Videodrome is Motherboard’s weekly look at the weird old archival footage lurking around the web. Check out old posts here.When you think about the 70s, you probably envision disco and cocaine rather than environmental efforts, and that comes as no surprise. Sure, the Iran oil crisis and smog regulations helped clean up America’s roads. But they also pushed Americans into poorly designed, gutless shitboxes of cars for the next two decades. Meanwhile, America’s cities were dirtier than ever, coal ruled the land, industry was still dumping waste into rivers will alacrity, the push for nuclear power development was stalling, and the idea of clean energy and conscious agriculture were dismissed as hippie bullshit with a hell of a lot more force than they are today. A decade on from Silent Spring, America’s path towards our current obsession with everything green had yet to shift.At the same time, that was the era that a number of themes in the environmental movement began to be galvanized. As this 1974 video from the Fish and Wildlife Service notes, urbanization, a growing population, and growing American consumption were coming at the cost of our own pristine resources. That’s become one of the most important elements of environmental advocacy and education: the realistic view that everything we do has a trade-off. So while we mine for resources and dam our rivers, we cause ancillary damage to the local environment thanks to erosion, the release of heavy metals, and flooding.The video also notes a classic problem with our growing population’s larger appetite: As we dedicate more land to farming (as well as suburbs and growing towns) we encroach on the ranges of animals like coyotes, who then go on to attack livestock in increasing numbers. That, of course, means population control for coyotes — and wolves, and the occasional cougar and bear — which can lead to animosity towards the animals themselves. I certainly understand that losing livestock to wild predators is costly, and ranching isn’t easy. But it’s also important to note that the environmental changes we’ve made in the past have largely led us to the problems we face now.And that’s the point of the four-minute crazy montage at the front end of this PSA: Throughout the United State’s turbulent history, we’ve had an astronomical effect on the native environment of our country. We can all argue if that’s good or bad — changing the environment is pretty much a given for us humans, so I’d rather that we discuss whether they’re smart or not — but we can’t ignore that whatever changes we make to the environment’s finely tuned balance are going to produce new challenges of their own.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.
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