Public Broadcast Laboratory; 215; Multiply and Subdue the Earth. Part 1
- Transcript
As the population increased in size as there were more interactions between individuals. The change that took place was not so much in the character of the deviance of behavior but in the fact that a larger and larger percentage of the total population exhibited deviance and behavior that was not of survival value to the group. That is they reached a time when most of the females never developed the ability to care for their young to build nests and so forth. And most of the males had extremely deviant sexual behavior homosexual or. Pansexual with the sex activities directed towards any rat indiscriminately. One of the things which you might call deviants is merely a withdrawal on a theoretical basis when the
interacting group. Which is the square of the optimum of every individual would be totally withdrawn and no animal would be aware of the presence of any others even though they're packed close together. And I think this is the the general conclusion which may have application to humans saying 25 percent of the residents of midtown Manhattan are severely impaired or incapacitated by mental illness. Fifty eight percent exhibit varying degrees of pathology less than one in five is mentally well. These are the results of the most thorough analysis of Mental Health in New York City. The midtown Manhattan study was published in 1962 after eight years of research by a psychiatrist at the Cornell University Medical College. Well we were kind of refugees from New York. We suddenly found that we were being surrounded by murders
robberies rapes shootings etc. and it became pretty scary living within this and came up to Beverly Glen in Los Angeles seeking that kind of feeling of community. With openness. Side which side. It's. On its way out now. Groatsworth had a chance to play it. It has gone to be replaced by four houses. I came out here and are looking for some peace and quiet and a lot of people who we can relate to within our community and I find that this is all disappearing with another kind of raping the raping of the hills. Megalopolis. Well I'd say one large city from Boston to Washington City.
It's rather crowded dirty. Chicago Detroit. Two hundred miles of confusion. All the way from Cleveland to Buffalo. Everybody grab it along the coast right. They are going to rip apart my neighborhood. Californians going by half million people police here. This is the captain speaking we're holding over Hartford. I flew I'm flying from Philadelphia to Boston. That's. When the lights go up. Crime goes down. Thirty million of us in the metropolitan New York by 2005. Is that what it's going to spread City to. I think for. God can only bless people. When they live on a farm megalopolis. From.
I I like it here I like a piece of art. You get away from all this for a while and you can do more than just look on paper to hear your songs. On. When that are 100 million most of us by the year 2000 when our cities be
sicker still our suburbs just a sick landscape father to be found. That's likely to be so. And the reason is simple. We are a man's center society. We have never learned that we are a part of nature. Show me any civilization that believes that reality exists only because man can perceive it that the cosmos was wrecked that the support man on this pinnacle the man exclusively is divine and then I will predict the nature of cities and its landscape. The hotdog stands at the end she'll that Ticky tacky houses that are call the mind of Rivage countryside. This is the image of anthropocentric man who seeks unity with nature but conquest yet guarantee fine when is out of goodness and ignorance are still and he lies dead under the trees walk. Among Us. It is widely believed. The world consists solely of a dialogue between man and man and
God. By nature is a faintly decorative backdrop to human play called progress or proper. If nature receives attention. Then it is only for the purpose of conquest or even better exploitation. The latter not only accomplishes the first objective but provides a financial reward for the Conqueror. We have but one explicit model of the world and that is built upon economics. The present fears of the land of the free business fleetest testimony even as a gross national product is a proof of its success. Money is our measure. Convenience's its coffee shop time is a span and the devil take the hindmost is a morale of. 89 percent of America's Redwood acreage is gone. That which remains twenty eight percent is protected in state and national parks. This is 3 percent of our original redwood forest. America is all your playground. Lake Tahoe California. Place to live and
relax here and right here we are keeping things jump in here at all. If you can picture of the property of people with extra particular case one in their surrounding. Nobody down on the builders convenience's including two swimming pool or we either Blvd I know you won't want to miss your family and you would have a fear of heights all the way to be in stable edifies is available with a fireplace. Biggest shows ever to hit Tahoe. I think that's likely to be in play and stay in luxury at Incline Village comp.. GI bill didn't apply and there's no way for the homeowner. They no longer are for full details on quality living. However they often help you'll find your particular Shangrila. Exceedingly easy
street. We anticipate that the traffic in this area will. Be four to five times the present traffic by 1985 and we have plans for. Improving. Route 50 to freeway standards. Seems to me that if the state government or the federal gov't. Wants to expand Highway 50 into Lake Tahoe basin. Then they must do this they must declare to the governmental authority here. You will have your highway. All. If and when you have shown us on paper and through the appropriate governmental structure which can back up what you propose to do that you can control growth and
development and liked all. Development is now. Growth and development are essentially out of control at this point. I mean let's take what we're talking about here. It's what Mark Twain called the fairest picture the whole earth affords. We are talking about. One of the great resources of the world. A very fragile magnificent Alpine work of God. God said be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over it. Whatever the origins of Western man's attitude to nature this is explicitly defined in Genesis man is exclusively divine given dominion and then joined to subdue the earth. The attribution of divinity to man alone denied divinity to nature. Nature and nature gods were seen as a threat to the primacy of Jehovah. This insistence upon mastery and
conquest and courage is man's most destructive instincts. When this is understood then the dead are nations and the disposition are comprehensible. This is the result of pollution and Lake Tahoe. Destructive building practices are exposed to the soil on the hillside slopes to the rainfall in the spring the melt in the spring and that melt washes the nutrients from the soil and often disturb the forest ordinarily being a very efficient recycler of these nutrient materials. It washes into the lake and that's the result right there that is the forest that used to be the forest that used to be the soil up on the slopes of the hills around here before they were bulldozed away. The very substance substance of the soil has washed down into the lake. Now you see it in the form of algae. Lake Tahoe is one of the two or three Claris lakes in the
entire world. Lake Baikal in Russia Crater Lake in Oregon are comparable and it could be turned green within a lifetime. The Indians of the South Pueblo in New Mexico have been drinking water from the house from Oak Creek for over seven hundred years. It is not polluted to them. The creek and all the land surrounding it are sacred. Our heart bleeds. Vega. Sad. When we see dead. Trees. Dead. In.
That grass. But when we see green. Green. Leaves. Make us happy. I would say in a big way that. For Hyperion kid and I was even down in the FE. I spent. A number of years Felisa. I never was completely happy like I am. I feel like I'm I mean open eyes. Open for just about anything in my life is very simple very easy. Just for you.
That's where I feel. The land to live. Shall we speak to it just like anybody would go to a church and have a say so prayer. Give thanks. I ask for more. Things. For the next year. At the present. Pray to the Lord to the spirit. Which would be our protector for all shores of everyday life or a future and the past beyond the sacred mountain lies blue. The source of power is Creag the source. The Indians believe of life itself. Now they conduct their ancient ceremonies of worship amid the white man's beer cans and the stumps of their sacred trees the U.S. Forest Service has managed this land since it was taken from the Indians in 1986. The Pueblo is asking Congress to give it back. I know with almost fully.
Go now Mr. Karena ROMERIL make the statement to the American public that what is the meaning of the blue lake. Middle age is a shrine. And it's like in this church. This lake is where our daughter. And they are all saying is leaving. This is made by God and nature. And surrounded by big big mound and all the way around and facing east towards the direction that this town is a crisis. And any surrounded by the living evergreen trees. And these are the symbols of worship. These are living symbols of saints to us. Now we don't have no right to look at one place like the Cathedral in New York City. We have no right to go over there and find a recreation spot. I was born with mountains just behind my home. Not quite as beautiful as yours but still they were very very beautiful to
me. And I think this sense of responding to the mountains and the sky the sea and through trees forests birds and so on is absolutely basic to all people. Certainly was the view which was widely held. What was happening 2000 years ago in the West that people believe that the man and nature were one thing. There was no division and that X-2 to nature was sacramental acts as you believed today but this tradition has been lost in the West Judea is a belief in One God in whose image was man made and that man was in fact given dominion over all life and non-life and it just required to subdue the act which is very different from living living in it and being all that Christianity simply absorbed the same stories of Jews and decided to demand dominance was incorporated into the old Western tradition. And by the middle ages you could see this it was actually visible in the cities the judges the gardens and the landscape was a wild walled garden and a walled city inside the city was the City of God and the
man and then inside this was a walled garden and nature was outside the city. Nature was thought to be still and had a temptation to man the great period of growth of course and that European history was around. And at that point suddenly man would have power to make a profound effect upon the land. The most symbols even seem to like that attitude to the land. The garden probably is the clearest because the garden doesn't really have any particularly put in function it's simply a device by which is an expression that is the nature. Well very put to me of that view is represented by Versailles and believe the video of nature laid down like an umbrella that if that is the idea of nature's wallpaper the imposition of a simple Euclidean geometry on each of these axes a mile and a half long half a mile wide nature just a sea of that I haven't signed untractable plants and a cookie sheet. So is just a beautiful thing and not a metaphysical symbol you can't complain about if you say it's a lovely
garden fine. There's nothing wrong with arranging some plants but this is a view of nature and you assume that you absolutely love nature in the sense front of confronted with an entire continent up and stood up. You had to conquer it. You come into this world. And so this is what I call it as well. These were men who came believing nature to be hostile nature is to become God as we believe space today is to become part of the ocean is to be conquered. So they came and they complete their works by describing this hostile nature. They cut down for us not because they wanted them but they cut it down because they were frightened of the trees. They were frightened of a ghost within the three evil spirits within the trees they cut this thing down. They decided they wanted to make a pastoral image. They wanted to tame nature in order to demonstrate their exquisite advantage and their God given license to Express's domination and subjugation that within all of us one of the most astonishing things happened the English Englishman when I speak about the English I'm very objective because the Scots and English have added an ancient antagonism in
England to this time. Agriculture was probably as backward as in Europe. The whole country was denuded of forests and this was a bit of a poor backward country and at that time strangely enough that came to be some Englishman who believed it was possible to have a harmony between man and nature in 18th century England. Very small handful of man half a dozen people to this idea of a harmony of nature. We froze the lands farmers to the lands I made probably the most beautiful productive landscapes ever be made consciously by man in a Western tradition. How does Walpole's said that these men these landscape that leaped the wall left the wall and found all nature to be a god. Well the tragedy of the 18th century was that it was even enough in England to stay the tide of industrialization. And this of course this enormous power wedded to the instinct to dominate and subjugate nature was simply trying to get across the Atlantic and with
greater powers in this vast continent man's inordinate capacity to ugly find destroy was given full license. And we had seen the result. But. It's.
Not. You.
Los Angeles has left park acreage per capita than any urban region in the nation three to four acres one thousand population. Urban planners recommend 30 study of metropolitan open space commissioned by the California legislature has recommended that an entire city block be bulldozed to create new parks. Since its release in 1966. Power lines of freeways and parking lots have continued to intrude on the existing park. A city council decision to allow a veteran's hospital and hazard park which serves one of the poorest sections of Los Angeles is being challenged in the state court of appeals. When the parks are gone then what is wrong with the undertaking. Cemetery in one way or a small memorial or what else.
Cypress Hills. I think you probably select the Jersey Shore as a supreme example of development based upon ignorance greed and malice. I'm a New Jersey shore alone. The great Atlantic storm of 1962 caused 80 million dollars damage destroyed twenty four hundred homes and left twenty eight that. We carried thirty nine dollars insurance on the building we lost. But because it was damaged by seawater which they're not liable for. They settled for one person three hundred fifty dollars. I couldn't believe it for some time but I mean many people suffer reverses and you just can't lay down quit. And we looked around and we didn't want to go anywhere else. So we rebuilt here and this is our home. Like people along the rivers that flood and get washed out or
they go back like the lemmings I guess ran over the cliff and commit suicide. If people here had only understood sand dunes were the protection against the sea this would never have had. But they bulldozed the dunes and what result was disaster. And when there was another big storm. It will happen again and so all this is the inevitable result of the vast powers of the Industrial Revolution wedded to Western man's presumption of dominion over nature. You see it's not a problem of identification at all and a very real sense it's a problem of survival. But all this need not be. After all it was a natural sciences which part the great efflorescence of technology and all of the spoliation it has brought. Let us simply use the same science to understand and respect nature to learn the degree to which we can safely intervene with our environment. This is what the science of ecology is. It is a study of how all the elements of the natural world relate to each other all the physical and
biological world which includes man. So we can say if you really want a life of maximum fulfillment then let's crap out of value system based on ignorance and economics and adopt new relation with nature based on ecology. Let us ask nature self-reliance if we can develop what we must leave untouched. Now on the Jersey Shore the ecology is very simple. The hard part is finding the place where you can see the expression of it. We've got to go to a state park which is one of the few places they haven't followed up. You see know how to survive here. You've got to understand about the sea about sand about wind about vegetation and about groundwater. With this understanding you simply can't survive in this environment. Is a marvelous one because it is really so finely so simple that there is a sea and then that is the this of the titles on the beach. Generally that is a primary doing on which we stand. Beyond that a succession of secondary dunes and then beyond that the banks do still follow the bay and
everyone of these are quite specific environments and each of them have specific tolerances. The sea is more of a site can stand any amount of use assuming no pollution. No there is no known number of Vaders diminish the value of the sea. The same is true of the Beach the beaches are markedly taller if they can take the most intense of us without any destruction at all. But the minute one gets to the dunes and the vegetation suddenly you find a zone of absolute intolerance. You see the roots of the glass is intertwined to form a dense math which stabilizes the dune against the wind and the sea and the leaves and trap the grains of sand and that's how the dew grows the grasses that are moved up trample the sea and the wind will simply rot away the primary doing the environments which you protect will be vulnerable. So that doing is tolerant of walking much less development. Now beyond doing there's a trough and limited development might occur. The trough is protected from salinity when driving sand plants going to exist here. So the environment is more stable and more tolerant
but if you remove the plants or kill them. It is no longer stable. And the best way to kill them is to remove the groundwater so that means no shallow wells only deep wells. Beyond itself are secondary dunes which are the secondary defense against the sea. So we leave them alone. But then we come to the back door. And this is like the trough only more so there is more protection abundant fresh water there for more diverse vegetation different trees increase stability. And as we move from Stahmann floods. So this is where most of the people should live. And beyond that back there is a base where we find shellfish in the breeding grounds of fish and wildlife and where we shall not dump out of garbage. And so we have for this very very simple ecological understanding we can see that way in which a man can live by the sea and enjoy the special fruits of the edge of the ocean. Now the tragedy of all this is that it is kindergarten stuff in Holland where life depends upon the sea. But in this country this knowledge doesn't reside in intelligentsia far less the political process.
As I'm planning to ecology can be applied to any area a suburb or a continent. The principle remains the same and it has little to do with subjective considerations of beauty or the arbitrary conservation devices of green belts wedges or Corydoras. It is simply to preserve those lands where development would be a threat to man or where Nature does work for man. But this is something we seldom do. If Western civilization has an inherent disrespect for nature the abuses are encouraged by the political institution. Americans prize most local government our New England town meeting Heritage's dictated that the cities and towns still control the use of their land and that they should tax it as the source of their revenue. There is more tax money in a house than in a tree. It is these pressures and those of normal population growth that threatened to overrun the green spring and Worthington's valleys in Baltimore County. Well the Green Spring Valley is only 9 or 10 miles from the city hall
but in my city and yet we can live out here in the open country where we can just enjoy our own little two acres. And when I come home at night I always drive down the entire length of the Valley although it means extra time and extra distance. The pressures of the world seemed to vanish. Now these are obviously threatened by the fact that if you look at the map you'll see that the valleys area is 70 square miles or so in the middle of a valley and there's a radio that goes out this way from Baltimore and a radio that goes out that way and there's industry here and industry there and of course you've got people driving back and forth to get to where they work. Well ultimately these pressures are going to go right through the bottom of that bay and come right smack out into the middle of the valley. And I'm afraid that when that happens if there's no plan or orderly plan of growth we're going to lose what we have. And it would be really a tremendous tragedy because we can accommodate this growth that we
have and still retain a tremendous portion of the natural beauty population of I think 15000 could reasonably be expected to go to by 80000 by 1980 and to 110 or 120000 by the year 2000. So we have some idea of the depth dimensions of the problem the zoning controls that exist at the moment in the sun and the square miles. One house generally would have been built throughout and it would have simply inexorably spread his way over the plateau into the valleys up the wooded slopes expunging all of this testimony to know two centuries of good husbandry to wise Land Management explains it all and simply it appears that with the ticky tacky of hotdog stands and gas stations and diners and billboards and saying why haven't split levels and ranchers testimony to greed stupidity and I mean not in the capacity to destroy. And the total atrophy of any creative skill.
And this of course was that inevitable destiny. Why should they be spared the rest of Baltimore County is to come just as the rest of the country has the heart of a typical suburban development the same dreadful cycle which begins when farmers find it more profitable to sell land and crops at the present time. We have 39 acres here of prunes and wallets and the taxes is getting to the point where it's not possible to farm the land as one should. We hope that we can get this mobile park home built by all financial reports. It's one of your best incomes on your dollar value today. You have to convert your property into something else you that are to developer. We expect that we'll eventually see here about 2500 Wehling units of all kinds single family clusters multiple that sort of thing which is a two bedroom dad and two bags.
What school district and the children in the Morgan Hill School District. We are anticipating in the immediate future the construction of a new 12 to 13 or possibly 14 million dollar high school. We have faced increased costs in our police departments service in our fire departments service in our school construction costs. And in my opinion the only way that the town of Burlington can possibly negate the influence of this type of spiraling cost in government today is to just go out and track a track and do so or entice as much clean and desirable industry into the town of Burlington as we possibly can. California is going to be hard pressed to meet its demands on its agriculture by 1975. After that we don't know what already because of developments like this one.
The quality of many of our foods has gone down in about five years ago and re subdivided in Baltimore County and the man obviously it was as if there was a Homestead Act about to be signed and the whole lot of them were just waiting for somebody to sign the pistol and they would come into the city and get it all ready because of developments like this one. We have lost a great deal of natural beauty in our in and around our urban areas in California. And they would expunging next to every piece of beauty you can see before you. And of course inevitably they go to the valleys first because valleys are remarkably easy to develop with a list of all possible investments you can capture the greatest vulgarize nation and the greatest spoliation you could accomplish the least profits for at least number of people with a maximum social loss already because of developments like this one. And of course many others worse than this California has has squandered
a fifth of its prime agricultural land since World War 2. Listening to what you were saying Mr. Heller It seems rather strange you were in the business of building residential communities. We think we've done a reasonable job here the public response has been quite good. It seems very right and proper place to live and you're almost suggesting that we never should have touched it it should have stayed in agricultural use when the response in terms of public acceptance has been quite good. Why shouldn't we build a community here. It you're damn right if I am suggesting that it shouldn't be done here but I might lay the blame entirely on the public agencies which determine land use policy. We can rely on local government too to preserve our our finest natural assets. It is a lesson that the state of
Hawaii learned Incidentally when it adopted in 1960 its land use law which withdrew from local government the power to own lands in the state of Hawaii. Does owning power out itself and one of the things they did was to designate all lands in the state which should be preserved for agriculture. When you start talking about something like this you come pretty close to home in this area anyway. The notion of home rule where people want locally to govern themselves and they're very fearful of giving up some of that power to even a regional governmental level. It seems to me that you are just suggesting we substitute one resource for another. The resource is a matter of fact is not really not really agriculture After all it's land and we're talking simply about the use to which land should be put. You're suggesting agriculture I'm suggesting residential development and we get into a subjective discussion of whether your use is
better mine is better. No it is not subject to my friend Prime agricultural lands that objectively definable and they are rare. It can take thousands of years for nature to create one inch of topsoil and some continents don't even have any in a world where millions are starving today and millions more will starve tomorrow. It is the most profound stupidity to sterilize these irreplaceable resources. Let me ask the obvious question. If not here where the question was the 110000 people accommodated in this area of 70 square miles how do you best develop it. We've studied the bedrock geology and groundwater resources and physiology the various streams the flood plains. And we came to some general conclusions about the degree to which the land in fact could absorb it off the ground. And those areas were in fact development involved penalties both to the to the land developer and to society at large. We found that the valleys where contaminants were most important ground water results in a whole
Baltimore region. So we can say as a proposition unless you want to make dysentery diarrhea hepatitis and call it a way of life unless you would like to make it a metaphysical symbol toilet paper then don't develop into that because clearly there's an inordinate hazard to health. This is a major result of groundwater for the entire community. And by such development with septic tanks you will simply pollute all of the wells and everybody here of course she was with us as well. But of course there are other ways of developing valleys you can introduce sewers but so was of course he'll also lose water. I can say that modern sewers are only the most advanced technological method by which you can pollute ground with resources. So we came to that conclusion the valleys were in fact not propitious for development. So we said What is the capacity of the slope to absorb development. And we concluded the least part of the age of this mixed I just thought of it actually probably could absorb absorbable one has three acres and still looks like a forest that would it wouldn't look like a broken forest. Where then can a hundred and 10000 people go. We find that between the
valleys the water plateaus and of the plateaus whether or not they sort of are for development. We found that there was of course no good on what the result is of any importance at all that flood plains were absent that there were no silos which were unsuitable for development with septic tanks. And moreover this area was found away the easiest of all to sever sewers. And so we came to the general conclusion that the bulk of development should occur on the plateau. So instead of the idea of having simply diffused suburbanization cutting throughout we suggested there be areas which were inordinately propitious for communities of different sizes the valleys would have been an open space in perpetuity. They would hit the slopes with very very low density development and the bulk of the population located in. Now I think that the odd communities existing in clusters within the forest and the plateau I think everybody is realistic and it recognizes that by the year 2000 we're going to have to take care of about 150000 people. And this plan will do it. And we will still have the same time
remain the great Spring Valley season we remain as part of the beauties will be there. I think that the people will be accommodated and institutions and the commercial nature of the area. The American Dream squatters rights in the shade of the trees our cozy hearth in suburbia where the trees in the fields become backyards for barbecues and front lawns to mow. No place USA to prevent this. Some people may choose wrong or clustered houses surrounded by networks of open space. As the pine for the valleys and the Santa Clara development will provide. This of course is the home owner's choice. The more important question is should it be simply the developers choice that determines what land is urbanized in the first place. Should the profit motive prevail. When the land in question is an important resource if it maintains quality water for a county
or quality food for a nation the laws by and large say yes. Either Maryland or California has any effective policy for identifying land as a public asset and preserving the laws of land and not as an irreplaceable resource but as a private possession to be junk well. Do. This a great and glorious region it is filled with lakes. It is translated by three great rivers in Mississippi to Minnesota right. There isn't any doubt about the value of these. There isn't any doubt about the beauty either. Is it inevitable that they have to try all the crummiest three it is most disgusting and ugly industries and uses. Do they have to be the inevitable repositories of dumps and garbage rubbish. You know this was scabrous industry. Do we have to turn our backs. I stood up.
I was using the second is a commercial rather than a single pass in the same room as a commercial reverse loop that is the same as beautiful fruit that in almost every land use can exist. I just do it over in a noble way. But you have to then insist in the first case that the river is noble and the land use the differential. So there isn't any reason why. Interesting can not in fact impinge upon that ever. Do this for some difference. This comes four hours a day seven days a week and when we're through we'll have a beautiful industrial area of eleven hundred acres of land all out of the river below. This is the type of work we're trying to do to create new dollars. Well new information for rainfall to make it a new productive city to take care of growth that we see for the 1970s and 1980s. We will expect this land area to be filled up in the 1970s and where we go from there we may have to take it out of the
river again. I'm sure that one can find sites which are better suited for industry haven't that Lakes in general and this one in particular where not suitable for the industry here obviously is a is always being spiled. Can we start again and I would. Is that a place intrinsically sort of an industry so that we can have the best of both worlds Lakes for all the delights that Lakes can get and it is best to have an industry like most metropolitan areas Minneapolis and St. Paul have developed with more respect for economics than for nature. But unlike most areas they have begun to question how they can absorb their future millions without destroying the quality of their environment. In a rare move in urban America the Twin Cities and seven counties have formed a Metropolitan Council to deal with problems which concern the entire region. The council commissioned the first ecological study to be undertaken for a metropolitan area.
I have spent years of my life offering my palpitating house to various people who couldn't care less and by and large you know that natural instinct is to stamp up on at any heart palpitating heart disease doesn't get you anywhere at all. It seems to me that one really needs to have two things you want not only be able to say don't you also want to be able to say do to be able to stand up to any developer and say friend I know about the last thing man you've really made a shambles. The House has slid down the hill. We've got a number of them here and somebody said you know you don't want that to happen again. The man said I certainly don't. You say well you're just come to me. I'll pay where you know we've got this map it'll tell you the areas where you can get the best of all possible foundations where you can guarantee to basements where indeed the recreational resources are not only attractive to perspective develop and so you then are engaged in a positive and doucement process in which developers are trooping in here asking to find out places where development is most fitting for every function even atomic power station or an airport or Newtown it doesn't matter what it is. But the only thing you can ask is nature. You're live in
the area of where the ice sheets came and went and they have left the mosque and so we have got to know about the official geology because they've modified historical geology if you know about climate historical geology and geography and so visual geology you know about photography because that just happens to be the current state of the world's surface as a result of these ongoing processes. If you know about climate geology the bedrock geology official geology and physiology then you know the hydrology and if you know about the movements of water then you know about salt if you know about salt then you can understand the distribution of plants. And if you know where plants are then you know why animals are. Because you know squirrels eat acorns and Robins eat worms. And when we get to that point we can introduce man but man's response to these things in a causal way to that as he searched here for rock river corridors and for the confluence of rivers and for agricultural hinterlands which were made of inordinately productive Salz which are comprehensible in terms of physiology and hydrology and fluvial processes and the response of the coal and the limestone and the iron and uranium and so on. All of which can be understood in times of the litany of progression of which I have
identified but it's not enough simply to identify this way we have to integrate it and that it be integrating science of course as ecology which is a study of the interaction of organisms and an environment which includes other organisms. So that's what we did. All those natural Pearse's data enabled us to determine the suitability of the land for various prospective uses for urbanization. We selected favorable conditions of slope and aspect and orientation and foundation conditions and saw the range and community and we avoid the detrimental conditions like flood plains and so recharge area. And so in various shades of red We've mapped and civility and a range of values for agriculture. We select the conditions of soil intrinsic productivity physical properties solid drainage slopes and so on which are represented primary agriculture and a range of values that agriculture and five create a map to see whether we did the same thing for recreation by types not blue for protection
Knapton in green here we identified all the plants we development would be a hazard to life and limb and the unique natural resources not having identified these individual suitability. We had to arrange them in a hierarchy of importance and we said the category of protection pre-empts all other languages. Now this is a judgment because society doesn't do this at a moment as I've suggested they best is true. They say give us a floodplain. We love to build in the floodplain. How else can we get our names in the paper. And so they get the name of the paper and they happily accept the proposition of taking them out of the basement. I think that the first the most important proposition to make is that the the river or the floodplain it will occupy it and there will be cycles of lights. I would if I had any power at all insisted the 50 year flood plain by definition be not occupied by any residential development of the 100 year flood plain might the five year flood plain Absolutely never. And then the area of protection is a very very large one and probably not a good word. I think you could think of it more more in terms of importance of the environment.
That is if you think of a proposition that nature is doing a great deal of work for man with any human investment that is in fact the biological system which is also a water purification system not because the organisms want to purify water but because they want to eat and they eat these wastes which come from all these processes. So we can think then of disposal of these is feeding that ever. We must do this however in relation to the capacity of the organisms to consume these wastes. And once we have done this we can regulate all land uses in order to feed and maintain the river at one level of water quality the cleanest water would be that supporting a crayfish not so clean a bass dirty catch fish and fowl flat. But I don't think there's a single cent that engine in the country who understands Rivers has biological systems and uses this understanding as a basis for waste disposal. You might even think a reasonable process to allow nature to do this it can work for us for nothing. Than of course what we do at the moment. Say what is this most valuable resource where does this process
which is absolutely essential to life. Let us screw it up with all joy an outrageously bad place but a dump of all the places to put it up this is really the worst place of those it is which by definition invented by what hit it is right that badly needed blood. Blood ponds adjacent to River toxic noxious materials in a dump will of course make their way into the water will affect what I call it. But you want to look places to dumpster Santror landfill. One has to be sure these are not an aquifer recharge those it is where the greatest amount of speculation occurs from the surface down into the deep water which is used for wells. We have to say then that hole dumps constitute an enormous waterfall and to hell so we set aside all these it is what should be protected. We then considered the highest categories of urbanization of agriculture
and of recreation. And when we superimpose these maps there what it is which we're eminently suited to for these particular uses. There was no conflict. We suggest that it is should be reserved for these uses. But there were other areas which were suited for several years and the people in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region have to resolve how they can have a creative mix of what languages they prefer and that we can all apply Merrylands we simply applied the same procedure to the lands of secondary and Lorcet abilities and so tediously and slowly we map this fantasy. And remember that we didn't know the answer as we proceeded. But finally we assembled all of this information and that it was done. All right. So I know it's terribly tedious stuff but you know you bought this and hit it isn't. You know you have to understand that I was right it's just that we do accept it partly of gratitude and enthusiasm and that direct our staff to make further review of this material for
us and then to proceed to make recommendations to this council of regard to the several programs that we have tied to this. My only requirement is you accept this whole thing give your life over this realization as the realization of these ideas is not going to be easy. Most people fail to understand that land which deserves protection is best protected by leaving it in its natural state. They tend to think that any open space ought to be developed into parks when you provide parks. You aren't just acquiring property or developing Passarelli you're going to have to have some type of a highway system to these areas and using equipment to develop the parks you're building roads here. You're you're cutting down Blotz got the land recommended for protection is likely to go down the drain unless the state creates a metropolitan open space commission empowered to implement the plan. A bill now
before the Minnesota legislature would provide revenue possibly from a hike in the cigarette tax to compensate the local governments for property taken off their tax base and preserve. The commission would not have to purchase the land simply the development rights to it to implement the plan for the valleys maybe simpler at least on the governmental level. Only Baltimore County is involved. But the problem of compensating those who will not be able to profit from development remains the same. There have been no zoning changes in Baltimore County for a good many years and with the help of the council and with the weight of the council there is a new zoning ordinance being put through known as a planned unit district where you can take a group of say a hundred acres that formerly it had to build X number of houses on H.A. and accommodate more dance a day on part of a acreage and leave open space to accommodate the recreational areas that the people would should have and will have.
But eventually is hope that those who own property in the higher areas of the route of the valley area will have agreements with those whose property is not to be built upon and that those whose property remains open would be compensated by the agreement with those who sell it on which houses will be built. When are you. Even might have set the stage for some action. For years the five counties of California and Nevada which are Lake Tahoe have been running their own show with no plan at all. The first move west you agreed to by state agencies which would adopt a plan and
have the power to keep everyone in line. The current session of Congress is likely to approve the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. Its job will be to control development to preserve the beauty of the land and the clarity of the water. These problems involve soil. And it is difficult to find native vegetation which will stabilize the soil of a road car or a bulldozer. How seriously will the agency consider curbing development to prevent sulfation from polluting the lake. The roads cannot be built without hastening pollution without limit highway construction. The agency will be staffed largely by the city and counties which have been responsible for the problems all along.
Will this simply be a case of the mice guarding the cheese. Why a taste of paradise. Just taste it. Why not move right in and own your own tropical bungalow. A few years ago the desire to bail out to Hawaii was so great that unsuspecting souls were buying lots of sight unseen in the middle of the lava fields. If this land speculation had continued unchecked. The burden on the county of Hawaii to provide police fire school and road services would have brought financial disaster. Something had to be done to curb uncontrolled growth and the day was fast coming when the jumbo jets would disgorge tourists by the millions. Hotels would be sprouting up in the pineapple fields to preserve its economy and its beauty. The state in 1964 put into effect a land use law which
withdrew from the county governments most of their power to his own land. Only Hawaii even today has state zoning on such a broad scale. Last fall Alfred Heller took his conservationist group California tomorrow to Hawaii to study how the land use law has worked. What we're seeing here from New Delhi is safe I think an excellent example of how Hawaii state land use laws working we have in a sense preserved a great scenic area here and hold it in its tracks. A subdivision we have halted it for four years. All the land which is built upon the green land the open spaces are Zone conservation the conservation provisions do not allow subdivisions. The boundary line between the conservation district and the urban district is the edge of the subdivision that you see here.
Conservation areas are the top of the hills the valley below us and here in the foothills beyond our job is somehow to make sure that in years to come we can hold this boundary here. Now at the time we started to work on this all this area was planned for subdivisions I remember seeing the drawings all laid out in a beautiful grid system. So here we have an example where I think Hawaii is really a pioneer in the nation that we preserved an area because of its scenic qualities because it is beautiful. Legally we have said we are going to do something that according to one of the reasons for setting up the land use Commission and the land use law was to halt the gradual encroachment of urban uses subdivisions into the sugar and pineapple lands in Central LA LA LA land is owned agriculture by the state. It encourages agriculture in the areas where are most suitable for sugar and pineapple. The state owns all the land and in Hawaii public and private
land within urban land the county requirements have higher priority. In other words whether she'll be residential or industrial whether it shall be a hotel or apartments in Honolulu one of the more popular places to live is St. Louis heights. If the state had not placed what was left of them and the conservations on these hills would have been obliterated completely. It stopped development primarily to protect the Honolulu water supply but also to preserve some vestiges of nature in the urban area in the Santa Monica mountains of Southern California. Public safety is much more of a problem and yet development continues virtually unchecked. Geologists consider the mountains a young inherently unstable susceptible to mudslides and flooding unless developed with extreme caution. The Californian open space study recommended that half the undeveloped mountains be preserved for recreation. The city of Los Angeles has preferred to let developers tear the
mountains apart and rebuild them so people could live in but the department of building and safety once called their castles in the air. No accurate death count has been made for the floods this winter. Estimates range up to 100 one died in January alone. Well look the beach of Los Angeles a radio failure of local government to protect the satellite of collapse
from urban developed or from simply being cut away for some other purpose. The incursion of cities on our prime agricultural land in Santa Clara of the sprawling ugly growth and the great scenic areas of life. All of these things. Could be. Stalled in the future stopping their tracks. If California had the kind of Leninist law that Hawaii States that is a. Marvelous concept it could be used to. Prefectures and Santa Monica Mountains by major cultural lands. In fact it's a device by which all intrinsic resources can be perpetuated as a device of reservation is the device of the value of when it applied to all state. Today I think it should apply to all. Kinds of plenty we're talking about of course have severe limitations when one penetrates into the heart of the city. We can't really solve the problem of 300 million Americans in the year
2000
- Series
- Public Broadcast Laboratory
- Episode Number
- 215
- Producing Organization
- National Educational Television and Radio Center
- WGBH Educational Foundation
- Contributing Organization
- WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
- Library of Congress (Washington, District of Columbia)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/15-53jwt74c
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/15-53jwt74c).
- Description
- Episode Description
- Multiply and Subdue the Earth, a report on how Americans are turning their once glorious natural environments into poisonous wastelands, is broadcast on Public Broadcast Laboratory on Sunday evening, March 9. The PBL episode, seen on NET's coast-to-coast network of affiliates, shows how hastily planned suburban developments are choking the life out of the cities they depend upon. "Slurbs" - suburban developments springing up helter-skelter around American towns and cities - are usually built with little regard for the natural life of the region. In the process, vital resources are devastated and future water supply imperiled. "Slurbs" often take over agricultural land essential to future food supply. In the broadcast ecologist and regional planner Ian McHarg states that the U.S. will need all its existing prime agricultural land by the year 2000, when the total population is expected to pass 300,000,000. The spread of the "slurbs" may also, according to experts, have psychic effects on populations' cur off from meadows, forests, lakes, and rivers. The broadcast highlights the findings of Dr. John Calhourn, psychologist at the National Institute of Health, who spent years observing the effects of over-crowding on rats. The episode links Calhourn's findings to the conclusion of a massive psychiatric study of midtown Manhattan by a team from Cornell University Medical College. Eighty-two percent of midtown Manhattan's population was found to exhibit varying degrees of pathology. Dr. Calhourn's overcrowded rats began to show such symptoms as sexual deviation and total withdrawal. Broadcast shows how poor or no ecological planning led to such catastrophes as the recent mud slides in the Santa Monica Mountains above Los Angeles. Ranging from the New Jersey seashore to the Hawaiian Islands, the episode depicts both good and bad adaptation to the natural life and structure of the land. Bulldozing New Jersey sand dunes to flatten out ocean front home sites renders houses vulnerable to any storm and the entire beach subject to erosion. In Hawaii, on the other hand, the state has taken land zoning powers away from local governments and has insured the preservation of open spaces. Other areas examined during the broadcast include Baltimore, the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, and three aspects of California - including the threatened destruction of Lake Tahoe, which Mark Twain called the "fairest picture the whole earth affords." Tahoe, one of the world's clearest lakes, may turn pea green within a few years as a result of jerry built developments all around its shores. At the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, ecologist Ian McHarg interviews Indians incensed by a plan for a picnic area at a lake they consider sacred. Also appearing in the broadcast is Alfred E. Heller, president of California Tomorrow, a conservationist group. "Multiply and Subdue the Earth" was produced by PBL producer Austin Hoyt at WGBH-TV, Boston. Cameraman was Peter Hoving. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
- Other Description
- PBL consists of 47-54 ninety-minute episodes.
- Broadcast Date
- 1969-03-09
- Asset type
- Episode
- Genres
- Documentary
- Topics
- Environment
- Nature
- Science
- Architecture
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Duration
- 01:03:13
- Credits
-
-
Camera Operator: Hoving, Peter
Interviewee: McHarg, Ian
Interviewee: Heller, Alfred E.
Interviewer: McHarg, Ian
Producer: Hoyt, Austin
Producing Organization: National Educational Television and Radio Center
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
WGBH
Identifier: 0000259976 (WGBH Barcode)
Format: Betacam
Generation: Master
-
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2049982-1 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 2 inch videotape
Generation: Master
Color: Color
-
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2049982-2 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Master
-
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2049982-3 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Copy: Access
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “Public Broadcast Laboratory; 215; Multiply and Subdue the Earth. Part 1,” 1969-03-09, WGBH, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed December 22, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-53jwt74c.
- MLA: “Public Broadcast Laboratory; 215; Multiply and Subdue the Earth. Part 1.” 1969-03-09. WGBH, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. December 22, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-53jwt74c>.
- APA: Public Broadcast Laboratory; 215; Multiply and Subdue the Earth. Part 1. Boston, MA: WGBH, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-53jwt74c