Earth Day '97

Earth Day was launched back in 1970 in the era of the happening and the teach-in. Pick a cause, any cause, make a few phone calls and within minutes street, beach, campus, or meadow would fill with people sporting all manner of outrageous clothing, signs, sculpture, and effigy - or so it seemed.

But like all living things, causes are bound to Mr. Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest law. Not all survive. It's good that Earth Day - one out of 365 set aside to celebrate the natural beauty of the planet, to acknowledge the devastation humankind sometimes has created on it, and to ponder solutions - has survived. Unfortunately, one day is not enough.

Earth Day observances are planned for Saturday and Sunday this weekend, although the anniversary actually is on April 26. As we approach this year's observances, 27 years after the first, we lose 100 species per day, a rate of extinction that will see 20 to 50 percent of all known species disappear by the year 2000. Most of these species are in tropical rain forests, of which an area the size of a football field is razed or burned every second.

In the United States, we have lost more than half of our original wetlands and prairies and 2.5 million acres of forest are expected to be gone within three years. The mournful list goes on.

It's time again to make a sign, call a friend, and find ways to become part of the solution.