Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan: Taking the time to save our planet

It seems to me that Earth Day just isn't working.

Holidays, after all, exist in part to remind us of sentiments that we're supposed to have all the time. The Fourth of July brings out that latent patriotism in us all. Christmas prompts us to spread a little peace and goodwill toward men. And Earth Day, in theory, reminds us of our commitment to making the world a cleaner, brighter, more-populated-by-spotted-owls place.

It's Earth Week -- technically, Earth Day was yesterday. How many of you stopped by one of the events around Philadelphia or campus? How many of you even let the existence of the day flitter across your mind? Too few, I fear. The problem with Earth Day isn't that it doesn't remind us of our eco-friendly ways. The problem is that those eco-friendly ways are not a reality to masses of people.

That was the thinking that brought this holiday into existence in the first place. You see, back in those turbulent '60s, the government didn't seem to care much about the state of the planet. Too bad, considering pollution, extinction and all those other environmental buzzwords were posing a real threat to our standard of living.

Fortunately, groups of long-haired, granola-crunching hippies kept the issue alive, eventually inspiring noble Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) to propose a national Earth Day. His mission was simple: to force environmental concerns onto the public radar in the hopes that aware citizens would become active citizens.

It worked at first. The very first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970, and was celebrated by an estimated 20 million. Cities all over the country held rallies and speeches. New York even shut down Fifth Avenue so participants could do typical Earth-friendly things -- you know, parading and marching and hugging trees. Philadelphia, too, got people out in droves to support environmental action, including everyone's favorite third-party spoiler, Ralph Nader. Truth be told, it was a big deal.

Before I got to Penn, I'd assumed that it stayed a big deal -- and it did, in some pockets of the country. I grew up in an extremely pro-Earth area; eco-friendliness was indoctrinated in us from our first day of public school. We gleefully dug through the trash to separate the glass from the plastic. We made posters on recycled paper and marched around the elementary school, our squeaky voices raised to demand protection for manatees and a ban on rainforest logging. We learned environmental rap songs in chorus, like the classic "Recycle, Recycle, Recycle Now (You Can Do It if You Just Know How)."

Ah, those were the days of ignorant bliss, when I thought all people reused their Ziploc bags as religiously as we did.

Apparently not. As I met and befriended a lot of perfectly nice kids here, I was shocked to discover that many of them didn't consider SUVs to be the enemy. They didn't know about the Clean Air Act. They looked at me strangely when I carried my empty water bottle around until I found a recycling bin.

I realized that not every student had been lucky enough to receive the environmental education I had. No, the most some of them could claim was a viewing or two of Captain Planet.

All right, you can't help it if that's the case. But we've grown up enough now to understand that environmentalism exists, that human development run amuck has terrible consequences for the quality of our lives, that there are a few easy steps each person can take to protect Earth. Ignorance doesn't cut it as an excuse.

It's fine if real environmental action isn't your bag -- not everyone is into attending Earth Day rallies or designing petitions concerning the endangered Chilean sea bass -- but at the very least, you've got to recognize that environmentalism is not a fad.

Do you really need a new cup for your Starbucks every day when a reusable thermos-style mug is so much more eco-friendly? And would it kill you to walk the extra 10 feet and throw your glass bottle into one of the recycling bins the fine folks of the Penn Environmental Group have worked so hard to get for us? Surely, even the most selfish among us can separate our trash in the convenient dorm facilities.

Because that's what this is all about: selfishness. At the root, a total lack of concern about the environment means that you're putting yourself ahead of all your fellow Earth-dwellers. Sure, Earth will probably be fine as long as we're around, but eco-apathy will wreak havoc on the lives of our descendants. As my father so succinctly puts it: you're selling out your grandchildren.

It's time we put some meaning back into Earth Week. And do I even have to ask you to please recycle this DP?

Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan is a junior communications major from Wheaton, Ill.

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