and since there are no fig leaves on any statues in Los Angeles for 

 example, it will never be a problem there. But it may effect fish 

 populations somewhere in the vicinity. Acid rain... remarkably 



democratic. . .a phenomenon that can affect everybody, and probably will, 

 especially as we make the conscious decision to move our energy base from 

 oit to coal. It's very simple. They go together. What to do about it is 

 quite another matter. 



The disposition of toxic wastes purposefully and accidentally is an 

 extraordinary problem for us, for you and for me--whether you realize it 

 or not. Some of you have read about Love Canal, which is an eastern 

 problem. Some of you have read about the PCB's that are concentrated in 

 storage tanks on the east coast. Some of you know about the presence of 

 of strange toxicants in the drinking water, it's almost universal. You 

 know about all kinds of things of this sort because it's in the press 

 everyday. Think also about some secondary sorts of things. How many 

 times have you read in the last month or so about the train that derailed 

 someplace and put a tank car full of chlorine off the tracks and everybody 

 had to leave town? I read somewhere the other day that--and I think with 

 some authority-there are over 5,000 derailments of that kind in the United 

 States every year. The disposition of toxic materials about which we know 

 virtually nothing is rampant. I have environmental contaminate evaluators 

 who know their onions, who can make me wonder why I ever bothered not 

 to be an embalmer as my mother devoutly wished I be, because it seems we 

 can never get ahead of this. 



You are aware, I am sure, of the immense rate at which deforestation 

 is taking place in Central and South America. The purpose of which is to 

 produce box paper, craft paper for cardboard boxes. I'm not sure the 

 tradeoff is a very worthy one because when those forests are gone they 

 are unlikely every to be replaced. The advance of deforestation is 

 alarming in Africa and elsewhere, including our own country. These 

 things are phenomena that can be attributed in large measure to man and 

 his activities. They will affect Butte, Montana and Helena and all the rest 

 one day, directly or indirectly. 



There is no escaping the fact that however happy and content you 

 may be lo recognize that you live in Montana--perhaps the last place that 

 there may be some kind of social upheaval based on the control of steel 

 traps or some other such mundane thing--you can never escape the 

 consequences of what's happening elsewhere in the world. I worry about 

 that a good deal. 



Many of you who hear me speak hear the same story over and over 

 again because I feel compelled to tell it everytime I have a captive 

 audience for 30 minutes. I feel it's important. We cannot escape what 

 goes on in the rest of the world. The consequence of what we do accrlies 

 to all of us. You need look only at acid rain or at the example... some 

 weeks ago I was given at a briefing on the Clean Air Act, which included 

 in its presentation a photograph from Sky Lab. From that there was no 

 visible evidence of human habitation on earth but for a plume of smoke 

 from a large fossil fuele power plant in the Four Corners area of the 

 desert southwest. The plume of smoke was clearly evident from a distance 



