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Life & Times Transcript
12/11/07 Coverage of Town Hall Los Angeles speakers on Life and Times is made possible by a grant from the Boeing Company. This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- You can't see it, but we all helped put it there and now the plastics we use every day are killing our oceans. Dr. Marcus Eriksen>> We find their skeletons. We find hundreds of skeletons of these Albatross chicks; a pile of feathers, a pile of bones and, in the middle, a pile of plastic. Val Zavala>> And then, it was a miracle of faith. Now it's being retold in a spectacular pageant that's become a Los Angeles tradition. 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>> Look around at all the things made from plastic. But did you know that they all started off with these? These are nerdles and they are the basic building block of everything plastic. The problem is, nerdles are killing our sea life. Toni Guinyard explains. Toni Guinyard>> Marine researchers want to change the way we view the ocean. They want us to look a little closer and realize that there's a battle brewing in the surf and we're part of it. It has to do with trash that makes up marine debris, specifically plastic. Dr. Marcus Eriksen>> Off the coast of California, we did a plastic sample off of the coast of Los Angeles in Santa Monica Bay. We found a 2.5 to one ratio of plastics versus marine life on the surface. That's by weight. Toni Guinyard>> Dr. Marcus Eriksen is Director of Education and Research for the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. When we caught up with him, he was slogging through Ballona Creek in Culver City dredging up junk that had made its way into the waterway. Dr. Marcus Eriksen>> Surprisingly, half of plastic produced in the United States is negatively buoyant. It sinks. So half is floating out to sea, but half of what's coming down our watershed is staying right here on land. Well, actually in the sediment in these rivers in Ballona Creek, the Los Angeles River, San Gabriel River. If you dig in the sediment, you can find plastics, things like potato chip bags and candy wrappers, a broken piece of taillight. Toni Guinyard>> Sixty to eighty percent of all the marine debris is plastic and some is obvious, the plastic bags and the milk containers. But researchers point out that there's a lot of plastic in the water that you simply can't see. Gwen Lattin>> This is a surface sample that was taken near the Big Island off Camillo Beach. Toni Guinyard>> In a small Redondo Beach lab operated by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, research biologists Ann Zellers and Gwen Lattin spend hours hunched over microscopes sorting bits and pieces of plastic from water samples. Gwen Lattin>> This is a sample that I've just picked out while you were standing here the past couple of minutes. It shows the different types of plastic. Toni Guinyard>> They're called microplastics, microscopic plastic debris. Scientists say that they pose an enormous threat to marine life, so they're working to determine how the plastics impact the environment and marine life that may be eating it, believing the plastic is food. Surprisingly, most of these microplastic bits don't meet the definition of trash. Gwen Lattin>> This is a screen that is 4.75 millimeters, so anything that goes through this would not be under the definition of trash. Toni Guinyard>> But everything that you've pulled out of this sample would go straight through that? Gwen Lattin>> Correct. Toni Guinyard>> And that's part of the problem, in a sense? Gwen Lattin>> That's part of the problem. A lot of people have pretty much looked past the fact that there are smaller pieces of plastic. They look at some of the large pieces of plastic and they're just not aware of how much plastic is out in the environment and that's one of the things that we would like to just make the public aware of. Toni Guinyard>> The public is getting the message at the Science Education Adventure Lab in Redondo Beach run by the Los Angeles Conservation Corps and at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium operated by the nonprofit environmental organization, Heal The Bay. Jose Bacallao>> And when they come here, we want to help them understand that these animals, especially this aquarium, live out here in southern California in the Santa Monica Bay. The debris that enters that water kills these animals and destroys the ecosystem. Toni Guinyard>> Senior aquarist Jose Bacallao and his staff are serious about their role of educating visitors to the aquarium. >> "Then feel this one. Can you tell me the difference?" Jose Bacallao>> What frustrates me most about our ignorance in the way we treat our environment is that it never seems to stop. It always seems that there's so much information out there and available for people to understand what impact we make, yet it continues. Toni Guinyard>> That frustration and the resolve to effect change prompted Heal The Bay to aggressively promote what they dubbed the Pacific Protection Initiative. Kirsten James>> And basically this was a flotilla of five different bills that we sponsored at the statewide level. Each of them took sort of a piece of the marine debris puzzle and addressed these different pieces. Toni Guinyard>> One piece of legislation, Assembly Bill 258, was signed into law in October 2007. It's aimed at monitoring the discharge, accidental or not, of plastic pellets used in plastics manufacturing. Heal The Bay water quality manager Kirsten James explains the pre-production pellets are called nerdles. Kirsten James>> Because of their small size, they mimic fish eggs which are a main source of food for a lot of our sea life. So the sea life then ingests these nerdles and it can lead to intestinal blockages and it can fill their stomachs so that they don't get the nutrients they need. Another issue with nerdles is that they have toxins. Different plasticizers that are added to these resin materials often have different chemicals added to give them different properties such as color or flexibility. What's been found is that a lot of these products are actually toxic. Toni Guinyard>> Researchers want to know, if nerdles absorb toxins and plankton ingest the nerdles, is it only a matter of time before the humans are affected? It could take years to exactly determine the impact of plankton feeding on a diet of microplastics. Gwen Lattin>> The research is too far off. You know, the results are oftentimes, you know, they take a while to get. We've been trying to take it step by step showing that there is plastic out in the environment. They kill the plankton, or if they alter the plankton, it may alter the food web or the food chain which eventually comes up to our food sources. Toni Guinyard>> The work being done in this lab is getting attention in part because many of the samples the researchers are working with come from the Pacific Ocean Gyre, the so-called Pacific garbage patch. Gwen Lattin>> It's not actually a solid land mass. Some people think of that, you know, when they think of garbage patch. But it's more of a soup with plastics. Dr. Marcus Eriksen>> It's almost as big as the United States, the North Pacific Gyre. It's enormous. In that rotating mass of water, you have debris that accumulates and now it is plastic. We invite other researchers to go there and replicate our study. That's how science works. That hasn't been done yet. Gwen Lattin>> It's attracting so much attention because it is letting us know that, from the farthest point almost that you can get from land out in the Pacific Ocean, we're finding manmade plastics out there. Dr. Marcus Eriksen>> We're trying to just make observations of what's happening in the ocean. We've gone six times from here to Hawaii by sail. We stop halfway, we drag our nets in the ocean. What we pull up shows an alarming amount of plastic compared to the animals that live there. Toni Guinyard>> The Algalita team has measured a six to one ratio of plastic to plankton. Kirsten James>> This is just a really amazing statistic and really a troubling statistic because we all know that plankton is the basis of our food web. Obviously, a lot of those sea animals are mistaking these plastic pieces for their food. Toni Guinyard>> As if to reinforce the point, Dr. Eriksen showed us this. Dr. Marcus Eriksen>> The albatross thinks these objects are food, like these lighters, this toothbrush, even this action figure leg. They find it floating in the ocean and they eat it. Toni Guinyard>> They can't digest the plastic and they die. Dr. Marcus Eriksen>> You find hundreds of skeletons of these albatross chicks; a pile of feathers, a pile of bones and, in the middle, a pile of plastic. Toni Guinyard>> What is that telling you? Gwen Lattin>> That is telling us that it is very obvious that we have a lot of trash out there. Man is making a big impact on the environment. Toni Guinyard>> And in many ways, the big threat comes down to tiny bits of plastics that make their way to the sea. Dr. Marcus Eriksen>> We need to rethink our way of doing things, our way of living. One step that I'm working on is to change how we look at disposable plastics. The age of disposable plastics is over. All those water bottles and plastic bags, it has to end. Toni Guinyard>> I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> So what do you think of nerdles and our environment? You can post your comments. Just go to kcet.org/lifeandtimes/blog. 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>> Imagine you're in an emergency situation and the only way you can get the help you need would be to sell off your house or your possessions. Well, that in essence is what's happening to some countries in the wake of catastrophes like tsunamis, hurricanes or war. They're doing things in desperation they wouldn't normally do and the beneficiaries are private corporations. This trend is explored in the book, "Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism". It's written by investigative journalist Naomi Klein. She says firms like Blackwater and Halliburton are finding that disasters can be great for business. Naomi, you've revealed a side of corporations that we don't normally see. It's called disaster capitalism. What do you mean by disaster capitalism? Naomi Klein>> Well, disaster capitalism is about more than corporations. It's really about politicians and corporations working together and harnessing some kind of a disaster, some sort of cataclysmic event. It could be a war, it could be a terrorist attack, it could even be an economic meltdown, but some shocking event that sends a society reeling. Using the kind of window of opportunity that opens up after a disaster to push through a whole package of pro-corporate policies that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise, I came up with this phrase, disaster capitalism. I had come back from Iraq. I reported from Iraq for Harper's Magazine about how the shock and awe invasion had been harnessed to push through what economists call economic shock therapy under Paul Bremer, all these really quite radical pro-corporate policies like a fifteen percent flat tax, totally unrestricted free trade, a new investment law that allowed foreign companies to own a hundred percent of Iraqi assets. I thought that was just unique to Iraq, but when I came back, I started reporting on what happened after the Asian tsunami and I saw something really similar. I went to Sri Lanka which was one of the hardest hit countries by the tsunami. Forty thousand people lost their lives and almost a million people were displaced. All of the people who had been displaced by the wave had been moved to inland camps, to kind of refugee camps. This was in the name of security, in the name of safety. If another wave comes, the state was concerned that they could be vulnerable to that. But when I was in Sri Lanka, what I saw was that all along the coast, hotels were building mega resorts. In fact, it really was a sort of land grab. That's what I mean by disaster capitalism. That's when I first used that phrase. I wrote about it at the time. I was already working on the book when the levees in New Orleans broke. I went to New Orleans to document the reconstruction there and that phrase, disaster capitalism, started being used spontaneously by the people in New Orleans to describe what was happening to them. To describe, for instance, Republican Congress people who were saying -- well, one in particular who said, "We couldn't clean out the public housing projects, but God did." As if the flooding of New Orleans was some sort of act of God that was allowing them to build condominiums where the public housing projects were. So that's what I mean by disaster capitalism. It's not just about a few profiteering companies. It's about really harnessing disasters for this very radical social engineering privatization agenda that also includes the privatization of response to disaster, the privatization of warfare. Val Zavala>> Explain that a little bit because normally when we think of response to disaster, we think of the Red Cross, other nongovernmental organizations, big humanitarian groups, going in with, you know, the best of intentions, a philanthropic mission. Naomi Klein>> Yeah. Val Zavala>> You're saying that's not true as much anymore? Naomi Klein>> Well, it is true, it is true. But what's also true is that as many of the companies that cut their teeth in Iraq, we have to remember that under Donald Rumsfeld, the invasion and occupation and reconstruction of Iraq was an experiment in new forms of privatization. Because this has been so profitable for this handful of very large, politically connected companies, now what we see is that they're looking for ways to diversity their holdings, new opportunities which is what businesses do. There's nothing particularly conspiratorial about this. But I think that where's it's dangerous is where you have this collaboration between government and business. Val Zavala>> So the new opportunities are things like Katrina or the tsunamis that normally they wouldn't even think about? Naomi Klein>> Well, one of the most powerful examples, I think, of what I'm referring to, not just as disaster capitalism, but the kind of mission-creep in the disaster capitalism complex is the company, Blackwater. Iraq was -- I hesitate to say this was the best thing that ever happened to this company, but it really expanded a fairly small company and new company into a real player when they got the contract to protect Paul Bremer and the contract expanded. But when I was in New Orleans after the levees broke, Blackwater showed up there and they were in the end providing protection for FEMA. They saw there was this security failure and they went in to fill that gap. Val Zavala>> FEMA needed protection? Naomi Klein>> They needed protection from looters. That was what they said. In San Diego during the wildfires, more recently, you saw Blackwater playing a very active role in providing humanitarian relief near San Diego. What Erik Prince, the CEO, has said is that they see humanitarian relief as a new market for the company. Val Zavala>> Basically, you're implying that the companies will want disasters to happen because that's how they make their money. But you can't create global warming. It's going to happen anyway. Naomi Klein>> Well, if you do nothing, you create global warming. Val Zavala>> Well, politicians are inclined to do that anyway, so they don't need any lobbying on that (laughter). Naomi Klein>> Well, I think there has been a tremendous amount of lobbying from the public where people do want real action on climate change. They want out of Iraq. They want real peace in the Middle East. You know, what we're getting from our leaders is a kind of a shrug in the face of catastrophes. Val Zavala>> But are you really implying that that's coming because they're listening to companies that have a profit motive for this disaster or wars to continue? Naomi Klein>> Well, you know, I'm not the first person to say this. Eisenhower warned about the dangers of a military industrial complex. What he was warning against specifically was the danger to a democracy when you have ever-expanding parts of the American economy invested in the infrastructure of warfare and reconstruction from warfare. Now we have much larger, what I'm calling the disaster capitalism complex, because the military industrial complex has met this ideology of outsourcing every aspect of this state. So now it's not just weapons companies and the big engineering firms. It's also health care companies that treat traumatized and maimed soldiers when they come back. They're some of the most profitable companies in the United States right now. What I argue in the book, and I realize it's controversial, is that 9/11 really launched a new economy. This is a serious change in the global economy, the emergence of this sector. Now when there is a terrorist event, whether a real attack or a plot thwarted like the plot on planes from London to New York, what I've been tracking is that every time this happens, the NASDAQ jumps. Now after 9/11, as we know, the stock market plummeted. But because there are so many of these Homeland Security stocks, the response to the market is not fear, but invest in Homeland Security stocks because there will be more infrastructure surveillance, more CCTV cameras, more biometric identification cards. So I'm just following the money, you know. I think this is what journalists should do in saying, "Wait a minute. This affects us. This affects us a society, so why aren't we talking about it?" Val Zavala>> Naomi Klein, I'm sure there's a lot more we could talk about, but thank you so much for some incredible journalism and really provocative ideas. Naomi Klein>> Thank you so much. It was fun. Val Zavala>> Naomi Klein was a guest of Town Hall Los Angeles. For information on future events and speakers, you can go to their website at townhall-la.org. 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>> It's in its seventh year, long enough to be considered a Christmas tradition, and thousands of people have come to see it. It's a performance that has no Santa, no Scrooge and no Baby Jesus. It's a very different kind of story about a peasant who has an incredible experience. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> It's a spectacular pageant, the story of a miracle, the Virgin Mary's appearance to a humble peasant performed, appropriately enough, in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Director Jose Luis Valenzuela has brought a hundred thirty actors and musicians together for the past seven years creating what has become a Christmas tradition in the city. Jose Luis Valenzuela>> I think traditions are very, very, very important to create community. That's how we gather. That's what we remember as a community. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Actor Sal Lopez plays the lead. The place is Mexico, the year 1531, just ten years after the Spanish Conquest and the conversion of the Indians to Catholicism. Sal plays Juan Diego, a humble Aztec peasant who witnesses something extraordinary. Sal Lopez>> And the way the story goes, she appears to him in a little hill called Tepeyac. So she appears to him and says, "Look, I have a message. I have a message that I'm here for the people. I'm here to console the Indians and I want you to go tell the Bishop that I want him to build me a house here, a home, a temple." [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> La Virgin de Guadalupe is played perfectly by Los Angeles opera singer Suzanna Guzman. Mary tells Juan Diego to go to the Bishop with a message, but church officials refuse to see him. [Film Clip] Sal Lopez>> So he returns to her. She says, "What happened? How did it go?" He goes, "Well, very badly." She says, "No, I want you to return and tell him I'm here." "But why are you asking me? Why don't you send one of your angels? Why don't you fly over there? I'm really petrified." "No, no, I've chosen you. You're the one and you're one of my most humble servants, so I want you to be the one." So he returns and, anyway, this goes on (laughter). Val Zavala>> The cast is filled not just with professionals, but with children and regular folks who are suddenly part of something special. Jose Luis Valenzuela>> I always compare Juan Diego to us, you know, who helped us succeed against all odds, meaning he has to keep going and going and going until they believe him, that he had seen something special that needed to be seen by everybody. Val Zavala>> Juan Diego finally succeeds in seeing the Bishop, but as you might expect, the Bishop doesn't believe him. Juan is frustrated, discouraged, and then his beloved uncle falls deathly ill. Sal Lopez>> Until finally in his darkest of moments, you know, she appears to him a final time and says, "I want you go to do this for me." He says, "No, I cannot. I cannot go. My uncle is dying. I'm rejected by the rest of the Aztec community." He has no one. He is alone. She says, "I know what's going on. I know. I want you to go. Your uncle is fine." He says, "What? You mean you have cured him?" "Of course. That's why I'm here." [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Then Juan Diego is granted another meeting with the Bishop and this time the Bishop asks him for something. Sal Lopez>> The Bishop asks for proof. Well, you know, show me some kind of proof that you've seen her, that she's appeared to you, and that's when she decides to create this miracle for him. Val Zavala>> Mary tells Juan Diego to go to the top of the hill and there he will find beautiful red roses blooming in the middle of December. Sal Lopez>> So he says, "Well, pardon me, ma'am, but there's no roses up there. All there is is weeds." She says, "Trust me. Just do what I tell you." So he goes up there, picks the roses and wraps the roses in like a little blanket and he takes them to the Bishop. They let him and they say, "He has something to show you." "Okay, well, let him in. So he says, "Well, show me" and he shows him the roses and then her image is on the blanket, the miracle. [Film Clip] Jose Luis Valenzuela>> When the moms go and she appears, they cry. It's so real for them and so special. When the miracle happens, you have to keep the people away from the flowers (laughter). [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> The Virgin of Guadalupe is now Mexico's patron saint and, in 2002, the Catholic church made Juan Diego a saint. Sal Lopez>> It's a very humbling role to take on as an actor. I have found that people look at you differently, so you have to sort of behave (laughter). [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> But the most important impact, says Valenzuela, is the effect it has had on the local Latino community, many of whom have never been inside the imposing downtown cathedral. Jose Luis Valenzuela>> The kids who are in it, the senior citizens, the pueblo, the musicians, you know, everybody, this is their time of the year when they can work with some people and sing and go into a cathedral and feel at home. [Film Clip] Jose Luis Valenzuela>> You know, I want my community to feel like this is our city, this is our cathedral, this is a place of which we empower ourselves. It's like one community, to feel like that's theirs and that they feel the right and they have, you know, every single reason to be there and to make it their home. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> There are still plenty of performances you can see between now and December 22. They're at the New Latino Theater in downtown Los Angeles. For details, go to their website at thenewlatcstore.com. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. 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. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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