An airport five times the size of New York’s JFK was proposed to be built on the edge of Florida’s Everglades in 1968. Only one runway was ever constructed, before the project was abandoned.

Pollution is a Matter of Choice is an educational film from NBC, which outlines the predicament posed by increasing global air traffic during the first era of environmentalism. We learn about the Floridian Everglades, a wetland of 1.5 million hectares, and the threat posed to it by a proposed airport expansion. While this airport was kept at bay, the film impresses the ever-present threat of human progress upon the natural world, intercutting shots of airplanes and pollution with birds living in the wetlands.

Some of the techniques employed in the work are typical of environmental film at the time. A symphonic supercut reveals a slice of contemporary urban life, made sinister by the roaring overtones of an unseen jet. The film doesn’t hold its punches, telling us plainly that the machines we have created for a prosperous life are murderous.