EARTH DAY FOUNDER ADDRESSES 100 AT UNIVERSITY

When Wisconsin Gov. Gaylord Nelson appealed to President John F. Kennedy to make the United States' ecology a national issue, he didn't meet with much success.

But several years later, when he appealed to the people, Earth Day 1970 was born.

April 22 will mark the 25th anniversary of the event Nelson created to alert U.S. citizens to the damage being done to their ecosystem. Since the first Earth Day, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and endangered species protection laws have been passed.

Nelson, a former governor and senator, addressed a group of about 100 at Southeast Missouri State University Academic Hall Thursday night, urging them to consider three issues important to ecology: environment, population and sustainable development.

Due to exponential population growth, Nelson explained, natural resources are being depleted. In 1916, the year he was born, there were 1.7 billion people on Earth; by 2000, there will be 6.3 billion.

The U.S. population in 1916 was 98 million and today it is 260 million. If it doubles again, Nelson said, it would mean twice the roads, homes, schools, prisons, cars -- everything. More wildlife habitat would disappear, so more wildlife would disappear.

What we need in the nation today, he said, is a sustainable society, or a society that meets the needs of the present without depriving future generations of the opportunity to meet their own needs.

Right now, society is self-destructive, depleting the resources of the future.

On a brighter note, Nelson said he believed we could be a sustainable society within the next four or five decades. Already, young children he speaks with understand the relationship between tuna fish and dolphins, and that's a start.

At the end of the presentation, Dr. Alan Journet, who teaches ecology and conservation biology at the university, encouraged those in attendance to sign the Environmental Bill of Rights, which calls for pollution control and preservation of America's natural heritage.