Chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, McHarg is a member of the Philadelphia firm of Wallace, McHarg, Roberts & Todd, which has been applying his "ecological planning" methods to land-use projects across the country.
Intending to interview him about the effect of the energy crisis on the environment, PEOPLE's Joan Oliver found McHarg's splendidly unfettered mind conjuring up great visions and dreams of a more perfect America—admittedly often without regard for details like cost or political practicality.
What's happening to the environment these days?
We are still screwing it up at a helluva rate. But we're also diminishing our own lives, which is much the most important thing. I don't think we have to worry about nature. The worst we could do—have an atomic cataclysm and wipe out mankind—would not wipe out all bacteria, viruses, plants. They would start again. But man is a different story. Man is ephemeral, unlikely and precarious.
Does the energy crisis further threaten man's relationship to his environment?
Of course. Man, by muscle alone, cannot have much effect upon the environment. Give him an ax and the Amazon forest; there's not an awful lot he can do. Then we gave him a power saw. Now we've given him pesticides, herbicides, an atomic bomb. We have successively multiplied the amount of power man has. But the discrimination he exercises diminishes with the amount of power he has. We have not been able to increase our intelligence at a rate commensurate with our increase in power over the environment.
You have a very dark view of man?
Oh, no, the opposite. My world is full of superb human beings. I have a gorgeous wife, two magnificent sons. I'm surrounded by breathtaking friends. My students are a testimony to the greatness of America. We're talking about large institutional stupidity, like the Department of Defense or the Army engineers or the bureau of public roads or the presidency.
What alternatives do we have in meeting the energy crisis?
Suppose we used intelligence in dealing with this business of energy. Far too much to hope for, but let's operate on this assumption. What we ought to do is maximize energy sources which neither stress the environment nor stress human beings.
Say we'll get as much energy as we can by using solar power alone. It involves no new technology. The simplest scheme would be a bloody great water tank and glass on the roof. You could get all the heat you want in almost any part of the United States from direct sunlight, shining through glass panels into water which is circulated through the house. But besides heat we also would like to have television and other amenities which use electric power. So we simply cheapen NASA's photovoltaic cells which transform sunlight into direct current. They've developed them for space, where you can't send up an electrician to change a fitting. Why can't we have a version that everybody can put on their roof?
Could this technique be put into production right away?
Absolutely. If we could only get a lobby. You see our problem is that we have lobbies for oil, for coal, for gas and for the Atomic Energy Commission. We don't have a lobby for solar energy. We need one. Also, where is our lobby for methane? For chicken dung?
How do those come in?
You get methane from sewage treatment plants, from a decomposing dung heap. And you can induce it by bacteria. Methane can be compressed and used to drive automobiles just as well as gasoline, with no stress to the environment. That's a beautiful conservation, isn't it? We should test every energy source like this one against the stress it imposes on the natural and social environment. By this measure, hydroelectric power usually means damage to the environment.
Why is that?
Alewife and salmon used to go up the Columbia River. Now these poor bloody fish confront power dams 200 feet high, and they say "the hell with it." So the result is that the salmon runs are pretty well finished in the United States.
And when we consider fossil energy, we're talking about real social cost. Taking out coal does a number of things. It forces miners to lie on their sides in water along a seam 2½ feet thick, working eight-hour shifts with pick and shovel, not knowing the time of day or season of the year. Moreover coal wreaks a terrible devastation on the environment. When you burn the stuff, you get a lot of pollutants and sometimes even radioactivity.
Does this mean we shouldn't use coal?
No. It means it should be priced higher. Compensation for the damage done by mining should be included in the price. I have the illusion when I pay the electric bill that I've paid for all the costs incurred. That isn't true. Philadelphia Electric's charges do not pay for the destruction of the landscape of West Virginia or upstate Pennsylvania by coal mining.
What about city people? Can their environment create anything but violence or lack of respect for nature?
I think they're just not fulfilled. I'm not an anti-city man at all. My sadness about cities is that they've declined so badly. For almost all of man's history, everything that could be called civilized was represented in cities. The word "city" comes from the Latin civis, which we still use in the word "civilized," and "urbane" comes from urbs which means city. And "polite" comes from polls which is the Greek word for city. So the polite, the civilized, the urbane were by definition the people who lived in cities. The barbarians were the people who said "bar-bar" and who lived in the country. They couldn't speak; they were illiterate. Now we have made a barbaric place of the city.
Can the city still be livable?
It's hard to make a general statement. But take Amsterdam. I find it a totally delicious city. The people living there are not suffering in any sense. They have all the elements that justify a city: a tremendous architectural heritage, great art, a great night life, fantastically excellent restaurants. There is the great vitality of people enjoying the city. Edinburgh? Given the Scots' commitment to masochism, I suspect that Edinburgh is pretty gratifying to the people who live there. San Francisco probably represents the best marriage of man and nature of any American city.
What about your own hometown?
Philadelphia is retrievable, because there's so much good in it. There are a lot of small neighborhoods. I live in an absolutely idyllic environment. I live in the city on the edge of a park which is 14 miles long and a mile-and-a-half wide. I see deer, possum, raccoons. The people who share this environment with me are living in a very satisfactory urban environment: good schools, good colleges in the area. On the other hand, 250,000 black poor live in the city, too, in an area of absolutely execrable conditions.
You've been outspoken in your criticism of modern skyscrapers. Why?
That's a special kind of lunacy. The idea of making a glass prism without distinguishing between north and south, east and west is obviously madness. A stupid architect doesn't seem to know where the sun rises and sets, doesn't know anything about radiant heating, radiant cooling, convection or conduction. Buildings are actually only another skin, a membrane between us and the environment. Each of us has an incredible involuntary system working like hell to keep our temperature at 98.6°. But instead of designing a building, another membrane, which would help our bodies maintain 98.6°, the architect exacerbates the problem. So the solution is to put in air conditioning and central heating to compensate for the fact that the architect doesn't understand climate or homeostasis.
Why are you opposed to prizes for architecture?
Because prizes are usually given on the basis of photographs. I said I'd like to devise another method: statements sent by users of buildings. For instance, a man and a woman have had an architect design a house and they've lived in it for a couple of years. So the whole family sits down and writes a letter saying: "You've no idea what has happened. In our old house, dining was just something we did, but now dining is an event. And our love life was pretty humdrum but goddammit, this architect has designed a bedroom so that the whole procedure of undressing and washing and sleeping and making love is absolutely amplified as a result." Now this is the kind of testimonial that justifies prizes.
What is your "grand plan"—your "National Ecological Inventory"?
We'd like to find for every person, every institution, every industry the best environment. There should be a national environmental center with a group of scientists who represent all the sciences necessary to understand the total environment of the United States. They'd be required to make a model of that system so they could predict: if you put an atomic reactor here, if you do offshore drilling there, then these are the consequences. I would like to be part of such a dream.
Do you think America is ready for such visionary proposals?
This sense of man apart from nature—this sense that he's got to exercise dominion, subjugate—is a deep, deep sickness that's got to be eradicated somehow. I am horrified by the assumption that the greatness of America is measured by commodity—by automobiles, or the amount of electricity consumed, or whether people jet all over the world. As far as I'm concerned, greatness is measured by compassion, by courage, by gentleness.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
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