No Easy Answers (1974)

foreign [Music] we used to glorify science for making progress possible all our conveniences come from the application of scientific knowledge but now we sometimes condemn science for our failure to use that knowledge wisely science just makes Wars worse it doesn't help them it doesn't stop them it just makes them worse and I think I'm going to study Humanities and religion because that's where the answer really is and we can't hope to stop Wars by science but only through religion and Humanity here we are spending billions of dollars sending man up to the Moon but yet here on Earth people are living in poverty the housing around here is just ridiculous it isn't surprising that science is blamed for the world's ills scientists have done what once seemed impossible so we tend to think they can find an answer to every problem like controlling insects which destroy a third of the world's food crop and spread diseases like malaria which these mosquito larvae can transmit when they mature we once believed chemicals like DDT were the answer but we soon discovered that insects quickly develop a resistance to chemicals now DDT hardly affects mosquitoes at all but insecticides do affect other living things computers are helping identify effective insecticides that have fewer side effects computers now touch almost everything in our lives from keeping track of school records all the way to scheduling airline flights and Landing airplanes completely automatically without any help from the pilots [Music] yeah computers I think I can appreciate computers as much as anybody else in fact uh that's why I've got this unemployment check on time today the computer system also put myself and about 50 other people how to work on the assembly line at the company I worked for without computers to keep track of the paperwork our society generates the whole economy would fall computer networks can store Vital Information about millions of people but what about the risk of computer mistakes and how can we prevent others from using memory banks to discover more about us then we want them to know computer analysis has helped geneticists unlock some of the very secrets of light indicating in advance whether children will be born healthy or deformed they do it by culturing the cells from unborn human embryos and then counting under a microscope whether all 46 normal chromosomes are present this way couples can know their chances of delivering healthy children in advance sometimes even before conception some of the long-term implications have been considered by Dr Arthur Robinson we're now in the midst of new discoveries which may give man the power to control his own evolution that power is undoubtedly many years in the future however already we have the ability to control the birth of individuals with serious defects eventually chromosomes may be engineered like building blocks to produce perfect babies but who is to decide what's perfect and how will we prevent Earth defects and yet not violate the rights and privacy of prospective parents freedom of personal choice is also a concern of biofeedback and behavior modification researchers newly perfected instruments can chart The rhythms of the brain when the readings are displayed subjects can learn to alter those rhythms consciously when people are under pressure the brain signals the muscles to contract the muscles stay contracted for too long a Time like say in the head area then you may develop a tension headache and these biofeedback instruments that we have here we can use to to teach people the art of relaxation using related techniques scientists can already greatly modify human behavior and actually can control the behavior of rats if human behavior can be manipulated that way who will decide who must be controlled and who will do the controlling because the world is interconnected often in ways we don't fully understand everything eventually has an impact on everything else be it computers insect control genetics behavior modification or the weather which controls how well crops grow and it's the weather that affects our travel and sometimes safety extreme weather is directly responsible for an average of 500 deaths and over two billion dollars worth of property damage in the United States every year [Music] because it is so important man has tried since the earliest times to control the weather [Music] meteorologists now can modify some kinds of weather and hope to control even more the question about the weather and about many other areas where scientists are working is this how much should they control [Applause] for example when a hurricane strikes it can cause enormous death [Applause] research has been conducted to steer these storms away from population centers but if a way to direct hurricanes is perfected who would decide that it's better to steer away from one city and let it hit somewhere else in effect it's a question of who owns and controls the weather in a part of Colorado known as hail alley Farmers have long endured damage from the weather I'll cite you one case back in 1948 we had seven hail storms through here we harvested less than 10 percent of a normal crop it came in it came through here and it completely wiped out everything that year my folks had nothing it just killed chickens just like if you went out there and shot them with the 22 rifle now when you get something like that no that's that's a heavy loss the national Center for atmospheric research in Boulder Colorado has been experimenting with methods to suppress the hail that devastates this region the most promising technique is to seed potential hail storm clouds from airplanes silver iodide particles from the burning flares are carried up into the clouds where they react with supercooled water [Music] we think that the particles will produce small hailstones like these that do no damage instead of big ones like this that can wipe out a wheat field in a few minutes because we're concerned about the effects that weather modification may have throughout an area we've been very careful to consult with the people who live up here in northeastern Colorado where we're conducting an experiment to see if we can suppress damaging hail the farmers and ranchers most affected by the experiment are not in total agreement I would be willing to pay I believe maybe a 10 gross Crop Production premium for Hail suppression and to tell uh it was proven that they could surprise hail that I I think it ought to be a research financed by the government well I'm not in favor of it because in the first place I'm not sure that nature should be tampered with to that extent in the second place I'm not sure that it's at least for areas like this it's not economically a good thing if it works but I would assume that they'd have to prove to us that they could suppress hail say uh from 75 to 90 percent uh every year then I think we could rely on it this thing would have to be controlled uh you know so it would benefit the general country if say we'd get two or three inches less rain in a year even though we didn't get any hail with it that could mean they fell in my position and be running maybe 100 head less cows which could for all practical purposes put you out of business I introduced the bill in the Colorado legislature because of problems we'd had in the local area of Colorado where I live the state must protect people from things that might happen and therefore we do need all these safeguards that we have built into into our law [Music] can we know for sure what changes in the environment will result from modifying the weather scientists have been feeding data into the biggest computers available for almost 25 years but they still can't reliably predict what will happen a week in advance because the physical problems are so complicated so if we can't even be sure if it's going to rain next Tuesday how can we be sure what will happen when we alter natural weather events for example Farmers profit from heavy snowfalls because Deep Mountain snowpacks produce abundant runoff in the spring [Music] elk can starve if drifts cover their normal forage some wildflowers may fail to develop seeds if the snow melts unusually late no one knows the effect this will have on small animals or more importantly on the total environment [Music] interactions between the Machinery of civilization and the environment extend far beyond the weather as man learns to control the most powerful natural forces such as atomic energy the risks as well as the benefits become greater so scientists have the responsibility to predict and explain the future impact of their discoveries and we all have the responsibility to pay attention so we can make Intelligent Decisions in our complex and interconnected World about the only thing we know for sure is that there will be no easy answers foreign [Music] [Music]