A Federal Case II; 1; The Environment: Some of the Rhetoric

This is a federal case from Washington D.C. the National Educational radio network brings you an examination of current issues facing our nation and its capital city areas any R.E.M. correspondent am Zille Americorp you the lobola speciale you just know well or the man is old news or you get bored her shoulder as you have been all over her. Backyard now eg upload. A list play a solo believe me I was good and the globe really. Oh yeah. OK. Those were the voices of some students who were singing America the Beautiful slightly off key at one of the many Earth Day rallies last April 22nd. This gathering

was in Philadelphia. Many of the voices you will hear have been recorded in this city over the course of the last six months by two filmmakers who were associated with the Earth Week there. Michael Katz and Chris Bamford 10 people are going to offer definitions of the environment 10 voices some of them famous some outrageous some plain citizens each has something different to say to some the environment has become the word of the year. The new game the in thing it's another way to talk about the war in Vietnam or civil rights or the rule of law to others the environment means what it has traditionally meant. Our physical world and the problems are dying wildlife or a polluted river. Listen to environmental and find out how different people are. The question to ask is what happens after the talking is over. Here is in the car. A professor of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania

and the author of a book called design with nature he explains what he thinks the environment is all about and who the real enemy is. I think the subject is a unitary one it isn't divisive at all and we must be very very careful to be sure that this is the preoccupation of the app was not for you or your to do whatever the side of the darkness of the suburbs the vision is with a visible social divide all of that is in this country. So the seven of the five of his enemies can set up revival as he defines it by support himself and he can apply his concern that he defied. I would say the proposition that the people who are here to conquer and exploit nature will be prepared to profit and exploit and if they are in the business the prominence of man just as likely to destroy the Defense Department which is about this Dr. Kong dealt with just as easily able to destroy it. Well that was the United States its resources

I think the enemy has won this. He's a conqueror. I need some people to distinguish of this kind of man is a man of nature. But in a change of pace Allen Ginsburg talks about the environment in a different way. Just as a junkie when he is addicted has a physiological change throughout his body so that each cell of the body is dependent on the addition of junk to keep him in any kind of state of painlessness. So the entire American consumer I feel ation is hooked on what you might call an oil burner habit to sustain his entire her daily life cycle were injecting in the United States were injected into the political the body politic into the metabolism of the body politic. Billions of gallons of oil millions of volts of electricity that run

in the fields that run the household keep us up all night. We consume 60 percent of the world's raw materials with something like 3 or 6 percent of the population between which means that we've got an enormous enormous monkey on our back like an electronic monkey a raw materials monkey. And we've been so conditioned over the last 30 years at least to be dependent on that. Raw material monkey. That if it were removed now would be like removing junk from a junkie and you can't remove them from the junk in the kicking and screaming and going into a good psychotic state of mind and sometimes heart attack. Sometimes it was. So that curing the American public of their over dependency. World will carpeting on television on radio and cutting down the forest for newspapers and telephone calls each one of which burned a flower would be as hard as trying to cure a junkie.

Here's even part of a poem Ginsburg decided recently while standing near a superhighway Brantley and Silver Dome silos bending above the barbell in the white reality laid the road in the river mist. While in the wood reality everywhere catches a billboard. Our new reality makes the difference. Cannon Fodder prepared for the next session of Congress with Cannon Cannon Fodder and the children of the war makers are exempt from fighting their rich parents War those with intellectual money capacity to go to college. Seventy really the radio war news for the negro photographs and rushes to axe murderers in Cleveland. Anger at heart babies all over the nation. Husbands ready to murder their why the

hats that I could take an axe and let the photographer's rate truck roll up the road in thick lit with yellow bulbs outside Pittsburgh. The devil a blue dress. That's a radio car headlight motel signs in blackness that panic covering your bike with crash your machine gun locusts airplane roar. Mayor John Lindsay comments in the speech. One sad state of the environment. So I. Have to call the other person saying we're

going to carry southern offers a vivid little analogy both to the total disaster of course. I mean if absolutely drastic measures are taken and most emergency like level. We're all going to end up in the room. I mean we're in the toilet but you know we are going to end up in Rio. The rest were so much worse toilet. Here's Ruth Patrick. A lady was a limb knowledge ist an expert on the biology of waterways who stands beside the wizard he can River in Pennsylvania and offers a very specific history lesson. This river today as a sad example of what happens when a water not when our forefathers first came to this country. This one from our happy breath

that he thought and said to want a bit of water. I don't want a. Lot of. Good at the store. So that up room Green told them a man would become my homework. This this was one of the first industrial rivers and not the first river in the United States. That was here the first. Money was made. The first of the first mills or the old. Whatever. The. Right market. For. River more follows it

in the river. Right. On the with. This. Thing. Power. Comes from the. One account for that one closely. And let's wrap. This up. Come to the spot. Pails of water is one of the great when I migrated to the lake. The friend of another little town and a great place into this very carefully. If they are supported here Jerry Rubin gets in a little of his lefty lingo in his description of the environment death.

Environments death. And totally controls everybody. But people got to realize that it's so the fact that profit people work for money and everything is created in what. What's going to sell and what's for profit that mess fucks up our lives. And if we organize our lives around relate to one another as human beings and not around trying to make money than than than a benefit we can could live an environment that we can be happy and you know and I think that the environment the schools environment of prisons as a prison for young people or schools kids got to realize the parents are the enemy and they've got to free themselves from the homes in which the parents. Tell them what to do and what not to do. And that's all part of the environment. But but the whole ecology thing is very very important because the Earth is on a destructive trip and it's on a destructive trip primarily because of capitalism. And I don't see how you can hope to solve problems of pollution without destroying capitalism destroying the whole profit system. And it's possible I think young people are going to do it.

I think it all boils down to money goes down the money and profit and greed and selfishness and it's something that you know something that you know young kids don't want you know. And it's it's happening it's happening kids got to got to realize that they have to kill their parents. Because the parents are responsible for it and when they can kill their parents and they can be free and I think that the fight on the ecology issue and realize that there are no solutions within capitalism that General Motors is not going to clear up the air. And there are thousands of our bills produced every year in advertising creates the need for it. There's no need. We're all turned into machines by the system. And we're it's a death trip and the only answer is a movement that lives by life and that's that's it. Everybody young in this country have hope. Here's what Ralph Nader in a speech he gave in Philadelphia. I don't want to be any.

More bearable warm up or work early and go out and warm for those were a few voices offering individual interpretations of this year's big word. They were all different. Yet even these descriptions didn't begin to cover all the problems of the environment. No one talks specifically for example about smokestacks or car exhausts or overpopulation. The suggestions people make for improving the environment are just as diverse as their first notions of the problems. There is much emotion in some of the recommendations you'll hear. It ranges from whimsy to crude violence. Here is Buffalo

Bob from the old Howdy Doody Show with a little whimsy. That's my boy. Big and who move and three I'm just like you and me. There have to be men and just like you and me they have to be told when to go big and who are Moos. They'll think you're great or they're a part of you and lick your and take them form a regular will and if they could talk they'd say thanks for being too. We love to be rude. To me but at what seems to be another end of the spectrum live

knowledge is truth Patrick looks at the future of one of the country's oldest dreams but it can be a beautiful river. But it's going to take time and I should like to take time. It's like people dedicated to it. Here's a quasi live political answer from novelist Terry saw that well have to get out of the economic mediately. Take a realistic appropriation of our wealth devoted towards the real problems rather than imaginary our own self-indulgent problems that used to be that we had to invent wars to got to take people's mind off poverty.

And together the economy thing going but now we can no longer really afford that. We've got them in the work to do and the economy. The thing to do. Suffice. And so we just got to have cut the defense budget so-called into nothing and have a realistic defense budget that is the say military nill and environment control 100 percent of of repression that is going through is going to continue I think until one side bends. I have hopes that in the administration President ministration make

such fools of themselves that the next candidate to me the Democrats will put up some real strong interest thing. When a type like like Lindsey as somebody John Lindsay himself with a brief philosophical prescription invent better words about. What keeps us going in belief. At least we can make things better in life or all. Perhaps not at the moment or an hour but in your heart continuing out. The effort will be slow and painful. It will not always work a lot of the most important advice will be lost and the injustice will continue but I do believe that through peaceful means we have a decent chance to turn things around. And stop the official fascination with repression. To make law and order

the rule of law would work. Instead of a code word that doesn't Ed Sanders is a Ubi poet who offers a vision of the future. Good evening ladies and gentlemen I'm the press officer for the yuppie Ianni Council of saucer OIDs. We're happy to declare tonight that the United States government has fallen. The Constitution of the United States in the Bill of Rights have been supplanted by the declaration of the hymn poured in that jive chumps have subsumed the substance of the earth beneath their manipulations and in that famine disaster and acts of the Haiti Oma relentlessly pursue a society causing eternal need for communality so that all shall share in the grains and foods and medicines and shelters necessary for common survival. And in that money in checks and letters of credit have been wedged between the people in the produce of Earth so that no one of earthly mammals may have his just share without soil soul destroying hype.

Manipulation con and violence acted against the weaker the unsuspecting the off balance the enslaved and the hyped. And in that women have been stumped behind the kettle and bent upon the bed denied their rightful position as co-leader and Co lover of the polis and federal Congress of the earth by the gun G. Barry breath slavers of the male Imperium. Ever since the days of the roam around Australopithecus punks. And in that wars have been waged in the name of nationalism in the name of vengeance in the name of punk gods in the name of theft and rip off ever since there was a federation of hot serve villages or nations or kingdoms or presidencies and in these wars only the young led by the brutal leftish middle aged piss ant warriors and only the young plus women and babies and aged have been stomped and washed and slaughtered in the name of the hype. The journalist that bankers worship that speculated it worship that church creates a network president's worship pipe pipe pipe pipe and

pressure and pain hype and pressure and torture pipe pipe pipe pipe accordingly be it known that thong thong song. With fists hands and fists minds dropping at the barricades we are loathed any longer to get sucked off in the neck by these jive war wolves. But even with the foamy lipped darlings of market speculation flying overhead and their air force bombers their drool dripping on the caches of fragmentation bombs we turn our backs on death and declare a new civilization a new plane of him poured dancer's right inside the motherland. We are free from the American vomit free from the fake started moronic Satan noid Novus Ordo sic Lorem free from punk sentimentality toward an economic system modeled on a vampire movie free from racism nationalism imperialism free from the policies of the chopped up and sacrificial murder of the topsoil the coastline the horizon the moon the air

and the entrails of the earth free from the oppressor. From anyone who would line us up and take from us our planet our light our right to an equal undeniable irrevocable share of our own planet without end. On to the EON forever and ever and endless cycles of birth and birth. Ralph Nader has a somewhat more coherent suggestion. We have had in our nation a double standard of law. The law applies to the to the weak. It is ignored by those drawn. In the area in the environment of violence we see this very very clearly. You can make up your own images quite readily let me offer one. Why is it a crime for an individual to relieve himself in the rivers of this country but it isn't a crime for corporations to relieve themselves in the rivers of this country. We have probably going through right here you are with

me. I think we must rebel. We're going to cry. You should be good. You really have to do many of them are performing in money. We heard in the car talks about what he thinks is important in the environmental movement. I think the other thing is going to be exact that this is the first issue which is not the visor the Viet-Nam as you was devise of poverty and race have been divisive this issue as far as we can see is not the visor that unites black and white as the essence that you're young and old. I can't remember a lot of course on this government. No not enough about American history I can't remember any occasion when one issue wasn't as unifying as this issue. It could very well one hopes will have a new political view. Which if there was a bomb in the theft of the Bible and that in the event of manager which of course is nothing espoused by any political party.

Finally here's a kind of environmental essay presented by an old man you've never heard of a working man who retired to a place called Darby Creek in Delaware County Pennsylvania. I came out here to build my home to be somewhat get away from the City metropolitan area. I like to surrounding in the tranquility of the swamp land in a natural raw light normally to cricket that time was fairly decent but since they put the sewage disposal plants in the surrounding community it apparently in the dump. The Philadelphia dumps are dumping in the Darby Creek everything it seems to pollute the area more so than ever and says they better start going this route 95 through that swamp land that destroyed a marsh and the wildlife the one time was what you might call a sanctuary for wildlife coming in from the south traveling north and traveling from Canadian

border south to. Multiply and propagate as it is now it's getting to the point where there's no food available for these migrating birds and ducks and cranes. There were cranes in that area but you don't see too many of them now. But it's not a heck of a lot to the average individual can do for the simple reason the start of this landfill program in Delaware County. They've got the Philadelphia airport to pollute the air. The landfill the polluted waters. And it seems like it's a great political football. It's a rotten game to play. The average snatch bearers that assume that has no say whatsoever about the natural habitation of the wildlife the turtles the geese the wild that it's. Getting

to the point where there's no more habitation or natural resources to take place. I'm fed up bad enough to move in some other area but I'm afraid that is hardly any place to move. And given that an age now where it seems progress of transportation Xpress ways as no means of controlling that natural habitats or natural wildlife in our country anymore. Well what I do say distort is not what I have planned. I've been ready getting ready for alone time and I know what I intend to do. I feel sorry for those that might follow after or after the consequences but I am ready I'VE BEEN READY FOR YEARS. They say there is ways and means by the ballot box but the bottom box no longer counts. And in fact I think the youth of America is getting too smart. They say well you

can change the constitution you can change this ways and means to do these things by being trained well and take it as it comes in and sleep on it. But I think the modern youth of the bases is not going to stand that this man who worries about the birds who have left is marsh and the landfill operations and the building of a new route 95 is not just wishing for some kind of good old days gone by. And as he said a minute ago he is not just sitting around down in this man's basement is the beginnings of a homemade bomb. This man's hopelessness runs deep. Indeed there was a little hopelessness in all the people you've heard. The environment is certainly a big word with a lot of meanings and it's currently fashionable to bring it up. This program may just be another example of lots of rhetoric but little action on an important issue. But when an old man

was sure he air and a beer belly and utter scorn for hippies becomes a self-styled revolutionary himself it may be that some disastrous things are happening even in the midst of all this talk. This is an Zille reporting for the national educational radio network from Philadelphia. You've been listening to a federal case a weekly examination of the national issue from the perspective of our nation's capital. A federal case is produced with farms provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is the national educational radio network.