WEBVTT 00:09.933 --> 00:25.166 [Birds chirping] 00:25.166 --> 00:29.832 [Speaker 1:] [Reciting poem] Today, no breath of life's allowed, 00:29.833 --> 00:33.533 for Autumn spins her silken shroud. 00:33.533 --> 00:37.333 Thread upon thread, the earth is bound. 00:37.333 --> 00:40.766 November's needle makes the round. 00:40.766 --> 00:43.732 No wind may lift the fallen leaf. 00:43.733 --> 00:47.099 No flower split the face of grief. 00:47.100 --> 00:49.700 No flight of birds distract the eye 00:49.700 --> 00:53.666 across the smooth unraveled sky. 00:53.666 --> 00:57.199 So still the day, so pure, so bare. 00:57.200 --> 01:00.466 Imprisoned in her crystal stair 01:00.466 --> 01:05.266 Earth waits a miracle, man too. 01:05.266 --> 01:08.999 This is the day all saints pass through. 01:09.000 --> 01:20.366 [Heavy equipment movement and engines grinding] 01:20.366 --> 01:34.066 [Sounds of industry, faint music] 01:34.066 --> 01:44.399 [Sounds of industry, piano music] 01:44.400 --> 01:47.800 [Hammering] 01:47.800 --> 01:59.200 [Sounds of industry, faint music] 01:59.200 --> 02:10.333 [Hammering] 02:10.333 --> 02:15.233 [Construction activity] 02:15.233 --> 02:21.766 [Whistle blowing] 02:21.766 --> 02:43.566 [Music] 02:43.566 --> 02:47.432 [Can clunks] 02:47.433 --> 02:50.933 [Plastic unwrapping] 02:50.933 --> 03:00.666 [Music] 03:00.666 --> 03:08.932 [Can opening, metal twisting] 03:08.933 --> 03:12.866 [Music] 03:12.866 --> 03:20.466 [Tinfoil ripping] 03:20.466 --> 03:29.732 [Plastic wrap ripping] 03:29.733 --> 03:34.633 [Lunch pail thuds] 03:34.633 --> 03:41.366 [Music] 03:41.366 --> 03:45.699 [Countdown to Collision] 03:45.700 --> 03:48.100 [Apple crunching] 03:48.100 --> 03:52.333 [Speaker 2:] That seems to me one trouble with the present world, 03:52.333 --> 03:54.733 is that people think they've got to change everything. 03:54.733 --> 03:58.066 [Speaker 3:] Ice cream cone, or a sucker, 03:58.066 --> 03:59.666 or a box of Cracker Jacks. 03:59.666 --> 04:01.666 Cracker Jacks only used to be a nickel, you know. 04:01.666 --> 04:04.532 [Speaker 4:] But you take a person my age, 04:04.533 --> 04:07.933 and we live back in the past lots of the time. 04:07.933 --> 04:11.833 [Speaker 5:] [?] then as we have now, 04:11.833 --> 04:14.633 but I think it's because we have more people. 04:14.633 --> 04:17.633 [Speaker 6:] Well, it was clean. 04:17.633 --> 04:20.933 There wasn't a lot of trash in it like there is now. 04:20.933 --> 04:23.199 [Speaker 7:] I think it will be a pretty unusual place 04:23.200 --> 04:24.900 in the year 2000. 04:24.900 --> 04:31.500 [Speaker 8:] Smoke, I guess, probably from trucks, cars, and factories. 04:31.500 --> 04:36.366 [Speaker 9:] The Bible said that men should not live by bread alone, but by the word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 04:36.366 --> 04:38.266 And I believe it with all my heart. 04:38.266 --> 04:40.932 [Speaker 10:] What I'm mainly concerned, it is, is the children... 04:40.933 --> 04:44.433 Uh, it is, and it just seems like no one does anything to better it. 04:44.433 --> 04:47.866 [Speaker 11:] And another thing, the smog in my eyes is killing me. 04:47.866 --> 04:51.166 I think this could possibly be a very aggravating thing to me. 04:51.166 --> 04:54.699 [Speaker 12:] The world can only handle so many people, and I think we've about reached that limit. 04:54.700 --> 04:56.100 [Speaker 13:] It's getting away from us. 04:56.100 --> 04:58.366 Pretty soon, we're all gonna be drowned in this mess. 04:58.366 --> 05:01.732 [Speaker 14:] I think we're finding a rather crowded world. 05:01.733 --> 05:05.133 [Speaker 15:] Water pollution, air pollution, and nobody's doing anything about it. 05:05.133 --> 05:07.733 [Speaker 16:] I don't expect to reach my middle age. 05:07.733 --> 05:09.433 [Speaker 17:] In school, I say something, 05:09.433 --> 05:11.366 and people say, oh, why don't you shut up. 05:11.366 --> 05:13.632 [Speaker 18:] Something that is constructive, always destruction. 05:13.633 --> 05:15.133 I can't understand that. 05:15.133 --> 05:16.933 [Speaker 19:] I would try to keep it to one. 05:16.933 --> 05:18.599 One natural, and maybe adopt some. 05:18.600 --> 05:23.033 [Speaker 20:] LSD and speed, heroin. 05:23.033 --> 05:25.399 [Speaker 21:] Charlie Brown. 05:25.400 --> 05:28.233 [Speaker 22:] It's dirty air. 05:28.233 --> 05:29.999 [Sighing] 05:30.000 --> 05:34.033 [Speaker 23:] He works hard enough, because sometimes he has to work seven days a week. 05:34.033 --> 05:35.399 He never comes home. 05:35.400 --> 05:36.633 [Mumbling] 05:36.633 --> 05:37.466 [Speaker 21:] Crowded. 05:37.466 --> 05:38.432 [Speaker 22:] Gotta wave. 05:38.433 --> 05:39.333 [Speaker 19:] Of course. 05:39.333 --> 05:40.566 [Speaker 18:] To a mass revolt. 05:40.566 --> 05:41.799 [Speaker 17:] A mass of gas. 05:41.800 --> 05:42.900 [Speaker 23:] I don't what the answer is. 05:42.900 --> 05:43.833 [Speaker 24:] The whole world is going to... 05:43.833 --> 05:44.266 [Speaker 15:] To garbage. 05:44.266 --> 05:45.266 [Speaker 14:] Your returnable type... 05:45.266 --> 05:46.132 [Speaker 25:] Your [Inaudible]. 05:46.133 --> 05:47.399 [Speaker 12:] It's a population explosion. 05:47.400 --> 05:48.533 [Speaker 26:] Generation to gen... 05:48.533 --> 05:49.399 [Speaker 11:] Shortcomings. 05:49.400 --> 05:50.366 [Speaker 10:] [Inaudible] 05:50.366 --> 05:51.099 [Speaker 8:] Well... 05:51.100 --> 05:52.200 [Speaker 27:] 30 years ago... 05:52.200 --> 05:52.666 [Speaker 6:] [Inaudible] 05:52.666 --> 05:53.666 [Speaker 28:] I miss them. 05:53.666 --> 05:54.499 [Speaker 4:] Can remember... 05:54.500 --> 05:55.100 [Speaker 3:] Too much. 05:55.100 --> 05:56.000 [Speaker 2:] [?] 05:56.000 --> 05:57.400 [Clearing throat] 05:57.400 --> 06:17.100 [Music] 06:17.100 --> 06:24.766 [Water splashing] 06:24.766 --> 06:50.899 [Music] 06:50.900 --> 07:01.566 [Traffic sounds] 07:01.566 --> 07:29.166 [Music] 07:29.166 --> 07:40.699 [Jet engine whines] 07:40.700 --> 09:33.433 [Music] 09:33.433 --> 09:39.733 [Transit bus engine] 09:39.733 --> 11:05.666 [Music] 11:05.666 --> 11:09.032 [Ship horn blows] 11:09.033 --> 11:16.199 [Music] 11:16.200 --> 11:18.966 [Train wheels clanging] 11:18.966 --> 11:21.166 [Train horn] 11:21.166 --> 11:25.866 [Airplane propeller and engine] 11:25.866 --> 11:30.699 [Water flowing] 11:30.700 --> 11:36.366 [Helicopter engine] 11:36.366 --> 12:54.599 [Music] 12:54.600 --> 12:58.333 [Dogs barking] 12:58.333 --> 14:26.366 [Music] 14:26.366 --> 14:34.799 [Siren wailing] 14:34.800 --> 14:51.366 [Music] 14:51.366 --> 15:06.399 [Earth-moving equipment] 15:06.400 --> 15:18.533 [Silence] 15:18.533 --> 15:19.999 [Screeching tires] 15:20.000 --> 15:20.966 [Crashing] 15:20.966 --> 15:22.532 [Police sirens] 15:22.533 --> 15:28.099 [Police radio chatter] 15:28.100 --> 15:30.666 [Phone ringing] 15:30.666 --> 15:39.266 [Baby crying, horns honking] 15:39.266 --> 15:41.532 [Speaker 29:] Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. 15:41.533 --> 15:47.166 Welcome aboard 20th Century Airlines flight 1980. 15:47.166 --> 15:50.366 We'll be fleeing almost indefinitely. 15:50.366 --> 15:55.699 They seem to have us in a holding pattern of some sort around the sun, I think. 15:55.700 --> 15:56.766 [Laughter] 15:56.766 --> 15:57.666 Umm. 15:57.666 --> 16:01.199 Unfortunately, it may be necessary to move 16:01.200 --> 16:06.100 some of you folks in first class back into the economy section. 16:06.100 --> 16:12.566 We may not have enough dinners aboard or enough wine. 16:12.566 --> 16:16.666 Of course, we have plenty of snacks. 16:16.666 --> 16:24.366 We'd just like to request that you keep your trash in and around your own seat. 16:24.366 --> 16:28.266 Otherwise, we seem to be in good shape. 16:28.266 --> 16:32.466 We have enough air for years in this, sort of, cruising. 16:32.466 --> 16:35.566 You may think it smells a little funny, 16:35.566 --> 16:37.699 but then, so does the water. 16:37.700 --> 16:41.300 However, you can reuse all the water you want. 16:41.300 --> 16:45.133 We just pump it right back up there again and again. 16:45.133 --> 16:51.366 Now, in the unlikely event there should be a temporary failure in the cabin air and water supply, 16:51.366 --> 16:54.599 a compartment over your head will open automatically, 16:54.600 --> 16:58.333 and a rubber Halloween face mask will drop down. 16:58.333 --> 17:06.233 Just pull it over your head and amuse one another as best you can. 17:06.233 --> 17:12.133 Now, if some of you people on the night side care to look out, you can see the moon. 17:12.133 --> 17:20.566 [...] 17:20.566 --> 17:22.866 [Music] 17:22.866 --> 17:24.499 [Hugh Downs:] Where are we going? 17:24.500 --> 17:27.033 [Music] 17:27.033 --> 17:29.599 Who knows? 17:29.600 --> 17:32.466 In any case, it shouldn't take too long to get there. 17:32.466 --> 17:36.166 Our tickets are bought and paid for, and we are well on our way. 17:36.166 --> 17:42.532 As you know, the population of the planet will about double in the next 30 years. 17:42.533 --> 17:45.166 We continue to multiply and expand, 17:45.166 --> 17:48.732 and our grossest national product is waste, 17:48.733 --> 17:51.999 increasing at twice the rate of the population, 17:52.000 --> 17:54.900 amounting to billions of tons every year, 17:54.900 --> 17:58.933 rising from the earth, sinking on the surface of the land, 17:58.933 --> 18:03.299 and always in the end pouring, settling, 18:03.300 --> 18:06.100 draining into the rivers and oceans. 18:06.100 --> 18:10.366 [Music] 18:10.366 --> 18:13.532 Leaving behind only the large rusting objects 18:13.533 --> 18:18.533 and the trillion indestructible cans and plastic things. 18:18.533 --> 18:24.866 [Music] 18:24.866 --> 18:27.966 And also, the growing trace of poison 18:27.966 --> 18:29.832 that accumulates in living tissue 18:29.833 --> 18:33.199 and increases on up the food chain to man himself. 18:33.200 --> 18:37.433 [Music] 18:37.433 --> 18:44.033 In this country alone, a ton of air pollutants each year for each man, woman, and child. 18:44.033 --> 18:48.299 Now, there are hundreds of thousands of toxic gases, which we can't even identify. 18:48.300 --> 18:51.333 New ones created every day by photochemical reactions 18:51.333 --> 18:53.566 high up in the super pollution that we breathe. 18:53.566 --> 18:58.232 [Music] 18:58.233 --> 19:01.333 Of course, most of the solids end up in our water, 19:01.333 --> 19:05.999 along with raw sewage, oil, nitrates, phosphorus, 19:06.000 --> 19:14.500 detergents, organic nutrients, mercury, and a thousand more. 19:14.500 --> 19:20.100 Our consuming thirst for unrestored quantities of water will soon be impossible to quench. 19:20.100 --> 19:26.333 As our residues are discharged ever downstream to assure eventually a septic world 19:26.333 --> 19:30.399 beyond the natural limits of waste and delusion. 19:30.400 --> 19:36.000 There is now no corner of the globe that does not receive its share of industrial fallout. 19:36.000 --> 19:39.433 In the forests and fields that some of us have known, 19:39.433 --> 19:43.699 the marshes, the estuaries, the plains and mountains, 19:43.700 --> 19:46.333 the last of the wilderness itself, 19:46.333 --> 19:50.933 all shrink from the expanding presence of man. 19:50.933 --> 20:07.566 [Music] 20:07.566 --> 20:10.766 We are now paving a million acres a year. 20:10.766 --> 20:15.066 And those who flee from the countryside, which can no longer support them, 20:15.066 --> 20:19.566 in turn create the choking suburban sprawl of megalopolis 20:19.566 --> 20:23.766 and join lines of commuters who move at horse-and-buggy speed on superhighways 20:23.766 --> 20:26.966 built to get them into traffic-clogged cities, 20:26.966 --> 20:30.966 where they can find no place to park their high-pollution automobiles, 20:30.966 --> 20:36.666 which most of us seem doomed to drag through life along with a growing collection of the products of planned obsolescence. 20:36.666 --> 20:42.666 [Music] 20:42.666 --> 20:47.499 This is the bright future promised by technology. 20:47.500 --> 20:51.000 This is the utopia we have made for ourselves, 20:51.000 --> 20:55.400 by coupling the Industrial Revolution to an expanding population. 20:55.400 --> 21:03.000 [Music] 21:03.000 --> 21:08.166 And now, we will pay the price, because our fathers progressed so admirably. 21:08.166 --> 21:16.432 Now, the simple pleasures, the moments of peace, the things of beauty, are becoming harder to find. 21:16.433 --> 21:21.333 Under a growing barrage of noise and nerves and electronic bad taste, 21:21.333 --> 21:25.566 in the service of somebody else's limited interests. 21:25.566 --> 21:30.532 It must be realized that all of our environmental ills are byproducts. 21:30.533 --> 21:34.466 They are the results of the way we live and eat and travel. 21:34.466 --> 21:38.132 The way we build our cities, and what we consume, 21:38.133 --> 21:40.599 and how we entertain ourselves. 21:40.600 --> 21:46.733 And all of our problems aggravate and feed upon one another in ways that we don't yet understand. 21:46.733 --> 21:51.633 Many scientists now believe that we may be entering the twilight of human existence. 21:51.633 --> 21:56.866 In this age of affluence, of technological marvels and medical miracles, 21:56.866 --> 22:02.866 is paradoxically also the age of chronic ailments, of anxiety, and even of despair. 22:02.866 --> 22:10.499 An age in which our fellow creatures face destruction within the same delicately balanced ecosystem that supports us. 22:10.500 --> 22:13.000 And in which our legacy to our own children 22:13.000 --> 22:17.033 is a rapidly growing number of ways to die. 22:17.033 --> 22:19.666 It is as simple as that. 22:19.666 --> 22:46.799 [Music] 22:46.800 --> 22:53.766 [Hugh Downs:] There is some good evidence that most of our people are deciding on a different road to the future. 22:53.766 --> 23:00.666 It's not without significance that the president has signed into law a unique bill establishing a national policy 23:00.666 --> 23:06.432 to permit conditions under which man and nature can co-exist in productive harmony. 23:06.433 --> 23:09.499 A Council on Environmental Quality was established 23:09.500 --> 23:16.100 that requires that all federal activities be subject to review as to their impact on the environment. 23:16.100 --> 23:23.200 There is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to do research on long-range pollution problems. 23:23.200 --> 23:30.300 The Environmental Protection Agency was created to mount an attack on the interrelated problems of air and water pollution, 23:30.300 --> 23:35.300 solid waste, pesticides, radiation, and noise. 23:35.300 --> 23:40.400 State and local governments, industries, unions, universities, 23:40.400 --> 23:46.300 and other institutions are working to adjust themselves to this new awareness. 23:46.300 --> 23:51.133 A more careful evaluation is now being made of the Alaska oil pipeline proposals. 23:51.133 --> 23:56.266 The jetport once planned for the Florida Everglades is not being built. 23:56.266 --> 24:04.099 The manufacturers of all our goods, from soaps to cosmetics, to cars and soda crackers, 24:04.100 --> 24:10.966 are eagerly seeking ways to demonstrate that they too care about the ecological questions which trouble us. 24:10.966 --> 24:17.999 These changes in attitude reflect that we, the people, have discovered that it's our air, our water, 24:18.000 --> 24:21.900 and our planet that are in jeopardy. 24:21.900 --> 24:25.100 To hold our institutions to making these difficult adjustments, 24:25.100 --> 24:30.966 we must reject the concept that the only freedom of choice we have left is in the supermarket. 24:30.966 --> 24:36.532 We must lay our hands on the levers of change and renewal in our society. 24:36.533 --> 24:43.099 The issues are complicated. Some of the choices and trade-offs, as the experts tell us, are hard to make. 24:43.100 --> 24:49.466 But if we don't participate in making these difficult decisions, they will make them for us. 24:49.466 --> 24:54.799 We can have the kind of environment we want. But the price is involvement. 24:54.800 --> 24:59.633 There's hardly a conservation or consumer organization in this country 24:59.633 --> 25:05.266 which is not striving to better understand and influence this movement toward ecological responsibility. 25:05.266 --> 25:07.232 We can join them. 25:07.233 --> 25:11.966 We can participate in the pollution hearings in our communities and states. 25:11.966 --> 25:18.599 We can stop assuming that we have to accept ugliness and obsolete land use and zoning laws, 25:18.600 --> 25:23.600 a high rate of noise, congestion, pollution, open dumps, and doubletalk 25:23.600 --> 25:25.733 as the price of progress. 25:25.733 --> 25:30.966 We can find out who is polluting our land and water and ask them why. 25:30.966 --> 25:37.832 We can be a thorn in the side of those who think our ecological concern is a passing fad. 25:37.833 --> 25:43.666 We could sometimes wish it were a passing fad, because then it would go away, as fads do. But it isn't. 25:43.666 --> 25:50.366 And when enough of us have begun to earnestly commit to these principles, we'll begin to face the facts. 25:50.366 --> 25:56.699 In our free and open society, the first place to look for the ecological villain is in the mirror. 25:56.700 --> 26:04.166 Only then will we be on a high road toward the future, and only then will we have begun to take personal responsibility 26:04.166 --> 26:07.366 for the direction of this nation. 26:07.366 --> 26:12.266 After all, this is what our founding fathers had in mind from the beginning. 26:12.266 --> 26:14.566 [Music] 26:14.566 --> 26:17.632 [An Airlie Production] 26:17.633 --> 26:21.999 [Executive Producer: Murdock Head, M.D.] 26:22.000 --> 26:27.866 [Commentary by Hugh Downs] 26:27.866 --> 26:33.299 [Producer: Frank Kavanaugh] 26:33.300 --> 26:39.466 [Director-Editor: Charles E. Francis] 26:39.466 --> 26:40.899 [Cinematographers: Charles Durie, Charles Strathman] 26:40.900 --> 26:44.566 [Paul Noonan, Raymond Garcia, James Carpenter] 26:44.566 --> 26:49.732 [Special consultant: Thomas F. Williams] 26:49.733 --> 26:52.433 [Produced by The George Washington University Medical Center] 26:52.433 --> 26:56.733 [Department of Medical and Public Affairs] 26:56.733 --> 27:01.299 [In cooperation with The American Academy of Family Physicians] 27:01.300 --> 27:11.000 [and the District of Columbia Medical Society]