Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products…Green Chemistry by Elizabeth Grossman Voice Over Script
It is late September 2008 and I’m standing in the lobby of a Manila hotel where I’m attending a meeting about occupational health, safety, and environmental issues for workers throughout Asia. On a television screen nearby, polar bears are diving off a small ice floe. Later in the day, I visit the National Museum of the Philippines where we tour an exhibit of prize winners in a 2007 Filipino art competition. One of the paintings shows a woman clad in a dress constructed of images of cars and smokestacks. She has her hands over her eyes in a gesture of despair and is up to her hips in water. In this tropical island nation, merely 15 degrees north of the equator, where many people live on the water’s edge, disappearing polar bear habitat–a sign of global warming and harbinger of rising sea levels–has local relevance. Over the next several days I meet people who work in factories that make clothing, electronics, machinery, and other products. When asked to name their top concerns about their working conditions, leading the list are the impacts of chemicals to reproductive health and the health of future generations. When asked what they would do to improve workplace safety, all say, “Remove the chemical hazard. Substitute something safer.”
This is, in essence, the story this book explores. Over the past century our reliance on petroleum and coal has made available a vast quantity of hydrocarbons. These byproducts of fuel refining have become the foundation for the overwhelming majority of our synthetic materials–manufactured substances that go into everything from computers to cosmetics. We’ve managed to create tens of thousands of such new materials–substances that exist nowhere in nature–and these materials now permeate every aspect of our lives. They have made possible the creation of countless useful and often ingenious products: the lightweight, shatter-proof, flame-resistant plastics used in electronics, aircrafts, sports gear, and motor vehicles; waterproof coatings for textiles; flexible plastics that go into medical tubing and children’s toys; nonstick surfaces for food packaging; thin films that enable microchip etching; and polymers delicate enough to coat an eyelash, to name but a few. It’s hard to imagine life without them. These materials were designed to make life easier, more efficient, more convenient, and in many ways, safer. And many do.
But many of these substances also behave in ways that make them hazardous to human health and the environment. A number of these synthetic chemicals, scientists are discovering, are capable of interfering with the biological mechanisms that determine the health of any living organism. These materials, it turns out, have been changing the world’s chemistry, in some instances altering the most fundamental building blocks of life on earth. As a result, the entire chemistry of the planet–from the cellular level to entire ecosystems–is now different than at any other time in history.
TOP-10 Scripts from Edge Studio's Voice Over Script Library
[Skyrim opens with an Imperial wagon driving four prisoners down a snowy mountain pass. All are seated and bound; the one dressed in finery is gagged.]
Ralof: Hey, you. You’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there.
Lokir: D**n you Stormcloaks. Skyrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and lazy. If they hadn’t been looking for you, I could’ve stolen that horse and been half way to Hammerfell. You there. You and me — we should be here. It’s these Stormcloaks the Empire wants.
Ralof: We’re all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief.
Imperial Soldier: Shut up back there!
[Lokir looks at the gagged man.]
Lokir: And what’s wrong with him?
Ralof: Watch your tongue! You’re speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King.
Lokir: Ulfric? The Jarl of Windhelm? You’re the leader of the rebellion. But if they captured you… Oh gods, where are they taking us?
Ralof: I don’t know where we’re going, but Sovngarde awaits.
Lokir: No, this can’t be happening. This isn’t happening.
Ralof: Hey, what village are you from, horse thief?
Lokir: Why do you care?
Ralof: A Nord’s last thoughts should be of home.
Lokir: Rorikstead. I’m…I’m from Rorikstead.
[They approach the village of Helgen. A soldier calls out to the lead wagon.]
Imperial Soldier: General Tullius, sir! The headsman is waiting!
General Tullius: Good. Let’s get this over with.
Lokir: Shor, Mara, Dibella, Kynareth, Akatosh. Divines, please help me.
Ralof: Look at him, General Tullius the Military Governor. And it looks like the Thalmor are with him. D**n elves. I bet they had something to do with this. This is Helgen. I used to be sweet on a girl from here. Wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in. Funny…when I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe.
[A man and son watch the prisoners pull into town.]
Haming: Who are they, daddy? Where are they going?
Torolf: You need to go inside, little cub.
Haming: Why? I want to watch the soldiers.
Torolf: Inside the house. Now.
Galadriel: (speaking partly in Elvish)
(I amar prestar aen.)
The world is changed.
(Han matho ne nen.)
I feel it in the water.
(Han mathon ned cae.)
I feel it in the earth.
(A han noston ned gwilith.)
I smell it in the air.
Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.
It began with the forging of the Great Rings. Three were given to the Elves, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven to the Dwarf-Lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of Men, who above all else desire power. For within these rings was bound the strength and the will to govern each race. But they were all of them deceived, for another ring was made. Deep in the land of Mordor, in the Fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged a master ring, and into this ring he poured his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life.
One ring to rule them all.
One by one, the free lands of Middle-Earth fell to the power of the Ring, but there were some who resisted. A last alliance of men and elves marched against the armies of Mordor, and on the very slopes of Mount Doom, they fought for the freedom of Middle-Earth. Victory was near, but the power of the ring could not be undone. It was in this moment, when all hope had faded, that Isildur, son of the king, took up his father’s sword.
Sauron, enemy of the free peoples of Middle-Earth, was defeated. The Ring passed to Isildur, who had this one chance to destroy evil forever, but the hearts of men are easily corrupted. And the ring of power has a will of its own. It betrayed Isildur, to his death.
And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, it ensnared another bearer.
It came to the creature Gollum, who took it deep into the tunnels of the Misty Mountains. And there it consumed him. The ring gave to Gollum unnatural long life. For five hundred years it poisoned his mind, and in the gloom of Gollum’s cave, it waited. Darkness crept back into the forests of the world. Rumor grew of a shadow in the East, whispers of a nameless fear, and the Ring of Power perceived its time had come. It abandoned Gollum, but then something happened that the Ring did not intend. It was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable: a hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, of the Shire.
For the time will soon come when hobbits will shape the fortunes of all.
To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark, dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp, shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!
Do I really look like a guy with a plan, Harvey?
I don’t have a plan …
The mob has plans. The cops have plans.
You know what I am, Harvey? I am a dog chasing cars… I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it.
I just do things. I am just the wrench in the gears. I hate plans.
Yours, theirs, everyone’s. Maroni has plans. Gordon has plans.
Schemers trying to control their worlds.
I am not a schemer. I show the schemer how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.
So when I say that you and your girlfriend was nothing personal, you know I am telling the truth.
I just did what I do best. I took your plan and turned it on itself.
Look what I have done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets.
Nobody panics when the expected people gets killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.
If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. – because it’s all part of the plan.
But when I say that one little old mayor will die, everybody lose their minds.
Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos.
I am agent of chaos.
And you know the thing about chaos Harvey?
“IT is FAIR.”
Hello, ladies, look at your man, now back to me, now back at your man, now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me, but if he stopped using ladies scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re on a boat with the man your man could smell like. What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again, the tickets are now diamonds. Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady. I’m on a horse.
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