On first Earth Day in Green Bay, Mother Nature had last word
This April 22 marks the 40th celebration of Earth Day. At UW-Green Bay, the occasion was scheduled to be marked with numerous events including the Green Innovations 2009 symposium. For the lineup, see www.uwgb.edu/inside/earth-day-activities
Any Earth Day celebration at UW-Green Bay, however, always recalls the inaugural Earth Day on April 22, 1970.
(What follows are excerpts from the April 2009 print edition of the Inside UW-Green Bay alumni magazine).
At the time of the first Earth Day, UW-Green Bay was weeks away from its first commencement but already drawing national attention for its focus on Mother Earth. Harper’s Magazine would nickname the new school “Survival U,” and Newsweek would call it “Ecology U.”
When Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin lobbied for a national day of environmental awareness on April 22, the Green Bay campus naturally took it to heart. Students and faculty joined the countywide committee to plan the observance. Schoolroom sing-alongs of environmental songs, poster contests and slide shows echoed the “Survival ’70s” theme adopted by the committee. Some UW-Green Bay students biked downtown, plugged nickels into parking meters and sat down to deny spaces to gas-guzzling cars. Others fell in line behind a high school band for a protest march. Canoe trips were launched on the then-polluted waters of the bay and lower Fox River. Many students took part in a full schedule of recycling seminars, films and poetry readings and “pocket theatre” performances on campus.
(For a photo record of the day’s events, click here.)
The main event was an evening extravaganza at the Brown County Arena featuring Victor Yannacone, an attorney and activist on environmental issues, and geologist M. King Hubbert, famous for his early appraisal that fossil fuels would soon be a dwindling resource. The pair spoke before an attentive studio audience earlier that day during an appearance on local television.
Memorably, the “Survival ’70s” theme came to life in an unexpected way when winds topping 50 mph and hail tore at the arena roof. The winds pushed parked cars around, uprooted power lines and blew out windows around the neighborhood, and rain sprinkled down through the leaky roof, but the program went on uninterrupted.
The storm, the irony of Mother Nature’s apparent attempt at making a statement, and the “survival” of the 3,000-member audience got top billing in the next day’s newspaper.
On campus, the Earth Day message took root. Before the year was out, UW-Green Bay students had banished throwaway bottles and cans from vending machines, sought ways to minimize vehicle and pesticide pollution, and suggested energy-saving changes to outdoor lighting. Faculty hosted what was the first national conference on environmental education.
To mark 40 years of Earth Day at Eco U, in spring 2009, poet Paul Belanger composed the poem “Prophets for Profits: Borrowing Sunshine.” He says the piece hearkens back to the exuberance of Green Bay’s first Earth Day celebration, Dr. M. King Hubbert’s prediction of an oil-driven crisis, and the environmental spirit of the times. His poem was commissioned by a fellow UW-Green Bay alumnus long involved in promoting the University’s environmental mission. Belanger is a 2003 grad who holds a master’s in creative writing from Cardiff University in Wales and is currently based at the University of Melbourne, Australia. To read “Prophets for Profits,” click here.
