Art-Purcell
Then:
NU graduate student and research assistant in Materials Science & Engineering, member of NU student group "Help Stop Pollution". Art helped facilitate a late night discussion group on air pollution during Project Survival event with Jim Robin, Terry Smith and Professor Jimmie Quon.
Now:
Ph.D.; Material Science, Northwestern 1973; Director of Sustainable Resource Management, Los Angeles, California; author of Waste Watchers: Citizen's Handbook for Conserving Energy and Resources.***
Memories of the Project Survival event:
Very high energy. Uniquely exciting. Crowded and dynamic. A major media event. I could feel that something of global significance was taking place. The electricity really started flowing at the dinner at the Orrington just before the event . At my table was Tom Paxton's pianist and arranger (who would accompany Paxton debuting his magical song "Who's Garden was This?" on stage at midnight.) I realized that if people like that had flown in from a place like New York to come to a place like Evanston in late January, something must really be happening.
The big event just kept growing that evening as speakers kept energizing the crowd. Adlai Stephenson III, Mike Royko, Barry Commoner.. The Illinois Attorney General. Tom Paxton. The audience was mesmerized. As well as energized. The hallways were filled w/ hawkers selling buttons and bumper stickers and Mike Royko, seeking an escape.
Then, at an hour when, on any Friday before or since, Evanston would be asleep, the "Teach Out" began. Tech got even more crowded. People actually went to workshops all through the night. They kept coming to my session, and others, until finally we kicked out the last group and walked home through the slush, as dawn approached. I knew then that this was a one-of-a-kind happening, a critical benchmark in the environmental movement. Today we spend a lot more money focusing on the environment than we did them -- think of the cost alone of the Copenhagen Global Climate forum -- and we see a much passion directed toward saving planet earth, but Project Survival captured a spirit that has never soared higher.
NSBE caught a small wave and turned it into a kind of tsunami. There was some real dedication in that group to make Project Survival work. It was just grass roots enough to develop a wide base and focused enough to put something substantive together.
Thoughts on activism:There are all kinds of activism. Ideological, practical, violent, peaceful, grass-roots, corporate. Focused. Scattershot. I think that just about all brands of activism contribute to forward progress in our society. But the best activism is that which really gets something done - a good environmental law, a new invention, whatever. Ghandi once said you must be the change you desire. And change is best effected through structured activism - a mix of philosophical and practical.
What happened to the early environmental movement?
The "environmental movement" is thought of as something very monolithic when, in fact it has many dimensions, not to mention incarnations. The "movement" per se well predates Earth Day I. We tend to think of it as something that came out of that period though the fact is there would not have been an Earth Day or Project Survival had there not been a movement before. Earth Day I, of course, consolidated, at least temporarily, the movement, as well as increased its size and strength. But then what happened? Things slowed dramatically in the ‘70s. Environmental problems didn't go away but the drive - and resources - to solve them did. Remember President Carter's "Moral Equivalent of War" approach to energy conservation? Abbreviating it to MEOW, the public pretty much laughed it away. It has been no coincidence that environmental enthusiasm and oil prices then, as now, have been intimately linked. When energy is perceived as scarce, there is a greater understanding of the need to "go green." So the "movement" came back in large part because energy came back as an issue. Then another dimension was added to the movement: It has become trendy, even de rigeur, in both the private and public sectors to fold "sustainability" into critical decision making.
Suddenly a funny-looking car w/ the funny sounding name of "Prius" began to literally drive circles around competitors by being sold as a sustainable means of transportation. Hilton hotels started urging customers to save on laundry by reusing towels two days instead one. Etc. Supermarket chains started telling shoppers to BYOB ("Bring you own bag.") Etc.
Thoughts on the future:
Climate change and global warming have, of course, dovetailed in a huge way into energy and resource issues, making environment an integral part of domestic and international business and diplomacy.
Let's consider those two issues - climate change and global warming - as guides to the future of the environmental movement because may be approaching some difficult polarization. There is a growing unease on one side that these issues are co-opting a litany of other critical environmental and resource issues. On the other side is the firm belief that they are the only real issues of consequence, and virtually every other issue - from waste reduction and recycling to noise control - is merely a part of this overarching set.
I think it will be imperative in the near future to sort this out if "the movement" is to stay as broad as it has become. We need to strictly minimize the carbon footprint of environmental advocacy.