Monarch butterfly. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos.
Occupy Health
In May 2018, I met Susan Downs at an international conference at the University of Patras, Greece. She is a physician and a fearless documentary producer. Her motto is “Occupy Health.”
The moment Downs realized I was the author of Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA, she invited me for a brief taped interview. She also phoned her colleagues at the Silicon Valley Health Institute in Palo Alto, California, and the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, California, and convinced them to invite me for talks. They did.
On Thursday, November 15, 2018, I spoke at the Silicon Valley Health Instituteand on Friday, November 16, 2018, I spoke at the Commonwealth Club.
Stories from the past
In both presentations I summarized my knowledge and experience. I worked on Capitol Hill for two years and for the US Environmental Protection Agency for twenty-five years. I supplemented my remarks with images from the industrialization of agriculture and the destructive administration of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s: the model for the harmful environmental deregulation of the Trump administration.
Of course, twenty-five years cannot be brought back, much less captured in a story. But I did my best in telling the truth with fragments of memories, some of which I documented in Poison Spring.
The overarching idea that explains the tragedy of today is this: America lost its soul with the winning of WWII. The…