Pandora's Box
Adam Curtis, 1992
4. Goodbye Mrs Ant
PANDORA'S BOX
PROLOGUE
When Chemists were Heroes
Thomas Midgely was born in
1889. He became a chemist and an inventor. In 1921, he solved the problem of
knocking in car engines: he put lead in petrol. In 1930, he discovered a new
coolant for fridges. It was called by
its initials: CFC.
Midgely became part of a
golden age of chemistry in America, in the thirties.
[Clip from the 1940
DuPont film A New World Through Chemistry]
In 1935, Midgely predicted
that in the future, chemistry would solve many of the world's great problems.
The ozone layer, he said,
could be altered to control the Sun's rays and allow scientists to govern the
world's
agriculture.
In 1940, Midgely contracted
polio. He built a pulley system to lift himself in and out of bed. But, in
1944, he
became trapped in it and
strangled himself.
That same year, the American
army began mass-producing CFC to help spray a new – some said miracle –
chemical over the Pacific battlefields. It killed insects. It was called DDT.
GOODBYE MRS ANT
Professor Robert Metcalfe [Metcalf?], entomologist, National Defence Research Committee 1943–1946
I was a project officer in the first aerial
application of DDT that was ever made in the world, I
guess; and we flew it over several square miles of
jungle and I was walking around some kraals
we'd cut in the jungle floor and there was an
incredible, [in]describable rain of insects of all kinds
coming down out of the tops of these huge jungle
trees – a hundred to a hundred and thirty,
forty, fifty feet; we got cerambycid beetles, beetles
of all descriptions – and probably many people
had never seen [them] or [?if] anybody had ever seen [them], because they're in the
tops of the
trees... I remember particularly some [..?..] of these long [..?..] beetles were coming down;
there
were wasps and bees of all descriptions and so forth [..?..] it was an incredible
experience; and I
guess what occurred to me then was that maybe this
was one of the best ways to collect insects
and find out what kind of insects there truly were in
a representative area of the jungle... and
that's just one of the more innocent things I guess
one could read into it.
[Period film showing Douglas C-47 (Dakota)s spraying Manila in the
Philippines]
[Voiceover:] "Low-flying planes cover every section of
the city, from the coast of Manila Bay to the
outlying
environs, in an effort to destroy the large numbers of flies and mosquitoes
plaguing
the area ...
Prior to the spring, the populous was informed that the insecticide would not
injure
vegetation or
clothes."
[Clip from black-and-white film featuring an unidentified man]
"In American bars, there was a drink which was
called "Mickey Slim"; and it was a good gin with
a spot of DDT
in it. And this was supposed to give you a feeling of happiness and merriment
–"
[Robert Metcalf]
... then in Naples, in 1943 and '44, there was an
enormous epidemic of typhus transmitted by the
human body louse; and [there were] about ten million
applications of DDT dusting powder [given]
to people and they wiped that out – and those things
got enormous publicity in household
magazines like [] Reader's Digest ... Everybody wanted to try
DDT; and [the] civilian population
could hardly wait to get their hands on it when it
was released in 1945 for civilian use.
ILLINOIS
Harry Renken, farmer
Well, it was sort of a miracle that happened; and, by
word of mouth, it spread rapidly and I
think everyone tried it.
I remember one time in 1952; it was summertime and we
were going to have a birthday party
right here on the lawn – right here where we're
sitting – and the day before I sprayed all the grass
with water and DDT. And this got rid of the flies and
also killed mosquitoes; and, you know, flies
in the afternoon – while the sun's shining – and
mosquitoes after dark; those are two things [that]
if you could get away from them, you could have a
wonderful party out here – and we did. We
had a pest-free party out here [on] this farm.
Wilbert Joyce, farmer
Chemical people would show us test plots and the
quality of the corn – and it would have little
small ears, for the weeds and the insects had taken
over; [but] where they'd used the chemicals,
the ears were bigger and the yield was two to three
times as much.
The United States was [on] a continent plagued with
insects. Farmers lived in perpetual fear of finding a new infestation. Whole
crops were regularly destroyed by pests. DDT and the other insecticides
invented in its wake promised victory in this war.
Shirley Briggs, biologist, US Fish and Wildlife Service
1945–1948
You don't in England... [have] anything like the insect
life that we have. You don't have to have
screens on the windows in many places – can't survive
here that way.
We are edgier about them. Anything with six legs
is... an enemy.
[Brief clip (no
dialogue) from the movie] "EARTH VS. THE SPIDER" [released] 1958
[Wilbert Joyce]
I've seen the time [when] full fields of crops would
be ruined [by] the insects before the chemicals
[came] into effect. I can remember the cutworms and the wireworms would
absolutely clean
the fields of corn and wheat; and there would be
nothing left to harvest. And then, when your
chemicals [came] along, you had this to eliminate the insects and... you had your crop
then.
Lillard Heddon, crop sprayer 1945–1983
It was a miracle chemical to us because we thought
it would control practically every insect ...
but I guess it was just the time and the period that
God had decided that he would let us discover
these chemicals and use them wisely; and... I suppose
everything, the whole system, is directed
by God, so I guess this was the time that we would
find our knowledge given by God would lead
us to find these natural resources to use, to
control... do away with some of the slave labour...
The incredible success of
insecticides led to a wave of invention. Chemists vied with each other to
design
new, more powerful products.
This, in turn, transformed other sciences – in particular, the study of
insects:
entomology.
Entomologists had
traditionally been figures of fun; eccentric scientists who spent their time
classifying insects. But this was now important information for the chemical
companies. They began to employ large numbers of entomologists. In the process,
the focus of their science began to shift.
Professor Robert Metcalf[], entomologist,
University of California 1948–1968
We were fed these new chemicals so rapidly, many of
us didn't have any time to do anything else
but test the new chemicals – there seemed to be
chemicals being introduced into the pipeline [and]
an inexhaustible pressure to put something out at the
other end; and, literally, we forgot about
good, basic entomology and became in a sense, I
think, handmaidens of the world chemical
industry.
The entomologists began to
discover what appeared to be serious side-effects. As they investigated the
effectiveness of large-scale spraying programmes, they found that many other
species of wildlife were being harmed.
Dr. Eugene Kenega, research entomologist, Dow Chemical Company
1940–1982
We found out soon that there were some side-effects,
even as early as 1946 and '47, but the
benefits were so great – we eradicated malaria from
the United States, let alone many other places
in the world – and... so, there wasn't the public
pressure on...
We were killing off birds; in some cases, it was
quite obvious that these species were disappearing,
starting in '47 or '48. And, by '53, even the birds
that lived quite a few years were beginning to
disappear; and they weren't replacing themselves
because the eggs weren't hatching.
These side-effects led to
serious disagreements among the entomologists. At their annual conference in
1953, their president made an impassioned defence of the chemicals. His speech
was entitled "The Greater Hazard – Insects or Insecticides". The choice, he said, was a simple one: either
continue spraying or return to the bad old days of starvation and disease.
Everything should be done to minimise the side-effects, but, ultimately, it was
a war of survival. Insecticides had already saved a hundred-million human lives
throughout the world.
[Robert Metcalf]
At our scientific conferences and meetings, we were
completely immersed in a haze of propaganda
about chemicals. There were lavish hospitality
suites, banquets sponsored by the chemical
companies – and a great many entomologists were
employed by these companies; and I'm sure
they were absolutely convinced that what they were
doing was of fundamental and very valuable
importance to the world.
The chemical companies also
portrayed the battle against the insects as a necessary war. Promotional films
of the 1950s invoked Charles Darwin. They depicted it as part of the inevitable
struggle for existence.
[Clip from such a film, "Goodbye Mrs. Ant!" (1959),
sponsored by the Velsicol Chemical Corporation]
[Voiceover:] "Wherever man is, there the ant is also.
They seem to come from nowhere and suddenly
are
everywhere at once, crawling over the food. As the hordes invade, man often
gives up his
pleasures in
utter despair. It is the law of nature: the strong survive."
Dr. Thomas Jukes, research chemist, American Cyanamid Company
1945–1963
Now, in evolution, all species are essentially in
competition with each other and the ones that are
most successful survive. And insects, as it's been
said, will inherit the Earth, because they're so
successful. And insects carry diseases to human
beings, such as malaria; and when we spray to
kill the insects, we're interfering with evolution –
if evolution were to proceed, then we would be
overwhelmed by the factors that are against us.
James Moore, biographer of Charles Darwin
When people in the post-war period spoke of a
"struggle" in nature, they were selecting one
aspect of Darwin's theories that suited their time.
Now, for Darwin, nature was a bloody
battlefield; there were winners and losers, victors
and vanquished. But this imagery took on
special significance in the Cold War years. In the
American midwest, when I was growing up,
the household aerosols were called "insect bombs".
The point is that in these life-and-death struggles,
scientists believed they were seizing the power
from evolution and redirecting it by controlling the
environment. They took it on faith from the
biologists that this is how the world works – and
then they chose to emphasise those aspects of
Darwin's theory which fitted in best with the
industrial programmes they were embarked upon.
This was not a neutral reading of Darwin at all; this
was an interested reading.
The first serious public
attack on the widespread use of pesticides came from Rachel Carson. She was a
biologist who had worked for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. In
the late fifties, she began collecting evidence of the side-effects; in
particular, studies which showed that DDT was becoming more concentrated as it
worked its way into the bodies of larger animals. In 1962, she wrote a book
called Silent Spring. It was an attack on the chemical companies.
Shirley Briggs, colleague of Rachel Carson in the [US] Fish and Wildlife Service
It started coming out in The New Yorker. She kept it rather quiet; she
knew that the chemical
industry – or the part of it she was worrying about –
would react; and, sure enough, [an] official
of the Velsicol chemical company wrote a very
threatening letter to Houghton Mifflin – "You must
not print this book!" – and came out with the
standard line, that they still use: "You see, if we stop
using all these pesticides, it would... simply ruin
the whole economy of the country. And this is a
sinister plot by the far-left subversive forces"
– as they called them – "to destroy the United States."
Silent Spring painted a dramatic picture
of a poisoned America. It caused an immediate sensation. It coincided with
revelations about thalidomide and the fallout of strontium-90 from nuclear
testing.
Gordon Edwards, entomologist
... I got the book and I went home and read [it. A]nd I got about two-thirds of
the way through
the book and I saw so many things I knew were not
true that it bothered me. Then I set out to
make a lot of speeches to let people know what she [Carson] had said and what was
really the
truth; and many other people were doing the same
thing across the nation.
So, usually at some time during the talk, somebody
would be interested in "What about the
effect on people?" And it was handy at that time
to have a box of DDT like this one [he is holding
it in his hand] so I could just dump some
out in my hand [he does so, then starts licking the hand] and
take some of it, to show that it's not harmful to
people – never has been; no-one's ever been
killed by DDT... I've not even heard of them being
made ill by it, even when they attempt suicide.
In 1963, the book was made
the subject of an hour-long [CBS] TV special. Three of the programme's sponsors – food and chemical
manufacturers – withdrew in protest. Carson used the programme to widen her
attack on the chemical companies.
[Clips from (presumably) the TV special]
[Rachel Carson]
"Now, to these people,
apparently, the balance of nature was something that
was... repealed as soon as man came on the scene. Well, you might just
as well
assume that you could repeal the law of gravity.
"Man's attitude toward nature is,
today, critically important... simply because
we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and to destroy nature.
"Well, unless we do bring these
chemicals under better control, we're certainly
headed for disaster."
Dr.
Robert White-Stevens, chemical industry spokesman
"Miss Carson maintains that the
balance of nature is a major force in the survival
of man; whereas the modern chemist, the modern biologist, the modern
scientist
believes that man is steadily controlling nature.
"If man were to faithfully follow
the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to
the Dark Ages; and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again
inherit
the Earth."
[Shirley Briggs]
The ironic thing was how Robert White-Stevens died:
he died as the result of the sting of a wasp.
In 1963, Rachel Carson died [from the
consequences of cancer]. Although her book had caused an outcry, it had no immediate effect on the
use of pesticides. But another attack on the chemical industry was about to be
launched, this time from the suburbs.
[Brief clip from
start of 1950s colour film entitled] THE QUIET REVOLUTION
America's suburbs had grown
enormously during the fifties, often on land made habitable for the first time
with the use of insecticides.
But continued spraying – to treat diseases such as Dutch Elm – now brought the
side-effects of the
chemicals into the gardens of the wealthy and articulate middle classes.
Lorri Otto, resident of Milwaukee suburb
We live in what's called the "Gold Coast"
area – the wealthier people – and so we had money right
away to buy this stuff and the machinery and the
men... And so they went around and squirted
first of all from the ground; but that didn't last
very long. Soon, there was... a whole page in the
Sunday Milwaukee Journal on how, now, Shorewood and Fox Point and Bayside –
where I live –
were really going to take care of their elm trees;
and they had a photograph of a helicopter
spraying with DDT...
And not too long after that, the robins started going
into convulsions. It started out... you would
see the robin and you'd think it'll be alright; and
then, all of a sudden, this quivering would go on.
Dr. Thomas Jukes, research chemist, American Cyanamid Company
1945–1963
Those robins got in the way of the spray and they got
drenched with DDT; and they fell to the
ground and there they were twitching and paralyzed.
And that seemed like a terrible thing – and
it was for those robins – but there were millions of
other robins that weren't being hurt at all.
[Lorri Otto]
We would be awakened by this
"sh-sh-sh-sh-sh" of the [?'copter] over the house;
and, one day,
I was so angry that... I raced up into the attic and
opened the dormer windows – in my little pink
nightie – and I climbed up on top of the roof and I
just stood there and shook my fist at them!
[Thomas Jukes]
What happened next was... that there was a
spraying of DDT in Long Island and Mrs Yannacone
didn't like it.
Carol Yannacone [with] Victor Yannacone
[Carol Yannacone:] The first time I noticed it, I [was driving] past here on my way home
from work
and there were dead fish for about ten feet out from
the side. This is noticeable as you drive by.
[Victor Yannacone:] The mass of fish killed in this lake – and,
as we later found out, other lakes –
were all ignored, largely because the suburban
population that was seeing this had nothing to
compare it against, having come from the concrete
canyons of Manhattan and Brooklyn and
Queens – where I came from – and not knowing what the
natural state was supposed to be.
The scientific community, which should've been
observing all of this, was too busy making new
products or living in their ivory towers: "Let
us take charge. We will bring you better things for
better living, through chemistry."
Victor Yannacone was a
lawyer. Together with two local biologists, he founded the Environmental
Defense Fund.
Its aim was to legally
challenge the use of DDT and other pesticides.
Their argument was that the
chemicals were spreading in uncontrollable ways, becoming more poisonous as
they did so. One of the strongest pieces of evidence was the disappearance of
the peregrine falcon. DDT was being found in their bodies and their eggs were
failing to hatch. Two ornithologists set out to count the falcon population.
Daniel Berger, ornithologist, University of Wisconsin [] 1965–1968
We were simply going to follow a route from northern
Alabama all the way up to the state of
Maine. And we started in... I believe it was early
April – and birds should be on location at that
time. And we simply worked our way northward; and we
followed a very torturous route and we
checked something like a hundred and thirty sites or
something like that in the course of the next
three months, driving a little over fourteen thousand
miles.
We found zero. Not one peregrine falcon.
In 1968, the Environmental
Defense Fund discovered an obscure law in the midwestern state of Wisconsin. It
allowed anyone a legal
hearing if they believed they could prove water pollution in the state.
Using this as a pretext, the
Fund engineered a hearing; and, in November 1968, a small group of them
travelled to Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, in the heartland of America's
agriculture. The hearing was held in the vast
State Legislature. It
quickly became a trial of DDT.
The star was Victor
Yannacone. His main aim was to get the public's attention [and] explain why tiny amounts of
a chemical could have such large effects.
[Victor Yannacone]
We had to explain that a part per million was
significant. We did this by calling a very prominent
scientist from the pro-DDT camp and we asked him a
very simple series of questions. "Doctor, do
you have any idea what the purpose of the hormones
that flow in your blood is?" – "Ye[s." –
"T]hey're responsible for your secondary sex
characteristics: the hair on your head, the hair on
your chest, the tone of your voice – right? Do you have any idea what the level of
testosterone in
your bloodstream is necessary to give you that lovely
shock of white hair, all that hair on the chest
and the grandchildren that you're so proud
of?" And he finally admitted that
it was five parts per
million. I said: "Well, do you have any idea
what would happen if the level of testosterone in your
blood should drop to as low as three and a half parts
per million?" He averred he didn't
know
and I said: "Well, you know that that hair of
yours would change, the hair on your chest would
disappear, the hair on the rest of your body would
change, [falsetto:] your voice would go up to a
little squeak [back to normal voice] – and you sure as hell wouldn't have any grandchildren!"
The public got the point. One part per million could
be very significant.
The Madison hearing soon
became headline news, with both sides claiming that everything America stood
for was at stake.
[Thomas Jukes]
At the height of the battle over DDT, I wrote a poem
and sent it to Time magazine. It was a parody
[of] "America, the Beautiful" and I'll sing
it for you:
"Oh, beautiful for bug-filled
skies / For weevils in our grain / For apple scab and
stable flies / Please bring these back again / Malaria, malaria, red
blood cells
harbour thee / Where Rocky Mountain fever thrives / Where babies have TB
/
Where parasites take human lives / Why, that's the land for me!
"Malaria, malaria, my spleen will
welcome thee / Restore the sickness grandpa
knew / By banning DDT!"
Dr. Hugh Iltis, ecologist, University of Wisconsin 1968
...Yannacone looked at me long and hard and [said]: "I think he'll
do." And then he looked at me
and [said]: "Can you, between now and tomorrow, put together a lecture of about
forty slides of
all the different pictures of the Wisconsin ecosystem
so it'll be not only beautiful but emotionally
rich and will affect the people who listen to
it?" [I said]: "I'll try...!"
Next day, I came here [the State
Legislature] and gave this talk with beautiful slides of the prairies
and the woods of Wisconsin ... It was, I'm sure, the
first time anybody has ever shown wild flowers
in the chambers of the Wisconsin Legislature.
In the late sixties, ecology
was a modest scientific backwater. Ecologists spent their time studying the
mutual dependence and balance of all the inhabitants of a particular area. But
for Yannacone, ecology was a powerful weapon with which to attack the defenders
of DDT – especially the entomologists. It gave him a scientific basis [from which] to challenge the idea of
evolution they used to justify the large spraying programmes.
[Victor Yannacone]
The entomologists, who should've known better – and
now, thirty years later, admit they
should've known better – simply saw the death and the
extinction of what we now know to be
beneficial insects as the operation of the
fundamental laws of survival and evolution. What they
didn't realise was [that] the kind of evolution they
were looking toward was the evolution of
monsters arising from garbage dumps; of
chemically-deformed animals and plants. What they
thought would come out of this was a simplified world
ecosystem, with "good" plants [and] "bad"
plants – weeds; "good" insects,
"bad" insects; "good" animals – the ones we eat – [and] "bad"
animals, the ones that take up space...
There was a problem, though.
If human begins were inextricably interwoven with other parts of nature, as
ecology said, where were the effects of DDT on humans? In thirty years, no worker in the DDT
factories had
been poisoned. The defenders
made great play of this at the hearing.
But then, in early 1969, the
Environmental Defense Fund received some unexpected news.
[Hugh Iltis]
A Swedish chemist by the name of Goran Lofroth wrote
a letter saying they [had] found, in almost
all women in Sweden, DDT in [] mothers' milk. Well, we
went to my house [and] we finally said "Hey,
let's call up Sweden!" – and we did; we got him [Lofroth] out of bed – [it] must've been four o'clock
in
the morning [there]. He spoke pretty good
English: "What do you want?" [We] said: "We want you
in Madison!"
He said he would come.
Thursday came and went; Friday, at ten o'clock,
people went out to the airport – it was all
hush-hush[. T]he testimony was droning on and on and on: the-pesticide-this and
the-chickens-that
and the-eggs-this and so forth and so on – my God,
one just... hours... I mean, we have... after all,
we have fourteen of these volumes [he has picked one
up], two-thousand
eight-hundred pages of
testimony; the stenographers went bananas.
Anyway, at eleven thirty, somebody
"hi-ho"ed me – a little sign [he is gesticulating with his little
finger] – and we went outside the hall; and, sure
enough, there was Goran Lofroth with his little
suitcase.
In the mean[time], of course, we [] called The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The
Washington
Post; all these reporters were waiting in the wing[s] ... and then, for the next
three hours, Goran
Lofroth laid it on the line that if babies [] drink milk [from] cows that grazed on land
that was
sprayed with DDT, their fat is going to contain DDT;
and not only this, but fat, of course, is in the
brain – most [of the] brain is fat – [so] it would be loaded with
DDT. By Sunday: front page of the []
New York Times.
And the opposition was just livid with rage, but we
won that one.
[Gordon Edwards]
When I heard of the ban, I really felt bad about it,
because I felt it was a victory against science.
And I felt that scientists and industry had a place
in this country and [were] certainly being
undermined by the statements about pesticides in
general; it's gotten worse since then, of course.
After banning DDT, the others were easy. Somebody
said maybe because DDT was so easy to
spell that people immediately thought about it.
Where once chemicals were
seen as good, now they were banned. In the early 1970s, press and television
became fascinated by any reports of the side-effects of pesticides and
herbicides – and, above all, by the effects on human beings.
News report, Arizona 1972
[Woman:] "The first analysis was phoned to me yesterday to say they have found
the residues of
2,4-D [2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic
acid]. So, I guess I'm
the first documented case to say it is residual
in the human
body after you've been exposed to it."
The battle against DDT had
been won, ultimately, by evidence of its presence in humans. Now the
Environmental Defense Fund placed advertisements in the national papers
implying that DDT caused cancer. Donations flooded in, but the decision split
the leadership.
[Victor Yannacone]
The Environmental Defense Fund and Carol and I parted
company over the issue of whether the shift
should be from the questions that we were sure of –
that DDT was bad for the environment – to the
speculation that DDT might cause cancer. I don't
believe in going to court on speculation. I go to
court on relatively solid evidence.
DDT is not good for mammalian systems. It damages the
nervous system; it damages the liver
enzyme systems; it causes some problems. It is not a
strong carcinogen; it is not – except in very
large doses – associated with serious human health
hazard[s]. Its real problem
is that it [has] the
capacity, had it continued to be used at the rate it
was being used, to literally destroy almost the
entire world['s] natural ecological system
upon which we really depend; and [that] would have meant
the ultimate collapse of the human species as [an] animal species.
The DDT hearing was a
watershed; not just for the battle against chemical pollution, but for the
science of
ecology. Ecologists became
influential figures, giving scientific advice in the battles against other
pesticides.
But, in the process, their
science was transformed. It became the guiding force of the environmental
movement.
Langdon Winner, historian of science
Beginning with the unintended consequences of DDT,
the science of ecology had emerged as a
useful tool in science; and many people began to see
it as something that could be drawn upon
for moral enlightenment as well – the notion of
everything being connected to everything else.
[Lillard Heddon]
I remember the first time I ever heard the word
"environmentalist" on the air was on an Arthur
Godfrey show; and he was trying to explain what it
was – and it was hard for him to explain what
the [?era] was, so... It was
really a new era.
[Period film
(colour, 1970s?) featuring a Native American character canoeing from the wild
to a littered industrial harbour
and then visiting a littered highway]
[Voiceover:] "Some people have a deep, abiding respect
for the natural beauty that was once
this country.
And some people don't.
"People start pollution – people can stop
it."
[From a ?newsreel]
[Voiceover:] "Two days ago, a man whose controversial
predictions of a forthcoming global
catastrophe
have made him an international figure arrived at London's Heathrow Airport. He
is Paul
Ehrlich, Professor of Biology at Stanford University in California and the
chief spokesman
for the
so-called "ecological movement".
[Interviewer (off-camera):] "Dr Ehrlich, just how
realistic is your projected theory of the
"eco-catastrophe"?
[Ehrlich:] "Well, I think that it's getting more
realistic all the time; the signs are getting worse, but
I still have
considerable hope because although governments are very slow, people all over
the
world are
awakening very rapidly to what the real danger is."
In much the same way as the
science of entomology had been changed in the 1950s, now ecology was
transformed by the social and political pressures of the early seventies.
Ecologists became the moral and spiritual
guardians of a new view of
the human relationship to nature.
And they, too, cited
Darwin's laws to prove that their view was correct.
Dr. Hugh Iltis, ecologist
Nature has a set of laws that all organism[s] have to obey, by necessity,
because that's the way
they evolve; and this applies to human beings very
much so.
[..?..] you need to introduce into our lives nature [sic], it is a need that is
enormously deep. Look
around you, wherever you go, into homes. There are
not only living flowers, there are not only
aquaria and pets – look at the wall[s]; what do we see? Sunflowers by van Gogh or irises by van
Gogh; or pictures, photographs of landscapes. You
don't see [in a] frame in a house a picture of a
crankshaft from a Ford... or a tin can, squashed; [but] in modern art – which is a
sick art because
it reflects the confusion in the human mind – [then] yes, indeed.
James Moore, biographer of Charles Darwin
Darwin's so big that he can support any number of
generalisations about the world. I mean, given
Darwin's image as a scientific saint, people
inevitably try to get him on the side of their view of
nature. Now, Darwin was complex ... In The Origin of Species,
for example, the metaphors tumble
over one another in the most unscientific way. Sure,
nature's seen as being at war; but nature is
also likened to a web of complex relations. And here,
then, was another aspect of Darwin for
people to seize on for their own purposes. Darwin
gave them a basis for urging us not to take
control of nature but to cooperate with it, to stay
within its balance. Again, Darwin serves up
slogans.
In the public imagination, scientific theories are
something fixed; and if they're good theories and
accepted by creditable people, well, then they're
absolute and that's that. What people don't
understand is that scientific theories never have a
single meaning. They become a cultural
property; they are useable, serviceable for different
interested parties.
TWENTY YEARS LATER
LOS ANGELES
The story of DDT continues.
The head of a large property
company has called a press conference to announce that he has stopped
construction in one of his skyscrapers.
[From TV footage of media and other people milling around on an unfinished
floor of a skyscraper]
[Reporter with microphone:] What's happening here this
morning?
[Spokesperson (the company head? (J. Snyder?))]
Well, the peregrine falcons have been
nesting in this building for five years and, every
year, the Peregrine Society comes and
retrieves the eggs; the eggs will not hatch here
due to DDT contamination [making them] too weak for the bird to sit on.
Each year, they bring back a small
baby for the bird so that they feel they've completed
the cycle.
Media
representative, J. H. Snyder Company
Basically, the people are here because
it's not just a story about the
eggs being laid and
gathered; it's a story about how this
particular developer, the J. H. Snyder Company,
has literally [sic] suspended construction in
this area during the mating season of these
particular birds... and [] it's an excellent idea of
how developers and businesspeople can
participate in environmental concerns.
Daniel Berger, ornithologist
You saw the number of TV cameras and the media people
who were up here today watching the
manipulation going on. This, in effect, is really a
myth being born – or being fostered, at any rate.
The myth in this case is that the peregrine falcon is
sacred. Granted, it's a precious species – we
were about to lose it, perhaps, a number of years
ago; now we have peregrines back in good
numbers [and] there've been dramatic
recoveries...
I think it's just an unrealistic attitude about how
sensitive parts of nature are.
[Victor Yannacone]
At the start of the DDT litigation in 1966, science
had become the way that [] human beings could
avoid responsibility: "Science will take care of
us!". After the DDT wars, we knew that science was
not necessarily going to be the answer – but mankind
in the twentieth century still wanted to avoid
responsibility for [its] own individual[s'] actions. Now it's nature
that's going to permit us to shift
the responsibility from human beings to some force
that we don't have to take responsibility for.
CALIFORNIA
Joan Fairfax, The Ojai Foundation
What we're talking about is a very profound internal
shift of attitude and of values. This is the
gift of ecology to human beings – and really to all
species – today. And that gift can give rise to
not utopia but ecotopia, which is this profound sense
of place; the sense of coming home at last.
THE EAST COAST
Langdon Winner, historian of science
The kinds of ideas about ecology and environment that
we see today I don't believe are any more
scientific or rational than previous notions of
nature. In both cases, people that talk about them
are saying "Look, this is scientific; I'm not
making this up. These are not my hopes and dreams;
this is what science tells us." But, in both cases, I think what you can see
happening is particular
kinds of social ideals being read back to us as if
they were lessons derived from science itself. In
the case of contemporary ecology, it seems to me that
what we're actually getting is a kind of
utopia of a perfectly constructed, complex universe
of natural things; and from that universe
one tries to derive various kinds of laws that can
help us live better as human beings.
[Joan Fairfax]
I think it is a moral lesson. There is a possibility
for a kind of utopia. We've dreamed about it and
that possibility exists in our future.
[Langdon Winner]
The scientific and technological notions of the 1950s
– the ideas of endless possibilities for [the]
exploitation of nature – are now seen as
ill-conceived and ill-guided. I'm haunted by the possibility
that the ideas of ecology that we now embrace today
may, in thirty or forty years, seem similarly
ill-conceived – and they're no more scientific than,
let's say, other notions of nature that we have
looked to in the past.
[Victor Yannacone]
At least, when science was our guide, we felt that we
were actively doing something; we were in
control. Now there are too many people that say
"There's nothing I can do – nature will take care
of it; I just will continue, fat, dumb and happy, the
way I am."
We must go back to the simple lesson of history:
Every human being, concerned enough, dedicated
enough and willing to make the sacrifice, can change
the world around them.
In 1860, Charles Darwin
wrote to a friend in America about whether it is possible to seek divine
providence in nature. "I feel most deeply", he said, "that the
whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well
speculate on the mind of Newton. Yet each man hope and believe what he
can."
[Lillard Heddon]
[Interviewer (Adam Curtis),
off-camera:] Do you think we'll ever know what's best?
[Heddon:] We will, one day, but it won't be here, on
Earth, in our lifetime. We'll know... When we
get to heaven, we'll know what's best.
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