Joel Gordes and Helen Burke Weber
Note: A shorter version of this appeared in The Hartford Courant on November 23, 2008, with many thanks to Deputy Editorial Page Editor Tom Condon for his guidance and patience.
One can hardly open the pages of a newspaper without finding at least one major article pertaining to the environment. Happily, even mass media breaks from an “if it bleeds, it leads” approach to pay token homage to environmental content nowadays.
Dr. Albert E. Burke, Yale’s former Director of Graduate Studies in Conservation and Resource Use, was a beacon of environmentalism who was able to involve the average person in thinking about this topic in a new way . He was the first to effectively use the media of television to convey the close relationship between the environment, natural resources and their importance to our well-being and and our very freedom. He also recognized connections between resources and security in its broadest sense that evolved into what is termed "environmental security" [Also see this short course on same.]
What made him all the more extraordinary was that his first series, "This is Your World," first aired in 1951, during TV's "Golden Age" on Connecticut's NBC affiliate Channel 30, long before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published in1962. Some may remember the beginning of his show: women walking in one line across a vast landscape of arid soil, balancing pots upon their heads as the rhythmic and haunting "Mars, Bringer of War" from Holst's 'The Planets' thundered in the background. He spoke about war - war of words in the classroom, about war as we knew it, and war as we didn't know it. He spoke about war being waged on our environment by 'we the people'. He was concerned about our diminishing natural resources; particularly about our nation's dependency on oil and it coming from the Middle East. He specifically warned:
Remember Suez, and what cutting off just one important raw material, oil, did to every European economy? That can be repeated indefinitely by means short of war such as political and economic influence in the affairs of the countries exporting raw materials…”[1]
His weekly shows covered many emerging issues but mostly he provided “a way of thinking” that entailed a genius for connecting the dots to relate disparate areas into a single tapestry of understanding. One moment he would be discussing the breaking of a solemn treaty with the Choctaw by the opening of the Oklahoma territory to farmers. Then he would directly relate that same event to one of the most disastrous environmental events of the last century; the turning over of fragile prairie sod for planting that had left it exposed to eroding winds causing the great dustbowls. [2] He related the "connectedness" of all things and the unintended consequences for ignoring the lessons. Dr. Burke also set the stage for acceptance of many environmentalists to follow who included such luminaries as Barry Commoner (whose First Law of Ecology says "Everything is Connected to Everything Else") [3], Donnella Meadows and later, Karl-Henrik Robert, founder of The Natural Step.
He also explained the geographical miracle that was the US in terms of its plentiful rainfall coming in the right patterns and its soil, that when not abused, provided agricultural bounties. This, along with immense mineral wealth and other natural resources, belied the myth some imagined was due to "manifest destiny" and accounted for our preeminence in the world. His uncanny ability to relate the environment to just then-emerging problems even gave him the ear of President John F. Kennedy who often visited him quietly at a trailer in the woods which served as his office in Cheshire, CT. They spent many late hours discussing a variety of topics.
Over the next several years, as his star rose, the show transferred over to CBS affiliate Channel 3 and picked up Hartford National Bank as a sponsor who was kind enough to provide viewers with a free transcript of the show each week. By then the show’s title changed to “Challenge” and then later to "A Way of Thinking" and finally, “Probe”. Eventually many of his shows evolved into his 1962 book Enough Good Men; A Way of Thinking that consolidated his vision of America as it has been with what it could be if we took care to protect our environmental resources. If there could be said to be any single underlying theme, it might be characterized as relating our freedom and physical security to the welfare of the environment around us.
The problem is not money. It is a problem of education, education to inform Americans about the
close tie that exists between a wide margin of resources and freedom. Reduce the margin of
resources, reduce the quality of resources, and you reduce what Americans have always meant
by the word "freedom". [4]
It is almost unbelievable that this and most of what Dr. Burke said took place 50 years ago but is as relevant as if it was written today. The difference is today we face multiple and compounded challenges largely due to lack of timely action on so many of the issues he identified. It would serve us well to heed the lessons he drilled into a generation; principles that are still solid and needed more than at any time in our history when the danger of continued environmental inaction and degradation carry immeasurable consequences. There is much more that could be said of Dr. Burke's legacy and what he espoused until his passing on January 9, 1999. Maybe it is best-summarized by a quote oft-attributed to an earlier Burke [Edmund] who warned, “All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in this world is that enough good men do nothing.” It stands not only as a warning but as watchwords for the future of our nation.
[1] Burke, Albert E. Dr. Enough Good Men.: A Way of Thinking. World Publishing Co. NY. 1962. p. 130.
[2] The account of this is from Enough Good Men. pp. 182-184.
[3] Commoner, Barry. The Closing Circle: Nature, Man & Technology. Bantam Books.1971. p. 29.
[4] Enough Good Men. p. 202.