To Spray or Not to Spray

When Joni Mitchell famously recorded these lyrics in “Big Yellow Taxi” for the first time 45 years ago, she couldn’t have imagined how impactful this song would become. She painted how once we destroy the environment there is no way to get it back, and then once it is gone we will finally miss it and wish we had protected it. Mitchell devised this call-to-action to bring attention to the harms of the most commonly used pesticide at the time, which was DDT, but her song has recently been reintroduced into popular culture through rerecording by various artists to call attention to the harms of the current most commonly used pesticide, which is Monsanto’s glyphosate or more commonly known as Roundup, and other modern chemical pesticides. Through vague diction and metaphor, Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” accurately depicts how chemical pesticides are destroying the environment and humanity by creating a toxic environment where nothing can thrive and disrupts the food web. A toxic environment destroys anything inside the environment, including humans, which murders genetic diversity and forges a ticking time bomb for a population collapse.

Mitchell acts like the environmental essentials are sexy, when they aren’t. One of Mitchell’s few inaccuracies on the ramifications of chemical pesticides is in between line 10 and 13,

When these lines are analyzed along with the lines 19 and 20, “hey farmer, farmer/ put away that DDT now,” it can be taken that Mitchell was trying to argue that someone will take essential parts of the environment and capitalize on them while the rest of it is destroyed by chemical pesticides. The problem with this idea is, the essential parts of the environment are just not sexy enough to be saved. Zoos, for example, are not filled with native animals. When I was at the zoo I was surrounded by people who were there to see creatures from somewhere else in the world, like lions from Africa, tigers from Asia, and bears from the Arctic. No one seemed troubled by the Kentucky native animals or the multitude of brown rats, which is commonly used in science, even though they are essential. They just kept walking by giving me crazy looks, like “why the hell does he care about that ugly little vermin.” Especially with the brown rat, most people have that animal to thank for the good life they can have and not be killed by daily products like shampoo. If the visitors really cared about these animals, then they would actually do more at home to protect them, but none of these native animals are exotic. Therefore the majority of Americans really don’t seem to care about them even if they do play a key role in their daily lives, which is at odds with Mitchell’s depiction.

Mitchell shows beneficial species are being slaughtered accurately. Throughout the entire song Mitchell consistently brings up “That you don’t know what you’ve got/’til it’s gone” (6-7). This idea is an exact conclusion. Experts for the World Wildlife Fund estimate the current extinction rate “to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.” While pesticides are not the only cause of this rapid extinction of species, it is one of the major causes. Many of the species, like the frogs, are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. These frogs live in areas with insect problems and take care of the insects to limit the population and not throw off the food web. These species are being annihilated just so crops can be produced cheaper and with less labor or allow fairway-like lawns in the suburbs without any regard for what was living there before. This accurate description shows the loss of critical genetic diversity which is needed to move forward as a species and ecosystem that chemical pesticides causes.

Contrary to Joni Mitchell’s extrapolation, chemical pesticides aren’t causing birds to just fall out of the sky. Mitchell’s vague diction shows chemical pesticides are killing off necessary parts of the food chain, but not in the most accurate light. In “Big Yellow Taxi” Mitchell sings:

The diction of, leave, put away, and spots intentionally leaves the portrayal of DDT’s affects vague to allow the listeners imagination to run wild. For example, someone could think that DDT is causing flocks of birds and swarms of bees to suddenly fall out of the sky when they are in the presence of

chemical pesticides. This depiction is not accurate since chemical pesticides don’t directly kill off anything except plants unless you are drowning something in a vat of it, but their build up in communities does cause mutations. These mutations in most situations do lead to a massive die off of at least one population. Then when that population is lost an important part of the food chain is lost for good, causing the rest of the community to fail to thrive. By intentionally leaving the effects vague, Mitchell is able to give off effect to get people interested, but chemical pesticide spraying has never caused the immediate death of animals.

Mitchell’s agreement about chemical pesticides effectively throw out genetic material like it is a baby in the bath water is spot on. The position that Mitchell argues about the loss of beneficial species in the metaphor between DDT (20) and “the birds and the bees” (22) is fairly accurate for today. “The birds and the bees” is a common metaphor for sexual reproduction and how genetic information is passes on in the process, so Mitchell means that she doesn’t want all the evolutionary improvements made to be thrown away. For example, Susan Milius describes a correlation that the study unearthed between the usage of the chemical pesticides glyphosate and atrazine and frogs becoming intersex in Avon, Conn. ponds (28). These frogs won’t be able to breed and continue on the species which effectively ends the genetic line and throws out generations worth of evolution. This example is important because it shows how these species are becoming endangered and their genetic improvements are being lost. While this example is fairly extreme it is a, sadly, not uncommon example of the loss of genetic diversity from chemical fertilizers, which Mitchell blatantly brings up in the song.

The domino effect is real and Mitchell accurately shows it will destroy the food web. Mitchell accurately shows this idea in lines 21 and 22 between the “Give me spots on my apples/ But leave me the birds and the bees.” This extrapolation means the animals which are being destroyed are essential for the continuation of the planet because everything in the food web is interconnected somehow. For example, changes to one species of frog will affect humans. Rick A. Relyea designed a study to see how Roundup disrupts the food web by causing developmental changes in various creatures (634). While these changes may not seem like a big deal, in reality they are a huge deal. In ecology energy transfer and food webs determine the essential workings of a community. When one part of the food web is disrupted, then the entire web is damaged. When the tadpoles in the study have developmental changes induced by the Roundup more of them survived the predator (Relyea 638). In the natural world, as opposed to the closed environment in the study, if the rate that the prey is killed decreases, then the population of the prey would increase. Eventually the population of the predator would continue to decrease, which would send ripples upwards through the rest of the web, while the population of the prey would continue to increase and eventually reach the carrying capacity, which is the maximum amount of a single species an ecosystem can support. This result would cause massive death among the community the food web is for since the population of the tadpoles would then crash since the ecosystem could no longer support their population size. The result would then be that the top of the population, which is usually man, would follow since their food sources decreased in population because of the changes in one group. This result would in turn result in very unrelated species feeling the effects because of one chemical being put into the ecosystem, causing others to not thrive as well which is what Mitchell alludes to.

Chemical pesticide usage is like playing Russian Roulette with all chambers loaded according to Mitchell which hits the nail on the head. Mitchell introduces her final theory on how chemical pesticides affect man in lines 29-32

This excerpt shows that chemical pesticides will result in loved ones being taken away. Since they are taken away by a taxi, the song implies that loosing the loved one is completely preventable in the same way living by not playing Russian Roulette is possible. The old Russian guy in the corner named Agribusiness knows the dangers but continues to push the dangerous game of chance. In their article, Kathrine Rugbjerg et al. describe their study where they found a correlation between agricultural work, and by association chemical pesticide exposure, and the development of Parkinson’s Disease (431). From when my grandmother was in the nursing home for nine years, I remember that the residents with Parkinson’s Disease that the disease is a debilitating condition where the person gradually looses fine motor skills and memory, eventually to the point that they can’t get out of bed or even speak. These people basically loose their lives over the span of years, which is painful for not just the person, but also for their family, similar to a group of family members playing Russian Roulette together. Most

agricultural workers have no other option usually; they are overwhelmingly poor with no other options, and therefore they are forced into the game of chance by the old Russian guy in the corner. They are given a death sentence just so the average American can have cheap corn. They are forced into a gamble that they can’t win where the old Russian guy in the corner unbeknownst to the players loaded all the chambers. This situation is the reality of the game which is very similar to how Joni Mitchell portrays it.

Monsanto and other Agribusinesses accurately have the blood of entire communities on their hands according to Mitchell. The diction Mitchell uses in line 31, “big yellow taxi,” accurately depicts how agribusiness is to blame for the chemical pesticide related deaths in many communities. She intentionally left the description of the taxi vague, but she did choose to highlight the fact that taxi is yellow which is most common color of pesticide solutions. I grew up in a small agriculturally based town called Ferdinand, Indiana. I remember from a young age how the farm across from my grandparents house would start the year barren of life and then by the end of summer be completely full and green with life. Corn and soybeans were the most common crop. I also remember the giant tractors and other gargantuan machinery which went through the fields and mist the crops. The other farms around town would also spray at similar times of the year. Due to the wind this spraying would always result in the town smelling like the chemical pesticides which were used by the farms. The area was also deemed a neurological disorder and cancer cluster. The older folks who lived their entire lives in the town experienced soaring rates of these disorders. I remember when my grandmother was in the nursing home, the number of people her age there who had worked and lived on farms their whole lives. Many of these people had developed Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, and other serious disorders in addition to multiple cancers. When Mitchell references how the conglomerates who make these chemical pesticides are taking away these people’s lives she couldn’t have been more right.

According to Mitchell, the next generation is imprisoned by the chemical pesticides which is accurate. When Joni Mitchell choose to highlight a metaphor in lines 31-32 that, “a big yellow taxi/ come and took away my old man,” she was accurately bringing up that the children of agriculture workers are left alone with no one to help them. For example, R, Mesnage et al. in their article in the British Medical Journal made observations of one family who had 2 children develop birth defects after exposure to multiple pesticides while in utero and described the correlation which had been found between pesticide usage and Stratton-Parker Syndrome-like symptoms (359). While this study may be slightly statistically flawed since it only takes into account one family, it is relevant because the family has no history on either side of Stratton-Parker Syndrome-like symptoms even though it is incredibly rare (359). These children are forced to live the rest of their life in a prison of disability because there father worked in agriculture. The parents aren’t able to help and neither are the doctors because of the nature of these birth defects which result in the boys being excluded from “normal” society. This result goes to show how Mitchell was spot on when she argued that the children of agricultural workers are being imprisoned by disability since current medicine can’t help them which is the sad reality of our world for many agricultural families.

“Big Yellow Taxi” is as relevant as ever towards today’s society with the extensive usage of chemical pesticides like atrazine and glyphosate. Joni Mitchell was able to accurately describe how chemical pesticides are destroying the environment and humanity by creating a toxic environment where nothing can thrive and disrupts the food web through her usage of vague diction and metaphor. Environmental toxins destroy anything inside the environment, including humans, which murders genetic diversity and forges a ticking time bomb for a population collapse. What is better, in the words of Joni Mitchell “spots on my apples” or the extensive death of living things in the toxic environment including humans?

Works Cited

Mesnage, R., E. Clair, J. Spiroux De Vendomois, and G. E. Seralini. “Two Cases of Birth Defects

Overlapping Stratton-Parker Syndrome after Multiple Pesticide Exposure.” Occupational and Environmental Medicine 67.5 (2010): 359. JSTOR. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

Milius, Susan. “In Field or Backyard, Frogs Face Threats: Amphibians and Other Sensitive

Groups Encounter Chemicals across the Landscape.” Science News 178.6 (2010): 28-29. JSTOR. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

Mitchell, Joni. “Big Yellow Taxi.” Ladies of the Canyon. Warner Brothers: 1970. M4A.

Relyea, Rick A. “New Effects of Roundup on Amphibians: Predators Reduce Herbicide

Mortality; Herbicides Induce Antipredator Morphology.” Ecological Applications 22.2 (2012): 634-47. JSTOR. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

Rugbjerg, Kathrine, M. Anne Harris, Hui Shen, Stephen A. Marion, Joseph K. C. Tsui, and Kay

Teschke. “Pesticide Exposure and Risk of Parkinson’s Disease – a Population-based Case–control Study Evaluating the Potential for Recall Bias.” Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health 37.5 (2011): 427-36. JSTOR. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

World Wildlife Fund. “How Many Species Are We Loosing?” WWF.org. World Wildlife Fund, 2015. http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/ Web. 31 Oct. 2015.