Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 23, 1990 TAG: 9004230072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In all, some 3,600 American cities and towns mustered forces to rejuvenate the environmental movement that was launched by the original Earth Day in 1970.
"I get a real sense of a renewal, and a kind of rededication, that will provide the support for change at the grass-roots level," said John McLachlan, scientific director at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C. "There's a sense of urgency that hasn't been there."
Thousands watched a hot-air balloon - decorated as the Earth - rise in New York's Times Square where the ball falls on New Year's Eve. The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled cars and trucks powered by alcohol, natural gas and electricity in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Students at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania buried a paper mache "Old Earth" containing a plastic foam cup, aerosol can, disposable diaper and container of leaded gasoline.
At a gathering of 125,000 people at the Capitol in Washington, several activists criticized President Bush for spending the weekend fishing in Florida.
One was Peter Bahouth, president of Greenpeace USA, who brought with him a life-size cardboard cutout of Bush.
Gaylord Nelson of The Wilderness Society, who originated the first Earth Day when he was a senator from Wisconsin, called for a grass-roots campaign to keep the spirit of Sunday's celebrations alive in the years to come.
"I don't want to come back here 20 years from now and have to tell your sons and daughters that you didn't do your duty," Nelson, 74, told his listeners. "We've got to raise a conservation generation."
Pennsylvania's Gov. Robert P. Casey led an "All Species Parade" in Philadelphia, playing the pied piper to children dressed in animal costumes made from recycled materials, and at least one marcher got the point.
We must recycle, said 11-year-old Lauren Derby of Philadelphia, "so that the future generation can have a nice Earth and a nice environment."
Hall and Oates, the B-52s, the Saturday Night Live Band and Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians were among the performers in New York's Central Park, where an estimated 300,000 people turned out.
On an expressway near the Charles River in Boston, artists used biodegradable chalk to draw a half-mile-long, multicolored tableau of birds, butterflies, flowers and messages such as "Recycle!" and "Save The Earth."
Unlike the first Earth Day, this year's commemoration was an international event. More than 140 countries on all seven continents participated, according to Earth Day 1990 of Palo Alto, Calif.
The international celebration will "give the clear message to politicians that millions of people are aware of the problems facing the Earth," said Andrew Lees, of the British branch of Friends of the Earth.
Environmentalists collected tons of garbage from Japanese beaches, sculpted a giant thermometer from a French glacier to protest global warming and rallied on the world's streets and mountaintops.
Students carried a globe on a stretcher, symbolizing a sick Earth, in a parade in Hong Kong's twin city of Kowloon. About 1,000 people marched, many dressed as trees or animals and waving green ribbons and banners.
East Germans gathered near the Berlin Wall to view exhibits and celebrate their newly won freedom to raise environmental issues. Under the Stalinist regime ousted in October, environmentalists had to operate underground.
In Istanbul, Turkey, police arrested 11 people for holding an unauthorized demonstration to celebrate Earth Day, the semiofficial Anatolia news agency reported.
Hundreds of people lined the main highway along the Cape Peninsula in South Africa to protest a government plan to allow mining on scenic Chapman's Peak.
The United States, through an aid program, sent 93,000 seedling apple trees to farmers in Afghanistan.
President Bush took a break from his fishing trip in the Florida Keys to give what he calls a "point of light" award to the citizens group Reef Relief, which is working to save the coral reef flanking the Keys.
Bush also said he would back a resolution to keep merchant ships off the reef. When Craig Quirolo, a founder of Reef Relief, asked for a ban on oil drilling in the Keys, Bush said the answer would come soon and that Quirolo wouldn't be disappointed. Nine oil companies hold 73 leases off of the Keys.
In Boston, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles performed for Earth Day. They "serve as reminders of how we must care for our environment," the show's organizers said. The story goes that it was a toxic chemical that transformed them from ordinary turtles into Hollywood's box-office champs.
The Nature Conservancy marked Earth Day with the signing of land-protection deals in all 50 states that will protect a total of 71,000 acres of natural terrain. The aim is to help save rare plants and animals from extinction, the organization said.
The day dawned on a somber note in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where demonstrators in white death masks and black shrouds held a "requiem for the Earth" at the gates of a nuclear weapons plant.
"We gather this day on soil once filled with the richness of life, pure and vital," said the Rev. Ralph Hutchison of Dandridge, Tenn. "But the life of this soil is now measured with Geiger counters."
by CNB