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Life & Times Transcript
12/20/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- How is a collection of eggs and feathers helping to save the world's bird population? Linnea Hall>> That's where they determined the pesticide DDT was actually causing the thinning, so as a consequence now, we've been able to ban DDT in the United States. Val Zavala>> And then, it may look like a colony of birds is nesting on Melrose Avenue. See what happens when an environmental artist branches out in Los Angeles. It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> It's a little known institute in Camarillo where scientists are trying to save birds, many of them endangered, and they're doing so by looking into their DNA from as long as four hundred years ago. As Paul Vercammen tells us, it's an attempt to save the future of these birds by delving into their past. Allan Mee>> This is a Turquoise-browed Motmot. Paul Vercammen>> Inside is a morgue where scientists look for evidence. You could call them the crime scene investigators, or CSIs, of the bird world. They hope to save bird species by finding out just what's killing them, from the small Cotinga to the giant Condor. Outside the nondescript warehouse in Camarillo, the sign reads Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, or WFVZ. Linnea Hall>> Well, this is the largest egg collection of its kind in the world. Paul Vercammen>> This center is vital to the survival of birds. Linnea Hall>> These nests and eggs are important because they hold information that's critical to the conservation of birds that are out in the wild. Paul Vercammen>> Dr. Linnea Hall runs a researcher's haven filled with fifty-four thousand bird study skins, eight hundred mounted birds, twenty thousand nests and almost two hundred thousand egg sets, all catalogued. The eggs and the nests and the bird skins come from all corners of the globe from all seven continents and more than one hundred countries. All of this makes up for one expansive collection here in Camarillo. Take a case study right from our own back yard. These crushed eggs show how the California Brown Pelican population dropped to seven hundred twenty-seven more than three decades ago. Linnea Hall>> It's almost complete reproductive failure in Brown Pelicans off of our coast and off of other coasts in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Paul Vercammen>> This pelican egg is from 1929. Scientists compared healthy, thick-shelled Brown Pelican eggs from many decades ago with fragile, thin eggs from the 1960s and 1970s. Linnea Hall>> The walls of the egg are so thin that obviously, you know, they look like they've just completely collapsed under the weight of the bird. The other thing is that the embryos, in some cases, don't even survive, so they aren't even fully developed. Paul Vercammen>> There are now tens of thousands of California Brown Pelicans, thanks to the scientists' discovery. Linnea Hall>> They found the thinning. They were able to go farther and to extract particular residues from out of the shell membranes and out of the shells themselves. That's where they determined that the pesticide DDT was actually causing the thinning. So as a consequence now, we've been able to ban DDT in the United States. That was, in large part, because of the collections of the Western Foundation. Paul Vercammen>> Other contaminants reduced our California Condor to just twenty-two birds. Dr. Allan Mee has been studying Condors for five years. Allan Mee>> You know, a lot of people come here to do comparative analysis of a lot of different species they can lay out, get hundreds of specimens from different species and look at what the variation between those specimens is. Paul Vercammen>> Mee looked for what might be poisoning Condors. Some clues are found in the middle part of feathers. Allan Mee>> Because a lot of contaminants that birds ingest along with normal food end up -- the birds try to excrete it in feathers and bones. So if you remove a bone sample or remove a growing feather, we can analyze that for contaminants. Paul Vercammen>> Scientific research can be heartbreaking. Allan Mee>> These are chicks that were hatched in the wild, but failed to fledge and died in the nest. Paul Vercammen>> Just four months ago, one Condor chick died of starvation and the other from West Nile Virus. Despite these deaths, great news. There are now two hundred eighty-nine California Condors. There is a lesson in every cabinet here. Linnea Hall>> This is the largest bird egg in the world. It's not a dinosaur fossil, it's not a fake egg. It's a real bird egg. Paul Vercammen>> It's from the extinct Aepyomis, or Elephant Bird, a cousin of the ostrich. Linnea Hall>> So we have the largest collection in the world of whole Aepyomis eggs. This is an egg from the Elephant Bird. It went extinct in about the 1600s on the island of Madagascar. They were huge, about a fourteen foot tall flightless bird. Not carnivorous, luckily. Paul Vercammen>> Researchers learned what Madagascar might have looked like four hundred years ago from a cracked Elephant Bird shell. Linnea Hall>> So what they did was ground down the shell and were able to extract pollen greens from extinct plants that were around at the time that the Elephant Bird was living on the island. They were able to identify the plants and thereby get a picture of what the habitat was like when this bird was actually alive. Paul Vercammen>> The Foundation's roots can be traced back to 1956 when it was founded by the late Ed Harrison and four other southern California naturalists. Now its collection spans the globe and reaches deep into the rain forests of Central America. Rene Corado is the center's collection manager. Here's a Quetzal from his native Guatemala. It's the country's national symbol, but the Quetzal's numbers dwindled as hunters killed the birds for their long feathers. Rene Corado>> They live in the rain forests. They are very quiet birds. Paul Vercammen>> Conservation efforts are bringing the Quetzals back in greater numbers, but Corado's field work shows more needs to be done to clean up Guatemala's polluted Motague River where he grew up and to protect birds such as the Cock of the Rock. Rene Corado>> They just jump and rock there near the river and they fight like cocks. Paul Vercammen>> Here you can also see how Guatemala's Orioles weave their intricate nests. Rene Corado>> This is like horsehair. Paul Vercammen>> One of Corado's favorite nests was fashioned by an African Weaver Bird. Rene Corado>> These guys build a nest like this with a tunnel down. Paul Vercammen>> Or how about a water-worthy nest? So we actually have a floating nest here? Linnea Hall>> Yeah. This is a very interesting one. Paul Vercammen>> A Pie-Billed Grebe, native to southern California, made this architectural marble for calm inland waters. A bird that nested in trees is part of a big drama right now. This is a mounted Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, a species declared extinct, but in the last two years, there have been reports of Ivory-Bill Woodpecker sightings in Arkansas and Florida. Linnea Hall>> We've had several researchers come to take photographs of the birds in different poses with the wings slightly spread and then closed because they're trying to get an idea of whether the birds that were in Arkansas and in Florida actually were definitely Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers based on the location of the white on the wings and the white on the back. Paul Vercammen>> At the WFVZ, they hope those are living Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers and not their genetic relatives, Pileated Woodpeckers. The amount of research material here is overwhelming and yet the WFVZ is under-exposed. The nonprofit is open to tours by appointment only, but the Foundation is reaching out to the public more, even building a classroom. Linnea Hall>> We'd like to expose people to the beautiful world of birds. Paul Vercammen>> And students can learn how the Foundation battles for bird survival by providing scientists with trays and trays of precious DNA. Paul Vercammen, Life and Times, Camarillo. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> We all know that our addiction to oil puts a dent in our wallet, but what about our health? Well, now the former head of California's EPA says that our addiction to oil impacts our health and the hazards have been kept secret for years. Saul Gonzalez talks with Terry Tamminen, author of the new book, "Lives Per Gallon". Saul Gonzalez>> Terry Tamminen, thanks for joining us on Life and Times. Terry Tamminen>> Thanks for the invitation. Saul Gonzalez>> In your new book, "Lives Per Gallon", you describe a society of junkies where the drug of choice is petroleum and all the products related to petroleum. Explain that a bit more. Terry Tamminen>> Well, the only difference I would have in your question is that it's not the drug of choice. As my book documents, for almost a century, oil and auto companies have lied to the public and lied to regulators and actually have been proven guilty of conspiracies in court to take away our alternatives to their products, to oil and to the internal combustion engine. Things like eliminating clean electric mass transit in forty-five American cities, including right here in Santa Monica, burning the Red Cars and dumping some right out here in the ocean off the Santa Monica Pier. So we know that this is not an addiction of choice, but it is an addiction because we don't really have other alternatives that are practical, thanks to these oil and auto companies, and we do have to get from point A to point B. Saul Gonzalez>> We're the victims of a conspiracy? Terry Tamminen>> In some measure, and I use that term advisedly. Again, proven in court and documented in my book. In other cases, it's lobbying and general lies to the public. Things like lying about the value of high-octane fuels which the FCC has found a number of oil companies guilty of lying to the public about those types of things. We know that the auto companies have used their amazing lobbying power and lied about the ability to make battery electric cars or to reduce the fuel consumption of their vehicles. Again, all documented in the book, so I don't say this lightly. But when the public and the regulators are lied to, that's a way of effectively addicting you to the products that they're selling. Saul Gonzalez>> If we do need this stuff, if we do need the fix of our automobiles, the fix of our petroleum use, what are the consequences of the addiction? Terry Tamminen>> Well, first of all, the most obvious one is in public health. The studies we now know and are documented in the book show that a child who lives near a busy urban freeway loses about one percent of his or her lung function every single year and it's directly related to petroleum pollution. We know that a hundred thousand people die prematurely in this country every single year from the same cause. And six and a half million suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases from the same cause. But it's not just that. Our addiction is costing lives defending our supply of oil in places like Iraq and around the globe, millions of dollars being spent in Columbia and Ecuador to secure our supply of oil in those countries and people die because of our addiction in Nigeria, Ecuador and other places, third world countries, where oil companies have gone in and destroyed the landscape, destroyed the environment and poisoned the drinking water and ground such that people are literally dying so that we can have our fix of oil. Saul Gonzalez>> But aren't people comfortable with that, to be quite blunt? Don't they know enough about the risks, enough about the dangers of petroleum and the global petroleum economy, and they've made their peace with this? Terry Tamminen>> I disagree because the oil and auto companies have spent almost a century lying to regulators, lying to the public, about the harms of their products remarkably similar to the way the tobacco companies operated. In fact, what comes out -- Saul Gonzalez>> -- explain that parallel. Terry Tamminen>> Well, what comes out of a tailpipe is remarkably similar to what comes out of a cigarette. Where you can walk away from anyone who's smoking and get away from second-hand smoke, none of us can get away from the second-hand smoke of petroleum pollution. As we stand here right now over busy Pacific Coast Highway, we're inhaling the same chemical constituents that are found in second-hand tobacco smoke and our lungs are paying the price accordingly. Saul Gonzalez>> I read recently that we have something like seven hundred million cars and light trucks on this planet. That's expected to grow by another twenty-five percent over the next twenty years. Considering that's the present and that's one future, at least, how do we get off of this stuff? How do we break the addiction when it is so thoroughly intertwined with how this world works? Terry Tamminen>> Well, I think it's a couple of things. First of all, if people are informed, I think they will make different choices. They'll use their cars less, they'll buy the most fuel-efficient ones when they can. They'll do simple things like inflating their tires properly which most people don't and that costs you about two or three percent of your fuel economy right there. Saul Gonzalez>> You're sure that people would do that? They're such rational actors that they would do that? It's very easy to get in that car, to buy that Hummer if you have the money and the inclination and you don't think about any of this. Terry Tamminen>> Well, but if you have the money, you know, those Hummers and the other SUVs are sitting now in dealer's showrooms ever since the price of gas went above three dollars and, of course, it's come back a little bit, but we know and we've seen in the past that it will go up again and hits as high as almost four dollars. Saul Gonzalez>> But it's only when they hit their pocketbooks that peoples' behavior changes, no? Terry Tamminen>> Some people. I think some people are motivated as they learn about the health consequences, others by the cost of petroleum, others by just the congestion on roads. But I think more people will turn to mass transit. Every time we add a new mass transit line here in Los Angeles, for example, we see tens of thousands of people suddenly flock to it. So I think people will act when they have information. I think they'll also act in the voting booth and make this a Litmus test with elected leaders. The second way that we get off of this is by getting our government to treat oil and auto companies the way they treated tobacco companies because we've been lied to, conspiracies proven in court that have taken away our alternative. We need to sue them and force them to give up some of these amazing profits that they're making and put it back into the pockets of the taxpayers to pay for health care costs and other out-of-pocket costs that states and the federal government are bearing, just like we did with tobacco companies. My goal is not to put them out of business. In fact, it's to civilize them. It's to give the oil companies a clean, healthy product that sells for decades to come, to give car companies, especially American car companies, a competitive advantage which right now they're seeding to the Japanese and, very soon, the Chinese. Then, of course, the final thing is, we've got to evolve to something beyond petroleum. While right now, we're focusing on biofuels and that's good and natural gas -- I drive a natural gas-powered vehicle -- and battery electrics are even making a comeback, we've got to evolve to something that is petroleum-free and that to me is hydrogen. We need to be thinking about this not just for the pollutants that are harming our air and our lungs, but also the ones that are literally changing the climate of our planet. Saul Gonzalez>> Terry Tamminen, I want to thank you for joining us on Life and Times and thank you for your provocative thoughts. Terry Tamminen>> Thank you. Thanks for having me. Val Zavala>> So do you agree with Terry Tamminen? We'd love to know and you can put your opinions on our Blog. Just go to kcet.org and click on the Life and Times Blog. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> Melrose Avenue is known for its avant-garde shops and stores, but there's a clothing store on Melrose that has wrapped itself up in something so unusual that even regular Melrose shoppers have to stop and stare. It's the Max Azria store and it's enveloped in waves of willow twigs and branches, and who's the artist behind this? A former hospital administrator from North Carolina who decided rather late in life to go to art school. Pat Dougherty>> My name is Pat Dougherty. I'm a sculptor. Sometimes I answer to environmental sculptor. [Film Clip] Pat Dougherty>> This building was here and was the Max Azria flagship store. They had the idea that maybe they should work with artists in some way, maybe a big environmental artist or maybe some kind of installation artist. So they saw a work of mine in a French fashion magazine and then they pasted that up on their board and it sat there for a year. When this opportunity came along, they said, "We ought to work with that guy". [Film Clip] Pat Dougherty>> When I started this work, my impulse was to know the natural world. I had built a log cabin. I was very interested in the environmental issues. I'm just one of a whole group of artists that started, you know, working with natural fibers and with natural materials and seeing what we could do about it and bringing a kind of awareness. I've learned what birds, beavers and other natural shelter-builders know about sticks and that is that sticks have an inherent method of joining. If you drag one through the woods, you'll see what I mean. It entangles in everything. [Film Clip] Pat Dougherty>> We had to solve the problem of attaching these sticks to the building, so we put a steel grid on the building about one foot square and then started weaving these sticks through the building, through that grid work, along the edge of the building and layering up the sticks so that there's this final layer, these larger lines that tend to carry your eye along the surface of this building as though you were seeing a big drawing. All the conventions that you might use with a normal pencil, I have to figure out how to use those same conventions kind of using your body to bend these sticks in and to work them so that there's a sense of line logic. It gives the sense of swirling and movement and a kind of rambunctious feeling across the building. Sometimes I go back and erase. I do the cosmetics. I go back and tuck little sticks in like this so that I can have them back where they belong so that they don't interfere with looking at these larger lines. I kind of tuck things back and kind of build a thickness. It's like using an eraser. If you see things you don't like, you can just erase over them. You take out little bits and pieces like this and try to smooth up the surface and make it look really nice. [Film Clip] Pat Dougherty>> I work extensively. I work ten to twelve projects a year. I work all around the United States and Europe. I've worked in Japan. I've made lots of really interesting work. [Film Clip] Pat Dougherty>> This is the first time in Los Angeles. In 2008, I'm scheduled to work at the Los Angeles Botanic Garden here. All my work takes about three weeks to make. That's about what I average for a normal installation. We had to put fire retardant on these sticks. In fact, we put it on on a daily basis so we could feel like we could safely leave them in the evening. So it takes three good coats onto the surface and then the piece would last a good two years. [Film Clip] Pat Dougherty>> People have pulled their cars to the curb, stopped in the middle of the road and turned their heads when they walk down the street. >> "It's amazing. How long did it take you to do it? Three weeks?" >> "You did all this in three weeks?" >> "Wow, that is fascinating." >> "I can't believe he did all this with his hands. Amazing." Pat Dougherty>> By the time we're finished, they're coming over and saying, "We really like this. Would you work at our wedding? Would you do this? Would you do that?" Val Zavala>> What would you do for someone's wedding? Pat Dougherty>> Oh, I think their imagination is running wild. They think, oh, he could build me a small building and I could be married in that stick building. We could go back to a place where we were unencumbered with all of our wedding presents. We could just be ourselves in there (laughter). Val Zavala>> I guess at times that nest feel is very -- Pat Dougherty>> -- yeah, we could go right back to the original Adam and Eve feeling. It's their own little Garden of Eden (laughter). [Film Clip] Pat Dougherty>> At the end of its life, often it has to be returned to the woods. Maybe they'll bring a chipper and they'll sit a chipper out here and they'll chip it up. You know, it will become a common material. The impact that I see this might present for the person who'd use it is kind of a sense of freedom, a sense of maybe taking a look into the natural world with all its different kinds of flow and momentum, one that catches your imagination and carries you to a different place. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> We all know that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and Alexander Graham Bell brought us the telephone, but what about more ordinary things like the zipper or the ballpoint pen? Well, Life and Times commentator, Cris Franco, put his research skills to the test to bring us the story of one man who almost by accident invented -- I'll let Cris explain it. Cris Franco>> Let me show you how I came up with today's commentary. Whenever I get one of my many strokes of genius, I quickly jot it down on one of these. I munch on Trail Mix and ask, "Which of these ideas should I write about? Southern California Youth Buying Trends? Bed, Bath and Beyonce? Or how about Gay Politics? How the West Hollywood was won? Love behind bars, cell mates as soul mates? Or buy new socks?" Actually, that's just a reminder. Then it dawned on me. My notes should be on these amazing little messengers that you can stick anywhere. On someone's computer, "Oops, I accidentally erased your hard drive." On your front door, "Please steal my un-housebroken dog." On the fridge, "Eat my yogurt and you die." And am I the only guy in the world who does this? "Hi, I'm Carol Channing and welcome to Broadway Leggings, Part 209." But then I started to wonder. Where did these little things come from? [Film Clip] Cris Franco>> The legend behind these amazing little sticky helpers began about twenty-five years ago when 3M employee, Art Fry, ran across an adhesive that, well, didn't work very well. It was tacky enough to stick, but not to bond with a surface. Now while a lesser man would have considered this a failure -- [Film Clip] Cris Franco>> -- not Art. He pondered this application for almost ten years. Then, divine intervention. As a member of his church choir, Art's bookmarks always fell out of his hymnal when he'd stand to sing. So Art spread the new adhesive onto little strips of paper, placed it in his hymnal and hallelujah, the world's no-slip bookmark. Art didn't realize that, if you wrote something on them and placed them on a report or on an object or on a co-worker, it was a new form of interoffice communications. [Film Clip] Cris Franco>> Art's boss was thrilled, but the mucky mucks weren't convinced. [Film Clip] Cris Franco>> "Too expensive to make", they said. In a leap of faith, Fry went down to his basement and built a machine that quickly and economically stacked and tucked the yellow sticky papers in the pads and began giving them away to his colleagues who immediately began requesting more and more and more. 3M had a hit. But what to call them? "Jot and Jerk", "Mount and Show", "Press and Peel Pads"? After a year of meetings, 3M decided on Post-Its. Its uses have since multiplied. "I'm a pirate. I'm Patti LaBelle and I got a new attitude. I'm Emperor Tutankhamen. You may live." Our man Art Fry never got rich or famous and his invention wasn't even named after him. But in the halls of low-tech interoffice small, sticky, interpersonal, interfacing techno-world, he's a giant. Art, were it not for you and your stick-to-itiveness, we might never have had these. This one's for you. Val Zavala>> Oh, I'd hate to see what he does with a stapler. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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