Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 15, 1990 TAG: 9004130462
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
More than 20 million people attended rallies across the country, demonstrating for environmental conservation.
Students in San Jose, Calif., buried a gas-guzzling car. In Cintralia, Wash., a goat wandered around a lawn bearing a sign that read: "I eat garbage, what are you doing for your community?"
In Roanoke, it was a relatively quiet day. Weaver remembers her elementary-age children talking about the pollution lesson they had that day at school. An environmental symposium at Roanoke College brought together educators, students, and civic and business leaders - but pointedly excluded politicians.
"It was mostly a day for the hippies," recalls Weaver. "And everybody put them down."
Earth day is back this year, after a 20-year hiatus.
And has it ever changed.
Across the country, organizers of the April 22 event are expecting a turn-out five times the size of 1970's crowds and are hoping to galvanize anew a nation of environmentally conscious citizens.
Students in San Jose are going to dig up that gas guzzler they buried 20 years ago - and recycle it. And millions of Americans will be asked to sign a "green pledge," promising to recycle, conserve energy and to put the Earth first when making lifestyle decisions.
In Southwest Virginia, where the first Earth Day was largely ignored, residents for the next 10 days will be up to their ears in garbage and garbage talk.
More than 150 groups will be rolling up their shirt sleeves and picking up trash alongside area highways and in parks. School ecology projects and public lectures on the need for recycling will abound.
On Earth Day Sunday, students from Bedford's Body Camp Elementary will be raising money to buy an acre of South American rain forest. Roanoke Valley residents will be asked to abandon their cars at the bottom of Mill Mountain - and ride a free shuttle bus up to the zoo for music, lectures, displays and games. A meeting to organize a Roanoke Chapter of the Sierra Club will be held the week following.
And so it goes, in Martinsville, in Franklin County, in Blacksburg, in Lexington.
Earth Day is back and bigger than ever. But no longer is environmental awareness strictly the realm of flower children and bird watchers.
"It's mainstream," says Weaver, who, as executive director of the Clean Valley Council and a middle-aged wife and mother, typifies the environmentalist of the '90s. "You read daily about oil spills, closing landfills and a garbage barge, and you start to realize that we haven't treated the Earth very well.
"My generation is getting real nervous about what we're leaving for our children and grandchildren."
Diminishing space in area landfills has brought environmental issues closer to home, Weaver adds. And the saga of Alleghany County's Kim-Stan landfill, where nearby residents have been fighting the dumping of out-of-state garbage, has intensified the debate.
In the past 18 months, phone calls to the Clean Valley Council have increased from a handful to more than 200 calls a month. Most of the calls, Weaver says, are inquiries about the status of area landfills and how to recycle household waste.
At Virginia Tech, environmental law professor Leon Geyer reports a surge of environmental consciousness among students as well. The majority of those registering for his class, for example, study the topic as an elective - because they want to get involved.
"Maybe the idealism of the kids is coming back because their parents were idealists," Geyer says. "Many of the students are financially comfortable, so they can start asking some of the tougher questions about life and the environment . . . and bring a little idealism and pragmatism" back to the movement.
Nationwide, a 1989 Gallup poll found that 76 percent of Americans considered themselves environmentalists. Solid majorities said they worried a great deal about pollution of rivers and lakes, contamination of soil and water by toxic wastes, air pollution and loss of natural habitat for wildlife.
Newer threats such as global warming, ozone depletion and the destruction of rain forests are growing in the public consciousness, while disasters like the Exxon Valdez oil spill show how fragile the relationship between man and nature can be.
And there is George Bush, in front of the television cameras, proclaiming himself the "environmental president." Groups like the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society are gearing up to hold him to his pledge.
Along comes a 20th anniversary - always a good cause for celebration - and it's no wonder that Earth Day '90 rallies will be held in at least 120 countries in addition to the United States.
What exactly do organizers hope to gain by re-enacting Earth Day?
At least as much as they did in 1970. In the charged atmosphere that followed the first Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency was created. The Clean Air Act of 1970 phased out lead in gasoline and drastically reduced auto emissions (a revision of it, however, has been stalled in Congress since 1981, though action is expected to take place this year). Activists also helped halt the spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam and pressured officials to ground the ecologically harmful Supersonic Transport.
Recreating that sentiment - making the environment a mass movement again - is the focal point of Earth Day '90.
"Energies got changed in the late '70s and early '80s," says Peter deFur, a staff scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund in Richmond. "Too much energy was spent on identifying problems rather than solving them, especially during the Reagan administration.
"Like with acid rain - we said we didn't know enough about the problem to solve it, so instead we did nothing. Now more people are starting to think it's better to try something rather than to just do nothing."
Environmentalists will be specifically pushing for legislation that aims to: stem the tide of global warming, produced primarily when carbon dioxide is emitted by burning fossil fuels; phase out ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons; reduce acid rain; reduce fossil-fuel consumption; cut the amount of generated solid waste; and protect natural habitats.
"Some places already know the magnitude of their environmental problems," says deFur. "They can't breath their air safely, or they have no place to catch fish. If New York doesn't do something, they'll be living on top of their garbage. Today's landfill problems are indicative of the whole movement: We generate trash, for instance, faster than we've been generating solutions.
"But we're beginning to recognize that the cost of waiting to solve these problems is too great. The '90s is the time."
by CNB