From Chapter 11 of Ruin and Recovery: Michigan's Rise as a Conservation Leader.
Wisconsin
U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson had proposed a national environmental “teach-in” on
college campuses, urging that it become an opportunity for learning about the
nation’s and world’s grave environmental problems. Fueled by campus activism,
the teach-ins evolved into Earth Day and stunned skeptics. An estimated 10,000
schools, 2,000 colleges and universities and almost every community in the
nation participated in events to celebrate and clean-up the environment. Cars
were banned for two hours on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The U.S. Congress adjourned for Earth Day
so that members could attend teach-ins in their districts.
All
three major TV networks covered the events around the country. A geology
student attending Albion College, Walter Pomeroy,
appeared on a CBS-TV prime-time special April 22, Earth Day: A Question of Survival, hosted by Walter Cronkite. In
contrast to protests on other campuses that Cronkite called sometimes
“frivolous,” the Albion activities Pomeroy
organized included the cleanup of a vacant lot to create a small urban park. Albion
called itself “Manufacturing City U.S.A.,” CBS
reported, and not all its foundries had installed air pollution control
equipment. But Pomeroy told reporter Hughes Rudd that he had arranged meetings
with the local polluters to promote dialogue. “We were afraid,” he said, “that if we picketed the factories, it would
actually turn the community against us.” The special showed Pomeroy’s fellow
students jumping up and down on the non-aluminum cans they’d collected in the
cleanup, making them easier to return to the manufacturer with a message that
it should switch to recyclable materials.
Michigan television stations also broadcast
specials in the season of Earth Day. WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids broadcast a series, Our Poisoned World, detailing serious
local air, water and noise pollution and the problem of garbage disposal.
Michigan was one of the hotbeds of
Earth Day action. At a five-day teach-in
on the University of Michigan campus in in March, in which an estimated
50,000 persons participated, Victor Yannacone, who in 1967 had filed
Environmental Defense Fund lawsuits to stop the spraying of DDT and dieldrin in Michigan,
spoke on use of the courts to halt pollution. He told students, “This land is
your land. It doesn’t belong to Ford,
General Motors, or Chrysler…it doesn’t belong to any soulless corporation. It belongs to you and me.” A new student group called ENACT organized
the week’s events, which included an “Environmental Scream-Out,” a tour of
local pollution sites, music by popular singer Gordon Lightfoot and speeches by
entertainer Arthur Godfrey, scientist Barry Commoner, consumer advocate Ralph
Nader, and Senators Nelson and Edward Muskie of Maine.
Business Week magazine said the event had
attracted the greatest turnout of any teach-in to that date. Noting that President Richard Nixon and
college administrators hoped environmental issues would turn students away from
Vietnam War protests, the magazine fretted that it appeared “the struggle for
clean air and water is producing as many radicals as the war. And if the rhetoric at Michigan is any guide, business will bear
the brunt of criticism.”
Action took different forms on different campuses.
Tom Bailey, a Marquette high school student,
worked with students at Northern Michigan University to plan Earth Day activities. One was a
“flush-in.” Students flushed fluorescent dye tablets down dorm toilets at a
synchronized moment in an effort to prove that sewage was directly discharging
into Lake Superior.
Events like these not only attracted the
attention of the press, but also gave future environmental professionals their
first major public exposure. Bailey
later worked for the state Department of Natural Resources, as had his father,
and became executive director of the Little Traverse Conservancy. One of ENACT’s
founders on the University of Michigan campus, John Turner, later became
director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Doug Scott, a graduate student active in ENACT’s teach-in planning,
moved on to the national staff of the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club.
Student
concern and action did not stop on Earth Day. Walt Pomeroy of Albion College contacted
activists on other campuses who agreed the next logical step was the formation
of a student lobby for the environment. Described as “lobbyists in blue jeans” by one newspaper, the new
Michigan Student Environmental Confederation received a surprisingly warm
welcome from some in the Capitol.
“Soon we made
friends in the legislature on both sides of the aisle,” said Pomeroy. “We
learned a day at a time. And since we
were in the Capitol almost every day, our network of friends and supporters
expanded from just student groups to a diversity of community, environmental
and sportsmen groups. Legislative priorities turned into victories…We started
an environmental organization with a good cause, not much financial support and
worked with the sportsmen and other environmental groups. We created the path –
the opportunity – for others to also organize environmental groups and hire
staff. None had existed solely to focus on state environmental legislative
policies prior to the creation of MSEC. Many followed and are now part of the accepted political landscape."
