1990 Ad

National Review, May 28, 1990 by J.J. Autobahn

EARTH DAY 1990 was an odd anticlimatic affair in the nation's capital. Although the city's news media had been pouring out a stream of green ink for weeks, there seemed to be little genuine interest and little intensity.

We joined the celebration early in the afternoon, by which time perhaps a hundred thousand people were gathered on the Mall. Most, however, appeared simply to be enjoying a spectacularly lovely spring day. Groups of young men and women were out looking at each other, tossing frisbees, working on their suntans (seemingly unconcerned about the hole in the atmosphere), or just hanging out. Washington's fertile bureaucracy were out with their newborn in yuppie baby carriages, their older children walking dogs or flying kites. All in all, Washingtonians were doing what they do on most nice days, joined by vacationing college students and traditional spring tourists.

East, toward the Capitol, the crowd was thicker. The Earth Day Exhibition Area, a sea of large tents stretching along Independence Avenue from 4th to 3rd Streets, had already undergone environmental degradation. All the grass had been destroyed, and the mire was made passable in most places only by a layer of straw. The three most popular activities were buying T-shirts, accumulating pounds of literature, and eating. F THE three most popular exhibits, one was that of the National Wildlife Federation, whose president, Jay Hair, is one of the most vociferous critics of the profit system for supposedly destroying the environment, while he personally has sold off to developers a number of magnificent private wildlife refuges which the Federation's Land Heritage Program was pledged to keep and manage in perpetuity. The cash registers were ringing merrily as the crowds massed to buy his T-shirts at $14 a pop.

The previous day, at a forum on "Shaping a New Environmental Agenda," Hair had given a speech awash in tear-jerking piety, in which he had talked mainly about the need for social justice and for helping low-income and minority communities, combined with environmental justice; all this to be obtained via an amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the right to breathe clean air and drink clean water. (The Soviet constitution expressly forbids environmental degradation.) He thundered, "I want to find out who's against clean air and clean water." Well, maybe selling tacky little T-shirts for $14 is a way of promoting social justice and helping the poor. Interestingly, apparently all the other exhibitors, including the much-maligned EPA-sponsored "Earthfest 90," made their sales by hand and stored the cash in cash-boxes, baskets, cardboard boxes, whatever. But at the Federation tent, six electric cash registers were running off a gasoline-powered generator that spewed air pollutants into the congested throng. This is an appropriate technology? This is green? The Federation did have a more environmentally benign express line which accepted checks only. At least Friends of the Earth attempted to keep its gigantic earth balloon inflated by employing a solar panel to run its generator. But, alas, alternative technologies don't appear totally capable of powering Western Civilization yet, because the solar system failed and FOE had to switch over to petroleum products.

Conservation International's tent had a long line of people outside, waiting to walk through a "tropical forest" consisting of moss-festooned tropical plants from local nurseries and tape-recorded jungle calls, together with a couple of tables chockablock with colorful T-shirts for sale. They might have saved the expense and effort and set up their T-shirt stands outside the nearby Botanic Gardens, with their gigantic tropical jungle of palms, banana trees, streams, and ponds.

The third biggest hit was NORML. Yes, NORML. We were wondering what the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws had to do with environmental preservation. A sign on NORML'S tent reminded the environmentally sensitive: "HempAmerica's Premier Renewable Natural Resource." "Hemp for Ecology" leaflets informed us that hemp was good for soil building, didn't require as many chemicals as corn or cotton, saved forests, was a source of fuel, could be used for clothing superior to cotton goods. And, just in case, there was another little pamphlet printed on yellow paper (presumably colored with environmentally safe dyes), entitled, "Dealing with Urine Tests on Short Notice."

It was that kind of crowd. Very young, very middle class, very acquisitive, and very white. There was the usual minute sprinkling of blacks, characteristic of all environmental gatherings. American Indians were present in substantially greater numbers. It was all vaguely reminiscent of the 1960s and the roots of the environmental movement in rock n' roll and antiwar protests. The people certainly looked the same. They were just more laid back and interested in having a good, but quiet, time. At the edge of the hard-core congregation gathered immediately below the west front of the Capitol, the Reflecting Pool was peopled with celebrants wading, throwing frisbees, and even attempting to swim in the shallow water. Some music group was yelling, "I want you to go crazy!" We asked a dozen or so of the young environmentalists what the name of the group was. Surprisingly, none of them knew, nor could they understand the "lyrics." We kept looking for people signing the "Green Pledge." Although we didn't see anyone doing so, there were surely thousands who did, for this was a feel-good gathering. Surely they were pledging to do their utmost to recycle, conserve energy, save water, buy environmentally safe products, vote only for environmentally sound politicians, and support enactment of local, state, and national laws and international treaties protecting the environment. What more could one do to Save the Earth? S WE finally headed home shortly before six, someone had ignited some plastic debris, and noxious fumes were wafting up toward the Capitol. A half-block away we escaped the odor, and in the little garden across the street from the Botanic Gardens, America's purportedly vanishing songbirds were thriving. Song sparrows, robins, mockingbirds, and a newly arrived migrant yellowthroat were all in full song, just a few feet away from the toxic cloud of one of Washington's busiest thoroughfares.