Hello friends, it's the Environment Show, and welcome. The world is on the verge of
a revolution, and this is a good thing, says Lester Brown at World Watch Institute. In
his annual State of the World Report, he says the environmental revolution will be quicker
and more critical than any that has swept human civilization. Also this time, the New England
Tropical Conservatory, the first stage of a plan to reactivate the nation's military bases
and preserve biodiversity. And this.
Aldo Leopold was more than just a foster or more than just a wildlife game manager. He
really was the philosopher behind the modern American preservation movement. A conversation
with film producer Larry Hott. The Environment Show is a national production made possible
by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New York, and this is Bruce Robertson.
In his poem The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost concludes thus. Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I took the one less traveled by. That has made all the difference.
We are at such a crossroads, says Lester Brown, President of World Watch Institute. In his
annual State of the World Report, Brown writes of our present dilemma and challenge.
Quote, our choice now is either to rally behind the environmental revolution, or continue
on the current path.
If we are going to achieve the kinds of changes that are needed, we are really talking about
an environmental revolution. We are talking about restructuring the global energy economy.
We are talking about a revolution in human reproductive behavior that is needed to stabilize
population. And this is a revolution on an enormous scale. An economic and social transformation
that probably ranks with the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution.
With the agricultural revolution, the stage was set for enormous population growth.
Dramatic demographic changes. The same will be true for the environmental revolution
in the sense that it will set the stage for dramatic changes, but the changes will be
in slowing and stabilizing population growth rather than in accelerating it. The industrial
revolution was based on the shift to fossil fuels. The environmental revolution, if it
succeeds, will be based on the shift away from fossil fuels. So we are talking about some
rather fundamental shifts, and shifts have to occur in a short period of time.
Each year, since 1983, Brown has led a research writing team in an expansive review, analysis
and forecast of the environmental state of the world. The report is generally a composite
of shocking realities and hopeful prescriptions. Leading to the publication this year, Brown
says World Watch compiled a list of critical indicators.
We are saying more and more evidence. I think I noticed that this year, perhaps more than
before, evidence that the environmental degradation of the planet is beginning to take a social
and economic toll. We see it in its effect on human health, whether it is the thousands
of ten-year-olds that live in the Los Angeles basin that have permanently impaired respiratory
systems, just because they breathe the air there, or the 300,000 people in the Soviet Union
are now being treated for radiation sickness, or the soaring cancer rates in Eastern Europe,
or the EPA estimates that 200,000 Americans will die of skin cancer fatalities because
of the increase in stratospheric ozone depletion over the last decade or so. We see the growth
in world food output slowing in part for environmental reasons, soil erosion, air pollution, acid
rain, hotter summers, and also probably because of stratospheric ozone depletion. There's
now some substantial research getting underway, some in this country, some in Australia, some
of the International Rice Research Institute and the Philippines looking at the effects of
stratospheric ozone depletion and the resulting increase in ultraviolet radiation reaching
the Earth's surface and how it's affecting crops. We're beginning to see that it does
indeed have an effect, and the effects are negative.
These are the signs of the times. Times Brown says that are ripe for revolution, but what
will it be like this revolution?
The kind of world that will sustain progress and improvements in the human conditions,
one that will be powered by solar energy in its many forms, and we now have the technologies
to efficiently harness solar energy. It'll be a world in which small families prevail.
It will be a world in which we reuse and recycle containers and materials of all kinds.
The Throwway Society will shortly become history. It's a world in which the relationship
between ourselves, however many billion of us there will be probably not more than eight,
and the natural systems and resources on which we depend will stabilize. Right now we're
part of a highly unstable relationship with life support systems deteriorating rapidly
in many parts of the world.
Brown says the conditions warrant change one way or the other, even if we decide not to
decide to take action, that in itself would be a change. But says Brown, do we lead the
change or will we follow it?
Change is often the threatening. Most of us resist change. There's a certain amount of inertia
both in human behavior at the individual level and certainly in society and in social institutions.
It's not going to be an easy thing, but the thing we have to realize is that if we're
going to build a sustainable future, we all have to get involved. It's not something
that a handful of environmentalists can do while the rest of the world looks on. I
use the example of a sporting event. The existing situation is rather like a sporting event
where there are thousands of people sitting in the stands watching the contest being decided
on the field. It seems to me we need to erase those sidelines between the spectators and
the participants so we can all become participants in the battle to save the planet as it were.
Here are some other observations in the publication this year. 140 plant and animal species die
out extinct each day. The atmosphere now contains 26% more carbon dioxide than before the
industrial revolution. Six of the hottest years since record keeping began have been observed
since 1980. 92 million more people are added to the world's audience each year, the size
of Mexico. Having observed the world's affairs in this way for nine years now, Brown puts
this year in context. Well, if we look at the state of the world as a doctor would look
at the condition of a patient and checking its vital finds, we have to admit that we have
not turned around a single major trend of global environmental degradation over the last nine
years. The forest are still shrinking. The deserts are expanding. The concentration of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is still rising. We're losing plant and animal species
at record rates. We're losing billions of tons of topsoil from our crop land each year
and so forth. The exciting thing is that the cold war is now over. The Soviet Union no longer
ensuring this. And we have an opportunity to rethink entirely the definite definition
of security that guides the expenditure of public funds. Brown suggests we think of security
not in military terms now, but as environmental stability. In this context, Brown sees the
upcoming United Nations Conference in Rio de Janeiro in June as the equivalent of a military
NATO-type summit. Lester Brown is president of World Watch Institute and a frequent guest
on the Environment Show. He spoke to us from Washington, DC. And this is Bruce Robertson.
What might be the best use of a closed military base? What might be the best way to preserve
biological diversity? What might be the best way to get a look at some of the earth's
rare, disappearing plants, seeds, and spores, tubers and roots? The answer, a tropical
conservatory. The idea is the work of Scott Hoover. The botanist is proposing the first
such to be located somewhere in his native western Massachusetts. He would call it the New
England Tropical Conservatory. Clearly, the magic of this project is its ability to integrate
biodiversity preservation with economic development and education. Under most circumstances, biodiversity
preservation is holding the natural rainforest lands of the world in a way so they remain
completely untouched. But unfortunately, deforestation is proceeding at such a rapid rate that
we're losing upwards to around 75 to 80,000 square miles a year. Our project is proposing
to go in and at least collect the species, the live plant material from those rainforests,
hold them in the native countries. And then as well, at some point for safe keeping, bring
them back, bring that germplasm back into the United States and hold it in different
facilities scattered around the United States. So this is ultimately a national project,
even though our administrative and managing center would be in western Massachusetts.
And the reason why we would stay in Massachusetts as its center is because Massachusetts is
the education state. A fantastic resource of the state of Massachusetts are its academic
institutions. They have among the finest in the country. And for that reason alone is why
this project should stay in this state. But aside from that, we don't want to hold all
this tropical germplasm here in this state. We want to scatter it out in different facilities
around the country. One of the ideas Hoover proposes is to make use
of some of the military bases slated for closure in the wake of defense department budget
cutbacks. So you have set infrastructures already established here. You have buildings,
you have water, you have plumbing, you have all kinds of facilities, you have road works.
And as a concept, if we could select out several of these bases at certain points around the
country, a particular military base could be a conservatory, greenhouse that could contain
the germplasm, the live germplasm, the live plant material from a particular tropical
country. And each particular facility around the United States could house the plant germplasm
from another country. And in that way, that particular town or city wherever the base
military installation is would not experience the dramatic dissension of its economic base.
You would provide the impetus for a tourist economy to come in and then develop. So all
the small shops and restaurants and everything could all continue to survive.
Before there could be many, there would be one such conservatory says Hoover to be located
somewhere in Western Massachusetts. Architectural designs to form the building in the shape of
a Nautilus, the Spirald Sea Shell, have already been drawn in detail by Scott Gaion, president
of Gaion Architects in Lexington, Kentucky. Hoover says the 58,000 square foot facility would
be unlike anything you have ever seen, incorporating giant aerial gardens.
We would create these gigantic artificial trees and then out in the branches of the trees,
you would build these planters. So you have live plant material in these huge trees that
are upwards to 85 feet tall and then run catwalks through them at their various heights. And
in that way, you resolve the problem that most conservatories face, which is having this
landscape foundation area, a flat surface, your ground area, and then you have a tremendous
gap between that and the ceiling. What we're talking about is literally filling the entire
volumetric space of this conservatory with vegetation. So the visitor no longer participates and
experiences just a two dimensional surface. He experiences an entire three dimensional
surface. While it may seem incongruous to cite a tropical habitat in some northern climate,
Hoover says engineers have long since solved temperature and humidity control problems that
otherwise would prevent such a venture. In fact, one of the world's largest gardens under
glass is the Montreal Botanic Garden in Montreal, Canada. Hoover says the New England tropical
conservatory would be even more finely adjusted to specific projects. What our plan would be
would be to, at each of these facilities, scattered around the United States, what you would
do at each one is you would divide up the facility into three separate habitats and environments
climatic regimes. And in that way, you could accommodate the diversity of all the plants
that you would collect from any given country. At least they could fit in very likely into
one of the three climatic regimes you would create. And in that way, you resolve that problem of
not having an environment that would be hospitable to the plants. After all, for people who have been
importing plants into this country and especially into Britain for probably five or six hundred
years, with a major thrust during the 1800s, bringing hundreds and hundreds of plants. But it's
interesting to note that of the estimated six hundred to seven hundred and fifty thousand
species of plants in the world, only about five percent or less have ever been introduced
to cultivation. So you have this enormous situation out there, enormous numbers of species of
plants have never been brought into cultivation. And rates of extinction are proceeding very dramatically.
And it's not that our project is based solely on biodiversity preservation to thwart extinction.
It's what the application of bringing those plants into cultivation in the first place has to do.
I mean, there's just enormous possibilities not only from the tourist standpoint, but from a research
standpoint, from a pharmaceutical standpoint, from an agricultural standpoint. There's many, many
applications that are available to do with the plants once they are in cultivation.
The plan says Hoover is to develop first a network of small regional conservatories in various
tropical countries. These facilities would provide the botanical specimens a refuge in their natural
habitats. Hoover and his associates, working in Ecuador on the first stage of such a system,
would employ local people to collect the samples. Taking advantage of existing temperature and humidity
conditions as well, Hoover estimates such a conservatory might be constructed for around four million dollars.
Scott Hoover, botanist and landscape designer, is founder and creator of the New England Tropical Conservatory,
the first of this multinational network. At this point, he says NETC is looking to raise $400,000
to conduct a feasibility study upon which the rest of the project would be determined.
This is Bruce Robertson.
One of the most significant writings in environmental literature is a sand county
almanac written by Aldo Leopold, where these words we read, no important change in ethics was ever
accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections,
and convictions.
Aldo Leopold was more than just a far-ster or more than just a wildlife game manager. He really was the
philosopher behind the modern American preservation movement.
Film producer Larry Hott.
In fact, behind all of the environmental movement, we wouldn't have a strong movement today if it hadn't
been for Leopold's thinking. He's the person who spurred on the movers and shakers of the 50s and 60s
to make the environmental movement what it was. What he did is he took two very polarized ways of
looking at the world, kind of humanity's approach to it, and the scientific approach to it,
and he brought those things together, and he made the link between a spiritual way or a intellectual
or a way of looking at the world and an ecological way. But I mean,
ecologically scientific way. He was able to put together those two concepts and make it work
as a rationale for saving wild lands. In fact, for saving just about everything.
And that's what his true importance is. He's the first person who combines the two schools of
thoughts, the scientific, the humanistic, and one rationale for preservation.
Hott's latest film, Wild By Law, soon to be released on PBS, will trace the life and the accomplishments of
Leopold and two other significant leaders of the wilderness movement, Louis Marshall and Howard Zahniser.
Marshall founded the wilderness society, and it was largely through the lobbying efforts of Howard Zahniser
that the wilderness act became law in 1964. Again, Larry Hott.
Well Zahniser was responsible because of his personal energy, but it's likely that he could not have
done it without Marshall and Leopold before him. You know, the wilderness movement or the
environmental movement has its three profits, and they are Marshall, Leopold and Zahniser.
Leopold is the philosopher. He's the one who gives it to the rational. And Marshall is the one who gives it its
energy. He's the activist. But those two really couldn't have gotten anywhere without somebody coming
along as a bureaucrat and politician. And that is Zahniser. So you really have this triumvirate, this
whole eternity of the wilderness movement. So even though it may be a would-of-full in a part with
any one of them, the three of them together, living at separate times, are what pushed the wilderness movement forward.
We don't have anybody like those three now. We have very good, high energy people, but many of them are
MBAs, lawyers, people in government. But the kind of activist and philosophers and in fighting
pit bull type bureaucrats like Zahniser, they're not around. And we don't have the kind of
environmental heroes that we had in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s.
Though the struggle over the preservation of wilderness areas continues today, hot suggests
that we as a nation really have come a long way.
There are very few people, industrialists, government people, forest service people who would not
call themselves at least a conservationist. In the end of the 19th century, through the middle of the 20th
century, many people didn't know what the word meant, let alone believe in it. But now to say
that you're not a conservationist, there's a tantamount to saying that you're a fascist or a
Bolshevik or you know, you just don't admit it anymore. So that has changed. If you talk to
anybody in the extractive industries by that, I mean the timber industries and the mining industries,
they will always tell you that they believe in wilderness preservation, that they are environmentalist
themselves. Even George Bush says he's the environmental president. But what they talk about is a matter of
degree, how far we should go.
What really is at issue today, even as it was 50 years ago, is not what do we make of the vast
tracks of wild territory, the issue is what is our place in the landscape. And says hot in this way,
Leopold from his farm in Wisconsin, wrote with profound insight.
One of the reasons that Leopold is such a prophet and that his San County Old Manek is really a true
Bible for the movement, is that he is talking about things other than just these millions and
millions of acres that we set aside as these pristine wilderness areas. He's talking about how you manage your
50 by 100 foot plot, which is something that prefigures the whole recycling movement that gives,
he's writing about it in 1930s and 40s. He's prescient. He looks into the future and he sees where the country is going.
And he's unless each individual takes responsibility for the health of the land around him, then the United States,
in fact the world is doomed because it has to be an individual initiative. And the individual also has to
understand where they are in the scheme of things. That's what the land ethic is. That we spent the
millennia putting ourselves at the top of the pyramid and therefore, and thereby ignoring everything that's
below us. And if you continue to do that on a personal level, then eventually you're digging your own grave.
And it almost a literal way.
Larry Hott, co-producer with his wife, Diane Gary of Wild By Law, the redefinition of American progress,
detailing the preservation efforts of Aldo Leopold, Lewis Marshall, and Howard Zonizer.
My favorite Leopold quote is very short. It's just said that in 1941, at the beginning of the war,
if science cannot lead us to wisdom, as well as power, it is surely no science at all.
The documentary, eight years in the making, will air nationally on public television, Monday,
January 27th, part of the American Experience Series. This is Bruce Robertson.
Well, that's our report on the Environment Show for this week for a cassette copy of the program
called 1-800-767-1929. Be sure to ask for the Environment Show this week, number 107.
That's 1-800-767-1929, the Environment Show, number 107.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its contents, Dr. Alan Chartock, executive producer,
and this is Bruce Robertson. The Environment Show is made possible by the JM Kaplan Fund of New York.
The Environment Show is a project that has been established in the past two years.
The Environment Show is a project that has been established in the past two years.
The Environment Show is a project that has been established in the past two years.
The Environment Show is a project that has been established in the past two years.
The Environment Show is a project that has been established in the past two years.
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