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Aspiring student environmentalists get tips from veteran
PORTLAND, Oregon (CNN) -- Adam Warbach, 28, is one of the young faces of today's environmental movement. And, he's also a veteran of it. The former president of the Sierra Club, an environmental organization with more than 650,000 members, has led national efforts for a "greener" world. Now, in addition to consulting for the Sierra Club and producing environmental documentaries, Warbach is teaching students how to become involved in environmental issues -- grassroots-style. He recently gave a speech at the University of Portland, an independent Catholic university of 2,600 students, about recharging the movement. "I don't know this as a really active school," Warbach said. "So it's going to be a challenge, I think, to figure out if we can get these people going or not." Warbach urged students to model their enthusiasm after the founders of the modern environmentalism movement. The movement then -- around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, before Warbach was born -- was a flamboyant, counter-cultural explosion. Thirty-one years later, the sons and daughters of the movement's founders are less radical, less visible. "We need to change back to some of the emotionalism, some of the righteousness and some of the faith that was actually at the core of the environmental movement when it was founded," Warbach said during his speech. Mark Hertsgaard, author of "Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future," agreed things have changed since the movement's early days -- but the caring is still there. "There was a lot more political fervor on campus than there is today," Hertsgaard said. "However I think that it is a mistake to think that young people today are somehow politically uninterested." Fledgling environmentalists
Hawking their hand-made, tie-died "Mother Earth" T-shirts, a new campus environmental club at the University of Portland worked to produce the college's first Earth Week celebration last month. Their bicycle parking lot was the main attraction. "We're just trying to get people to ride their bikes instead of drive, sort of promote different kinds of transportation," said Chris Sparks, a 21-year-old group member. Ginger Emrick, 20, said the group stays low-key to avoid alienating people. "We don't want to be activists who scare people away," Emrick said. "I just think that when people think of activists they think of people that are kind of out there, rude in-your-face activists." The students launched the group seeking change on campus, targeting recycling and water conservation, they said. One student wants to see an end to the wastefulness he sees -- leaky showerheads and watered grass, even when it rains. After delivering his speech, Warbach sat down with the club's organizers to offer guidance. He advised the students to work with larger institutions -- like business, politics and religion -- to bolster support for the movement. Political supportMany environmentalists say that in the '90s, a sympathetic presidency dulled their roar -- even as more scientists pointed to the dangers of global warming, air and water pollution and extinction of species. These young environmentalists are cynical about what government can accomplish. They focus instead on what they can do, what minds they can change in their own communities. At the same time, however, many of these same young activists hope President George W. Bush, who some perceive as hostile to the environment, will re-energize the movement. They may not yet know where to go from here... or how to take on the giant, global issues they're concerned about. For now, they say they just look forward to making Earth Day happen more than just once a year.
RELATED STORY: Student Activism RELATED SITES: The University of Portland | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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