Cross Currents; Lecture by Jules Rabin on the State of Food in America ; Forum on Dependency of Automobiles, Recorded in Burlington (Vermont)

This is Vermont Public Radio forums crosscurrents a series of lectures and public discussions exploring issues of concern in Vermont. On this edition of cross currents we take you first to Marshfield Vermont for a lecture by anthropologist Jules Raven. He will discuss our state of food our state of mind. Then we go to Burlington for the discussion. Autumn ability in Chittenden County. What does the future hold. Jules Raven is a former Goddard College instructor an anthropologist and a bread baker. He and his wife Helen live in Marshfield Vermont and run the upland baker's on the evening of March 21st 1979. Jules Raven spoke at the jock with public library in Marshfield. His topic was our state of food our state of mind. Food is wonderful but it can also give you a belly ache and a headache when you try to figure out what should go into the pot. Food By the time we're 20 each of us is a perfect expert hadn't put down

20000 meals or so counted up 20 years 20000 meals. Try and get us to change our habits then try broiled mouse on a Vermonter. Some people actually eat mice broiled or otherwise milk on a Chinese shrimp on old time Jews or an English breakfast on a Frenchman. Try putting hot ice cream. I should say try putting ice cream on hot roast beef as well as in hot apple pie. One makes sense the the other doesn't it just goes against the grain. Try the family man with a week of solitary dinners or a bachelor with a week of dinners at the hurly burly of the family table. Food is one of the best things in life. We're with the animals on that. It makes the blood sing. When we get half get it after being without it for just half a day we organized our day around it. We make it the center of holidays and

rituals. We use it as an excuse to sit down with friends. We use it as a gift to cement relationships. We growl over it. Look at them. A knife in one hand a fork in the other has surrounded a plate of meat. He holds two square feet of table and while he's eating only his sweetheart or is baby would dream of penetrating his table space nobody comes near him and when he's got his knife in his fork and something he ate. And food. I think that in America today more new cookbooks are published every year than new books on the nature of man or God or the universe. More than all of these together probably. We are a people extraordinarily preoccupied with food and food. In America we have discovered two new curses. One is obesity. On a scale which you know of the civilization has known we worry about getting fat.

We are getting fat. Over eating which used to be the problem with kings and countesses is a Democratic problem among us. We suffer from it in the millions. This is of course strange and worse at a time when more than half the world's four billion people don't get enough to eat almost every day of their lives and suffer the bodily defects of malnutrition as a result. And thousands of people actually die every day of the year because they simply can't get their hands on enough food to put into their bellies. The last figure I have for a few years ago was 10000 people per day 10000 deaths per day each day enough salts to fill a month's pewter or a Barry. Hunger deaths occur mainly in places like Bangladesh Mali and Ecuador where for the malnourished baby measles is likely to be fatal. But they occur here in the US to where poor people have an infant

mortality rate due in part to malnutrition much higher than that of rich people. I discovered just yesterday working with my 10 year old on her geography that Taiwan and that little island off the coast of China little Taiwan shows up a little better than the US nowadays with an infant mortality of 20 profiles and compared with 21 profiles and for us worldwide with the 14th ranking nation in infant mortality. I repeat inadequate diet is a major factor in infant deaths among the poor. I said that we're conscious of two Christians in America when we sit down to eat. The second Christmas cancer and the other mortal ailments notably heart disease that some of us think we may be building in ourselves if we're not on guard about what we eat. Half of the 2 million annual deaths in this

country are partly related to diet. Heart disease stroke and cancer of the bile. Time was when grandfathers and grandmothers knew all we thought we'd ever need to know correct or not about what was good to eat and what was bad to eat. Now Grandpa and Grandma live elsewhere. And hundreds of new manufactured food preparations appear every year. I don't know what my grandparents could possibly have told me about Pringles a pop rocks. We take our advice on food we get our food lore from the backs of Wheaties boxes from the medicine men and entertainers on TV from General Foods and General Mills and made up personalities like Betty Crocker. Betty Crocker fronts for the wheat farmers of Kansas as we all know. And that's not so bad. But she also fronts for the associated and amalgamated and syndicate

syndicated chemical industries of America working to fix the taste and color and texture of our foods. And that's what has some of us worried. Because the chemical industry is putting out more chemicals for our food. More than 3000 different ones to date than they can possibly test. Some people think our pancreas isn't our livers are saying oops and ouch to that quietly every day. Like the folks of another time the purge Beyers of chemicals would have to say if they were conscientious ignore Ramos. You're going to rob them of us. That's a bit of Latin means. We don't know. We will not know. We can't know what bad effects a lot of this stuff may have on you if you keep eating it for 20 years or if you eat this one in combination with that one. What they do say of course is try it you'll like it. And they throw in a catchy song for free.

That's the funny side of the matter. The Samba side for me and I would think for you is this. In the sparsely populated region where I live in my small circle of acquaintances and I tried to count up. I think that I known probably everybody around the table counting up the circle of acquaintances knows perhaps 100 200 people. At any rate in my small circle of acquaintances I know of six people with cancer and two of those six died around the beginning of the year. When I counted up that number six and I counted that up in the early part of the year I began hearing about people with cancer and and finally it struck me as a lot. And I counted up six and I thought that that's it's way out of proportion to. And to what I would think was was reasonable acceptable in this life. When I counted up that number six I felt deeply troubled and frightened.

I thought there was a deadly serious fault in our lives which we fail to understand. This trouble makes me think of the classic fairy tales that report dragons who come down from the hills every year to claim a few victims from among the townspeople. Every year systematically without fail or. And the crap with cancer has us all scared. And not utterly private act of our lives. The ingestion of food seems to some an invitation to the crab to settle in the fine and delicate tissues of our body. We pick and choose among our foods and get into the habit of acting a little spooky earlier crazy about what we eat. Besides the three thousand two additives the chemical industry has devised for our foods we think of the billion pounds of pesticides pesticides that are sprayed annually annually on our crops. That's four pounds for every person

in this country every year. And irony connected with the whole pest side business is that the success of that branch of chemical warfare is doubtful. In the last 30 years while we have increased our use of insecticides tenfold the crop losses due to insects have doubled 10 times more pesticides. But we're not getting the bugs the the number of the crop losses due to them is doubled. Those chemicals seem to make the bugs get smarter. We'll look now at our food system anthropologically. We were hunters and gatherers for 99 percent of our human existence. From say two million years ago when something recognizably human was walking on the earth to 10000 years ago. We have been farmers and herdsman for less than 1 percent of the time we have been on Earth just the last ten thousand years. Most of our human existence we've been hunters and gatherers and you know

10000 years ago doesn't seem recent but in comparison with our human history of 2 million years it's just yesterday it's just one percent of the time we've been on Earth. Here's another way of looking at that. Of the hundred fifty billion humans who ever lived there. There are by the way just four billion people walking the earth today but people have calculated roughly that all the humans who ever lived amount to about one hundred fifty million. Of the hundred fifteen billion humans who ever lived 60 percent have been hunters and gatherers. Thirty five percent have been farmers and the remaining few percent. Well that's ourselves. Modern Age humans of industrial society. Even today half the people on earth are peasants and that's astonishing. But when you think about the China's news of the world and how most of those people live it's not so astonishing. Half the people in the world today are

effectively peasants. And as recently as 1940 that figure approached 80 percent. Most people in our society really have nothing to do with food production. And there's the occasional personal hunt in deer season. And then there is the 4 or 5 percent of our population who are actively farmers but most of the rest of us are. You know we use the supermarket to get our hands on food and that's that's unprecedented in human history. OK. Speak. King of closer yesterday's on a four mile stretch of the road where I live I recently counted standing bons and farmhouses which represent 14 farms that's what I was talking to you about. John I live up in Hollister hill and there's a house every third of a mile every quarter of a mile and I drove up four miles of that road and I looked at houses and I looked at the bar and some of them in good shape some of them in terrible

shape. And I realized by golly in this four mile stretch along where I live on this this dirt road there used to be 14 farms here. Well those are all working farms about 25 years ago. Only two of the 14 are going today. I mean farming as we all know is just dropping out of the picture here in Vermont and in the country as a whole. The statistic for America as a whole is is pretty awesome. From 1950 to 1970 an average of 2000 farms a week were closed down. Now this is a big country but 2000 farms a week I mean if you think what happens when a farm is auctioned off when you know somebody closes up his barn that was happening 2000 times a week for 20 years I don't know what the statistics do to sticks out in the seven days. The statistics on so dramatic I mean from the still going out of business but not at such a great rate as they were in the in the 50s and 60s.

How are you today only 45 percent of Americans are down on the farm. That small number is without precedent for most of human history the main business of most men and women has been the plain business of catching or finding or growing food and just about every day of the year. We don't incidentally get off as lightly as that figure of 4 or 5 percent suggests the farmer has behind him a tremendous number of supporting workers. And if you stop and think about it you'll realize what a tremendous sector of the working population. So to speak backs up the farmer who was there as the primary individual producing food. We can think of the people who make the tractors and the chemicals and the gasoline and the cans and boxes that the food comes and the people who puff the rice and sugar coat the corn food processing is an enormous

industry in America. And if you want to count them in the people who put on the songs and dances that are meant to make US spying. Starting at that IT and food advertising especially kids food at the ties and is the biggest in the business and the food production system as a whole. From the farmer to the quarter million dollar a year TV entertainer is our biggest money industry. It's bigger than steel bigger than autos bigger than the armaments or defense industry. The people down on the farm aren't getting the whole or even the greater part of that big pot of money. What leaves the farm represents a small fraction of the cost of what ends up on the table. Thirty nine percent according to a recent estimate which I got just yesterday from Gill Parker was it down at the Department of Agriculture nationally the farmer gets something like thirty nine cents out of every dollar that the consumer pays for food.

From hunters and gatherers to the fun of a breakfast food show on TV represents a long step for mankind. Today TV is our main source of nutritional education. We have relatively few food instincts left and in that regard we're worse off than our cousins the chimpanzees. And we have little remaining connection with the food lore. Our parents our grandparents received used to be that you learned what was good for you what was bad feel what proportion to you in what proportion to eat this or that from from from your people from your grandparents. But we're effectively cut off from that kind of. Well we're sort of a new Columbus is all of us trying to find our way. And I peculiar see of strange foods. We have especially if we're five to ten years old. Always and always a week of

nutrition education at the knees of the TV set where the paid entertainers and the less well paid doctors of science set us up for a lifelong diet of Frosted Flakes and Chef Boyardee ravioli. Ten cents of 10 cents with the food and a penny's worth of chemicals for a dollar. And if we think that at least our funny foods of today come more easily to hand than did the foods of all time hunters and gatherers or peasant ancestors in between are another matter. I'm going to speak not just of so-called primitive hunters and gatherers then. Then we're partly mistaken that's to say if we think that at least we're better off in terms of getting food more easily for me. New research is on the lives of hunters and gatherers show that for many tribal peoples in that line of work the amount of time they spend in the food quest they spent on the food quest was remarkably less than we spend overall in gaining our livelihood.

Life for many hunters and gatherers was not as savage and desperate tussle with nature or with each other. Careful arithmetic applied to such peoples shows that including commuting time and kitchen time. Such kitchens as they had. The average woman spent 20 to 40 hours a week foraging for her share of the family's food and preparing it while her husband with fewer kitchen sure has spent even less time in provisioning the family. I say this not by way of suggesting that we should go that way ourselves but to put in a more critical light our progressive missed assumption that anyhow we've done a better job of licking the food question than ancient peoples did. Food wasn't always such an almighty problem for ancient peoples as we think. And if we consider in this connection not just our affluent selves but the more than 2 billion people who consistently fail to get enough food to maintain

health then we have to conclude that the present day world is not doing well in the matter of providing our daily bread. Oh well there are a lot of us now. There were a few of them then and that is the core of the matter for a lot of critics who look at the problem of world hunger today. Population control they say is the only possible answer. I think it is an outrageous answer when these critics speak from American or European platforms. Given the disproportionate amount of foodstuffs that we consume in America and the other affluent parts of the world. Consider that the developed countries of the world that's the Americas and United States Russia Japan all of Western Europe. The developed countries of the world with a little more than a quarter of the world's population consume two thirds of the world's grain and three quarters of the world's fish catch mostly in the form of feed for livestock and poultry

most of the fish that. We purchase is ground up to feed chickens the. Preponderance that the greater amount of grain that we raise in the United States and that's imported to Europe and Japan is used to feed animals to make beef. The U.S. with its vast cattle industry and its obesity problem is the world's foremost importer of beef Now that's a stunning fact we've got all the big round ups in Texas all the big cattle ranches. And yet we are the world's foremost importer of beef. We're also a net importer of dairy products. Japan to look further afield with one thirtieth the population of India and China imports more food than both those countries combined. The Netherlands which we think of as a leading dairy country imported more of nonfat milk solids in the 1960s than did the entire poor world. They needed

all that milk to raise veal and that means living very very high off the hog. And between 1960 and 1970 two per capita meat consumption in Germany rose by 33 percent in Italy by 200 percent. And in Japan by three hundred fifty percent. The big rise in U.S. meat consumption came a decade earlier in the 1950s when we doubled our rate of meat consumption. Today a big industry in Honduras and Costa Rica is raising cattle for export to the US. Tough cheap cattle fit for fast hamburgers I think it all ends up in McDonald's and Burger places like that. Tough cheap cattle fit for fast hamburgers but still way too expensive for the people of Honduras and Costa Rica who suffer chronically from protein deficiency. I can't afford the meat that's raised down there it's shipped up here where we can pay the price.

Consider Latin America with a population of not much larger than that of the US has an area three times greater than the US. Latin America nevertheless is a hungry continent. But how can we proposed population control to them when they have three times more land than we do. And the best of that land is used by our rich powerful friends down there to grow coffee and sugar for sale to us. What it comes down to is that the people leer can't afford the produce of their own country. Really their own land. When you examine the process by which the plantation owners pieced together their gigantic estates from the small holdings of the natives and peasants. In Brazil in 1972 after five years of one of the highest economic growth rates in the world the economic minister himself this wasn't a radical down there coming up with the figures I'll give you in a moment this was the economic minister that had gone through five of their

outstanding years of economic growth. Brazil was outstanding in the world in that five year period for its rate of economic development and the economic minister reported and how they stood economically how is that prosperity had benefited the people at large. The he estimated that well 5 percent of the population were better off 50 percent remained in the same condition and 45 percent were actually worse off. That was after five years of unprecedented economic growth. The economist speak of the trickle down of prosperity from the wealthy to the point that's the term they use they say well sure the rich are raking in a lot but it's going to trickle down to the poor people the poor people eventually benefit from that. But I think this while the trickle isn't inevitable and as the aughts of business and government advance to shut off the trickle turns out to be a simple plumber's trick.

The millions of peasants who have left the countryside where they were starving and move to the Bombays and Rio de Janeiro's of the world where they continue to stop are victims of this failure in the trickle. Periodic droughts notwithstanding there is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone. But when we take fish from protein poor Peru to feed chickens in Japan in the US when we import beef from protein hungry Honduras to feed affluent America then it would appear that we aren't innocent witnesses of a problem that belongs to others. We are ignorant to not compound in the problem of these people. How many of us know that we Americans eat twice as much protein on the average as our bodies can use. The surplus doesn't make us more than 100 percent healthy it doesn't it can't make us super men or super women. It is burned off as carbohydrate potatoes would do as well or excrete

it as waste all waste matches at least a part of their hunger. While I feel that's enough and I want to raise one final question. I guess it's not enough I'm going to labor you with with the same point but with coming on. And we in America Germany Russia and other parts of the affluent world are overeating on an unprecedented scale. It's insane not just because we're depriving other people of their food but because it's costing us our health and our lives. Why do we do that. What is the source of that emptiness we tried to fill by packing in more and more food three times a day seven days a week. Repeating that frustrated ritual. I mean reading. I don't know what the answer is. And I might make a stab at it incidentally because I think I'm as guilty as the next

American in respect of overeating. I don't know what the answer is. Could it be loneliness and lack of communion at the table. I know I eat more when my family's away. Could it be anticipations of calamity. Does the specter of other people's hunger incite us to eat more. Do we suspect that the food corn you Copia will close up on us and will go hungry like the rest of the world. After all we farm with floods of oil. Take the oil away and our farming system collapses. A quart of petroleum goes into the manufacture of a pound of fertilizer. A gallon of gas stands behind the production of every bushel of corn. Unbelievably the energy return of food production in America is one one hundredth that of ancient hunters and gatherers 1

500 that of Chinese peasants. When you take account of fuel inputs as well as human energies person for person we of course produce much more food the American farmer produces more food than does the Chinese farmer or the ancient hunter and gatherer. But when you consider the energy that the farmer supplies in the form of petroleum and electricity and the manufactured tools he uses like a tractor and so on and there's a tremendous tremendous amount of energy that goes into the production of every calories worth of food that we consume our state of food our state of mind by Jules Raven. He spoke at the Jaquith public library in Marshfield Vermont on March 21st 1979. In April in May of this year the citizens for responsible growth with the cooperation of the University of Vermont's Church Street center sponsored a series of three public

forums under the heading of mobility in Chittenden County. What does the future hold. On May 7th at St. Paul's Cathedral in Burlington The topic was are we dependent on the car. Personal freedom and community ideals. Our panelists are introduced by moderator Jenny Stoller at the University of Vermont. This discussion the series of discussions is being sponsored by Citizens for responsible group growth. It's a citizens based group concerned with the direction of growth and development in Chittenden County. In a wide variety of ways all three discussions are being funded by the Vermont Council on the humanities and public issues. The Vermont Council sponsors a wide variety of public issues discussions in an attempt to get scholars from various humanities disciplines into dialogue with the adult public. You in this case and we have in fact a scholar with us this evening who I'll introduce to you in a moment before I go any further I'd like you to meet Joe Knight who is the project

director for this project and I think John would like to say a few words. Thanks Jenny. Last week I talked about it. I figured probably people would be wondering why I had done such a thing so I answered that in some detail last week I'll just mention to the newcomers this week that it basically grew out of an ambivalence that I feel toward the automobile that I recognize as do all of us I guess. Some of the hazards that accompany our excessive use of the car especially in urban areas and I'm worried about it. But at the same time I'm one of the people who is very fond of my automobile and I use it every day and I have a very difficult time when I try to give it up so I have extreme ambivalence. And I wanted to to explore that and to help other people explore that that same thing because I think we're all experiencing that. I wanted to mention as citizens responsible growth is the group that fought pyramid mall in Willesden and that I think that that group perceives the automobile as

being an issue very much tied up with the issue of suburban malls and tied up with all growth issues fortune and co.. And we see at this time proposals for several new highways in Sion and county style Taney Asli the north connector the south connector the South Burlington connector the Route 7 bypass in Shelburne the Essex Occam French Hill highway possible new interchange on Interstate 89 near Bolton possible widening of Interstate 89 near Burlington and some hot parking issues in Burlington itself. So I think it's timely that we look at these things. I want to also mention the Humanities Council of the Vermont Council on humanities and public issues is interested in the project in as much as they'd like us to get to to take a look at the things that we usually take for granted in terms of our values and habits. And to take this opportunity to

question at a deeper levels the things we usually don't think all that much about. We have set up all the panels with a balance of different points of view so that at no time we hope at no time they'll be any kind of a bias. So that's all. Thank you. Thank you. In the interest of balance he'll be very interesting interested to know who our panelists here this evening are to my right is Thomas Kinley. He is the executive vice president of the auto club of Vermont. So it's sort of a pro automobile person if we can give him a quick label. To my left is our humanity scholar this evening David Conrad David is an associate professor of education in the College of Education and Social Services at the university. David has done quite a bit of study on urbanization and issues related to urbanization he has a. Has done studies on Lewis Mumford I don't know if that name rings a bell.

He's an urban critic from really the 30s onward still alive today. And David has some special perspective to share with us this evening because he has done so much study on this urban area. I'm going to start this evening with having Tom give us some remarks that he's prepared. Then we'll go to some prepared remarks by David. Then I'm going to give these two gentlemen a chance to rebut each other. OK. So Tom will go first. Thank you very much. I think I'd like to start out by throwing out three basic question which I feel will be spending most of the day most evening dealing with and that is are you as residents of chickening County willing to give up the freedom and independence that your car offers you. Is your personal transportation a necessity. And is the economic growth of this area dependent on the automobile. And you might go one step further there and say is your job dependent on the automobile.

The personal transportation as far as I am concerned is definitely a necessity for most people. And I say that because I don't feel that Chittenden County or the state of Vermont is in the position to support a mass transit system which would be needed to replace the automobile. During my discussion you'll notice that I'll either refer to it as the automobile or personal transportation. Mainly because I don't know what 20 years down the road will bring for us but I definitely feel that because people desire the freedom and the independence that their car offers them that we will have personal transportation. It might be some kind of an automated belt that runs around the community it might be a personal car hooked up to a tramway it could be any thing of that nature but I definitely feel that technology will offer that to us as individuals.

To go beyond the technical aspect of it I think the automobile industry is such an economic force in the country that there is no way that that economic force will be eliminated. And when I say that I mean the production of fifteen point four million cars in one thousand seventy seven the jobs of 14 million people and the. Sale the sales income of one billion dollars. That was during one thousand seventy seven. When I talk about technology offering you some sort of option just to give you an example we refer you to a newspaper article in The Boston Globe concerning for or to Ford Motor Company engineers who have now

developed a diesel driven car which will average right now 82 mpg and they're projecting it to go over 100 miles per gallon. I can see in looking around people are saying what's this guy talking about we have an energy crisis on our hands. That's debatable I'd rather not get into it whether we actually do or not. We do have a shortage of fuel at the time at this time. But I don't think that's going to change people's desires it didn't in one thousand seventy three in one thousand seventy four and it won't today. They will still want their personal car. They'll wait in lines as they are in California today and they will continue to drive their automobile. I referred to the automobile industry as being a very economic force. You want to OBL itself in Chittenden County is a very viable and strong force. Just look around your community at the number of

services that employ chickening County residents. The auto dealerships the hotels and motels and restaurants which are dependent on the automobile road maintenance crews small businesses which are located outside the city and off of mass transit routes. I think I feel that the area of chickening County including the downtown area would certainly suffer. We didn't have personal transportation and we were not able to move about at our free will. I like to look now at at what implications the car might have had on the family in the communities. There has been some derogatory comments made towards in that light and I feel that the car may have had some influence on spreading out the family and drawing it apart. But I honestly believe that society has done that more than the automobile. And in some cases we might

find families coming together because of the automobile taking their family vacation going on a family trip on the weekends I know I take my family on numerous trips and spend some time with my children and I might not do if I didn't have the automobile or the convenience to get away from the house. I know when I go home and I would be have a project around the house when I want to be with the kids I normally take them away from the house so that I'm not avoiding them. I think communities have definitely spread out because of the automobile but I don't believe that it affected the closeness of people I know people very good friends in Brattleboro in Bennington and only because I have my own personal little dealing can take a trip down there once in a while. I don't feel that that's a good criticism of the car and I believe that the communities would have spread out anyway just because of the population growth.

I think I have caused enough grief at this point. I'd like to say that this is definitely a mobile society. We've been raised and born to enjoy our mobility. It's a way of life for most of us. The over the years the automobile has made many adjustments to tighten to adjust to its social criticisms and I believe that it will continue to make these adjustments and it will continue to be a viable source of transportation for us in the future. Thank you. Thank you. OK let's see how David looks at the world. OK thank you Jenny very much. I like to challenge I guess you might say the auto supremacy in our society today. I feel that the role of the automobile is too powerful. And the what we might call auto addiction of our society needs to be broken and it needs to be broken no. This is a very appropriate time especially when we think about the various energy issues. And when we think about our cities and deterioration

of them much of it I believe caused by the intrusion of the automobile into the community. For me the auto is not a symbol of progress. You know I know that it's been considered a symbol of progress but I'd like us to look at it a little differently. I feel that automobiles erode our quality of life and I think we could point to various indicators of that at that at this point I'd like to mention a quote By Lewis Mumford who Jenny mentioned I've done some research on. I think he says it very well. The fact is Mumford wrote that motor transportation is the sacred cow of the American Religion of technology and in the service of this curious religion no sacrifice in daily living no extravagance of public expenditure appears too great. It's a strong statement typical of Mumford he has made strong statements he's very outspoken but I think he puts it well and I'd like to as I said break the auto addiction I'd like to look at this sacred cow and be critical

of the sacred cow of American technology. It seems to me that cars lessen our freedom in many ways rather than increase freedom. For instance they lessen our freedom of safe movement on foot. We're all in jeopardy when we walk around town. Cars could hit us at any moment and of course that is happening there are more and more injuries as all mention a little bit later it seems to me that we ought to think about creating more auto free zones. It may be necessary to ban cars in downtown areas. I don't think such a ban would destroy the freedom to travel at all in downtown area. It simply would restrict our freedom to travel by auto in downtown areas. And I will suggest in a few minutes some alternatives that I think we we need to think about driving in the city. Also increases tension within us. It seems to emphasize values of competitiveness and it promotes a kind of

aggressiveness often in especially if we're waiting in a long line of cars and so forth. Some of these things some of these values are not values that I believe we ought to be promoting in American or indeed world society. And I certainly don't think we should be encouraging them for the future let alone the present. Our environment is becoming more and more shaped by cars and in this connection. I'd like to read one other short quote by Mumford the cloverleaf. He points out has become our national flower and wall to wall concrete the ridiculous symbol of national affluence and technological status. Now I ask is that what we want to be our national flower. I don't think so and I don't like the idea of wall to wall concrete as our symbol of progress or affluence. I think this is a very such a sorry comment on our social values in this society. Now some of the problems with Autumn ability I'll just mention briefly and will probably want to refer to these a little bit more later. One great problem of course is the waste of resources. They

put tremendous petroleum drain of driving the dependence on oil is one that I don't need to mention very much. We all are conscious of that. Cars happen to be Steel's biggest market. Two thirds of the robber produced in the country goes to the auto large amounts of lead and zinc aluminum are used up in the production of automobiles. The interstate highway system which is nearing completion now used enough sand gravel and stone and this is really fascinating I think it brings it closer to home to us use enough sand gravel and stone to build a wall around the world 15 feet wide. If you can visualize this and nine feet high. Another way of putting it the sand gravel and stone using interstate highways would make enough concrete to build six sidewalks to the moon. I think that's kind of an interesting statistic that again maybe makes it seem a little more human. The automobile Another problem is that I feel the automobile is a destroyer of community life.

It has scattered parts of the community and sociologists like Philip Slater have discussed this very much. Huge amounts of space are sacrificed to the automobile. Tom mentioned that and we all know of the tremendous space used by parking lots garages gas stations and so forth. Strip development is encouraged and we just need to look at Willesden road in Shelburne road in this area to see that but we can see it in all areas of the county and Vermont as well as the rest of the country. Homes and yards recreation space are sacrificed to the automobile. The south end connector which Joan mentioned a little while ago is going to take some homes if it's built in the present. Alignment. It's certainly going to take some recreation space. These are these are problems that I think we need to deal with health hazards are also associated with Autumn ability for air pollution increases lung cancer heart disease in the and other health

problems even asbestos for instance which we don't think about too much in terms of brake linings is a serious threat to our lungs. Safety problems are another thing we must be concerned with a very serious problem of Autum ability. This year's highway death rate in Vermont and I think most of you know that is absolutely shocking. More people were killed in this state in March than in any previous March in the 30 years the statistics have been kept. And if this rate continues I guess 1979 will set records for highway fatalities in Vermont a very very shocking thing that concerns me greatly and I'm sure concerns all of you here beside the deaths which are are spectacular in their in their figures. There are thousands of injuries caused by the auto and the untold suffering that this creates. It is of great magnitude. Well the final comments I'd like to make it the beginning here are just about a few alternatives for today in the future because I think at the

same time that I'm criticizing the role of the auto in our society now in the future I think we do need to think about alternatives because I don't I don't think we can eliminate the car or or lessen dependence on the car without this. We need an integrated transportation system. Certainly we need to increase public transportation options that are available to all. Better more frequent bus service is an obvious thing. I'm delighted that the CTA for instance is going to be bringing in some new buses I believe this month to help out. Bus riders could be given a tax reduction as one of the commissioners of the CTA excuse me recommended I think that's a great idea to encourage commuters to use buses and leave their cars at home. He says why not give them a tax reduction in their Vermont state income tax for taking the bus. An excellent idea that's the kind of imaginative thinking. I think we need to do. We also need to think about dial the buses that people particularly elderly people could call and have a bus a small maybe a van

stopped in front of their house and pick them up. Various kinds of vans various carpooling need to be explored. Certainly the idea of peripheral parking on the outskirts of the city is essential. There should be free and quick transportation bus transportation from this peripheral parking area or various areas around the county say to the downtown area. At the same time we work on on public transportation and I call it public transportation not mass transportation. It is hard to conceive of mass transportation in Vermont we don't have the numbers that we might have if we were in New York City or somewhere else but we certainly can't talk in terms of public rather than private transportation walkways and trails need to be expanded. We need to upgrade and maintain our walkways. Just a great deal more trees and flower beds then churches plazas could be added to make walking a real pleasure a joy good exercise. Let's

use personal energy let's use body energy. Let's not use as much of those precious petroleum resources that we're depending on so much now. Bikes and bikes ways bike ways could be built further especially bike way separate from automobiles and I've observed such things in Japan and also in Finland. It's happening in many parts of the world. Bike ways and trails and dependence on bikes are so much greater than they are here. No reason why we can't do it too. We could we could think in terms of some temporary use of small cars for picking up packages for instance at grocery stores and that sort of thing. This is being done I believe it's Amsterdam somewhere in Europe. What would happen in this case would be a small car maybe battery operated which might or you know which might be picked up very much like a shopping cart at a supermarket and then left in a holding area somewhere nearby within walking distance and then it could be used by someone else when necessary. We must design our

communities for people not for cars. I hope that we will put people and human needs at the center of our thinking. Again Lewis Mumford reminds us that the human person the human being human needs organic needs must be at the center and not at the periphery. Let's increase mobility. I think we've got to increase mobility but let's decrease auto mobility. That's my feeling. Thank you. Well I think between the two of you we've identified a number of different aspects we are going to have to cover this evening. I think we could maybe sort of start breaking down some categories of things to talk about this evening and first maybe there is there is the aspect of how the car affects each as individuals as persons What do we want in the way of personal transportation mobility for the future. And then secondly what is it that we want for families for groups of people. How does the car fit into what we want for families in the future. And then thirdly what about the whole community. I think

that's where where David is really coming down with with a lot of emphasis. What do we want for our communities in the future and how does the automobile fit into those communities. And maybe in Vermont we have to ask ourselves are there urban rural differences that we have to worry about here that that might not come up elsewhere. And then fourth you know coming broader and broader What about the whole nation. What do we want for the country as a whole and what is the current doing to that. Let's hear what Tom has to say about David's remarks. Well I think you know it makes a lot of good points none of them really practical. The car is definitely a powerful force in the country it will remain a powerful force in the country I don't think there's any way that you're going to break up that that force because that's what people want. And people's desire will long come before the dreams of some someone else. And I don't think there's any way you're going to convince them that they want to stand on a street

corner in the rain waiting for a bus that's late. And I did that for 12 years when I was a kid. I think auto free zones to some extent would destroy downtown Burlington because of the number of options people have outside the city. And I would not drive to the perm or to take a bus into the city when I can go to a shopping center and get the same thing. Today I would drive downtown because I find Church Street a very pleasant place to shop and I would not be at all opposed to creating a mall out of Church Street but I would be opposed to the elimination of the automobile to get there. Breaking up of the community. Again I don't agree. I feel that yes there's a lot of concrete and cement out there and there's a lot of blacktop. But.

There is still a lot of free spaces where people can go and enjoy themselves. I think Vermont is very fortunate in having so many areas. But just for example I can think of downtown Boston which is a huge metropolitan area that has many lovely parks that you can go and enjoy yourself in. Even though there is the traffic and the cars which are related to a big city. I find it hard to believe that the chicken and co. would have grown as far and as fast as it has of was of personal transportation. I don't think people would come out of the city metropolitan areas to live up here and to develop it in county and therefore we wouldn't have the jobs that we would have that we have now. There is little comment I can make on the death record. We certainly are setting one this year it's more or less a disgrace. I think it may be a little animals ation of that you'll see that it's it's a younger

group it's more one car accidents. It's people no longer paying attention to the 55 mile an hour speed limit. There's a number of things that are coming into play with the accident rate. I don't totally agree with the statement concerning the unsafe to walk. I don't know of too many pedestrians that have been knocked down in the city of Burlington but I may be enlightened later with that comment. Transit some of his alternatives. Take for example the transit system you have right here in the city. It's a financial disaster. It will always be a financial disaster without federal funds you wouldn't have new busses. The federal funds come from funds derived from the automobile so without the automobile you still wouldn't have your new busses. There is no way that you can run a transit system on the money that you

receive from it. Even the operating costs let alone the cost of purchasing new vehicles. I think one mistake people do make when they think about using in this is kind of in Dave's favor but I think the mistake they make is when they decide that $5 a day and it is 50 cents I think is it to ride a bus or is it cheaper than that. Well let's assume as 50 cents at $5 a week and they figure they can get back and forth to work cheaper than that but they don't include depreciation on their carpet. That's the way people think. They don't care. I mean they don't care that the cost of their car doubled in five years and the cost of fuel has doubled and in three or four years that's not important to them. The important part that they want is the freedom to drive where they want to go and not to have the inconvenience of piling onto a bus. I don't know what public transportation is because I always felt the public transportation was mass transit and I'm not sure what the differences so I really can't comment on that.

I think that's OK for now. It might have a few things. Yeah I guess so I might start by commenting on the inevitability of things continuing the way they are. I I just think we need to challenge inevitability because people are now depending a lot on cars doesn't necessarily mean they're always going to. Again the energy situation is certainly going to make it more expensive more difficult to use cars. If there are indeed good alternatives people will use them that has happened and I think it can happen more and more. I think we've got to think as Mumford put it to one time trend is not destiny. We may have a trend in one direction but it's not our destiny so I don't think we need to accept the inevitability of dependence on cars. A lot of this will be depending upon the attitudes of people and I think public education has a strong role to play here. I think education elementary and secondary schools college and adult education is

important for people to really think about transportation. Think about the role of the automobile in American society and what the automobile is doing to us how it affects our health and safety some of the kinds of things I was saying. We can change attitudes I firmly believe that I don't think we have to accept everything as a given I think we need to challenge some of the assumptions that we often make now in terms of for instance just the idea of waiting in the rain for a bus. Sure but why. Why do we have to wait in the rain for a bus and why can't we provide some shelters for buses. It doesn't have to happen that way. People it seems to me people will come downtown to Burlington because it's a special place and they will come downtown as they did when there was an experiment on Church Street over six or seven maybe even eight years ago now. Church Street was closed to traffic and there was peripheral parking up while one of the places I know was up near the gutter Sinfield house at UVM and many people including myself took a

drove to that peripheral lot and took a bus I think was 10 cents down town and Church Street was just alive and exciting and exciting place for about two weeks. It can happen it can happen permanently. And that was just one little sample of how I think it can happen. My feeling is if Burlington downtown remains a special and exciting place to be people will want to come down and they will take public transportation if it is comfortable if it's efficient if it's convenient. And those are things I think we need to to work on now in terms of the auto industry as a powerful economic force certainly. I couldn't. I agree more it certainly is. My feeling is though that we can convert a lot of our of our industry our automobile industry and some of those 14 million jobs and so forth to other to creating to building other forms of transportation. That's certainly one way we can do it. We can also retool we can get into other social

human kinds of forms of industry that are that are furthering those so I really do think that because we have a tremendously powerful ministry right now auto industry right now we don't again have to accept that for the future we can convert just like many of us are talking about piece conversion we're talking about changing some of the military budget some of the tremendous one hundred twenty billion dollars of military some of that a part of that anyway into peaceful uses like public transportation. Why can't we change some of the dependence on creating cars into other forms of jobs. You know in terms of technology too. I think that we're still going to have problems of parking finding space and so forth. We're going to have problems of road construction so forth. Even though we may be able to create better engines that are more efficient all the rest we've still got those problems to contend with. So I I am not one to rely on technology

finding a big technology finding a solution to all our problems. I think we have to look at technology very carefully. We have to be conscious of what Mumford talks about as mega Technics mega technology big overblown kind of technology and I think we need to think more in terms of smaller scale appropriate technology. And I think some of the proposals or alternatives I suggested are more in line with appropriate or small scale technology and less depending upon this giant industry. In terms of the family in the community Tom made some comments about the car helps the family stay together and do things together and so forth. That may be fine to bring the family together around an auto trip or whatever and I do too I use a car to go on trips and I I don't think I'm calling for elimination of all automobiles I mean that would really be at this point absurd although that might be something we will have to think about in the future.

But I'm talking about limiting the use of all bills I'm talking about particularly some drastic changes in our urban areas. At any rate I believe that instead of the automobile we could we could have our family together and we could travel comfortably using other forms of transportation. I've just spent 28 hours on the train in the last 48 hours and that's a long time to be on the train but in spite of that in spite of spending two nights on the train. Not in a bed. There are great things about public transportation like trains. There is a there's a conviviality about it there's a sense of community there's a lot of sharing that's possible. I have some criticisms yes of Amtrak but I also feel excited about the possibilities of trains and actually I don't think we should eliminate thinking about trains either for Vermont. Many people scoff at any possibility of trains but we could have some kind of bud cars and people have proposed this from Rutland to Burlington and in

between and from the Berryman period to Burlington and in between there's no reason why we couldn't have some energy efficient rail single rail cars going back and forth and try to make it appealing and attractive enough for people to take. That was David Conrad a Louis Mumford scholar from the University of Vermont. He spoke at a public forum recorded at St. Paul's Cathedral in Burlington on May 7th of this year. We also heard the views of Thomas Kinley of the Automobile Association of America. The topic was are we dependent on the car. Personal freedom and community ideals. This is been Vermont Public Radio forums crosscurrents a series of lectures and discussions exploring issues of concern in Vermont. This edition was recorded by Fred Wasser and Randall Balmer.