You You You We primeval forests felling we the rivers stemming vexingly and piercing deep the mines within We the surface broad surveying We the virgin soil upheaving pioneers oh Pioneers We You America a nation of sidebusters Of pioneers who took on the job of changing the wild world to the uses of man and who succeeded In six short generations we have taken and tamed the continent We've taken timber and iron air and water Land and the lands harvest and we've taken a lot for granted Today we face an environmental crisis and we wonder Where have we been what have we done what can we do? The date September 16th 1893 the event the last great land rush Six million acres of land known as the Cherokee Strip now part of the Oklahoma Panhandle The end of an era the last crest of the wave of white men that swept the American continent Hunger for land was the driving force of the pioneer homes for the homeless the land of opportunity Dollar land The word bonanza has been adopted as a symbol of the frontier spirit And I think it's an appropriate one you know in the very early days when America was still a dream People thought of the new world as a land of gold essentially a place where you could go and pick up riches As you will when we came here the the reality was somewhat different But still there was an opportunity to to exploit and to and to grab what you could for yourself So that the sense that there were riches here Persisted both in fact, but more importantly I think in the kind of dream there was always another horizon There was always another place where that pot of gold might still lurk and if you were strong enough courageous enough you could find it In 1845 John L.
O'Sullivan editor of the New York Morning News summed up the American attitude toward the West It is our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us Another New York editor reflected the same public mood There is in fact no such thing as titled to the wild lands of the new world Except that which actual possession gives they belong to whomever will redeem them from the Indian and the desert and Subjugate them to the uses of man I'm not sure that I would call the attitude of the pioneer belligerent toward nature.
It certainly was a an attitude of conquest in the sense that he wanted to dominate and extract the the wealth from from the next from the nature that he saw and If any any other creatures got in his way including Indians, he was not too anxious to respect their rights And Now the yesterday show with your host Tommy Parson Tommy's guest tonight includes cowboy star Jack Grabs environmentalist robber trashman well -known industrialist mr.
C steel mills and that queen of consumers Betty Byers and now Oh So right off the big start with an old friend of mine an expert on the old West you've probably seen him starring in His new film how the West was bought.
Let me present mr.
Jack Doing quite well We're going to run a film clip of it and while we're showing it would you tell us what it's about? Oh, right Tommy now this year movies a typical American success story We might call it a sag of free enterprise now there that's me on the horse there going lickety -split Now where did I play Ben far right owner of the biggest spread in the West the squanderosa? Well, I saw the film in a screening and I wonder how did you manage to make that buffalo hunting scene so realistic Well, we use real buffalo and live ammunition.
I wanted that scene to be perfect You actually killed the buffalo you used in the film, right, but we didn't use American Buffalo.
Oh you didn't know We brought in some Asian water buffalo and dressed them up in chub coats Well, then I guess it's all right, you know, it's all the talk about ecology today A lot of people are really touchy about killing animals, but speaking of ecology, yeah, you're doing something about it I understand a project to preserve the beauty of our national parks No, I'm not The first bonanza was for In 1820 the Pacific Northwest was teeming with beaver bear and other fur -bearing animals 20 years later 1840 the Rockies and surrounding areas were trapped out Games all driven out.
There's no place here for a white man now too poor a White man has no more business here Many fortunes were made in fur notably those of the American Fur Company founded on the business genius of John Jacob Astor in 1834 Astor's company began offering Indians a rifle and ammunition in exchange for 11 Buffalo hides Indians thus became the first commercial Buffalo hunters When the famous British explorer sir Richard Burton crossed the American plains in 1860 there still remained 7 million Buffalo roaming wild The annual destruction is variously computed at 200 ,000 to 300 ,000 head The American Fur Company received per annum about 70 ,000 robes and not more than 5 ,000 of these fall by the hand of the white man by 1883 10 ,000 Buffalo remained they were slaughtered that year The conditions the 19th century were those in which exploitation Particularly in a new country like America was in a sense the thing to do.
I mean it was what were historical Conditions called for at that time It was not necessarily did not necessarily have to be done with it with it with a kind of brutality and single Mindiness that in fact it was done with to cut trees and and then move on to plow the land and move on to spare human beings labor and to and to substitute for that labor a maximum use of these nearly free and apparently inexhaustible resources We primeval forests felling And piercing deep the mines within Arizona Arizona New Mexico, Utah and Colorado meet in an area called Four Corners Here six huge fossil fuel power plants are under construction in operation or being planned Much of the coal they burn comes out of strip mines like the one at Black Mesa, Arizona Which produces at a rate of 500 tons per hour? Airborne pollutants shower the surrounding area For example the Four Corners planted fruitland New Mexico which generates powerful Los Angeles Deltas out airborne particulates at a rate of 55 tons per day sulfur dioxide at 237 tons per day nitrogen oxides at 240 tons per day Technology does not exist to reduce sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxide emissions significantly in the near future Here in microcosm is the environmental cost of most power generation Disruption of the earth resource depletion pollution In spite of this the USA continues to be the first of the big spenders of power only six percent of the world's people we consume 35 percent of the energy and The more you use the less it costs thus promoting excessive consumption, especially by large industrial users You Know one of the things that people need to learn about the environment is that it represents a constraint on what we can do When we look at these curves of the growth of electric power The power companies many other people say well, we've got to keep on there are on the horizon and In pretty good shape in terms of research some very exciting and Promising means of reducing the effect of making power on the environment and thereby negating mr.
Comet commoners equation of other incremental degradation for incremental power The reason why our electric power consumption keeps going up exponentially is that it's so far It hasn't been coupled to the dwindling source of fuel and to the rapidly rising Impact on the environment, but we can get we can get down to levels that are certainly Tolerable that will not further degrade the environment The nuclear route to us has seemed to be the the most promising of all because we eliminate fumes and dusts and gases the amount of Radionuclides that are admitted to the atmosphere is so minuscule as to be almost Negligible there's no such thing as non polluting power because any power even if it caused no Radiation is in the car a case of nuclear power or chemical pollution as in the case of the burning of fossil fuel All power ends up as heat When we put out new products like a self -cleaning oven which increases the amount of electricity used For a good received after all the good of an oven is that it cooks things When we avoid the necessity to clean the oven by pouring a lot of electricity into it to heat it up and burn out the the dirt what we're doing is Transferring that dirt so to speak somewhere else in the environment.
We're trading off the problem of washing the oven for dirtying the air The Navajo Indians at Black Mesa in the southwest are having their air polluted in order to produce power that the people of Los Angeles Consume that's the kind of trade -off that's involved everywhere Oh Well while we're on this subject of ecology, let me bring out my next guest he's environmentalist Robert Trashman Well Bob welcome to the show Tommy I'm just here to point out some damage that we've been doing to the environment.
I'd like you to take a look at this This fish comes from one of the most polluted streams in the United States The water was so bad this fish couldn't live it that which was actually killed by pollution Well, not directly Tommy's either fish crawled out of the water and was hit by a car That water was clean this never would have crawled out I Guess you think the water is cleaner in Russia What does that have to do with it? I'm talking about poisoning ourselves.
Well, I'd rather poison myself than live under a commie dictator I Certainly do think that both in terms of the experience of the nation and of individuals that having come up through the hard knock school You tend to persist in the attitudes that that created so that the America having been through the frontier syndrome through the frontier experience Retains those attitudes just as individuals who have had to work very hard for a living Tend even when they become very wealthy to retain many of the attitudes that they that were appropriate to their to their early struggles America was the refuge of the tired the homeless masses.
They have knots from other lands The quick money men skimmed off the fur gold and timber But most pioneers came to stay on land.
They could call their own To have it to hold it to farm They faced extraordinary hardships In 1859 30 ,000 settlers gave up on Kansas when a drought wiped out their crops Hardships were many they were endured for a reason for a better tomorrow For a proper house later To be worth something Material progress was an understandable preoccupation For settlers who stuck it out there were many potential rewards gradually towns sprang up Many a man grew rich as civilization followed and his land became more valuable growth was an undeniable good More people met more markets and more money Behavior patterns learned in one circumstance always tend to persist after the long after the circumstances Changed and so that the change from the 19th century essentially is a reversal now We have an abundance of people an abundance of labor and a growing scarcity at least of cheap natural resources But the attitudes that prevail in the 19th century when the reverse was true do persist Oh Why don't I bring out my next guest now, I'm sure he can shed some light on the subject of ecology He's industrialist C steel mills Oh Mr.
Mills, how do you feel about the fact that most people blame industry for all the troubles in our environment? Well environments environment environment.
How many times have we heard that tiresome phrase Tommy? I'd like to say that we will try to build a non polluting automobile But at the same time we'd like to see medical science come up with a better human respiratory system That's ridiculous, that's ridiculous you people make useless products and then try to convince us that we need them Just take a look at this fish We like to think of it as the freedom the freedom to want Surely we all want something don't we new cars color television sets toasters what America wants America gets because American industry stands ready to give it to America That's the most inspiring thing I ever heard in my whole life Baloney we weren't on the air.
I tell you what was in baloney.
Take a look at this fish you and that damn fish That fish back to Moscow and send yourself with it We limit production or hold back progress surely every company like our frontier forefathers has the right to grow expand and profit Our country of course is the leader we will be expanding constantly as long as there is a Population expansion as far as our country going to a zero population growth our country really has many many vast areas of land that there are no people in so there's not a problem if Our growth would exceed the possibilities of course that's possible because as long as man lives he will be looking for More better ways of doing what he is doing, but We can always branch out just like Columbus did under To America we can always branch out to other planets.
There's a lot of research doing here our company for our country excuse me, I'm speed oriented our country is undoubtedly the greatest company country in the world and I'm just very very happy and thank God that I'm a part of it I Have a piece of blank paper that I start every morning off with have my goal on the top of the paper and then I run they call it Ben Franklin balance sheet and Run different ways that I can attain this goal new ideas.
I would say a self -made man is There's a man that has Reaches goals I want enough money that I can live and do the things that I want when I want without barriers As far as saying exact some that's that's hard to say It would probably be infinite I doubt if anybody ever has too much I Like incantation all right.
I'm in love with I like the car.
I am of course Conveying a image of success people like to look successful and Of course that's how people judge each other right Many people in my business that are making great sums of money Talking about making on a thousand a year people just expect that you're gonna be driving this kind of car Well, why don't I bring out my last guest now a woman recently selected as consumer of the year, this is Betty Byer Think number three you don't have a curtain.
Yeah, okay with the box then we don't have a box either So what do I win nothing? We just want to talk to you, but you're not talking even times money now I take a home empty -handed right? Now we've selected as consumer of the year well actually you know I spent a higher percentage of my husband's income than any other housewife in America what percentage 250 percent Well, it's great to live in a country with easy credit terms You know what I mean? I mean, where would we be if our ancestors didn't trade in their cars every year, right? No, you know, I'm talking about don't you I think it's ridiculous What do you know that's disgusting? Yeah, why don't you show her your feet? Why look at this bitch? The Environmental crisis represents a huge debt that we've run up Against nature by destroying the environmental systems that support us and everything we do now that debt has to be paid and We pay through the economic system our economy is based on extracting goods for private use profit The environment in fact all of our resources are a social good As a nation we have a lot of bad habits We have super duper gas gulping auto engines self -cleaning ovens and self propelling gizmos of all kinds We guzzle electricity and promoted successive use by rates that charge less the more you buy Even though making electric power depletes our resources and pollutes our air Our way of life grew out of the frontier which had many resources and few people Resources once seemed limitless and their excessive use has built into our way of life today From any angle the town car we face increasing numbers of people dwindling resources and an environment that severely polluted and But we're still the first of the big -time spenders Set it apart as a one -of -a -kind motor car one that would satisfy even the most discriminating taste Why the owner is even presented with his or her initial to be mounted right here on the door You
