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November 22, 2016 full episode transcript

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Coal is energy, coal is power. Canada has as much coal in the ground as almost any country in the world, enough to mine at the present rate for over 2,000 years.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: That 1950s enthusiasm for coal has given way to a government and environmental aversion. Canada has about two dozen coal mines, its coal reserves are the fifth largest in the world. But within 14 years, Ottawa says it wants none of it to be used to make electricity here at home. The industry, workers and communities with coal fired generating stations say the cost in jobs lost and future employment will be high. Environmentalists say the cost in lives lost to coal emissions is already high. We're on that in a moment. And then, right on the heels of the Trudeau government's coal changes, maverick philosopher Peter Singer sees climate change as a moral issue.

SOUNDCLIP

I mean, the sound bite answer is you should be moral because in the long run looking at your real interests, it will be better for you.

AMT: Peter Singer on the ethics of the real world, in half an hour. And then, 53 years ago today Abraham Zapruder was a man in Dallas taking home movies of a presidential motorcade when he captured the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

SOUNDCLIP

From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official President Kennedy died at 1:00 pm Central Standard Time, thirty eight minutes ago.

AMT: The film sequence was a mere 26 seconds long. It would set the stage for media wars, conspiracy theories and ethical questions we still confront today. In an hour, Alexandra Zapruder on how her grandfather's 486 frames of film affected the American psyche and followed her family through generations. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

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Canada's plan to phase-out coal-powered electricity by 2030 sparks concern

Guests: Ross Galbraith, Robin Campbell, Erin Flanagan

SOUNDCLIP

Coal power today results in close to ten per cent of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions coming from four provinces Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The action announced today will reduce Canada's greenhouse gas emissions by more than five megatons by 2030. This is the equivalent of taking 1.3 million cars off the road.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well, that is Canada's environment minister Catherine McKenna turning the lights out on coal powered electricity. The Federal Liberal government plan announced yesterday would see coal phased out from electrical generation by the year 2030, making 90 per cent of Canada's power generation clean, according to the government. As it is, coal powered plants generate just 11 per cent of the country's electricity, but they are responsible for more than 70 per cent of the electricity sector's emissions. As the minister mentioned, there are currently four provinces with coal power units including New Brunswick. Ross Galbraith is the Business Manager for Local 37 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in New Brunswick. And he's in Fredericton. Hello.

ROSS GALBRAITH: Good morning.

AMT: How many jobs in New Brunswick could be affected by this decision?

ROSS GALBRAITH: We've got about 200 people that work between our coal fire plant, we also have one other fossil fuel plant and in addition to those, there would be about another 220 induced jobs, so indirect jobs related to the industry.

AMT: And what are you hearing then from New Brunswick power workers that you represent?

ROSS GALBRAITH: Well, they're pretty worried. I mean, they've done a good job of making sure that we have a reliable electrical system in this province and, you know, we also provide electricity to neighbouring jurisdictions and, you know, they're concerned by this. The IBEW, you know, as an organization, we've always advocated for a reliable and strong electrical system. And, you know, we acknowledge that climate change is real, the science is definitive, but we think we need, you know, a sensible, balanced approach for the future of our electrical sector to ensure that we have a reliable system that's at the right cost for the consumers.

AMT: And what would that approach look like?

ROSS GALBRAITH: Well, I think that, you know, if you look in my province of New Brunswick, New Brunswick Power’s reduced the greenhouse gas emissions by about 64 per cent from 2001 and we're currently 75 per cent non-emitting. And so we're moving in the right direction, there's a project going on right now with a smart grid that allow us to better integrate renewables into the system. And so, they've moved a lot, you know, without, you know, government saying hey, we just have to draw a line in the sand and close these plants. So we're going to get there. I think the right approach is to allow the plants — the few that are still remaining — to finish out their lifespan while these other initiatives are ongoing and we can avoid a lot of cost to the consumer and also issues with reliability to our electrical system.

AMT: What's non-emitting, is that nuclear?

ROSS GALBRAITH: Yeah, we’ve got nuclear in this province, we also have some hydro and we're purchasing some wind.

AMT: OK. Now, is the federal government offering help in terms of retraining workers affected by that announcement?

ROSS GALBRAITH: Well I guess that's the big question mark. In the yesterday, there is, you know, I noticed that the minister is saying that, you know, there's some flexibility going forward. I haven't heard anything about retraining but, you know, certainly that's a concern in this province. It's been hit pretty hard economically and a lot of economists would say that, you know, New Brunswick needs good jobs. And in the power sector, there are high tech jobs, there are power plant operators, engineers, you know, a lot of technologists and they’re the type of jobs that this province needs and it’d just be ashamed to see them, you know, lose those jobs.

AMT: They’re also union jobs huh? So they’re pension, they have full benefits.

ROSS GALBRAITH: Yeah, they’re good jobs, they help this province move forward.

AMT: What would this mean to consumers in the province?

ROSS GALBRAITH: Well I think there's three issues with closing, you know, plants prematurely. First is reliability, the second would be related to the cost of electricity and the third thing would be what we just talked about, the impacts on employment. Now with reliability, you know, the issue is that renewables aren't a constant source of energy, they're cyclical. You know, a cloud goes in front of the sun, solar power drops, if it's not windy, which it frequently isn't in periods of the most extreme cold or the most extreme heat, they don't generate a lot of electricity. And, you know, Michigan's a case in point. The head of their Public Service Commission has warned that the state could actually go dark if measures aren't taken very soon to reverse the loss of the base load power they had from generation that was fossil fuel. And they eliminated that to rely on solar and wind, and so it's causing problems for them.

AMT: Well, what about Nova Scotia though? Nova Scotia is turning on the turbines for tidal power today. How do you know that in 14 years that technology won't be refined and reliable and other technologies won't be as well, to replace coal?

ROSS GALBRAITH: Well, it may very well be. But the issue today in our society is electricity is an essential service, we rely upon it for our quality of life. And we not only rely on electricity, but we rely on a high quality of electricity, you know, we can't have outages or voltage changes. We need a really reliable system. And even with tides, I mean, I'm not sure how the technology works exactly, but I imagine it's cyclical because the tides change twice a day. And so the issue with renewables is how do we make up the power when they're not generating? And to date, you know, historically around the world it's been through the use of fossil fuels.

AMT: Well, yesterday's announcement accelerates a timetable set out by the Harper government in 2012 and the New Brunswick government was already considering shutting down Belldune, which is your only coal fired facility by 2030. Wasn't the writing on the wall?

ROSS GALBRAITH: Well, I think that what we've been advocating for is the life span of that plant was to 2040. And we're saying, let's take a measured approach, let's let that plant finish out its lifespan. And, you know, to the best of my knowledge, I think 2030 is just a number that, you know, people have decided upon. I know in Germany their target was 2030, but now with a lot of the changes they've made, they've actually got the highest power rates in Europe. They've got the highest CO2 emissions that they've ever had and there's some talk over there that they have to back off their target of 2030 for elimination of coal and move it out to 2040.

AMT: OK. Well, Mr. Galbraith, thank you for your thoughts on this.

ROSS GALBRAITH: Thank you so much.

AMT: That is Ross Galbraith. He is the Business Manager for Local 37 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in New Brunswick. He joined us from Fredericton. The Coal Association of Canada has been watching this announcement closely. Robin Campbell is the association's President. He's in Edmonton. Hello.

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Hello, how are you?

AMT: Well, I'm well. What do you make of the government's announcement to phase out coal energy by 2030?

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Well, you know, I think that, you know, it's a little short sighted. Again, I think that, you know, the government came back from [unintelligible] and a lot of pressure around the world to continue to shut down fossil fuels and they came back and came out with announcements that we're going to look to accelerate this. And I find interesting, being that both Minister McKenna and Minister Carr were in Saskatchewan a couple of months ago and both toured the carbon capture storage plant and both found it to be, you know, exemplary and that this was the future of coal. And then of course, yesterday we had the announcement that Nova Scotia is going to be able to run their coal fired plants, plus beyond 2030 because of a cap and trade system put in. So I think there is a bit of a moving target out there and I think it's just creating a lot more anxiety across the four provinces who do use coal for their power?

AMT: The government has said it can be flexible. Do you see some wiggle room there?

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Well, I think that, you know, the minister did say that the plants had carbon capture storage attached and that they could continue to run. So, you know, we're of the position that, you know, we should be looking at continuing to spend money on research and technology and looking, you know, to continue to reduce our emissions but do it in a manner that we can use the resource that we have in Canada that’s plentiful and it creates, as the gentleman from New Brunswick said, you know, creates affordable, reliable power system not only for consumers but also for attracting investment.

AMT: What's stopping the industry from already working on that though?

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Well I think the industry is doing that. And, you know, again I think there has to be a signal from the federal government, you know, that this is the way to go and that, you know, they will welcome that. There is a partnership going on in Saskatchewan right now where BHP, the largest coal miner in the world out of Australia, and JCOAL out of Japan, are working with SaskPower and the University of Saskatchewan, and continue to look at how to make CCS become more efficient and more cost productive one year in the future.

AMT: Coal fired power represents over 70 per cent of emissions in Canada's electricity sector. It provides only 11 per cent of the country's electricity. What's wrong with wanting to replace coal with cleaner energy such as natural gas or nuclear power?

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Well I think when we look at the numbers, you know, they can be a little deceiving. You know, I mean, you have to look at in the global context. Canada only produces 1.6 of greenhouse gas emissions around the world. And if you shut down all of the coal fire generation in Canada, you're only going to affect it by point 0.135 per cent. So to say that it's 70 per cent of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, yes that's true. But you have to look at the global context.

AMT: But we're a tiny country, so per capita those numbers are higher.

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Well, not really. And again, when you look at the coal that we have in Canada, we have a clean coal, it's low sulfur, low ash. You know, we have the ability to be innovative. And you know, when I look at provinces like Alberta where, you know, 51 per cent of the power generated is coal and look at Saskatchewan and those numbers are high, and of course, look into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. As the gentleman from New Brunswick said, these are good paying jobs. And they’re small communities and, you know, there's been no talk at all about transition, as far as how you’re going to retrain workers. There's been no talk at all as that, you know, how are you going to replace. In Alberta for example, you're looking at replacing 6,200 megawatts of energy if you shut down coal fire generation, and is that even possible--

AMT: [interposing] But Alberta has also said it wants to do that right? Alberta has said that separately that it wants shut--

ROBIN CAMPBELL: [interposing] Well, it’s one thing to say you want to do it, it’s another thing to do it. And again, we look at Europe, we look at Germany, for example. Germany was going to be the leader of getting off of coal, they’re going back to burning coal. Holland is burning coal because of the electric car situation they have there. Japan--

AMT: [interposing] Well, let me ask you then. There’s still, like, what is it? Something like 24 coal mines in Canada. Where does the product go if Canada doesn't use it for electrical generation here?

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Well, you have thermal coal, which is used for power generation. Of course, you have the metallurgical coal, which is used for making steel.

AMT: For steel, yeah. So where would the thermal coal go, would it be?

ROBIN CAMPBELL: It’s used domestically, the majority of it.

AMT: OK, so you'd have to find new markets for it.

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Well, you'd have to find new markets it. But the issue with that you’d also have to have the infrastructure to get it to market. So a lot of these mines are what we call mine to mouth operations. The mine is there for the power plant and the rail line’s not there to, even if you did want to look at exporting that to other countries.

AMT: So in other words, even though the federal government is targeting the coal fired electrical generating plants, the actual mines, they will be affected.

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Oh, they'll have to shut down because they’re there for one reason and that's to feed the power plants.

AMT: So how many jobs are you looking at?

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Well, when we look at the numbers that the federal government put out yesterday, you're looking at about 42,000 jobs across Canada and just about six billion dollars in GDP.

AMT: OK. Well, Mr. Campbell, it’s important to hear those numbers. Thank you.

ROBIN CAMPBELL: Thank you very much.

AMT: That is Robin Campbell, President of the Coal Association of Canada. He joined us from Edmonton. The Pembina Institute is a non-profit think tank promoting clean energy. Yesterday, it released a report saying that phasing out coal powered electricity by 2030 would improve health, save tax dollars and help Canada meet its goals for reducing carbon emissions. Erin Flanagan is the Group's Program Director of Federal Policy. And Erin Flanagan joins me from our Ottawa studio. Hello.

ERIN FLANAGAN: Hello, thanks for having me.

AMT: Well, you've been listening in. What's your reaction to what you just heard, that this in fact has a ripple effect right to the mines?

ERIN FLANAGAN: Well, it's true that we need to be considerate to the impacts that this may have across the economy but I really don't think there's any reason to believe that the government doesn't also have that view. We heard from the minister yesterday that they are sensitive to the economic impacts of this and that they'll be bringing in programs to address that. So I'm confident that the government is aware of this and will work with the provinces who are directly impacted to bring in programs that can support workers.

AMT: Now, we've seen the decline of the coal industry both in Canada and worldwide in recent years. Given that, how significant is yesterday's announcement by Ottawa?

ERIN FLANAGAN: Well, Canada is not the first country to commit to phasing out coal and certainly we won't be the last. So when we look at the international trends, we see that the UK has already made this commitment, in fact, faster. They're phasing out coal by 2025. Denmark’s made this commitment, France, Austria. So really, Canada is joining a pack of international leaders on this and this is something that, you know, those countries are pursuing in part for climate reasons but also because of the co-benefits, you know, the benefits to air quality and the benefits to the health of their people.

AMT: Well, you have a report on health and spending benefits. What are you saying?

ERIN FLANAGAN: Well, we looked at the existing federal regulations, so we can't forget there is a regulation on the books that was brought in by the Harper government to phase out coal. That was a regulation that was brought in in 2012. And at that time they had to do a cost benefit analysis on the regulation. And so what we did is we took the government's own numbers and we said OK, if we actually strengthened that and we brought the target down to 2030, what would be the additional benefits of that measure? And what we found that the additional benefits are more than a thousand avoided premature deaths, over 870 ER visits avoided, 128,000 asthma episodes avoided. And you're looking at health outcomes which is, you know, lower productivity costs, lower health costs at more than 5 billion dollars. So the numbers are significant. And even if we don't want to do this for climate reasons, we should recognize that this is a public policy that improves the health of all Canadians. And so it has merit just on the health factor alone.

AMT: So these are the tangible results of coal emissions.

ERIN FLANAGAN: Absolutely.

AMT: Going into the air.

ERIN FLANAGAN: Yes.

AMT: So you would cut that. Now, there are 35 coal power units across Canada that would be affected, including one in Hanna, Alberta. I've got a clip here of Mayor Chris Warwick, listen to what the mayor had to say.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm concerned because of a lack of investment into technologies that could create cleaner burning coal. The biggest problem with completely be wiping out coal is now you’re going to replace it with natural gas. Well, natural gas prices are not going to be as stable as coal prices will be. Right now as it sits, we’ll lose over 200 jobs. You know, to lose 150, and if each one of those people has a spouse and maybe one child, now you're looking at 450 people coming out of a community of 2,700, so that's a pretty major impact.

AMT: Erin Flanagan, should the government be investing in what coal advocates call clean coal technology?

ERIN FLANAGAN: Well, I don't think there's a place for public dollars in these kind of technologies. If project proponents think there's a viable business case, then sure, let's see some private investment into these technologies like carbon capture and storage. But to think that the government needs to be playing a role in that I think is really short sighted. I mean, a lot of the conversation this morning has been about taxpayers, has been about ratepayers and insuring that we're being sensitive to how we're spending public dollars. So I think that is also fair to extend that to carbon capture and storage and other technologies.

AMT: The Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has been very vocal, he's criticized Ottawa for making top down announcements. Are you concerned that with provincial buy-in this plan might fail?

ERIN FLANAGAN: Well, the federal government does have unilateral jurisdiction to regulate on this and we saw that exercised under the Harper government. So this regulation, you know, is in place already and the provinces have the ability to develop flexible solutions to comply with it. I mean, I think when we look to Saskatchewan, this is actually a huge opportunity for Saskatchewan to move forward the technology that they are so proud of, which is carbon capture and storage. You know, they have the ability to deploy that technology to comply with the regulation. And so why not take that opportunity? It's for the taking at the moment and, you know, we look forward to Saskatchewan bringing forward a plan that demonstrates they can comply with this in a cost effective manner.

AMT: Before I let you go, of course, just south of the border President-elect Donald Trump has made the revival of coal a centrepiece of his campaign. How do you see that in the US affecting what the Canadian government wants to do?

ERIN FLANAGAN: Well, in Canada we need to recognize that we have our own climate targets and so this policy makes a lot of sense for us to reduce our own emissions. When we look south of the border, I mean, really the market trends are not with a revival of coal and if the president-elect wants to bring in, you know, subsidy programs or do other sorts of interventions to prop up the industry, he’s free to do so but that would be counter to the economic trends that we're seeing in the electricity sector.

AMT: OK. Erin Flannigan, thank you for your time.

ERIN FLANAGAN: Thanks for having me.

AMT: Erin Flanagan, Pembina Institute's Program Director of Federal Policy. She's in our Ottawa studio. Well, let us know what you think of this. You can tweet us, we are @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook or go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And the news is next. And then we're going to be talking about disrupting everyday ethics with philosopher Peter Singer. But first, given the fact that coal powered electricity may be on its way out in Canada. We've got a little song for you here. Coal mining is still a major part of Canada's heritage and we have a little bit of The Men of the Deeps, the men's choir of coal miners and former miners from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

[Music: The Men of the Deeps]

AMT: We’ll take this to the news. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current. Stay with us.

Back To Top »

Ethics not just a discussion for philosophers, says Peter Singer

Guests: Peter Singer

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Well, still to come 26 seconds is the entire length of an amateur movie Abraham Zapruder filmed in Dallas 53 years ago today. His footage of the Kennedy assassination changed America. In half an hour, Alexandra Zapruder, Abraham's granddaughter, joins me with her own personal history of that whole movie. But first, thinking through some ethical taboos.

[Theme: The Disruptors]

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[Sound: crowd chanting]

CROWD: Hey hey, ho ho, Singer’s got to go.

PROTEST VOICE: Princeton employs a man who openly and coldly says that most of us with disabilities should be dead. He believes that I should have died 62 years ago when my disability became apparent. I have cerebral palsy. I should be dead, according to Princeton University's Peter Singer.

AMT: Well, though there are very few thinkers alive today who generate praise and protest the way Peter Singer does. You heard some demonstrations there, upset demonstrators because of his stance on euthanasia for infants with disabilities. That is hardly the first protest the Australian philosopher and bioethicist has faced in his decades in the field. He may be a Princeton University Professor but Peter Singer has always made a point of making his voice heard outside the ivory tower. He has weighed in on the ethics of controversial subjects from assisted dying and euthanasia to the ethics of eating animals, climate change and how much the world's wealthy owe to the world's poorest. As a thinker, he is constantly overturning our long held ethical assumptions. And that's why he's joining us as part of our project The Disruptors. Peter Singer joins us from Princeton, New Jersey. Hello.

PETER SINGER: Thank you, Anna Maria, it's very good to be with you.

AMT: What do you think when people react so strongly to your philosophical and ethical writings that they come out to protest in the way that we just heard?

PETER SINGER: Obviously people have a right to protest, that part of it is fine. What I don't like is when they get my views wrong, as the person who you quoted there did. I certainly don't think that he should be dead or anything like that.

AMT: And I want to get into the specifics of that in a second. But why is it important to you to engage in ethical discussions so publicly?

PETER SINGER: Ethics is about how we ought to live. It's about how we ought to act, what we ought to do, what choices we should make with our lives and about how we can do more good by doing one thing then another. So it's really important that everybody thinks about this. This is not just a matter for philosophers in universities to think about. Everyone who has a life to live ought to be reflective.

AMT: And sometimes that stimulation goes into areas of protest but that's just part of the discussion then? You're OK with that?

PETER SINGER: It can be, it can be. Yes, I certainly, I'm always OK with peaceful protest. I support peaceful protests on causes that I believe in and naturally therefore I accept that other people who disagree with me also have a right.

AMT: So let's talk about what made those protesters so angry, you touched on it there. But can you explain the idea of the worth of a life being relative?

PETER SINGER: I would not put it exactly like that. I would rather say that parents make decisions about their future children all the time. They may make them for example, when they get a prenatal diagnosis that shows that the fetus has a disability. Other decisions get made in the neonatal intensive care unit, whether to put a baby born with, let's say a massive brain hemorrhage, on a respirator or not. And I think it's right that parents should make those decisions. I don't think parents should be stuck with having to look after a really severely disabled child because of a decision that a doctor makes, because doctors now have technologies that they maybe didn't have 30 or 40 years ago and those infants would not have lived. I think that sometimes lives can be so bad that they're not worth living, not worth living from the point of view of the person whose life it will be or too great a burden for the parents to bring up a child, perhaps they already have children and they're concerned that they won't be able to give enough attention to their existing children if they have a child who needs a lot more care than typical children. I think those are reasonable decisions for parents to make and I'm supporting their right to make them.

AMT: OK. So we're talking about infant euthanasia but you are suggesting that one of the things that are factored in is not solely whether this child with severe disabilities at birth will be able to have a quality of life, it's also whether weighing that a future child from the same parents might have a better life. That that comes into the equation as well or can?

PETER SINGER: Yes, it certainly can. I mean, the man you quoted was saying I've had a good life and that's great. I'm delighted that he's had a good and worthwhile life. But realistically, if he had died at birth or soon after, his parents probably would have had another child. So, you know, it's not as if it's just a net loss in terms of the life of the person who has the disability but nevertheless has had a good life, it's a question really, a choice of one life or a different life. It's not unreasonable for parents to say they would prefer to have the child without the disability.

AMT: We spoke to Amy Hasbrouck, the Canadian Director of Not Dead Yet, which is a disability rights group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide, in this country doctor assisted suicide. Let's listen to her response to some of your arguments.

SOUNDCLIP

Well, it's not logical discussion if you're not including the people who are directly affected i.e. people with disabilities. There's already a very predominant view that life with a disability is a fate worse than death. It puts people in the position of having their quality of life judged by non-disabled people who don't understand the experience of living with a disability.

AMT: So Peter Singer, how do you respond to an idea that it's not up to you or anyone else to decide if a non-disabled person's life would be worth more than a disabled person’s?

PETER SINGER: I agree that it's not up to me. What I've been saying to you is that it should be up to the parents, in consultation with the doctor. They're the ones who, in addition to the child itself of course, are most affected by that decision. And I think they should be fully informed, I think it would be good for disability organizations to provide information to parents to make their case. But if in the end parents say yes, but nevertheless it's going to be more difficult. I think that's also a decision that we can support parents in. I want to support parents and I think the states should support parents whether they decide to bring up the child with a disability or not.

AMT: We have done some work with parents on this program, talking to them about children born in that grey zone, born very prematurely and doctors appear to give parents that choice now.

PETER SINGER: Yes, absolutely. With infants born very prematurely, parents have the choice because the baby will need a respirator to breathe and therefore they will offer the parents the choice of withdrawing the respirator. But this is in a sense, accidental, whether the child needs the respirator or not. If the child has a different condition but maybe is going to be just as severely disabled as that very premature infant would have been but doesn't need a respirator, then the parents don't have a choice. And that seems to me somewhat arbitrary.

AMT: Because this is happening in hospitals but people don't talk about it, right?

PETER SINGER: Absolutely. And I think we should talk about it. And I hope the disability rights movement also thinks we should talk about it.

AMT: You know, Canada has passed assisted dying legislation just this past June and it makes doctor assisted dying legal for those over 18 with a grievous and irremediable medical condition. Critics say the criteria are too restrictive. When do you think individuals should be able to choose to end their lives?

PETER SINGER: I think that the Canadian law goes most of the way that it should go. But I would have included — and I understand that your Supreme Court wanted to include — the idea of an incurable condition that is not leading to death.

AMT: How should the cost of medical care factor in in your view?

PETER SINGER: Well, I think that really these should be individual choices. But there is a point at which, any state that provides healthcare to its citizens is going to have to say some treatments are so expensive and offer such a small benefit that we cannot provide it. So this is not a point about physician assistance and dying. This is rather a just a point about having a rational use of healthcare resources.

AMT: And we've seen this both in Canada and the US, these legal fights where someone in the family wants someone kept alive even though they are clinically dead.

PETER SINGER: That's right. It's reasonable to give the family time to adjust to the fact that the person they love has died, is brain dead and can never recover from that state. Once a reasonable time has passed, then I don't think that the state has any obligation to continue to pay for what you might call life support except that the person is legally dead. If the family have these views which are somewhat idiosyncratic to themselves, then if they can pay for it fine, I have no objection to them maintaining the bodily functions of someone who is brain dead.

AMT: What for you is the value of human life?

PETER SINGER: Human life is valuable because it makes possible everything that we value about our lives. It's valuable because it gives us the possibility of leading rich, full, enjoyable, happy lives. Lives which we experience, love of others and contribute to the lives of others and contribute to the life of our community and our society. So in normal conditions of course that's something very precious and it needs to be protected. But we also have to recognize that there are conditions where that doesn't apply.

AMT: What about the value of animal life, how do you compare that with human life?

PETER SINGER: Obviously, animal life varies greatly. To me what is the essential prerequisite for value here is consciousness. The capacity to have experiences, the capacity to enjoy life. If the lives of animals in factory farms are lives of suffering rather than lives of enjoyment, then I think the animal life has no value and it's better for the animal if they don't exist. Although they can't express the choice, there is a parallel with humans who might be requesting assistance in dying.

AMT: What got you started in your work on the ethics of animal rights?

PETER SINGER: Curiously what got me started was a completely accidental lunch with a Canadian. A man called Richard Keshen, who was at the time, as I was, a graduate student in philosophy at Oxford University. And Richard asked the person serving whether there was meat in the spaghetti sauce and I was curious because one didn't really meet vegetarians in those days. So I asked him what his problem was with meat? He didn't say as I perhaps thought he might. That he thought it was not good for his health or something like that. He said he didn't think that the animals that had been turned into meat had been treated in the way we ought to treat animals. And that was a very novel view at that time in 1970 and I started to think that the whole way I'd thought about animals for the first 24 years of my life was wrong.

AMT: And that's why you bring up these issues. You want people to think and think maybe differently than they have been thinking.

PETER SINGER: Yes, exactly. I think many people are still stuck in the same unquestioning acceptance of conventional views.

AMT: What's your ethical case for veganism?

PETER SINGER: I think the case of veganism is sort of a complex one. The largest part of it is the treatment of animals, especially in factory farms, I think is morally indefensible. We don't need to do this, it's not essential for our life or health and therefore we ought not to support that kind of practice by buying its products. Now, people might then say OK but what about animals that are add on grass not factory farmed, living good lives and then humanely killed. I have filed less of an objection to that. But now we understand a lot more about climate change and the contribution of the meat industry, particularly if you're eating beef, say, grass fed beef or lamb. There's a big contribution to climate change from the methane. I'm not a purist about this but I do think that in general, making a clean break with animal exploitation leads to a substantially vegan diet.

AMT: Is it true you try to get your students to talk to their families about this at Thanksgiving dinner?

PETER SINGER: Well, what I suggest they talk about at Thanksgiving is the way the turkey that the family is eating was treated. 99 per cent of the turkeys Americans eat at Thanksgiving are factory farmed turkeys. And I think it would be interesting if people would talk about this a little bit more.

AMT: Well, if we’re talking about dinner table discussion, and the US Thanksgiving is getting closer, there's another big topic for discussion — the Trump election win. What does that say to you about the ethics of American voters?

PETER SINGER: It’s very sad, I think. It's tragic, really, in terms of the consequences it’s going to have, even if you just focus on climate change, say, which is, you know, a huge issue that we need to deal with. And now we have a president who is on record as having said it's a hoax.

AMT: A hoax perpetrated by China.

PETER SINGER: That's correct. That's what he said.

AMT: That’s what he has said, yes. He's on the record.

PETER SINGER: Who knows what the consequences of that are going to be. They could be catastrophic.

AMT: What do you see as the moral responsibility of countries such as the US and Canada compared to developing countries in tackling climate change?

PETER SINGER: Those countries have a much greater responsibility for tackling climate change because they have made a much larger contribution to the problem historically. But also even today on a per capita basis, they are putting out far more greenhouse gases than China or India. Think of the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb our greenhouse gases, as an apple pie that everybody would like a big slice of but not everybody can have a big slice because there are too many people wanting a slice and not enough pie. So what do you do? Well, the standard thing is you say let's give everyone an equal slice. If you do that on a global sense, then Americans and Canadians are currently having four or five slices when they should only be having one. The United States with about 300 million people is producing more greenhouse gases than India with around a billion people.

AMT: Right, so we have to own that as the wealthy countries with the longer history.

PETER SINGER: Absolutely, absolutely.

AMT: So how do you how do you convince people in wealthy countries that doing more and paying more to fix climate change is an ethical duty?

PETER SINGER: It's certainly not an easy task. But I think you’ve got to get them to see this as a classic problem of justice.

AMT: Let's just stay on the issue of what's going on in developing countries. You've written about the duty of the wealthy to help the global poor. How much do we need to give to live up to our obligations?

PETER SINGER: As nations, I think we need to give enough to really show that we are dealing with the problem of extreme poverty. And let me say, we have been dealing with this problem. The number of people in extreme poverty is falling. A lot of people think that somehow this is an eternal problem that just keeps getting worse. That these countries are basket cases, that we’re pouring money down a drain. That’s not true. Last year, or early this year, for the first time in history the number of people in extreme poverty fell to below ten per cent of the world's population. The countries of the wealthy world ought to be looking for eliminating large scale extreme poverty by around 2030. But we also as individuals I think need to be doing more.

AMT: I've got several questions there, but OK, I'll pick up on the individuals because you lived this. Like, you believe this to your core in terms of how you have decided to live your own life. Talk to me a little bit about what you do.

PETER SINGER: Absolutely. You know, we shouldn't just push this on governments, we should also say I have the ability to give something. Now, how much we have the ability to give will depend on how comfortably off we are. I earn a nice salary here at Princeton University and I've gradually over the years been increasing the proportion of my income that I'm donating to effective charities. It's currently running around 40 per cent. And I'm very careful to find the most effective charities so that my money goes as far as possible. And I founded an organization called The Life You Can Save, which recommends the charities that I and other members of that organization have vetted carefully.

AMT: 40 per cent, that means you make choices not to be as acquisitive as you might otherwise be able to be.

PETER SINGER: That's true. I do, but on the other hand I get a lot of satisfaction and fulfillment from knowing that I'm able to help people who are just not as fortunate as I am. You know, knowing that I'm on the good side, as I would see it, more than makes up for me for the fact that there might be some luxuries that I do without.

AMT: So what do you do without?

PETER SINGER: I don't spend very much on clothes. I do go on vacations with family, that's important to me but I don’t stay at the most luxurious places. I don't go to really expensive restaurants but I certainly do go out for a meal. Those kinds of things.

AMT: And when you talk about charity, you also make the point — obviously with your organization — but not all charities are worthy, in your view, or some are more worthy than others, that people need to be more conscious of how they choose.

PETER SINGER: There are different causes that where you can do more good. And particularly if you're trying to help people, your money will go much further if you donate to a charity that is helping people in developing countries, where, let's say people might be living on 2 dollars a day. So, you know, 700 dollars a year than if you're donating in an affluent country, where the poverty line might be, I think, in the United States it's around 11 or 12,000 dollars a year. So obviously to help someone who is on 12,000 dollars a year, even though that's pretty poor, is going to cost a lot more than helping somebody on 700 a year. So you need to really look at the research to say what impact is this organization having, is it really improving people's lives? Those are the questions.

AMT: And where is your money going, because you use the example of donations to the Red Cross in the United States after 9/11. Tell us what happened.

PETER SINGER: Yes, 9/11 of course got a huge amount of media and a lot of people said, you know, oh, we want to help these people injured by those terrorist attacks. The Red Cross set up a fund and it got a huge amount of money but then it turned out that a lot of the victims of 9/11 were dead, so you can’t help them. Their families are already getting money from various sources. So the Red Cross, in a way, didn't quite know how to distribute this money. And they suggested that they'd put some aside for future disasters but that caused a huge negative public reaction. People said no I donated to 9/11 you’ve got to distribute it to 9/11. You know, I can't believe that that's really a good use of the public's charity. Just the impulse to rush in with a donation after something is in the headlines is often not a effective use of your money.

AMT: What about groups within our own countries whose living conditions are far below average. Indigenous people in remote areas of Canada for instance. How do we best help?

PETER SINGER: I don't personally donate to those groups. That's not to say that these people aren't in trouble and that they don't need help. They do. But I think that is a government responsibility. And I think that we will do more good with our money by donating it to people who don't have governments that are in a position to help them.

AMT: But is it fair or is it moral or ethical to judge the standards of poverty by world poverty standards when you're in a wealthy country? That's not their reality, they're living in Toronto or even remote parts of Canada, where there is an expectation that they have a right to live like other people.

PETER SINGER: They may have that expectation but if you have limited resources that you can donate. I can understand the idea of saying we ought to give some preference to people who are close to us or part of our community but I think the discrepancy in how much good you can do is so great that it outweighs that priority.

AMT: I said earlier that one of your latest books is Ethics in the Real World. Where do you feel you've had the biggest real world impact?

PETER SINGER: I think the two areas that we've talked about. One is the treatment of animals, giving a kind of philosophical underpinning to the animal movement and also in regard to what's now known as effective altruism, which is an emerging movement mostly of people of the Millennial generation, that are doing research into what is effective and are thinking hard about living altruistically, are giving more and making altruism a really important part of their life.

AMT: Where do you think that movement will be, politically, a decade from now?

PETER SINGER: You know, it's really hard to predict things like that. I'm hopeful of course, that the movement will continue to grow. It seems obvious to me that once people realize how easy it is for them to make a positive difference to the lives of others, we'll have more people who are recognizing to live an ethical life does include helping people who are less fortunate than we are. But, you know, as we said earlier, the election of Donald Trump is very disappointing for anyone looking for people to think and vote more altruistically.

AMT: But I'm going to ask you about one, beyond Trump, just the idea. Again, we can go back to the protests at the beginning. There would be those that argue that the living of the pursuit of altruism should actually exclude the idea that infants lose their lives if they are seen by some to be too disabled.

PETER SINGER: I can understand that some people may think that there's some kind of contradiction between those ideas. I don't think so. I think in all of these cases what I'm trying to do is to reduce the amount of unnecessary suffering in the world and to help people to live better lives. And I think when there are choices that get made, you could say before life has really got underway, even if it's after birth, you know, there isn't a person aware of their life at that time. I think that it's reasonable to make choices to have children who will live, one can reasonably expect may live better lives, and where one's family may also, in general, have a better family life because of the reduced burden of having to care for someone with a severe disability.

AMT: Peter Singer, we have to leave it there. Thank you for speaking with me today.

PETER SINGER: Thank you Anna Maria for those searching questions, it's been good talking about these questions with you.

AMT: Peter Singer is the Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values. He has two books out this fall, One World Now: The Ethics of Globalization and also Ethics in the Real World. He joined us from Princeton, New Jersey. Well, he is trying to overturn your thinking. What do you think? Should you be overturning your thinking on some of these issues or do you think he should be? Let us know, you can tweet us we are @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook, go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And if you're joining us partway through, you can always listen to the podcast online or on the app cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us. Coming up in our next half hour, one of the original where were you when questions. Where were you on November 22nd 1963? Whether you're old enough to even answer that, this is the assassination of JFK Kennedy. The image that likely comes to mind is from an amateur video, that taken by Abraham Zapruder. His granddaughter is waiting in the wings to tell us what that film has done to generations of Americans and to her family. This is The Current.

[Music: Extro]

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26 seconds: The history behind Zapruder's JFK assassination film

Guests: Alexandra Zapruder

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

ABRAHAM ZAPRUDER: I got out about a half hour earlier to get a good spot to shoot some pictures. And I found a spot, one of these concrete blocks they have down near that park, near the underpass. And I got on top there, there was another girl from my office, she was right behind me. And as I was shooting, as the president was coming down from Houston Street making his turn, it was about a half-way down there, I heard a shot, and he slumped to the side, like this. Then I heard another shot or two, I couldn't say it was one or two, and I saw his head practically open up, all blood and everything, and I kept on shooting. That's about all, I'm just sick, I can't--

TV ANCHOR: I think that pretty well expresses the entire feelings of the whole world.

ABRAHAM ZAPRUDER: Terrible, terrible.

TV ANCHOR: You have the film in your camera; we'll try to get--

ABRAHAM ZAPRUDER: Yes, I brought it on the studio.

AMT: Well, that is Abraham Zapruder speaking with a local Dallas television station on the 22nd of November 1963. You may have never heard Mr. Zapruder’s voice before but you may likely have seen that film he shot. He was of course witness to the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy and the amateur footage he shot of the event would become one of the most famous moving images in American history. Others of course witnessed it, but he was standing in the very place where he could get a clear shot of what happened. His film would become a key piece of evidence for those who believe there was a conspiracy behind the assassination. Alexandra Zapruder has taken a close look at the film her grandfather shot in Dallas on that day 53 years ago and the controversy that has followed it since. She's written a new book, it's called Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film. And she's with us from Dallas. Hello.

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: Hi.

AMT: It's interesting to hear his voice. How do you react to that?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: You know, I didn't know my grandfather, he died when I was an infant. So for me, it's always very, it's very emotional to hear that clip and what I hear is his grief and his sadness, the thickening of his voice and his struggle to maintain his composure as he's recording what he, reporting on what he had just seen and how his voice breaks at the end and how very painful it was for him.

AMT: Do you think of the assassination on the 22nd of November? Like, is it a moment for you?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: Well, it's a moment for our family because it's a time when the nation's mind turns towards the president. And every year at this time, you know, our family gets phone calls and people want to talk about it and to talk about the Zapruder film. But for us as a family, our emphasis has always been on who our grandfather was and the kind of person he was in the context of our family and the fact that he died rather young, which was very painful for everyone who knew and loved him. So, you know, that's the way we have always thought about it. And again, writing this book changed some of that for me.

AMT: How did he come to be filming the presidential motorcade that day in Dallas?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: He was a dressmaker and had a manufacturing company called Jennifer Juniors, that made knockoffs of couture outfits and clothing and which was just adjacent to Dealey Plaza. And so, and he loved the president. I mean, that's such an important thing to remember, that he was just absolutely the biggest kind of fan of John F. Kennedy. He had come to this country from Russia in 1920 as an immigrant and he loved America. And I think he thought of John F. Kennedy as being sort of the best of what America represented. And so he wanted to be there in order to see the president and the first lady and he had his camera with him because he was a very avid home movie maker and had been since the mid 1930s. So, you know, he filmed everything, he filmed all kinds of home movies of our family life over the decades. And I think he hoped that this would be, you know, an opportunity to catch a very special moment and something to share with his family and friends.

AMT: And how did he explain his ability to continue filming the assassination with gunshots going off and as he's looking through the lens?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: He never could fully explain it. I think he said once, that he thought he was kind of paralyzed and sort of in a shock and just glued to the spot. But it is something that we've all thought about. Somehow the composure that he had to maintain his focus and continue filming. And one of the things that I noticed and learned in the research was that Marilyn Sitzman, his receptionist who is standing behind him, said that when the limousine disappeared out of view and they looked around, everyone around them was flat on the ground. And there they were on this four-foot-high parapet, you know, just standing while the bullets had been flying.

AMT: So he was so consumed with what was going on he wasn't really registering danger or even quite what he was seeing in one way.

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: I think that's right. I mean, he certainly knew because he had witnessed it through the zoom lens that the president was dead. And in fact, when he got off the parapet I'm told that he was distraught. He was screaming they've killed him, he was crying. I mean, he knew and even though no one else knew for sure that the president was dead for some time, he was absolutely sure of it. And he then went back to his office and called my father and my father recalled that he was crying and completely anguished, saying over and over again they've killed the president and how horrible it was that Mrs. Kennedy was there in the car when it happened.

AMT: What did he do with the footage that night?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: So that very day, he was approached on Dealey Plaza by Harry McCormick, who was a reporter for The Dallas Morning News, who asked him, you know, what do you have, did you get this on film? And my grandfather said I need to get this in the hands of the federal authorities. That was his absolute primary concern, consuming focus in the moment. And it took the entire day to make that happen. He went with Forrest Sorrels, the Head of the Secret Service in Dallas and his business partner Erwin Schwartz, to first to WFAA and then to the Kodak labs where they got the film developed. And then from there to Jamison and Company where they got duplicates made and then back to Kodak in order to get those duplicates developed and then to the Secret Service offices to drop off two copies. So that was the end of his, sort of discharging his, what I think he felt was his civic and public responsibility.

AMT: Once he knew what he had filmed, he did have a number a number of ethical decisions to make about it. What was concerning him?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: I think his primary concern and his sense immediately was that this was something that could certainly be sensationalized and exploited. I think he feared that it would be splashed all over the television and that, you know, there would be a sort of lack of respect for the Kennedy family and their grief and to public showing of this incredibly gruesome violent moment, which of course, that sort of thing was not seen on television and not seen by the public typically in that time. And so he wanted to entrust it to a news outlet that he felt would treat it with respect and with care and would avoid exploiting it at any cost, and that's why when he was contacted by Richard Stolley, who was a young reporter for, an LA bureau chief for Life magazine. That's why he chose to sell it to them because he felt that he could trust them. But the ethical decision of course was, you know, if he sold it and profited in some way financially from this national tragedy, you know, how could he reconcile that inherent conflict. And I think it was something that deeply deeply troubled him over that weekend and from that time forward.

AMT: Now, you say that he chose Life, but there were others who wanted that. What was the media, sort of, response around him like at the time then?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: As the news got out about the film and as it became known that there was this piece of footage. The media began to sort of throng around him, even that night there were many offers to purchase the film over the course of the day and then it got kind of more and more the following day. And there were a great number of reporters who turned up at his office in the morning of November 23rd, to ostensibly to bid on the purchase of the still picture rights to the film. And I think it was a scene of complete chaos. I think it was very shocking and Richard Stolley has written eloquently about this that, you know, the climate was just these sort of frenzied reporters, all of them vying for it and trying to get their hands on it. And this was exactly what my grandfather wanted to avoid and I did my best in the book to really capture the feeling of that and what that experience was like for him and how the pressure was mounting over the course of the hours to find a place for it, to behave ethically and responsibly and not to somehow make a misstep that he would then regret.

AMT: In fact, didn't someone talk about maybe slugging him and stealing the film?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: Yes. Don Hewitt who was the head of CBS at the time, wrote in his book about getting on the phone with Dan Rather and saying to him, you know, go to Zapruder’s house sock him in the jaw, grab the film and run, take it back to the studio and then return the film to him. And that way the only thing they'll be able to get us on is assault basically or, you know, theft or something along those lines, but we won't, you know, we'll return the film. And then kind of coming to his senses a few minutes later and calling Dan Rather back and saying, you know, don't do that, that's crazy. [chuckles] But there were a number of people who had that kind of reaction, this sort of sense that, you know, they had to do anything they could to get their hands on the film.

AMT: And can I just clarify for our listeners. So the president's in a motorcade in Dallas, there would be still photographers on that route, there would be television, film cameras, not video in 1963, on that route. But no one captured that precise moment.

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: Correct. There were, you know, what's interesting and something that people don't know, one of the many many many things that I learned in the working on this book that I think sort of are not known by the general public, is that there were 21 other photographers on the scene that day along the motorcade, the sort of last part of the motorcade route. And so, my grandfather happened to be in the vantage point to get the best and clearest image of what transpired. But there were many other stills and also moving picture images that have been used together with the Zapruder film to try to piece together the events of that day. So his movie not only was it a central piece of evidence for the Warren Commission and the later government assassination inquiries but also it became the nation and probably the world's memory of that event. But it was not the only one.

AMT: How much did Life magazine eventually pay your grandfather for that film?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: So Life magazine paid 50,000 dollars on that Saturday, or the agreement was for 50,000 dollars for the still picture rights and then the following Monday they purchased the moving picture rights for an additional 100,000 dollars. So it was 150,000 altogether, which was of course at the time of a very large sum of money. And then my grandfather donated 25,000 dollars of that to the widow of JD Tippit, who was the police officer killed by Oswald in the movie theatre in Oak Cliff. And I think he felt that he needed and wanted very much to do something of meaning and value with the money that he earned in order to, you know, assuage his own, you know, moral questions about profiting.

AMT: He was concerned the public would see him as profiting from the killing of the president huh?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: Yes, I think he was. And I think more than that, he was concerned that he was profiting from the murder of the president. I mean, I think the worry about the public perception was one part of it but really it was his own internal moral questions that were the most troubling. And this was, you know, a situation that no one really would want to be in. I mean, there was sort of, it's hard to imagine a way that he could have behaved that wouldn't have engendered some kind of criticism from someone. And he was a deeply moral person and he did the best he could and at least I for one, I think he handled it admirably.

AMT: He was worried about anti-Semitic backlash as well, wasn't he?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: He was. Dallas was a very reactionary city at the time and there was of course, you know, a hardcore group of people who were very opposed to President Kennedy and of course there was rampant racism. And he was worried that, you know, old stereotypes about Jews making money from, you know, not just terrible events but any event, that those kinds of old stereotypes would come back to haunt him. And this was a culture that he grew up in in Russia, where of course there was so much anti-Semitism that I think it sort of made those worries even more amplified for him in that particular moment.

AMT: Mm. I want to ask about the actual film. One frame shows and I think you name it, I think it's like out of 486 frames, it is frame 313. It actually, it's the moment the bullet hits the president's head and it literally, you see an explosion. Was there any debate inside Life magazine about printing that?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: Yes, absolutely. One of the things that was so extraordinary for me about this book was that I was able to get access to all of the Zapruder film records related to the film inside Life magazine. These are archival documents that have never been shared with anyone in the public before. Some people felt that it should be used, others and the majority of people at Life to their credit, felt that certainly in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, that it was simply too grotesque and too violent and too disrespectful to the president and his family to publish it and so they didn't. A year later they did publish that frame in the Warren Commission issue of October of 1964 but then pulled it and replaced it with a different image shortly thereafter and received some criticism for having shown it at that time.

AMT: I want to play you a clip from November 25th of 1963. This is a very young Dan Rather, because of course he's still reporting today, describing what he saw on the Zapruder film. Listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

DAN RATHER: In the next instant, what this time Mrs. Kennedy looking on, a second shot, the third total shot hit the president’s head. His head could be seen to move violently forward. And Mrs. Kennedy stood up immediately. The president leaned over her way, it appeared that he might have brushed her legs. Mrs. Kennedy then literally went on the top of the trunk of the Lincoln car, put practically her whole body on the trunk.

AMT: How did Dan Rather get a preview of the film?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: Dan Rather was at the offices of Passman Jones, which Sam Passman was an attorney and a relative of our family, who was handling the sale of the moving picture rights on Monday the 25th of November. And so, there were a number of other reporters there at that same time, including Richard Stolley. And the agreement, the oral agreement was that the reporters would be able to see the film and then make a bid if they wanted to purchase it but that they were not to report on what they had seen because obviously the the news outlet that purchased it wanted to have the first opportunity to air it. And Dan Rather witnessed the film, watched it like all the other reporters did and then, and this comes from his book, this is not a bombshell, this is something that he himself published back in the 1970s in his book, immediately went back to the studio and reported on what he had seen on national television. Which was, you know, clearly in violation of this agreement that had been made. And one of the things that I learned in the writing of this book is that the film is, the story is about so many things and it's so compelling. And one of the things is about unintended consequences. The way in which the actions of individual people at any given moment in time have results that no one could anticipate. Dan Rather saw the film once ran back to the studio and made this report and mistakenly says that the president's head went forward violently when he was hit by the bullet, when in fact anyone who sees the film now can see that the president's head goes backwards. There's a tiny forward movement and then it jolts violently backward. And that simple mistake spawned a great many conspiracy theories, there are people who say Dan Rather saw the real film and then the film was altered to reflect the results of the Warren Commission after the fact. And all of that came about because, you know, Dan Rather was a young ambitious reporter and he wanted to make a name for himself and he wanted to be the first to report on the film and so, you know, he did this this thing that turned out to have very unfortunate consequences. One of the things that's so fascinating about the film and one of the reasons why I think it remains so compelling today is that it contains these contradictions. So the official report of the Warren Commission and the belief of most of the people who I respect and trust is that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He was firing his rifle from the Texas School Book Depository building behind the president and that the final fatal shot came from the rear. And one would assume that the president's head would go forward if that was the case. But in fact, when you watch the film, it appears that the president's head goes backwards and that meant that people thought there was somebody perhaps shooting from close to where my grandfather was, standing on the grassy knoll, a second shooter, which implies a conspiracy. That is the essential outline of the debate, was he shot from the rear or from the front?

AMT: Mmhmm. And this didn't happen many decades ago, so remind us what the Warren Commission was.

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: So the Warren Commission was the official investigation into the assassination of the president that was formed just a month or so after, not even, no, I think just a week after the assassination. My grandfather was asked to testify for that and they came to the conclusion that it was indeed Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. But one of the other things, and we were talking earlier about unintended consequences, you know, Life magazine endeavoured to respect my grandfather's wishes not to exploit the film or sensationalize it. And Life magazine is a print outlet clearly not a television one. And so they didn't have a way of showing the film and they had to be very careful about how to present it, out of respect for my grandfather and their own values, their own sense in the 1960s that certain things simply shouldn't be seen by the American people. So they never aired the film in a film or documentary or on television. They refused to allow CBS and other news outlets to do it. And as a consequence of that, as the conspiracy theories began to grow and as there began to be more and more speculation about what had actually occurred, the inability of the American people to see the film sort of fed this sense that something was being kept from them. And this is one of those ways in which, you know, as I looked through all the records at Life magazine, it was so clear that their decision making didn't have anything to do with where the president, where the shots were fired from or what anybody at Life magazine believed about what had happened, but a whole different set of considerations. And yet, the unintended outcome of that was that people felt that something was being kept from them and that that was almost evidence itself that there must have been a conspiracy.

AMT: So interesting, the unintended consequences. What did your grandfather think of the conspiracy theories that grew up around this and that the role that film that he took would play in them?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: My grandmother died in 1970, so he, although he was certainly aware of the conspiracy theories, he didn't live to see Watergate, he didn't live to see the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was another very important investigation that took place and he didn't live to see Vietnam, I mean, all the things that really broke down a trust in the federal government. So my grandfather certainly believed the Warren Commission. I think it is fair to say that part of that is about the fact that he was, as I said earlier, a Russian immigrant who came to America because this was a democratic country, a place that represented progress and the opposite of the corrupt lawlessness of the Russia that he knew. And so for him, the idea that, you know, he would have questioned the results of the Warren Commission or that he would have doubted the basic goodness of the American government is just, it just doesn't tally with who he was and where he came from.

AMT: I don't think there's another 26 seconds of film that's ever been more studied than that one. Why do you think so many people were obsessed with looking at it frame by frame?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: Well, part of it is that there's no clear answer to what happened. You know, if the film showed unequivocally a sequence of events upon which we could all agree and the murder was solved and Lee Harvey Oswald hadn't been killed, which is a huge piece of the story. The fact that he was killed immediately after, two days later and then, you know, in that absence, all of the other evidence gained more importance because he wasn't there to be questioned. But the film itself embodies these compelling conundrums, it both shows us exactly what happened and it doesn't show us exactly what happened. And so people keep looking and looking to try to find the answers. And as long as America, you know, doesn't have an agreed upon story about what happened, how our president got murdered, that remains an open wound I think.

AMT: When you look at America today and you compare it to the political environment of November 22nd 1963, what do you see?

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: Well, if people thought that the rhetoric and the culture, especially in Dallas in 1963, was inflammatory, you know, I think where we've come is so far at the other end of the spectrum it's hard to even absorb it. I think my grandfather would be shocked. I think if my father were alive he would be shocked and dismayed. And it's not just the rhetoric, it's also the proliferation of information and the immediacy of information and some of that is to the good, there's no question about it. But it also brings with it things that are, you know, damaging I think to our society. And there's nothing to be done about it, it's the way that history has unfolded. But part of what I wanted to look at in this book is the way that the Zapruder film triggered and opened up so many questions that become the questions of and remain the questions of our time about, you know, who decides what the American public should see when it comes to the news and information? How does that information get transmitted? What is the effect on a society of that information spreading like wildfire across the world? These are compelling questions around media ethics that remain very present for us, I think.

AMT: It's really true that we learn from history, huh? As we face our future.

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: One hopes.

AMT: Alexandra Zapruder, it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER: Thank you so much.

AMT: Alexandra Zapruder, author of Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film. She joined us from Dallas, Texas. Now, before we go, I want to invite you to a town hall we're hosting in Winnipeg next week. As the federal government launches its inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, The Current is hosting a series of forums across the country on the issue. We're bringing our virtual reality documentary on the highway of tears with us. If you are in Winnipeg, please join us next Wednesday, November 30th, 7:00 in the evening at Eckhardt Grammaté Hall at the University of Winnipeg. We will specifically be looking at how the police have responded to these cases. And of course, we will then take that forum and we will play it on the air and leave it online for those of you who can't get to Winnipeg. But for more information and to reserve a free ticket, go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And we'll be showing our VR doc in Winnipeg but you can also download it from our site. We have all the instructions there, it's very moving, it's well worth a look, our VR documentary. That is our program for today. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

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November 22, 2016 full episode transcript

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