
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 21, 1990                   TAG: 9004230189
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

RESTORING A SENSE OF NATURE'S WONDER

PRIMITIVE people were awed by the forces of nature. Not only did they quake before the furies of thunder and lightning, and the cataclysms of volcanic eruptions and killer floods; they were mystified, too, by nature's quieter, slower workings: the regular cycle of seasons, the sprouting of seeds, the gentle flow of streams, the teeming of life in all its shapes and forms.

Tomorrow - Earth Day 1990 - would be a good time to summon back some of our long-ago ancestors' sense of wonder.

Earth is our home. All of us depend on it; the point should not need belaboring. But as a society, we have not treated it well.

That is true not just for the United States but also for the nations in general. The farther we progress from a primitive stage, the more we forget about our origins and what sustains us. So we spread trash and poisons in air and water and on land, lay waste to forests and wetlands, gobble up natural resources - and expect we can keep doing this forever.

We can't. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, an unlikely source for such counsel, put it well recently: "No generation has a freehold on this Earth. All we have is a life tenancy - with a full repairing lease."

The repair needs are piling up. Nations at last are beginning to heed them, at least to the extent of holding international conventions and forums. It is easier to talk than act. Remedies are not always obvious. Environmental issues create conflicts between countries and interest groups. Developed nations want to keep what they have; underdeveloped nations want to get theirs.

This need not mean poisoning the Earth or sucking it dry. The backward countries need to learn that, no less than the industrials. The worst environmental horror stories nowadays come from places such as Poland, Mexico and China: There, a unit of economic growth takes a comparatively greater ecological toll than in the United States or Western Europe. The Economist of London points out that poor countries live more directly off the environment: If it worsens, they have much more to lose than the rich.

The problems are dauntingly large, and they will not be solved tomorrow just by picking up trash or recycling more aluminum cans. That much is good, but Earth Day should mean more. To spend the day thinking about how much there is to do is to stockpile despair.

Instead, take time to be still before nature. Watch it, listen to it, heed it. Recapture some of the primitives' profound respect for all that nature is and does. We are part and parcel of it, and that may be the most important lesson we can take from the day.

by CNB