60 Minutes - 6/24/2018: Human Cargo, Governor Brown, The Isle of Eigg

Episode Date: June 25, 2018

The separation of families at the U.S-Southern border is just one issue undocumented immigrants -- human smuggling is another. Scott Pelley reports. Immigration is not the only issue facing the Trump administration. As Bill Whitaker reports -- climate change is another. Plus -- Steve Kroft revisits the Isle of Eigg on tonight's "60 Minutes." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. Wendy's most important deal of the day

has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $5. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, English muffin sandwiches, value iced coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. The debate about immigration reform and border security is front and center right now. Tonight, we'll show you what human smuggling on an industrial scale looks like along the Mexican-American border. California suffered its most destructive fire season on record last year. Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in December as raging wildfires whipped by fierce Santa Ana winds enveloped Los Angeles in ways people have never seen before. And, as you'll hear, California's governor

criticizes President Trump with righteous passion for rejecting the science of climate change that he says is the cause. I don't think President Trump has a fear of the Lord, the fear of the wrath of God. The Isle of Egg is an ungroomed masterpiece of nature too wild to tame, a craggy speck of incredible beauty. Well, the people on Egg, I I have to say, are more evolved. Charlie Galley, the taxi driver

and amateur philosopher, says most people here have done the whole life on the mainland thing and rejected it. You know everybody on the island? I know them, and there's true sizes, and like I say, there's no secrets on an island, so...

So what are they talking about this week? Mainly you. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Immediately after President Trump's inauguration in 2017, arrests of illegal immigrants on the southwest border plummeted to lows that hadn't

been seen in years. But three months later, with immigration reform stalled in Congress, the numbers started climbing again and have now returned to average. That comes to about half a million immigrants arrested each year. As we first reported in March, a great deal has changed on the border. Because of increased enforcement and the control of the drug cartels on the Mexican side. Human smuggling has developed to an industrial scale. Illegal immigrants in the hands of professional smugglers find themselves trapped in a system of cruelty, neglect, and death. There was no reason to notice the trailer in Frio County, Texas, except for the voice of a woman crying, we don't want to die. In 2015, the sheriff freed 39 men medical treatment, and this time, no one died. 18 wheelers packed with people are discovered at a rate of more than 100 a year just in Texas.

Last July, this one was found in San Antonio with well over 100 Mexican and Central and South American migrants inside. It was eerily quiet. When the doors opened, I expected to see people standing. All we saw was people laying down. Paramedic Kale Chambers reached for unconscious victims. Extremely hot to the touch. Physically hot to the touch. People at the brink of death that were at the end of the rope, and then people that were alive but declining as we were there.

You were losing them. Sure, yeah. The trailer was designed to be refrigerated so it was sealed tight. The cooling system was broken. Ten died, including two children. Twenty-nine were critically ill. They're doing it out of a sense of desperation. People simply fear for their lives, and they have no other way of surviving. Jeremy Slack is a researcher who has spent years interviewing immigrants in Mexico. He's a professor at the University of Texas, El Paso.

What is so terrible in Central America and in Mexico that it drives this migration? Well, we have intense levels of violence, both in Central America and parts of Mexico, where the population has been targeted in a way that we had never seen before. Issues such as extortion are one of the main drivers for immigration because gangs and drug cartels start extorting businesses, which eventually leads to the business being forced to close down. And now not only do people have no economic sustenance, but they also have people trying to kill them. And those two factors are incredible drivers of migration.

We met some of the immigrants when they surrendered to the border patrol. A 16-year-old girl told us that she was threatened with rape by a gang in El Salvador. This boy journeyed 1,000 miles from Guatemala alone, hoping to reach his parents in Florida. They ended up in detention, where they can apply for asylum or eventually be deported. This traditional route, over the Rio Grande River and through the brush on foot, is the path smugglers often use to funnel immigrants to the 18-wheelers on the U.S. side. But many are lost here. My wife came home from the grocery store at 5 o'clock one afternoon.

Our dogs were playing with something in the yard, and it was a human skull. Mike Vickers' South Texas ranch lies on the smugglers' roots. I've probably got 500 pictures of different bodies. We didn't find all of those. Some of them were found by ranch hands, sheriff's department, different people. 500 over what period of time, roughly? Since about 2004. What's killing them? The heat and being unprepared.

Eddie Canales works in the same county as Mike Vickers' ranch. He crossed in through Piedras Negras? Yes. In 2013, Canales founded the South Texas Human Rights Center, which helps rescue endangered immigrants and helps identify the dead. We came across the bodies of two men who apparently froze to death during a cold snap the other day. They were young men. They were 18 and 19-year-olds. One was from Mexico and one was from El Salvador.

How often are bodies found around here? Last year, 61 bodies were recovered. That's the ones you know about? That's the ones we know about. The sheriff here will tell you that for every one recovered, there's five still out there. Of these survivors, some are led by smugglers to safe houses like these on the U.S. side, which were filmed by the Border Patrol. In days or weeks, their numbers grow until there is a truckload.

The migrants aren't told about the 18 wheelers until it's too late, and then they are forced to board. We wanted to understand their desperation, so we traced a survivor of the fatal San Antonio truck 650 miles to his home in Aguas Calientes, Mexico. 42-year-old Jorge De Santos Aguilar was pulled from the truck unconscious. He was in a coma nearly three weeks and in the hospital nearly two months. You have a new little boy to support. Was he one of the reasons that you went to America? Yes, DeSantos told us. I'd do it for him. Nearly half of Mexicans live in poverty.

DeSantos is married with three children in a small apartment. In Aguas Calientes, he can make up to $300 a month, which doesn't pay the bills. In America, it's $5,000 a month. He's made the trip four times, worked in a factory on a hog farm, and helped rebuild New Orleans after Katrina. For his last, nearly fatal trip, he sold his truck, saved money from his past trips, and paid smugglers $6,500. It was completely dark, DeSantis told us about the trailer. There was no

window, there was no light, there was nothing. It's estimated the 100 and more victims in the back of the San Antonio truck, baking in their own heat, pushed the temperature well over 120 degrees, which led to the 10 deaths and 29 critically ill. I heard a lot of people screaming, DeSantos said. They wanted water. There were some people saying that they wanted to die. I heard a mom scream for her children. The torment lasted three hours. The last thing I remember, he told us, was calling out to God. Is it more dangerous today than ever? I would say so. There is so much enforcement in the areas that people were able to cross safely.

It has pushed people more and more into places that are dangerous. How much of this illegal immigration is controlled and run by the drug cartels? They're kind of the regulatory mechanism, and they essentially set the rules, so to speak, for illegal activities in the region. It has led to this professionalization, this need to collaborate and coordinate with the drug cartels because they are the ones that are able to control how officials work. They know more about sophisticated ways of avoiding apprehension, avoiding enforcement. The drug cartels own the border.

Definitely. Once migrants are over the border, their next challenge is effectively a second border of federal checkpoints. On major routes far north of Mexico, the Border Patrol operates a second set of screening stations. We visited one of the busiest 29 miles north of the border on Interstate 35. That truck that was found in San Antonio came through here. It did. Jason Owens is the deputy chief at the Laredo checkpoint. How did it manage to get through? It's unfortunate, but the possibility of us catching every single thing to come through this checkpoint is just not feasible.

The driver had his commercial license revoked. Yep. He came through here without a license how is that possible so the agent on primary has just a couple seconds given the amount of traffic that comes through and so uh the agent whenever they talk to the driver didn't have that reasonable suspicion the x-ray was broken down that day yes the border patrol wanted to show us the x-ray machine but it was broken when we were there too I'm gonna go back and scan the other side yep when the x-rays work they illuminate the horror there were 200 people in this

trailer when high-tech fails dog tech is ever reliable. Burned it, how many? We watched two illegal immigrants sniffed out from behind the airfoil on the roof of a rig. Chief Owens told us that they would catch many more trucks, but there are just too many. 1.3 million of these vehicles comes through here, just cargo alone every year. Another 1.9 million passenger. In just this station? This checkpoint alone, if this were a port of entry, this would be about the third busiest port of entry in the entire country. If you checked them all, commerce would stop. Right. So part of our job as CBP is to facilitate legitimate trade and travel, at the same time securing our borders. Smugglers recruit American drivers because they are less suspicious.

We wondered how they find willing Americans, so we called one. This call is from Troy Dock, an inmate at a federal prison. Former truck driver Troy Dock is in a prison we were not allowed to visit. He told us he crossed the border to see the sights. A man befriended him and asked Doc to smuggle an abused woman and child across the border. After dinner and drinks, the man confessed that what he really wanted was to pay Doc $5,000 to transport a dozen illegal immigrants waiting at this safe house in the United States. When Doc arrived there, the dozen turned out to be 50.

Did you have any trouble at the federal checkpoint? No, they just waved us through. Hours later, Doc reached Dallas, but two of his captives did not. They say two of them had passed away from a heat stroke, and the other one I think was in a coma or something like that. How long are you supposed to be there in the federal prison now? Till 2036. The driver in the San Antonio deaths, James Bradley, pleaded guilty to transporting immigrants resulting in death

and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. More Border Patrol agents. That's what we need here. We need at least another 150 agents here in Brooks County. South Texans, including Mike Vickers, are improvising. Vickers organized the Texas Border Volunteers, 300 armed civilians who patrol ranch lands and call in smuggling activity. The volunteers have no legal authority, and they were investigated

by the sheriff in 2014 for detaining and tying up illegal immigrants while waiting for the border patrol, something that Vickers says they won't do again. Some people watching this interview are saying to themselves right now he's an armed vigilante taking the law in his own hands. We've heard that before. This was a massive invasion. We've been doing this for 11 years. There have been thousands of people that we've reported that otherwise would have came in here scot-free.

Eddie Canales, the founder of the South Texas Human Rights Center, is focusing on rescue. He's set up more than 100 water stations. You know, there are people who say you're encouraging illegal immigration by making it possible to get through here. Well, I don't think I'm the overriding factor of why people come here. You know, there's people that are leaving their countries by, you know, being pushed out, you know, and they have no choice. I'm providing humanitarian effort and, you know, so people don't die and that people don't suffer. Meet Tim's new Oreo Mocha Ice Caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side

or B-side or bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more.

The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Our country is divided between red states and blue states, a division that has intensified since the election of President Donald Trump. And some of the blue states are intensifying their resistance to the president. Most prominently, California, the country's bluest and most populous state led by Governor Jerry Brown. Brown has been governor of California twice, the first time 40 years ago. He criticizes the president on taxes. California is suing the Trump administration over health care, immigration, and air quality. But nothing raises more righteous passion in Jerry Brown

than the issue of climate change. As we first reported last fall, he castigates the president for denying the science and aggravating a problem Governor Brown says is causing California to burn. California suffered its most destructive fire season on record last year. Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in December as raging wildfires whipped by fierce Santa Ana winds and fueled by bone-dry brush laid waste to tens of thousands of acres in Southern California. The smoke plume that shrouded the Los Angeles area could be seen from space. The fires that ravaged California's famed wine country in October were the deadliest the state has ever seen.

Whole neighborhoods were incinerated. Dozens of people were killed. The fire season used to be a few months in the summer. Now it's almost year long. These fires are unprecedented. We've never seen anything like it. Scientists are telling us this is the kind of stuff that's going to happen and we've got to deal with it. Scientists are telling us this is the kind of stuff that's going to happen, and we've got to deal with it. It's going to happen, he says, based on science that predicts

extreme swings in weather patterns. Last year, Southern California experienced record heat in October and November, creating the perfect conditions for this. Nature is not a political game. Nature is the ground on which we stand. It's the air in which we breathe. And the truth of the case is that there's too much carbon being emitted, that heat trapping gases are building up, the planet is warming, and all hell is breaking loose. President Trump has famously called climate change a hoax. When he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, he said this wasn't a good deal for the United States. That's a preposterous idea, not even a shred of truth in that statement. So I'd say to Mr. Trump, take a deeper look. Now is not

the time to undo what every country in the world is committed to. Are you fearful? Oh, yeah. Anyone who isn't is not looking at the facts. I don't think President Trump has a fear of the Lord, the fear of the wrath of God, which leads one to more humility. And this is such a reckless disregard for the truth and for the existential consequences that can be unleashed. If he sounds like a Jesuit seminarian, it's because he was one years ago. Now he's a climate missionary traveling the world preaching the gospel of renewable energy at the Vatican. In China, where President Xi Jinping discussed collaborating with California on cutting greenhouse gases.

Brown went to the Global Climate Summit in Bonn, Germany last fall. He and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg led a delegation of mayors and legislators representing 40 percent of the U.S. economy. While the official U.S. delegation sent by the White House showed up to promote coal, Brown went to tell the world President Trump doesn't speak for all Americans. California is not waiting for Trump. We're not waiting for all the deniers. He's already weaning California off fossil fuels. To give us a glimpse of the future, Brown took us to this 62-acre solar farm near Sacramento on the site of a decommissioned nuclear power plant. You have said that you want to have 50 percent of California's electricity generated by renewable

sources by 2030. By 2030. And you think you're going to beat that? Yes, no question about it. With the federal government standing down on climate action, California is blazing its own trail. What can you, the governor of one state in the United States, do to fill in the void? As governor of California, we have a cap and trade system, which is a very efficient way to reducing greenhouse gases. We have a zero emission vehicle mandate. We have efficiency standards for our buildings, for appliances.

So California is showing that dealing with climate is good for the economy, not bad. California is booming. Under Brown, it has grown from the ninth largest economy in the world to the fifth. It's now bigger than the U.K., with a budget surplus of more than $8 billion. When you first came into office this time, California faced more than $50 billion in debt and deficits. There were headlines that California was going to be the first failed state. The fact is, we cut the budget, we raised taxes, and the economy roared back. You cut the budget, you raise taxes. These days, that sounds like a prescription for political suicide. You got to pay some taxes. You have to invest. We need to

invest in the technology of tomorrow or somebody else will. And that somebody is China, India, and other countries. You're not going to poor mouth yourself to the future. And roads cost money. That's called taxes. R&D costs money. Colleges cost money. Schools, child care, all of that. We're a rich country and we can handle it. But California's economic success has come at a cost. Housing prices are through the roof. So are the ranks of the homeless. A quarter of the country's homeless live in California. It's not paradise. We have lots of problems. California is the engine of America, and I'd like to remind my fellow citizens, when you kind of look askance at this state, you're looking at one of the, not the only one,

but a major contributor to the well-being of the whole country. California is vital to the national economy. That's why Brown is so angered by the tax overhaul law that was pushed by House and Senate Republicans. They call it a tax cut. But Brown says by eliminating deductions for state and local taxes, it actually increases the tax burden on high-tax blue states like California. He and other blue state governors say the bill is retaliation against Trump's opponents. Brown called it evil and divisive.

Do you think the Republicans are intentionally trying to punish the blue states that didn't vote for President Trump? I know this. The Republicans have this cult. Just like they believe there's no climate problem, they believe that cutting corporate taxes without any money to pay for it, they think it's magic. It'll make everything wonderful. Very irresponsible, very dangerous. But California Republicans say Brown's tax hikes are irresponsible. In Trump's America, Jerry Brown's California seems far out on the frontier. California doesn't look like the rest of the country.

Minorities are now the majority of the population. It doesn't act like the rest of the country. The state voted to legalize recreational marijuana. It will soon offer a third gender choice on driver's licenses. Hillary Clinton trounce President Trump here by more than four million votes. It seems that California is way out of step with the rest of the country. But I'd say we're more in tune with the future than many parts of the rest of the country. You think the country is going to look more like California in the future?

I think it will. Because I was asking myself, why did Democrats in Ohio, in Wisconsin, in Michigan, Pennsylvania, why did they vote for Trump? Not a lot of them did, but enough to give those states electoral votes. And your answer? There's more confidence here. There's less fear. People are looking to the future. They're not scared. They're not going inward. They're not scapegoating. They're not blaming Mexican immigrants. They're not blaming the stranger. Just the opposite. It's a place that's alive. It's dynamic. It's a culture that's on the move, not pulling up the drawbridge out of fear and economic insecurity. Jerry Brown is California's 39th and oldest governor. When he first held the office in 1975, he had a full head of hair. His father, Pat Brown, had been governor eight years before. When you look at all the staid portraits of his predecessors

in the Capitol Rotunda, it's obvious Jerry Brown is not like the others. Not many politicians spent four years in the seminary as Brown did in the 1950s or dated a rock star. He went out with Linda Ronstadt in the 70s. I've seen a lot of different things. I've worked with Mother Teresa. I've spent six months doing Zen meditation in Kamakura, Japan. And I've run for president three times. I've done very incompatible things. People who like you will say that that's evidence of intellectual flexibility. People who don't like you say that that's evidence of your being flighty. Well, I'm not going to... That's that psychobabble.

Whatever you call it, his far out politics, his first time in office earned him the moniker Governor Moonbeam. We found him to be down to earth. He's California casual at the office. His dog, Calusa, has the run of the place. Are you better at being governor this time? Yeah, it's a different experience. 79 is not 36. Different ballgame in every way. So I would say I know more. I understand more. What have you learned about yourself in those intervening years? There's something you lose with age, your physical prowess, but mental acuity and just life experience is very important. So I enjoy the job a lot more.

No, come on, you know that in California... It's hard to see why. His liberal policies make him a punching bag for conservatives, and he's not universally loved by liberals. He's a political maverick. He's rolling back state union pensions. He refuses to curb oil production until there's a viable alternative. A majority of Californians like what he's doing, but he's been doing this for almost 50 years, and he says it's time to hang

up his political spurs. When he leaves office in January 2019, he swears he's going to leave elective politics behind. I think you're gonna miss this. No, I don't. You don't think so? Next year I'll be 80. And what do I want to do with my life? That's my question. What do you want to do? I want to spend time with my wife. A go-it-alone bachelor nearly all of his adult life, Jerry Brown now has a partner to share his life, Ann Gust Brown, a former executive at The Gap. They married in 2005. Their plan is to retire here, to this ranch in a golden valley north of Sacramento.

They're building their dream ranch house, with solar panels, of Sacramento. They're building their dream ranch house with solar panels of course. It's off the grid and way off the beaten path. The governor and Calusa showed us around. She's ready. This is beautiful governor. This is pretty steep. So you haven't seen nothing yet. This is beautiful, Governor. This is pretty steep. He told us he's going out at his peak. Stepping away from the fray on land his great-grandfather settled in the 1860s.

He said he intends to be a modest rancher. He's going to unplug and unwind. Do you think this man sitting next to you is going to be content puttering around? I wouldn't call it puttering. I don't putter. He sure doesn't putter. No. As he said, running a modest ranch. We both wonder about it because we've been running 100 miles an hour and now we're going to be in a place that's almost the opposite of that. And we'll see. Yeah, we're out on the frontier, as it were. And you're going to like that. Well, I like being on the frontier, that's for sure.

Every now and then, just for the fun of it, we decide to go off to some really obscure place that you've never heard of and are not likely to visit. Last November, we took you to the Isle of Egg. If you missed that trip, we're going back tonight to Egg, or the People's Republic of Egg, as it's jokingly referred to in Scotland, which is a country where half the privately held land is owned by fewer than 500 people. A lot of it's tied up in huge estates owned by lairds, who often run them as fiefdoms. Twenty years ago, after two centuries of servility, the people of Egg drove away their laird and seized control of their own destiny,

establishing the first community-owned estate in Scotland's history. We wanted to see what they've made of it. Just three miles wide, six miles long, and ten miles off the Scottish coast, Egg is part of the Inner Hebrides, surrounded by the isles of Rum, Muck, and Sky, at the edge of the North Atlantic. It's an ungroomed masterpiece of nature, too wild to tame. A craggy isle of incredible beauty, populated mostly by sheep and the dogs that keep track of them. The people do their best to stay clear while taking everything in.

So what's your average day like? Some people would say very lazy. I like to think I just make the hard work look easy. All depends on your outlook. Charlie Galley is the taxi driver on egg and the only source of public transportation up and down the island's furrowed main artery. It's a niche he claimed for himself when he arrived from the mainland with his wife in this aging Volvo four years ago. Plenty of time to get the feel of the place. You know everybody on the island? I know them and there's two sizes and like I say there's no secrets on an island so. So what are they talking about this week? Mainly you. It's not like they don't get visitors.

12,000 tourists came here last year, most of them to spend only a few hours. There are very few places to stay. We were going to be here for days, asking questions about eggs' quirky history. And everyone directed us to Maggie Fife, the island secretary, who landed here 41 years ago after touring Afghanistan in a camper. I never imagined that I would spend the rest of my life here. Does that mean you like it? I think so, yeah. It was 1976, just after the entire island had been purchased by a wealthy English toff named Keith Schellenberg, who became the seventh Laird of Egg. Welcome to Egg.

Under Scotland's feudal landlord system, he had absolute power over virtually every aspect of his estate. What kind of impact did he have on people's lives? He had that control over everything, people, jobs, houses, and he wouldn't give anybody a lease on anything. By all accounts, Schellenberg used the island as his personal playground, lavishly entertaining guests and driving about in a 1927 Rolls Royce while most of his tenants lived in poverty without electricity. Was there a rebellion? Eventually, yeah.

It started with a slow burn that burst into flames one night in 1994, when Schellenberg's beloved Rolls-Royce met a fiery end, burnt to a crisp like a slice of bacon, under circumstances still unexplained. A mysterious fire, spontaneous combustion, who knows. So did you ever figure out what happened to the Rolls Royce no headline writers all over Britain couldn't believe their luck there was scrambled egg burnt rolls and egg comes to the boil it went on for a year until Schellenberg gave up expressing his disdain for the islanders in this BBC interview. I think that my ultimate failure with egg is that I can't be bothered to try and get on with them anymore.

His final act was to sell the island to a wacky German who called himself Maruma and claimed to be an artist of note and a professor. He turned out to be an artist of note and a professor. He turned out to be neither. Up to his beret and debt, Maruma stopped paying people's wages, and within two years, creditors put egg up for auction. Maggie Fife and others thought, why not buy the island for ourselves? By the time we got to Maruma, and two years of somebody that was living in Stuttgart and had only visited for four days, it convinced

everybody that we wouldn't have to do very much to do better than what he'd done, which was nothing. No one in Scotland had ever tried a community buyout before, certainly not 64 residents on a depressed, undeveloped island with no cash or credit. But lots of people were familiar with their story and fancied the idea of we folk taking on the big guys. In 1997, a public fundraising campaign brought in 2.5 million dollars to close the deal. The funds came from 10,000 individual contributors and one huge check from an unknown woman. The bulk of the money came from a mystery benefactor. A mystery benefactor? Sounds like Dickens.

It's a pretty crazy story, really. You don't know who she is? The only string attached was that she remained anonymous. She ever been to the island? Not as far as I know. Do you know why she did it? I think she's given money to a lot of what she regards as good causes. And we were lucky enough to be one of them.

That was 20 years ago. The Eggers and their friends marked the two decades of self-rule with a big blowout they call a Kaling. With traditional music, dancing, and drink. We decided to cancel the next day's shoot to allow time for recovery, but 24 hours wasn't enough. What time did you leave the Cayley?

It was about 8 a.m., I think, when we finally left. How long did it take you to recover? Probably tomorrow. Johnny Jobson first experienced egg in his 20s, working on a fishing boat as a scallop diver. Since then, a lot has changed. One, there is electricity now, which allowed him to move his wife and family here last year

and edit a sports journal online from their tiny cottage. It's required some sacrifices, but they love the beauty of the place and its eccentricities. You look at the scenery or you see a pod of dolphins come through and you just remind yourself how lucky you are. You seem to have a lot of characters on this island. Yeah. Were they normal when they came here? Yeah, not all of us. Dean Wiggin turned up in a kayak 14 years ago, and he's still here.

He's very good at fixing things. Jobs are extremely scarce, so you have to bring one with you or use your wits to invent one. It's one of those places that really gets into your soul, I think. It's quite enchanting. Sarah Bowden runs her uncle's sheep farm on Egg. She grew up here, then left to work as a music journalist in London, where she met her future partner, Johnny Lynch, one of Scotland's most popular musicians. She coaxed him to egg. Did you think he was going to come?

Not really. No, because, yeah, I was living in a caravan at the time and, yeah, it was all quite rustic. Yeah, you did look a bit shocked. And Johnny's, you know, proper suburban city. What? Well, you're not an actual country boy, are you? If you mean I look after my nails, then yes, yes I do. But yeah, I knew from as soon as I got here, I couldn't really see a reason for me to go back and just look at me now. Look at you now. See if you can spell it.

When it comes to the essentials on egg, there is basically one of everything. One primary school for five students, one grocery shop where a hundred islanders all choose from the same food, and one pub at the tea room down by the wharf where the best beer is local. Stu McCarthy and Gabe McVarish, who are both married to women who grew up on egg, got so tired of drinking the mass-produced stuff from the mainland, they started their own mini-microbrewery two years ago. So this is it? Is this legal?

It's legal. They make eight different brews, including I Am the Egg Man, which is very popular with the tourists. They're just beginning to turn a profit, but say they've saved a lot of money drinking their own beer. Are you the biggest selling beer on egg? Thankfully, yes. Yeah, we can say that. None of these younger people would be here without the island's tiny but unique power grid that runs almost entirely on renewable energy, a combination of wind, hydroelectric and solar,

the first time it's ever been accomplished anywhere. That is the biggest and most impressive project that we've done. It changed everything, right? Oh, yeah, it's made life so much easier. It was designed and funded with multiple grants, mostly from the European Union, and engineers from all over the world have come to study it. Like everything else on egg, it is run and maintained by revolving committees of islanders, the only visible sign of any sort of government. There are no offices, no court system, no police.

Is there any crime on the island? There's no crime or anything. Never? Not that I can remember. Nobody's snatched something or borrowed something? They borrow it, and you'll get it usually within the week. It'll return to you, kind of thing. You just don't know where it is at that point in time when you're looking for it. But it will turn up again.

It can't go anywhere. It's on an island. What happens if somebody gets sick? You basically have to be sick on a Tuesday. The doctor comes from Skye on a Tuesday, spends a day here. And that's sometimes weather permitting if it's really rough in the wintertime. Egg is dependent on boats for everything. When a ferry comes in with fuel and food, people flock to the wharf to help out. It's not a courtesy, it's a necessity on an island where everyone is more or less scraping by.

To survive, they have to rely on each other, look after each other, and put up with each other. The island is too small for feuds or lingering resentments. What's the difference between people who live on the mainland and people who live on egg? Well, the people on egg, I'd have to say, are more evolved. Charlie Galley, the taxi driver and amateur philosopher, says most people here have done the whole life on the mainland thing and rejected it.

They're all doing their hamster wheel thing, if you know. Hamster wheel? Yeah. You get a mortgage, you get a car, you get a job, you do this and the next thing, and they all get so involved they forget to look about them and see what's actually going on in life, you know. You should know egg is not always served sunny side up.

As the days get shorter, the windy, rainy weather turns to sleet with gusts up to 100 miles an hour. The boats might not get through for a week, so people keep lots of beans and spam in the storeroom. Even the sheepdogs look forlorn. If you accidentally open your mouth when a gust of wind's coming, it involuntarily fills your lungs.

You're like... To live here, you have to be resilient, self-sufficient and patient. And not just with the sheep. The cows like to go down and lie on the beach, on the sand, and they'll all trail down the road, so you can't argue with a cow, you know. It wants to do what it wants to do, and you've just got to give it plenty of time, you know. There are no grand ambitions here and no discernible interest in development,

despite the sea, the cliffs and the vistas. The owners don't want hotels or a Donald Trump golf course or hundreds of new residents. I think we're looking for one or two at a time. I think that's how it works here. Then it works a lot better and we've got time to get used to new residents. I think we're looking for one or two at a time. I think that's how it works here. Then it works a lot better and we've got time to get used to new people. We would have liked to stay longer in this stress-free non-conflict zone where everyone seems to be more or less on the same page. But we were out of clean laundry, we had a ferry to catch, and hamster wheels to jump back onto.

As for the people of Egg, I don't think they were sad to see us go. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. Tomorrow, be sure to watch CBS This Morning.