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causing hideous deformation
     of the stalks and leaves. To finish off the job, it exudes from its rectum honeydew to attract ants. These ants deposit a
     sootlike residue on the leaves, which stifles any growth.
    This was not the only nightmare parasite to afflict American and Asian farmers at that time. The red vine spider, a species
     of armyworm and the striped stem-borer joined forces with other destructive insect species to deprive humanity of a large
     part of its agricultural resources. Only the chemical industry could come up with a means of eradicating such a scourge. Conscious
     of all that was at stake, a number of companies went into action. One of them was American. Its name was Union Carbide.

    Born at the beginning of the century of a marriage of four companies that produced batteries and arc lamps for acetylene street
     lights and headlights for the first cars, Carbide—as it was affectionately known by its staff—owed its first glorious hour
     to World War I. It was helium from its stills that enabled tethered balloons to rise into the skies above France and spot
     German artillery fire; it was iron- and zirconium-based armor-plating of its invention that thwarted the Kaiser’s shells on
     the first Allied tanks; it was Carbide’s active carbon granules in gas masks that protected the lungs of thousands of infantrymen
     in the trenches of the Somme and Champagne. Twenty-five years later, another world war was to enlist Carbide’s services for
     America. Out of its collaboration with the scientists of the Manhattan Project, the first atomic bomb was born.
    In less than a generation the absorption of dozens of other businesses propelled the company to the forefront of America’s
     multinationals. By the second half of the century it was among the mightiest of U.S. companies, with 130 subsidiaries in some
     40 countries, approximately 500 production sites and 120,000 employees. In 1976 it was to announce a revenue of $615 billion.
     The products that emerged from its laboratories, factories, pits and mines were innumerable. Carbide was the great provider
     of industrial gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, methane, ethylene and propane used in the petrochemical industry, as
     well as chemical substances like the ammonia and urea used in the manufacture of fertilizers, among other things. It also
     produced sophisticated metallurgical items based on alloys of cobalt, chrome and tungsten that were used in high-tensile equipment
     such as airplane turbines. Finally, it made a whole range of plastic goods for general use. Eight out of ten American housewives
     did their shopping with plastic bags stamped with the blue-and-white logo of Union Carbide. The logo also appeared on millions
     of plastic bottles, food packaging, photographic film and many other everyday items. The intercontinental telephone conversations
     of half the planet’s inhabitants were conducted via underwater cables protected with sheathing made by Carbide. The antifreeze
     for one in every two cars, 60 percent of batteries, 60 percent of silicone implants used in cosmetic surgery, the rubber for
     one in every five tires, most aerosol fly and mosquito sprays, and even synthetic diamonds issued from the factories of a
     giant whose shares were among the safest investments on Wall Street.
    From its imposing fifty-two-story aluminum and glass skyscraper at 270 Park Avenue in the heart of Manhattan, Carbide determined
     the habits and dictated the choices of millions of men, women and children across the five continents. No other industrial
     company enjoyed the same degree of respectability. After all, didn’t people say that what was good for Carbide was good for
     America—and therefore the world?
    The production of pesticides was in line with its past and its experience. The objective—to rid humanity of the insects that
     were stealing its food—could only enhance its international prestige.

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Three Zealots on the Banks of the