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6 • The Red and Black » Friday, April 20. 1990
Earth Day 90
Earth Day events
COLLEGE SQUARE. April 22
• Noon Bill Walsh, speaking on Earth Day 1970
•12:10- Valerie Ledbetter, acoustic musk.
• 12:30- Farru and the Burgoos, music.
• 1:00- Andrew Young, gubernatorial candidate.
• 1:15- Tony Joseph, Earth Love Fund. Ltd.
• 1:25- Ken Rlddleberger. Project WILD.
• 1:35- Blue Holland, musk.
• 2:10- Gargantuan Platoon Cloudcuckooland." theatrical troupe.
• 2:35- All Jones. Campus Environmental Audit. Students for Environmental Aware
ness.
• 2:45- Vkky Wlndal. Athens/Clarke County Clean and Beautiful Commission.
• 2:55- Plat-Eye Blue, musk
•3:35- Dan Everett. Athens Peace Coalltkn.
• 3:45- The Warblers, folk music.
• 4:25- Barbara McDonald, No HARME.
• 4 55- Michael Thurmond. State Representative.
• 5:05- Ebenezer Baptist Church Choir, gospel music.
• 5.45- Rep. Karen Irwin, Governor s Proclamation of Earth Day.
• 5:55- Valerie Spratlln, Green Pledge
• 6:05- Normaltown Flyers, musk.
• 6:45- Broad River Action Group.
•6:55- Bullet Standing Deer.
• 7 05- Don Cole, acoustic music.
• 7:25- Mark Williams, Sierra Club.
• 7:35- Southern Crescent, music.
•8 15- Randall Bramblett, Bob Jones, Davis Causey, music.
•8 55- Anna Bass. Northern Georgia Earth Day 1990.
• 9:05- Benjl K, rap music.
• 9:25- Groove Trolls, musk.
•10:05- Ed Tant, author.
•10:15-White Buffalo, musk.
UNIVERSITY* NORTH CAMPUS GREEN-Famlly Programs
• Noon- Pete Schrantz/Earth Ball Games.
•1:30- Native American Dancing Demonstration, Pow-Wow Style.
•2:00- Bottom Dollar Boys-muslc.
•2:30- Pieces of Earth; Susan McMIchen, Dixie Mills. Anthony Phillips
•3:00 Pow-Wow Style Dancing Competition.
•4:00- Valerie Spratlln, Green Pledge.
• 4:15- Chris White, music.
•5:00- Brent, Ash, Annette, musk.
•5:30- Athens' Misfits, clogging
SEA gives awards
to area businesses
Students for Environmental
Awareness will give awards today
to Athens area businesses and in
dividuals who’ve made environ
mentally sound decisions.
Corrie Bryant, SEA vice chair
person, said the organization will
present the awards to representa
tives at 12:25 p.m. at the Univer
sity’s Earth Day celebration at the
Tate Student Center plaza.
Loraine Shelton, manager of If
It’s Paper, an SEA award winner,
said she only stocks stationery
right now, but because of positive
response, she plans to stock a full
line of post-consumer products.
Post-consumer products are
those recycled after consumer use.
Bryant said SEA checked out
several businesses and individuals
and voted on them at the last
meeting.
Also chosen for their environ
mental contributions were: The
Bulldog Room for getting rid of Sty
rofoam, Kinko’s for offering re
cycled paper, Blimpie’s for
switching to albacore tuna, UGA
Bookstore for offering notebooks
and notebook paper made from re
cycled paper, R.E.M. Athens for
continued support and Flagpole
Magazine writer Jerry Ellis for ad
vocating the environmental
movement in his column.
— Anne-Marie Fanguy
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■■WI8
‘it’s a fad to be into the environment’
Earth Day veteran wary of new ‘eco-chic’
Bill Walsh: Local businessman organized UGA Earth Day
20 years ago. He hopes this one will make more waves
By J.O. SQUILLANTE
Staff Writer
Bill Walsh was a University
sophomore in 1970. A journalism
student living in Russell Hall, he
was not unlike those who dwell on
campus now, some 20 years later.
But Walsh, now a successful
businessman, wore his hair long,
liked to put on camping boots and
birdwaten and hike. He liked to
ponder his relationship with the
environment. He was an environ
mentalist at heart before ecological
concern became vogue.
The causes of his generation,
anti-war and pro-environment,
had a way of consuming a person,
he said.
“When you truly feel for some
thing it becomes a part of the total
person,” he said with his eyes
closed, as if he were transporting
himself back to the age when
Nixon was president and Vietnam
baffled the United States.
However, people can be fickle.
Heavy demands on time and atten
tion can become too much. The
mind can juggle only so much and
so it has to make decisions about
what’s important.
For this reason Walsh, now
chairman of the Earth Sciences
section of the Georgia Academy of
Sciences, compares Earth Day
1970 with a pebble thrown in a
pond.
“It made a few ripples of aware
ness in people, but before too long
waters were still again,” Walsh
said, sitting among glass-encased
Southern literary collections that
make up Talking Leaves Bookstore
in downtown Athens, which he
owns along with the Bluebird Cafe.
Earth tips
• Clean, dear and disinfect sinks
and drains with ordinary table salt,
which Is non-toxic and antiseptic.
• Put filter-tip cigarettes in ash
trays, not drains and toilets. They can
be hamrdul to cesspools and even large-
city sewage processing plants.
• Make sure your car has the re
quired smog device and have it
checked regularly.
• Don’t use washers end dryers
during peak electrical load hours (B-7
pm). The strain at your loeat genera
tion station may add to ah pollution.
• Put e quart-sized plastic Jug filled
with water in your toilet tank to reduce
the amount of water used to flush.
• To conserve power, use low-wat
tage bulbs In lamps not used for
reading and turn out lights not being
used.
• Separate your household trash.
Smash cans and put In on# box, bottles
In another, papers In another.
— Anne-Marie Fanguy
“It’s a fad to be into the environ
ment,” he said. “Right now eco-chic
is the thing.”
“It’s just like Beatle haircuts in
the 1960s,” he said. These days
Walsh plays classical music in his
bookstore and takes the time to as
sess the strength, or lack thereof,
of Earth Day 1990.
“Nobody learned anything new
about our environment in 1970,”
Walsh said. “It was just the ‘hap
pening’ thing at the time and that’s
probably the case now.”
But then Earth Day was less of a
publicity extravaganza, he said.
“Only 300 University students
got into the day in 1970,” he said.
Events didn’t include music and
huge advertising campaigns back
then.
“We went to little half-hour
By ANNE-MARIE FANGUY
Staff Writer
Long before University Presi
dent Charles Knapp initiated an
environmental literacy program
and recycling bins appeared on
campus, University graduate stu
dents were getting hands-on expe
rience in the Environmental Ethics
Certificate program.
Frederick Ferre, vice chair of the
rogram, said graduate students
ave worked with sea tortoises and
national parks as well as other
Field projects since the program
began in 1984. One graduate of the
program, Michael Zwerling, is a
founder of Students for Environ
mental Awareness on campus.
Although there has been a
steady increase in the program’s
workshop seminars in Memorial
Hall where different angles were
taken on building respect for na
ture," he said.
English teachers volunteered
their reflections on nature’s role in
literature; music teachers did the
same for their field. Philosophy
professors put man’s attitude to
ward nature under the microscope.
At first, environmental aware
ness correlated with the anti-war
movements, Walsh said.
‘There were such horrible things
going on in regard to the war and
showing an outpouring of love for
the Earth and the beauty of nature
soothed people in a way," he said.
But then life got more compli
cated. The “Institution” was
threatened by the fall of a presi
dent, he said, and the war’s end
enrollment, Ferre said he doesn’t
think increased media coverage of
environmental issues has been the
reason.
“I don’t think media blitzes have
much of an influence on graduate
students,” he said.
Ferre said at any given time,
about 20 students are involved in
the program, which consists of 30
hours of course work. Because stu
dents are encouraged to develop a
program of study suited to their in
dividual interests, he said, the cer
tificate includes 15 hours of
electives.
Elgene Box, an associate pro
fessor of geography, teaches con
servation ecology for the program.
When Box came to the Univer
sity 10 years ago, he tried to start a
doctoral program in ecology and
forced the United States to step
back and assess the damages on
the country’s morale.
Walsh said by this time people,
having gotten more tied up in the
war, had jumped off the environ
mental bandwagon.
Even though attention to the en
vironment dwindled, the environ
ment’s dwindling health didn’t
stop for man, Walsh said.
"Before everyone knew it, it
wasn’t enough just to ‘appreciate’
nature,” he said. “You had to be
come an all-out activist to defend
it.”
Owen Burd, national Earth Day
student coordinator, is more opti
mistic about Sunday’s impact.
‘Twenty million people will be
demonstrating on Earth Day," he
said. “Everyone will get everyone
else involved and a real conscious
ness will come around.”
Burd has coordinated Earth Day
programs at 2,000 colleges and
universities.
“Colleges are important in this
fight,” he said. “I think students
are politically ready to accept some
responsiblity for the future and it’ll
be a big boost if they set an ex
ample.”
Walsh said he acknowledges
that progress is being made. He
cites the decision of major tuna
companies to refuse fish caught in
nets that injure and kill thousands
of dolphins every year.
“But there’s still so much to do,”
he said. “I really do hope Earth
Day’s enthusiasm will sustain
longer than it did after the first
one, which was just ripples in the
big pond.”
the environment.
‘That program didn’t fly, but
after that the Environmental
Ethics Certificate program was
started,” he said.
Ferre said the program includes
courses from environmental de
sign, forest resources, law and
management as well as the tradi
tional sciences.
One required course, about tech
nology and values, is taught to in
troduce “ways in which to employ
technology in a more gentle way,”
he said.
Ferre said a committee will meet
May 29 to discuss opening the pro
gram to undergraduates. Pre-
viously, a course in
environmentalism was proposed as
a core requirement for all under
graduates.
Hands-on experience available
Enviro-certificate offered to grad students
GLOBAL
From page 1
proving, waste is our number-one
enemy,” he said.
Odum thinks improved relations
will leave the federal budget with
“peace dividends” that can be uti
lized in environmentally en
hancing ways.
In addition to logical argument,
Earth Day’s message will pull
America’s heartstrings as images
of oily suffocation suffered by thou
sands of animals in the Valdez oil
spill are recalled.
“I don’t see how people can hear
about real problems — dying ani
mals, holes in the ozone layer, un
controlled garbage build-up — and
not make the effort to recycle and
be responsible,” Reich said.
“I think people are tired of
seeing dead animals wash up on
our shore,” she said. “Who can
stand to see that?"
An aggressive awareness cam
paign echoing the plea for mercy
has pasted posters on the faces of
buildings all over the country.
Television announcements won’t
let this Sunday stand as just an
other non-work day.
Of course even Mother Earth
has to pav her way, but Earth Day
personnel and volunteers made en
vironmental scruples a top priority
when raising funds needed to feed
the $2.5 million campaign budget.
Most of the money has been
raised through private donations.
Corporate funding was accepted
only from select businesses.
"Any company offering us money
was screened like you wouldn’t be
lieve," Burd said.
“It would defeat the purpose of
the whole cause if we took money
from a corporation that polluted
the environment with a product or
a by-product of manufacturing a
product,” he said.
Burd said one company that
sells paper products made of re
cycled material is a sponsor as is a
baking soda company.
Baking soda is an alternative to
toxic cleaning chemicals in the
home, he said.
National coordinators rejected
more than $4 million in donations
—almost twice the amount of
Earth Day’s entire budget — of
fered by corporations that orga
nizers said had flaws in their
environmental records.
Lunsford said private donations
have supplemented funding doled
out to Atlanta from national head
quarters. Georgia corporations of
fered donations to the group, but
none were accepted.
Earth Day is intended by coordi
nators to be a beginning of eternal
environmental concern, not just a
day of reflection, Burd said.
Hayes is laying the foundations
for campaigns targeted at avoiding
post-event fallout and keeping
awareness and enthusiasm levels
high.
He is planning for a global alli
ance of U.S. Earth Day organizers
with more than 1,200 groups in
116 countries. He’s also developing
“Valdez principles,” named for the
Alaskan oil disaster, which would
require corporations to manufac
ture environmentally-safe prod
ucts, clean up oil spills and submit
to inspections to ensure compliance
with environmental laws.
Only time will reveal the true
impact Earth Day 1990 will have
on global society.
‘Everyone knows how J.F. Ken
nedy said, ‘Ask not what your
country can do for you, but what
you can do for your country?’ and
we already know what the environ
ment does for us and what we get
from the environment,” Odum
said. “It is time for us to ask *What
can we do for the environment?’ ”
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