Alone in the Midst of the Land

[Music] well unto them that join house to house that lay field to field till there be no room and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of the land Isaiah 5th chapter the 8th verse [Music] oh [Music] welcome to the museum boys and girls if you will look above you at the ceiling you will see groups of strange twinkling lights these represent the stars in the skies above Chicago for more than 50 years we have not been able to see the sky but if we could we would see the following groups of stars called constellations Versa major Versa minor andropia J the planet Earth is nearly dead its most intelligent animal species the homo sapiens commonly called man approaches Extinction for some time this species has been unable to reproduce those few still living wear padded suits and masks and near the [Music] end man did not die from germ warfare nor in nuclear Holocaust he died because he killed his planet for some reason the homo sapiens thought his breed stood apart from nature never fully accepting that mankind was but one animal species among many man destroyed his environment with willful abandon and the environment in turn destroyed man this is a progress report about the balance of nature in the year 1970 and what we can expect in years to come sometime in the future man will attempt long trips through space inside the rocket ships everything will be limited air and water will be recycled an efficient balance of plants and animals will be maintained AED for food population will be limited waste or overcrowding would bring death to those on board the ship Earth itself is a spaceship moving through the heavens and around the Sun it has a delicately balanced environment providing living space air water and food we are all aboard the spaceship Earth on its maiden voyage through the universe and something is going wrong based on the present rates of birth and death there will be more than four times as many people to be fed and housed within the lifetime of a child born in 1970 at least 3 and 1 half million people will starve to death in 1970 a mere handful compared to the numbers expected to starve within 10 years smoke and filth clog our air at times pollution is so thick that it damages trees in the forest preserves surrounding Chicago we have twice the incidence of lung cancer than is found in a country like Norway where the air is cleaner ecologists fear that mankind will die of Suffocation one out of four hospital beds across the world contains a patient ill because of polluted Water Lake Michigan formed 12,000 years ago is now dying 100 years after man began dumping things into it experts now say that at the present rate Lake Michigan will be dead in 9 years despite the awesome predictions we continue to ignore the fact that human beings live within limits there is just so much land so much air so much water every living thing Depends for its life on other their living things and the warning signs are up during the last 2,000 years 106 species of mammals have become extinct but nearly half of those animals have died in the last 70 years more than 100 species of birds have disappeared in the last 300 years more than 250 additional species of mammals and 350 species of birds are now threatened and expected to die out within the next few years virtually extinct in 1970 for example are the European bison PR wolski's horse on which the armies of KublaCon once rode into battle father David's deer from China the beautiful Honduran jaguar and the American Red Wolf most of these animals don't live in their natural state but are maintained only in zoos falling away in numbers and scheduled to become extinct within our Century our polar bears the pygmy hippo the Great Indian rhino American alligators and the walrus just to name a few the road that leads to Extinction seems to be a helpless Highway built by man no species is immune by implication not even man himself once in a while a great ecological disaster creates public indignation last year for example countless thousands of birds were killed in California by oil leaking from an undersea well fish in great numbers died damaged to Plankton the one cell SE animal that produces much of the oxygen we breathe is feared to have been great but most serious is the fact that other accidents like this one could still happen oil is the enemy of water and all life within it but when because of industrial carelessness 5,000 gallons of soybean oil was poured into the Chicago River on March 21st 1969 no test for biological damage was even made the water in the Chicago River no longer has enough Purity to bother to measure for such minor contaminations where once the Indians drank freely we can now only carry sewage and Propel boats the state water plan of Illinois published some 3 years ago declares that the beautiful Illinois River is too polluted to be used for a water supply the same plan states that swimming or even water skiing in any of the streams or rivers in Illinois is not recommended despite known danger to man and his healthful environment three steel companies and three oil refineries expel more than 7 billion gallons of waste into the Calumet River daily water that contains oil nitrogen and and cyanide the Calumet flows into Lake Michigan which is of course the source of drinking water for Chicago and many other communities with totally contaminated Lake Erie as a grim reminder a portion of our own Calumet Harbor is now said to be vying for the dubious distinction of being the most polluted body of water in the world some beaches on Lake Michigan have been closed to swimmers for years many others close for periods each summer with increasing frequency even without considering the pollutants man has changed the entire Ecology of Lake Michigan in the last 40 years it once abounded with lake trout chub perch and white fish providing an annual commercial catch of 265 million pounds but the fishing industry was virtually destroyed by a parasite the sea lampri eel the lampri entered the lake through the Wellen Canal adapted to fresh water and attack the trout in 1942 1 million pounds of trout were caught in the Chicago Wan fishing ground 8 years later the same area produced only six trout and five of them bore scars from the lamp eel the Wellen canal and later the St Lawrence Seaway in produced another sea creature to lake waters the ale wife a worthless trash fish it now accounts for approximately 90% of the fish weight in Lake Michigan eventually conservationists found ways of coping with the lampre eel but the AL wife is still a pest especially during the midsummer die offs that fowl the beaches in Hope of destroying the AL wife and at the same time providing recreational fishing for sportsmen the state of Michigan and introduced the COO salmon to the lake the COO is a large game fish a magnificent predator and it has provided a good deal of excitement thus far but whether or not it can help solve the ecological problems of Lake Michigan May well become a moot point half of the salmon planted in the lake die of DDT poisoning before they reach maturity and 25,000 lb of coo purchased commercially for sale to the public were impounded by the federal government last year because the fish contained dangerously high concentrations of DDT in their systems DDT gets into the waters in runoff from areas where the fruit crops or Fields have been sprayed these attempts at Pest Control can unbalance the delicate ecological system of the Earth for example in the spring of 1956 the people in the Suburban community of Elmhurst Illinois proud of their hundred-year-old trees became concerned about the Dutch elm disease they undertook saturation spraying to kill the beetle that carried [Music] it what they did not realize was that the DDT sprayed on the trees would be eaten by the earthworms when the leaves fell to the ground in the fall the following spring the robins returned to Elmhurst but by miday there were dead birds in nearly every yard and a caran smell was in the air Robins sparrows starlings gral kinglets all dead from eating The Poisoned worms what's more DDT continues to have some effect on the soil on which it lands for some 18 years scientists were shocked to learn recently that that DDT was found in the tissues of penguins in the Antarctic many thousands of miles away from any area where the pesticide was sprayed the DDT had apparently been carried to the polar region on the wind and by migrating fish and birds Dr Joseph hickey chairman of the Department of Wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin said the pesticide may lead to the end of the species penguin as it is apparently doing with other bird species closer to home evidence was presented at the 1969 hearings in Madison that DDT is threatening many types of birds and bringing to near Extinction a number of the birds of prey including the bald eagle the Osprey and the paragan Falcon the pesticide apparently affects the nervous system of the birds the eggs develop improperly shells are too thin and crack or break before the young are hatched in itself the death of birds might not seem a great catastrophy to some but ecologists indicate that birds and man sit together at the top end of the food chain we must understand that the pesticides which affect the nervous system of birds could have a like effect on man as the concentrations build up there are predictions that man may bring death to his own planet Earth if that happens it will be caused by ignorance pillage and wanting destruction of the circumstances that gave birth to human life for as we poison the water our industrial life violates the air spewing 140 million tons of pollutants Skyward every year every jet that takes off leaves 88 lbs of residue behind as a souvenir in a city like Chicago that amounts to some 66 tons a day during the last industrial Century more than 400 billion tons of carbon alone were artificially introduced into the atmosphere leading to what some scientists are calling the greenhouse Theory according to this Theory the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide thrown into the air form a dome in the atmosphere warming the climate artificially therefore at the present rate the mean annual temperatures all over the world would increase by more than 5° over the next 50 years this would speed the melting of the polar ice caps raise the level of the oceans and put much needed land underwater closer to home we have already noticed weather changes probably caused by air pollution average snowfall at the south end of Lake Michigan has increased from 54 in in the 1920s to 78 in in the 1940s to 85 in by the late 1950s this increase follows a curve that is very similar to the growth of production in the Chicago Industrial Area but changing weather isn't the only problem lurking in the air in 1948 at dinora Pennsylvania 20 people died and 5,000 were reported ill when polluted air was trapped on the ground by a thermal inversion a similar inversion in 1953 killed more than 4,000 people in London in November of 1969 for nearly a week Chicago was struck by a super smog people with lung conditions and children with respiratory illness were urged to curtail normal activity and stay indoors the situation with our air is serious to the point of tragedy Urban dwellers in a number of our cities breathe into their lungs the equivalent intoxic materials of one to two packs of cigarettes each day respiratory diseases are doubling every 5 years at the same time that we poison the air we limit this planet's ability to create oxygen in America alone we pave over more than a million Acres of oxygen producing vegetation each year in addition we're using much of the land to build new homes for the growing population in Los Angeles when they ran out of flat space for homes they built on the slopes the result for some time now the hillsides surrounding the city have been giving way because the animal and vegetable life has been so badly Disturbed the Earth will not hold water and washes away great amounts of land are being taken permanently out of production at a time when there are fears that we will run out of food for some years now the world has been consuming more food than it produces to maintain the supply of food at its present level will require a doubling of all food production by the year 2000 more than a billion people now crowd our cities 13 the population of the Earth by the time the century ends there will be another 3 billion people and most of them will join us in the urban communities observation and experiments with animals indicate that crowding all by itself is a pollutant of Life groups of mice studied at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo for example get along well together until their space becomes limited by increase in their numbers at which point they begin to show signs of acute stress with these mice overcrowding created a disordered and unstable structure in which social Customs broke down the population collapsed and eventually died off adding it all up one would get the idea that if nothing is done to reverse the trend man will become a hungry thirsty breathless psychopath a plaque at the Academy of Sciences in Chicago reads this is the good green planet earth on which you and I are but passengers in an endless journey through space other worlds there may be but this one is ours we must understand it if we are to conserve it scientists are now giving Lake Michigan nine more years how much longer for the air for the land and for us [Applause] the vast loneliness of the Moon makes you realize what you have back there the Earth from here is a Grand Oasis astronaut James a Lovel December 2 24th 1968 [Music] l [Music]