Good evening on this Earth Day, millions of Americans and the communities which dot
this map have taken the first step to survival. But if this day of
teach ins, mock funerals, rallies, marches, speeches and songs does not
convince enough of us that the threat to our life on Earth is clear and
present, then we may have cast a vote for death. Welcome to this
special episode of Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and contributions to American
popular culture. With Earth Day upon us, we thought it would be a
keen idea to explore the holiday with someone who is there at the beginning.
I'm Jonathan Friedman, and I'm Joey Adrielfield producer engineer Mike Tomern is working somewhere
behind the scenes. Amusing Jews is a product to Adak Caverein Corregation for Humanistic
Judaism, the Cool Shool Jewish Cultural Community, and Athec United Studios. Our
special guest today is Nancy Pearlman, an award winning broadcaster and environmentalist who has
dedicated to her career to protecting the planet's ecosystems. She organized the first Earth
Day in southern California in nineteen seventy has hosted the Environmental Directions radio show since
nineteen seventy seven, and has produced the Econews television program since nineteen eighty four.
She also directs the nonprofit educational Communications Nancy, Welcome to a museum,
Jews. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here on planet Earth.
We haven't destroyed it yet. You've been an environmentalist for over fifty years.
What initially drew you to environmentalism. I credit my parents for bringing me to
the mountains when I was a child. Beautiful nature, and it really warms
my heart to see the wildlife while not in the cactivity in a zoo.
And then when I was in college, I traveled the world. I went
around the world on a ship and it was incredible to see different environments,
different cultures, different people. I majored in anthropology with an environmental study specialty,
and I saw what was going on in many different places in the world,
and I simply had a love of nature, a love of people caring
about nature, because quite frankly, the animals and plants don't speak for themselves.
We have to go to the public hearings and testify and be sure that
they get the protections. And I also was drawn to activism because of my
parents. They were very much social liberal people who wanted to make society better,
to give back and to help people as well as the other creatures on
the planet. And so I took the activism from them, and I took
my anti war activism from the Vietnam War. And we organized the first of
Enviomil teaching. We called it that because they were having and I wore teachings.
And Earth Day was a week long affair. It wasn't just one day,
And of course, really it's a lifelong affair for me. And so
I have been engaged in one capacity or another, in many different organizations,
with many different groups, with many different individuals. But I truly believe it's
important that everybody get out in nature, because the studies have shown that if
we are just connected to the computer, which is wonderful to have, but
we need to also feel the earth and the plants and the animals. As
mentioned, you organized the first Earth Day in southern California in nineteen seventy.
April twenty second, nineteen seventy was the first Earth Day ever, how did
you get involved with that. I was attending the University of California at Los
Angeles and they joined a student club and they said, oh, we should
do something. There's a birthday. Now there are people who get credit for
it. Senator did it in Congress, and there was a national organization,
but quite frankly, the national organization did nothing more than send us buttons,
bumper stickers and posters. We did all the grassroots leveling, and back then
it wasn't commercialized. We didn't have the sponsorship of companies who were trying to
either be green or greenwash their activities. We were citizens and we put out
the card tables and we handed out the literature and we got petitions signed to
stop the SST, the supersonic transport plane, and to stop a development in
mineral keying that Disney wanted to make a ski resort which is in med Ole
King in the Sierra Mountains, which is now a national park. Fortunately we
saved it. We didn't save everything. We've been fighting for decades to save
Bona Wetlands. We lost three quarters of it. Amigo State Bolsa Chica was
working to save the Bolsha Chika and the Huntington Beach Mojave Desert. We tried
to save that and create a national park. We got a National Preserve.
We tried to expand the Joshua treat Santa Monica Mountains. We organized one thousand
people on mulhalland Boulevard and to protest the fact that there was too much development
in the mountains and we wanted a national park. We didn't succeed, but
we did get a National Recreation Area and some areas have been saved. In
fact, one of my first Immy nominated specials PBS specials was Gum in the
Heart of the City about the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and rim of
the Valley quarter that. Going back, I also must say it's very important
that people read. I was attending UCLA. I took a biology class.
It was required. It wasn't my specialty. But there was a little book
called The Population Bomb by doctor Paul Airlicht, and I read that book and
that changed my whole perception. At that time, we had about two billion
people on the planet. We have over eight billion now. We've gone beyond
the carrying capacity. If we controlled our population on a voluntary basis, then
everybody could be fed have health care, have education, have food, have
clothing, have housing. But people didn't listen. And I read that book
and there was one it was really in the opening chapter he talked about an
airplane. Yeah, an airplane can fly, and we know about these airplanes
fly and what's breaking up? One rivet one rivet too many and then collapse.
And that really hit me hard that we can keep adding people, but
at what standard of living? And what are we doing to the ecosystem.
So I think it's really important that people read some of this information. And
I've been privileged in the years that I've been doing my radio and TV show
to interview some of these experts, people like Jane Goodall and Carl Sagan and
Paul Erlich and the father of human ecology, doctor Derek Harden, and all
these people who've done incredible work pointing out that we must do more, and
they've written incredible books that I recommend everybody watch and listen and read. Enjoying
the show, click like and subscribe. I've also read that if everyone on
planet Earth were to consume at the rate and level as Americans do, we
would need two or three more planet earths. This is a major problem.
When I traveled, I was really stunned. I saw people dying, living,
starving in different places in the cities on the streets. Now we have
homelessness on our streets. One of the things that is so significant is that
we cannot carry on on the level that we have been doing because Americans use
so much more energy, so many more resources, and that means other people
and animals and plants suffer. And I did my third Immy nominated special was
overpopulation in the United States. But it was hard to show because oh,
you're showing Beverly Hills, the wealth, all the wonderful things that everybody wants
to accomplish. It doesn't look bad. Everybody wants that, but that consumption,
that consumerism is destructive. It's so much easier to show over population where
people don't have the resources. But it is here in the United States,
and we do have to reduce our consumption and get into that triple R.
You know, the reduce, reuse, recycle, recycle is really last.
We shouldn't be using so much. How has Earthday evolved since those early years.
I'm assuming its focus has changed as the environmental crisis has accelerated and taken
on new dimensions. When I thought about Earth Day then and coming up now,
I always think what has changed, what hasn't. Sadly, it's gotten
worse, and one of the big differences in the seventies it was environment versus
economy. In other words, the businesses did not accept it. We couldn't
even get into the schools because they considered us very radical. And of course
now everybody wants to say they're doing something for the environment. I don't like
the current Earth Days from the last twenty years or so because the organizers charge
citizen groups, activist groups to have a table, to have material to distribute
to others, and the commercial operations and the commercial sponsorship is really sad because
they are promoting it for themselves that they're not giving it to the nonprofits.
We My nonprofit organization founded in nineteen fifty eight has never received a dime from
these companies. Another major change that I don't like is the fact that environmentalists
are afraid to tackle the real essence of the problem, and that's over population.
It's become a tamboo subject. They are afraid now. We weren't afraid
back in nineteen seventy and the seventies. We spoke out about it, but
now people are afraid to talk about it. And it has nothing to do
with your race, your religion, or any of that. It has to
do with human beings. Where Homo sapiens were all worn and over population applies
to everybody. And yet people are afraid because they're going to be accused of
being a racist. They're are going to be accused of not caring about people,
when we care about animals. It's the other way around. If anybody
has seen that circle of life, that you realize we're all interconnected. We
can't take out the major predators, you know, whether or not it's the
wolves. We can't take out the whales. We can't take out any of
the major predators because they keep the other animals in balance. And this concept
is not really being explored and discussed. The other thing that's absolutely horrible is
that we haven't solved the extinction problem. When I started speaking in nineteen seventy,
it was five to ten species a day or becoming extinct. I would
have thought by now I wouldn't be saying we still have five to ten species
a day becoming extinct. That's not improvement. And we also have massive amount
of plastics. That plastic problem has totally gone out of reach, and it's
taking so long for the governmental agencies and the business is to make the transition
to non plastics. We don't need plastic. One used plastic bags. There
are alternatives, but yet they're still there. And everybody now knows about the
big garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean and another oceans. I mean, even
in the fifties and sixties Jacques Cousteau raised attention to the ocean pollution, and
we haven't done much about it at all. And so I think one of
the things that has changed is on a positive level, is that people are
talking about sustainability. Finally, we have to live and be sustainable. And
yet what does that really mean. We're not going to be pureist. We
all probably do drive a car, and even if we take mass transit,
it's using some sort of fuel. I did once ride my bicycle from Los
Angeles to sant Anna. I have fifty miles, but it took all day.
You know, you can't do this on a daily basis and work and
do that. So we have to have transit systems, we have to have
areas of sustainability. That are imbalanced, and even organic food is not necessarily
safe. It may still be grown in a non regenitive way. We haven't
really adopted regenitive agriculture. That's a major area that we still need to dress
us. And of course, one of the things that started me on environmental
issues was the anti war and the napalm that was being dropped in Vietnam and
the pollution. I say that war is the ultimate pollution. And we have
wars all over this planet, whether or not it's Ukraine or Gaza, or
Sudan or Mayan Mare all over and war is destroying people, plants, animals,
and the land. So we have to really connect these movements. Yeah,
you said a heck of a lot there. And one thing that I
was reflecting on when you're talking about the circle of life and the interconnectedness of
everything, it seems like the one species that really doesn't belong, that isn't
really needed is us, right, And yet we're the ones who kind of
have this capacity to destroy at grade levels. And yet what do we add.
All we can do is reduce our harm. We can't really necessarily create
a balance. We can always sort of try to preserve balance. It's an
interesting thing. And when you're talking about there being, you know, eight
billion people in counting is very scary. I think that the planet would do
fine without human beings, but since I am one, I do want to
survive as long as I can. And I think that human beings can survive
if we use our brain. And that's the odd part. We have intelligence
and it's not being used. And we know today in politics how many lies
you're thrown out there. And I was an elected official for sixteen years.
People were throwing lies about need that made no sense whatsoever. And you can't
compete with a million dollars of your opposition money. So we have to change
the way we govern. We have to change the way we live. We
have to change our activism. And I hope that people will identify and get
involved with one or two environmental organizations. Where they not it's for one animal,
where they not it's for animal rights, whether or not it's wild or
domesticated animals. For one place, your backyard, what is being built.
I'm here right now talking in Idle wild in the Santa Centil Mountains. And
I was too young to fight the tramway from Palm Springs up into the wilderness
in the Santa Centil Mountains that going to Santa Cento Peak. It should never
have been built. It's wonderful p people. People love it, but they
don't realize that it's technology in a wilderness, and there was supposed to be
no technology in a wilderness. That's one of those kinds of operations where we
have to look and see what do we really need, what do we not
really need, and how can we change our lifestyle. It's taken so so
long for the building traits to adopt sustainable practices, to use reused material,
to even when they tear down a building, use what's called deconstruction, and
not take all that waste and put it in a landfill, but to reuse
it. The boards, the concrete, the windows, everything. These are
not regular occurrences, and they should be. It shouldn't be the exception.
It should be big occurrences. And we're not there at all. And I
sometimes wonder why not when everybody, the young people definitely care about the environment,
but they're not making sure that whatever career they're going into is being handled
and functioning right. I remember when I first got elected in two thousand and
one, we received a packet of one sided agenda material was like this every
month. I said one sided, let's go, let's go double sided,
and they fought me on it. I finally want you don't give up.
You keep on fighting. And of course now it's available digitally, which saves
some things. But even digital and we have to realize our cell phones use
rare earth elements and materials, so it's not always the safest and the best
because digital either maybe that'll pen and pencil on recycled paper or actually not even
recycled paper kN naff paper him paper, I mean dura. World War two,
they promoted hip was used for parachutes and shoe laces. Our Constitution was
written on it, you know, and then it stopped. I mean it
should be legal. Everybody should be rolling yamp and using him for there are
two hundred kinds of products that can be made out of it. Why are
those options available? Yes, speaking of smoking the constitution? Is it true
that capitalism is at the root of not only the American experience, but I
would say the destruction of the planet as well. I wouldn't say capitalism alone.
Every form of economic system right now is destructive. Every form of political
system isn't working to our benefit. When I say our, the Earth's benefit.
And I recall in the late eighties traveling to the Soviet Union because I
was curious what communism was about when you had a central government that could do
things, and I was shocked to see the pollution, the pollution of the
oil fields in the Caspian Sea. They had the power to do it cleanly,
and they didn't. I went later to like by Call, one of
the freshwater deepest lakes on the planet, and the pollution was horrible. And
I've been to Asia, South America, North America, you name it.
It doesn't matter. We have to have an environmental, green economy, whatever
you want to call it, and no country in the world has that.
Now some countries are doing better. Scandinavian countries, when I traveled there was
very good about protecting their environment, but they were perfectly either. You've edited
the Compendium news letter since nineteen seventy two. It's published six times a year
and covers ecological and humanitarian issues and projects. You've also hosted the radio program
Environmental Direction since nineteen seventy seven. It's the longest running environmental radio show in
the country. Could you tell us a little bit about these projects and the
larger goals. I'm pleased to because I found that as an activist it's important
to communicate to the public the issues. And I found that writing the newsletter
which I started when I founded the Ecology Center of Southern California through the nonprofit
group Educational Communications, it focused me. I was putting the information down so
that I had a better understanding of what was going on and encourage people to
write letters on this issue or that issue. And then I found that I
was guested on programs and that was fine, but I said, oh,
I could control more if I hosted a program. And I was fortunate to
be taken up by one of the commercial stations in the country. They didn't
peck me. It's a volunteer effort, but they gave me airtime, technological
support in the radio station. And in fact, for seventeen years I was
on the number one commercial radio station in the country out of nine thousand stations.
So I was very proud of that. So I'm still on radio,
but now we started our YouTube channel. You have to get into the internet
system. But in doing that, I gave people who are doing good activist
work a form to express themselves, to tell people what was going on,
and that was critical. So I've done two five hundred radio shows, a
new show every week, and I've never missed an air deadline. And then
in the eighties, I had a friend who was in TV and he says,
Oh, let's start a TV show based on your radio show. Well,
you can't do a TV show like that without money every week. So
I've only done six hundred TV shows since then, and then on about two
hundred cable stations except for the three specials that were on the PBS Systems and
Discovery Channel. My second Emmy nominator special that I didn't mention was Wind Energy
for the Nineties and Beyond. We were the first to promote wind energy back
in the nineties. It's an alternative energy source and we need to do it.
And so what I found with using the media to our advantage just says
you all are doing. Get out the message is so important because we can
reach so many more people and let them know what is going on. And
it's been a real pleasure. My biggest pleasure is meeting and talking to these
experts who are really doing the work in the field, and sometimes some of
the scientists who will spend weeks and months in the field, their names may
not be so famous, but what they discover and what they tell us and
how they're trying to save the different animals is remarkable. I've totally enjoyed it.
I started all my environmental work through the nonprofit which was founded in nineteen
fifty eight, where a group of men and women wanted to do a film
about an artist between World War One and World War Two, and it actually
won an Oscar nomination, so it's available there too. But in ninety three
so started really promoting and helped create the term ecotourism. And I've been promoting
ecotourism because if you don't help the local people, you can't save the wildlife.
If you tell the local people don't shoot the lion, don't shoot the
elephant, don't shoot the rhino, well what do they get out of it?
Well, you have to support their school, their orphanage, their health
clinic. And that's what we're doing. We have too that we support in
Kenya and Tanzania. We said donated supplies over and a container every year,
and that's important so those people can care about their own local environment and get
something back, and so that's really important. And so we created that project,
and it just seems like there's always another project to create with regards to
eco news. What are some specific programs that you would recommend us and our
viewers getting into watching and how would we find them? You can find them
on different cable stations. But we are now making a YouTube channel, Eco
Neews with Nancy Kerlman, and the programs vary. We've had to take off
about five hundred and seventy five of the shows because they were done in the
old format, the old TV format, our video and they don't work so
well. So now we can only put up the digital ones that are being
done. But the important thing to tell is well, we can't compete with
BBC and Nature and Nova and National Geographic and all those programs because they have
money and those camera people sit out there. Forever. We volunteer our time.
We volunteer our time to go and talk to these experts and show these
places, and we have volunteers who edit the shows. We have volunteers who
are on the shows. Nobody gets paid. The stations have never paid us,
but they air the programs and the programs range from ecotourism, where we
went to Malaysia and documented the greenest hotel in Malaysia two hundred ways. They
took an old hotel and made a green and they had there. We went
to the greenest hotel, I think resort on the planet, Jean Michel Cousteau's
resort in Fiji, and it should have gotten a five star rating, but
it didn't because they refused to put TVs in the rooms, and that's required
by five stars. But these places, the food that you eat at their
restaurants are grown in their own organ in garden. And in Fiji, part
of your dollars go to re establishing the mangrove force that had been destroyed,
and you can actually help plant a mangrove tree, and some of your dollars
go to the local schools and communities. And we covered the greenest hotel in
the Czech Republic in Frague, and they took they took us down to their
basement where you could see all the machinery recycling their own waste water into clean
water right there on site, and of course naturally solar panels and so forth.
And then we went and documented so many different kinds of places, whether
or not it's from from Ireland to Osba Jehan, to Turkey to Costa Rica
to Kenya and Ethiopia as gorgeous. I wish Ethiopia didn't have a civil war
going on because I think everybody should go and see the wonderful, wonderful,
beautiful environment. You go to the national parks and all these places. And
then one of the shows that was in the old digital fashion can't see.
But I forgot to mention that our organization also started the Earth Cultures Project,
which is an ethnic dance where we provide ethnic dance programs to schools, retirement
homes, groups, whatever. And I danced with eight thousand dancers in Estonia
doing the same traditional folk dance. It was an incredible experience. So we
documented that and then my current videographer in twenty twelve thirteen, because it was
New Year, we climbed the highest peak in Africa, nineteen three hundred and
thirty six feet Mount Kilimajaro, which is also the highest mountain peak not connected
to any other mountain range. And that was an incredible experience to show that
eco adventurers can do it. And I did that when I was sixty five,
so I was very happy and proud that I could show that women and
older people can still get out and make an effort and get to the ice
peak in Africa. I'm not trying to do every highest peak in the world.
Too snowy. In some of those places, we did see the glaciers.
The last two hours on Kilimajaro, you have to hike the glaciers.
But what was interesting is I had done an eco news show in the nineties
in the mid nineties, didn't climb kill ma Ajar, but we stopped on
the road typical photoshop photo stop and took a picture of malt Kilimajaro. When
I went back fifteen years later, we stopped at the same spot and took
a picture of the mountain peak and half the glaciers are gone. So within
that fifteen year time frame, I actually have documentation of the glaciers disappearing due
to our destruction of the climate. And when we went to Switzerland, they
actually have in one of the villages where you can hike into the Alps,
a trail where they have pictures showing you where the huts were one hundred years
ago and where they are now. Because the glaciers have recided, receded.
Because the glaciers have receded, they had to move the huts and the town
below because the glaciers are melting. They've had to move the people at the
base because they would be flooded. So it's really interesting when you go back
to some of these places and you can see what's going on. There's no
question that we are destroy the planet with the climate change. So eco News
we have a whole range of stories from cultural and natural history, and it's
really exciting to go to these places and to see these places. If you
can't travel there, watch the shows. So Nancy, what do you see
as the future of earth Day and environmentalism? I see the future of earth
Day as a continuing awareness of the public to our ecological crisis. I would
hope that the commercialization might be minimized and that people would be willing to speak
up for the real issues that need to be addressed, the real actions that
need to be taken, the real protests that need to be done. The
first Earth Day, I organized a thousand bicyclists on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles
without a parade permit because bicycles are considered transportation and vehicles and as long as
you follow the vehicle laws rules. We stopped at the stop lights, we
stopped at the stop signs, but we traveled on Wielshirt to bring attention to
the problem of automobiles is way too polluting. Other places in the Earth day
would bury a car we did the bicycle ride. You won't recognize me in
the picture on the front of La Times, which I was because I was
wearing that old fashioned World War two small basket. Maybe I should have taken
it off for the picture, but I didn't know they were taking the picture.
We have the Internet, we have social media. The focus is going
to be more difficult because we have so many people claiming that they understand the
ecological issues and they're promoting the wrong thing. So we have to be aware.
We have to keep our guard app We have to do more research,
we have to do more protests, we have to do more cleanup, we
have to do more testifying. I mean, they're still ready to round up
the wild horses. We thought we saved them when we got the Wild Horse
and Burrow Act passed. Our wild horses on our public land would not be
killed and yet they are doing it right now as we speak. So some
of the issues we were successful. I recall when I first got involved before
Earth Day, I actually joined an organization to save the tulielk. This is
the smallest elk species in the world, found originally in the Owens Valley.
And as we all know, most of the Owens Valley was taken and bought
by the city of Los Angeles to take the water, and so there went
the Tulis, There went the tuliel There were about twenty two species left,
and my ex mother in law actually saved them by going into yifying at Congress
and getting a National Wildlife Refuge established in Theones Valley. So the population with
over two thousand, and now they're up in point race. So it shows
what one individual can do organizing other individuals. And I could tell you story
after story like that of gifferent people that I've worked with over the years to
save this animal or that species or that ecosystem. We don't have the time
I wish, but it's ongoing. And so what do I see as the
future. I see that environmentalism is not going to disappear, the ecological crisis
is not going to go away. We have to continue to do this,
and I thank you so very much for giving me the opportunity to share some
of my experiences. And we'll just have to do this each your birthday and
in between the birthdays. Thank you so much, Nancy for joining us.
Thank you very much for having me and to our audience. Now back to
you your regularly scheduled lives. Amusing Jews is here to amuse you. If
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