Fifty-two years ago, on this day, May 22nd, 1972, the BBC showed an influential documentary about national parks and how the protections people thought they had were being undermined…
Outcry from the Conservation Society, Friends of the Earth and other groups led the BBC to run a Horizon documentary called Do You Dig National Parks May 22 1972
FOE’s collaboration with television teams led, in September 1971, to a Granada TV production entitled “A Subject Called Ecology in a Place Called Capel Hermon,” and, in May 1972, to a BBC Horizon production called “Do You Dig National Parks?” In the discussion which formed the latter half of the Horizon program, FOE spokesmen Graham Searle and Amory Lovins, manifesting a grasp of open-pit mining technology and economics at least equal to that of their adversaries, methodically dissected the arguments put forward by RTZ Vice-Chairman Roy Wright and one of his colleagues. Suddenly it began to be conceivable that FOE and its allies – who now included many of the local people in Snowdonia – might have a chance of winning.
Walt Patterson – https://www.waltpatterson.org/foertz.pdf
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the nascent environment/protest movement in the UK was worried about what was being done to national parks by Rio Tinto and other mining companies. This documentary exposed that and helped raise public awareness and make some of the decisions more costly and unpalatable for politicians.
What we learn is that documentaries can matter.
What happened next, the environment movement kept growing sort of though, things kind of became harder from ‘73 onwards partly because of fatigue and old news-itis but also the oil shock and economic problems up the wazoo.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
May 22, 2007 – “Clean coal” power station by 2014, honest…
May 22 – Build Back Biodiversity: International Biodiversity Day