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If there was a moment during my research about the Dow Chemical Company when I felt at last that I understood how to judge the "great things" this corporation claims for itself, it came while watching television. You could have seen the video moment for yourself, but only if you'd driven to Dow's hometown - the small quiet city of Midland.
Visiting Midland is like stepping into a Frank Capra movie: prosperous streets, conservative clothes, cheerful fellowship. Dow Chemical, where a quarter of city's working residents draw their paychecks, has hardly ever laid anyone off, not even during the Great Depression. It (and the Dow family) have built some spectacular public works in Midland --- a terrific library, a nature center, a replica of the original Dow plant from 1890, and an array of buildings inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. (Alden Dow, son of the chemical company's founder, was a Wright protege.) Then there is the scenic overlook, the panoramic view of a 1900-acre erector set, built of pipes and pumps --- the Dow Michigan chemical plant across the river.
In Midland I sat at an editing deck in the community TV station, to watch an August '90 episode of a local talk show called "It's Debatable." One guest was Karl Kamena, director of government affairs for Dow's plastics division, promoter of plastics recycling as a solution to the American landfill problem. Soft-voiced and deliberately earnest, he looked (on TV, at least) like Joe DiMaggio; local environmentalists privately consider him one of Dow's most self-assured and condescending debaters. His opponent, Mark Adams, was the 30-something co-founder of the Waste Oil Action Committee, a local environmental group promoting an end to disposable plastics altogether. With curly dark hair and a flowered tie, Adams came across like Doonesbury's Mark Slackmeyer. He introduced himself by tossing a polystyrene clamshell across the table.
I had little hope at first for ``It's Debatable.'' It's hard to say which was more irritating: Kamena's ponderous lecture on how ``Styrofoam'' is a trademarked name, or Adams' street-theatre-esque interruptions: ``This clown Ronald McToxic may fool the children, but he's not fooling most of the adults out here.'' But then, about halfway through the program, Adams changed course. Holding up a report from the Michigan State packaging program, he asserted that polystyrene coffee cups leach chlorine into hot drinks. It was the first moment in the show when any outside evidence had been introduced.
``I'd be happy,'' said Kamena, ``to have our people take a look at these studies.''
Adams deftly took the opening. ``If Dow found that these reports are in fact true,'' he asked, ``would they stop producing polystyrene packaging?''
``If we found that polystyrene was causing a human health problem,'' said Kamena, ``or an environmental problem that couldn't be controlled…'' -- he paused -- ``why would we want to produce that product?''
In their hearts, it appeared, both sides wanted the same thing: an end to poison. The environmentalists I'd met were technically savvy and reasonable. The Dow executives were fiercely moral, committed to good faith in a way I'd rarely encountered as a business reporter. A Dow executive named Dan Fellner had sought me out at Garbage and invited me to Midland to investigate them, not knowing that for two years I'd been gathering information on the company. In this moment on TV, I believed Kamena: If Dow found out that polystyrene was toxic, in an era when such knowledge can't be covered up, why would they want to make the product?
But Adams had an answer for that, too. Depending on your point of view, his answer either hit below the belt, or else got to the heart of the tense contradictions under the veneer of corporate environmentalism. ``For the same reason,'' he said, ``that Agent Orange was produced.''