER: We do now see more and more understanding that environmental degradation, environmental breakdown can actually be a factor in causing conflicts.

NARRATOR: In 1996, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department and the Defense Department agreed to join forces to address environmental degradation and to reduce conflicts. Since then, they designed several programs addressing existing global environmental issues and have identified potential environmental problems with national security implications.

Recognizing the strategic importance of the Baltic region, the EPA has launched an initiative to correct the environmental mismanagement of defense installations. Environmental security is also an important part of US-China relations. Due to the size of China's population and economy, future environmental problems such as water scarcity, air pollution, and population pressures will alter the global environment.

While some Americans would like to believe pollution is a problem only for developing countries, this is simply not the case.

RENNER: The same environmental challenges that perhaps at this point seem more pronounced in some of the faraway regions are ones that are basically of equal concern within the United States itself.

NARRATOR:The most commonly identified form of environmental damage comes from making nuclear weapons. Within the United States there are still 18 active nuclear weapons facilities. Decades of nuclear bomb-making left behind over 400,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive waste. Many citizens living near nuclear facilities have suffered high rates of illness that are not easily explained, including immune, neurological and respiratory problems.

Another prominent environmental danger is global warming: the heating of the earth's atmosphere caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels such as gasoline. Since the early 1900's the average temperature has increased by 3 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The 11 hottest years in recorded history have occurred since 1980. The five hottest consecutive years on record were between 1991 and 1995, and 1998 was the hottest year in history. 1999 was the fifth hottest year on record.

The environment suffers from a host of problems besides radiation and global warming. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly half of the nation's waters are unsafe for fishing and swimming. There have been over 20,000 oil and chemical spills in the United States every year since 1991. And the federal government has declared over 1200 "SuperFund sites," areas so contaminated that failure to clean them up violates the law. Another half-million sites are severely contaminated and have been abandoned.

Much of today's contamination resulted from weapons manufacturing after World War II and through the 1980's. While the United States spent over $14 trillion on the military, little thought was given to protecting Americans and nature from dangerous contamination.

Military spending served as an economic engine, creating high-paying jobs for blue and white-collar workers alike. Huge military programs meant more jobs for Texas, Southern California, Georgia and the Northeast, everywhere military goods were made. Even today, one can see the enormous impact the military industry has on our economy.

This year the US plans to spend almost $300 billion on the armed forces. Congress often votes to increase military spending for economic rather than security reasons. Many regions count on the construction of planes, tanks and ships for their economic livelihood. For example, 46 states have contractors involved in the production of F-22 fighter planes.

As environmental problems become the focus of national security, the United States needs to develop a new security strategy. Personal protection from environmental threats does not come from tanks, planes or guns. Instead, it comes from innovative clean-up technology and alternative energy systems. The need for "environmental technologies" is more obvious every day as the pollution of our air, land and water continues.

RENNER: Well, certainly among the key environmental problems and challenges that we're facing almost anywhere on the globe that you're looking really, among these issues is certainly water scarcity, the issue of soil erosion or the maintenance of good soil quality, deforestation.

NARRATOR: Penelope Hansen is the director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Technology Verification Program.

HANSEN: More people, more economic activity, more pollution. It's a simple equation. And therefore, having better and more innovative approaches, more cost-effective approaches is really critical in order to be able to address the environmental problems of the 21st Century.

NARRATOR: One of the largest obstacles to clean-up and technology development is money. The United States continues to spend close to $300 billion a year on the military -- a figure that will rise every year for the next five years to over $330 billion by 2005. In contrast, according to the Brookings Institution's Atomic Audit, it will cost $365 billion over 20 years to completely clean up the nation's nuclear contamination. If the US were to consider a healthy environment as an aspect of its security, some of the Pentagon's budget could be devoted to this purpose.

RENNER: I think it is a very safe prediction to say that only a fraction of the military spending would more than suffice to promote those kinds of policies, those kinds of technologies.

NARRATOR: Another environmental aspect of national security is renewable energy, such as wind and solar power. Developing renewable energy sources is rapidly becoming a significant security issue due to the decline of the United States' oil supplies since the 1970's.

MACKENZIE: So we, in particular, are growing more and more dependent on foreign oil sources.

NARRATOR: Jim MacKenzie is a senior associate for the World Resources Institute's Climate, Energy, and Pollution Program. He points out that conflict in the Middle East could jeopardize the US oil supply.

MACKENZIE: I'm talking about wars and all kinds of other things that happen in that part of the world which could jeopardize the world's oil supply. It really behooves us to start looking for alternative sources.

NARRATOR: Research into alternative sources of energy is flourishing. Newspaper headlines tout the newest products -- testaments to environmental technology's place at the forefront of the scientific research. The good news is that additional investment in environmental technology would create new jobs.

HANSEN: There is a private company that has estimated that there are about 1.8 million jobs associated in one way or another with environmental activity in this country.

NARRATOR: Renewable energy will generate many more jobs than traditional energy creates. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, for every million dollars spent on oil and gas exploration, one-and-a-half jobs are created. For every million spent on coalmining, 4.4 jobs are created. However, for every million spent on making and installing solar water heaters, 14 jobs are created. For manufacturing solar electricity panels, 17 jobs.

For electricity from plant sources, 23 jobs. Even so, some fear that the new technologies will not generate as many jobs as expected. Some believe we must make a choice: protect the environment or maintain the very jobs that seem to destroy it.

MACKENZIE: Certainly if you favor one kind of technology, you're going to create jobs in that field other than in another one.

NARRATOR: However, if the government made environmental safety a national security priority, and invested in environmental technologies -- just as it did with military technologies -- the result would be more jobs. An investment in environmental programs would increase jobs at a greater rate than military spending. To some extent that is already happening.

The federal government, through individual states, has set up initiatives to encourage the private sector to develop environmentally friendly technology. A typical car produces almost six pounds of carbon dioxide for every pound of gasoline burned. Due to serious smog problems, California recently stipulated that all cars sold within that state must be low in pollutant emissions.

As a result, several car companies began to develop innovative vehicles. Honda developed a hybrid car, one that uses a combination of gas and battery power. And Volvo has unveiled a "smog-eating car," which filters ozone from the air as it flows over the radiator.

The push for new fuels accelerated in response to pollution and the diminishing oil supply. The government is an increasingly strong proponent of renewable energy. Several states now encourage consumers to buy wind and solar power, a signal that suggests environmental concerns are a spreading national priority.

MACKENZIE: Many states are requiring the utilities to buy a certain fraction of their power from renewable resources. And as a result, this has given a real boost in the arm to wind, in particular, because that's the most competitive one.

NARRATOR: This push could eventually ensure a constant supply of power for the United States.

RENNER: And there would be less concern about will we have continued reliable access to the flow of oil from the Middle East or from other regions to this country.

NARRATOR: The new emphasis by the government on environmental technology suggests that some in Washington believe the greatest danger to the United States is no longer a military threat. The Energy Department now funds government laboratories to develop alternative energy sources, including solar and wind power like these windmills near Livermore, California.

HANSEN: I think all government agencies, but particularly the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, EPA certainly, as a leader agency in this area, and many other agencies are also giving higher focus to environmental technologies than they have in the past.

NARRATOR: Los Alamos National Laboratory is developing a zero-pollution energy plant. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has several alternative energy projects, including wind and solar power, biomass -- energy from plant sources -- and geothermal energy from the earth's core.

But is the United States doing as much as it can to encourage such projects? Michael Renner believes that the government could play a larger role.

RENNER: The role that government could play is not even to say, 'Well, we are financing all of this,' you know, all of the research and develop that may be necessary to make headway on efficiency, but at least to put in place programs that provide incentives for companies or communities to further pursue these kinds of technologies, these kinds of opportunities.

NARRATOR: Penelope Hansen cautions that the environmental movement is only about 30 years old and there is still much to learn about how government and industry should join forces.

HANSEN: And that means that there is a tremendous amount about the environment, about what is good for the environment, about the risks in the environment, about how you solve those risks that still today is not known.

NARRATOR: Despite some questions, we see much more cooperation between the private sector and the government in tackling common problems. One such partnership joins together the University of California at Berkeley, Southern California Edison, an electric utility company, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This team has devised a technology called "Dynamic Underground Stripping," or DUS, that speeds the cleanup for those severely contaminated areas known as SuperFund sites.

For 50 years, Livermore has been designing and testing nuclear bombs. This continues to be their main focus of work. Robin Newmark is a geophysicist at Livermore.

NEWMARK: The laboratory was founded to develop nuclear weapons, and that's where our expertise base came from. We have a national security mission and that's not going to go away.

NARRATOR: Although most of Livermore's annual one-and-a-quarter billion dollar budget is reserved for military research, a small fraction is set aside for non-defense projects, such as DUS. Livermore became involved with Dynamic Underground Stripping due to severe contamination at the lab itself.

As a result of decades of military research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory contaminated its own nest. It came a SuperFund site with "hot spots" -- areas more heavily contaminated than the rest -- spread over its square-mile campus.

Ms. Newmark is a co-developer of DUS.

NEWMARK: So, when the Department of Energy started looking at their problems and the very slow and cumbersome ways that we had to clean them up, they started addressing the question of "Can we speed up the cleanup of these sites?"

NARRATOR: While Livermore had the scientific expertise to address this question, it lacked the hands-on experience necessary. For this, Livermore worked with Southern California Edison, who had their own motivation for developing DUS.

Between the early 1920's and 1980, Southern California Edison operated a utility pole treatment yard in Visalia, California. Over the decades, more than 100,000 gallons of preservatives spilled into the soil. After local residents complained of contaminated drinking water, Southern California Edison decided that cleaning the treatment site was a top priority. Their hope was to dramatically speed up the clean-up.

WEIDNER: I didn't want to bring my great-grandchildren here, drive by the pole yard in a number of decades and say, "Yes, I used to work here and they're still here."

NARRATOR: Randy Weidner is the senior engineering geologist for Southern California Edison.

WEIDNER: We wanted to get beyond that. We wanted to be able to close this up and close the books on the Visalia pole yard.

NARRATOR: To facilitate this process, Southern California Edison enlisted the best minds they could find, the scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

WEIDNER: We brought in the Lawrence Livermore scientists from the very beginning to help us out.

NARRATOR: Dynamic Underground Stripping injects steam into the earth via pipes driven deep underground and heats the soil. Many of the contaminants are destroyed by water. At normal temperatures, this process is extremely slow. However, heating the toxins dramatically speeds their decay.

NEWMARK: When you heat up the cleanup, when you heat the soil up and the ground water up, the contaminants are more readily removed.

NARRATOR: The steam forces the contaminants towards wells where they are treated and removed. DUS is used with imaging techniques to monitor and control the cleanup. Similar to a CAT scan, this technology shows which areas are hot, which need additional heat, and where the contaminant has not yet been extracted.

Dynamic Underground Stripping was first tested at Lawrence Livermore on a former gas storage site. After years of use, gasoline had contaminated the ground water. Livermore originally estimated that the cleanup would take several decades. Using DUS, they were able to finish the job in one year.

NEWMARK: We had set out to reduce the length of time necessary to clean it up. We actually cleaned it up. Oh, well, that's pretty neat.

NARRATOR: Based on this success, Southern California Edison implemented Dynamic Underground Stripping at the Visalia pole yard. Using the traditional "pump and treat method" -- a process of extracting contaminated ground water, treating it and disposing of the contaminants -- the pole yard would have taken at least 200 years to clean up.

WEIDNER: So, realistically, I think pump and treat I think was -- as we said, "pump and treat forever."

NARRATOR: Southern California Edison now predicts the cleanup will be completed by 2005.

What is the future of Dynamic Underground Stripping? Edison foresees introducing DUS into the commercial marketplace.

WEIDNER: We did an evaluation and felt there was an incredible market for dynamic underground stripping.

NARRATOR: There are a large number of potential cleanup projects for DUS. One estimate is that DUS will completely clean a quarter of the 1200-plus SuperFund sites in the nation and partially clean another quarter of them.

WEIDNER: So, we now believe that we can go back to those sites and effectively clean them up and, hopefully, get a lot of our ground water throughout the nation and even the world cleaned up.

NARRATOR: Because contaminated water is prevalent around the world, new innovative technology could help solve this and other global environmental problems. Besides improving public health, they may create untold numbers of new jobs.

NEWMARK: I think that the new technologies that we're developing are making an impact in the private sector. People are licensing our technologies, are able to go and provide this new service in the community.

WEIDNER: Our analysis shows at a minimum, probably $250 million per year of these types of cleanups for the next 30 years. So, that is very significant. That's a lot of money, that's a lot of jobs.

NARRATOR: It's not just the United States that stands to benefit. Since pollution is a global problem, investment in this area could find a worldwide market and help generate a global economic boom.

As the environmental-industrial complex evolves, some foresee a "win-win-win" relationship in which the government funds private research. Government financing of research would help businesses working to develop efficient renewable sources of energy. In turn, business could return a portion of the profits gained from their products invented with government aid. Finally, the public "wins" because the new technologies decrease health dangers associated with pollution.

HANSEN: Americans are impacted by environmental technology every day, every hour of every day either by their existence or their non-existence. If we have environmental technology that is good, we will have an improved environment and we will have better public health.

NARRATOR: Environmental breakthroughs do not happen overnight. It takes commitment and a willingness to take risks to see many research and development programs through to practical products.

MACKENZIE: These changes do not occur rapidly. It's going to take a major effort to improve efficiency. If we don't do it, the legacy we're going to leave for our children is going to be one of a baked climate.

NARRATOR: With our view of security constantly evolving, is this the time for more cooperation between government and the private sector?

WEIDNER: I believe that there have got to be a number of fantastic opportunities for working relationships between the private sector and the government for the future.

NARRATOR: America's national security in the 21st Century may ultimately hinge on the extent and success of this type of teamwork. Rather than continuing to increase military spending, it may be more urgent to invest in environmental technologies. The need for renewable energy and clean air and water will only increase. Meeting this need must be a national priority.

[End of broadcast.]