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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 5, 1970)
Page 2 College (Station, Texas Thursday, February 5, 1970 THE BATTALION CADET SLOUCH by Jim Earle Guest Opinion On The Environment By Bill Voigt Editor’s Note: Bill Voigt is coordinator for the Symposium for Environmental Awareness, a student-faculty group plan ning to participate in the na tionwide ‘Environmental Teach- In’ scheduled for April 22. Here, he states his case for the need for personal commitment to solve the problems of pollu tion: In the sixties, the human race began a journey into outer space; that journey will continue, and as it does the human spirit will ex pand. But in the seventies, man must turn inward. He must learn to control himself. The problem of bringing population and envi ronment into balance transcends and encompasses all other prob lems. Lately the newspapers and magazines have carried articles predicting that we have any where from 10 to 50 years left to live. That we will have to wear gas masks and live in doom ed cities. Will we have to? Let’s look at the news: The Apollo 10 astronauts easily picked out Los Angeles from hun dreds of miles out. They could see the blotch of ugly, cancer- colored smog of 4,000,000 cars vomiting cancer-causing gases, 16 million tires vaporizing deadly asbestos particles, and the new polychlorinated hydro-carbons on to the pavements, into the atmos phere and into the sea. In Cali fornia they not only breathe the air, they can see it coming. Sign on Los Angeles school room, bulletin: Warning!! Do not exercise strenuously or breathe too deeply during heavy smog conditions? ? ? How does smog effect man? Chronic bronchitis is seven times higher than it was ten years ago. Lung cancer is twice as prevalent in the cities as it is in the rural areas. Bronchial asthma and em physema are up eight times in the last ten years. One day’s breathing of New York’s smog is equivalent to smoking five packages of cigarettes. It is an ticipated that before many years have passed, ten thousand people will die daily of pollution. Up in the Lake Arrowhead area (Los Angeles, California) about 10 percent of the Ponderosa pines, 1,300,000 trees, are dying as the result of smog. What’s Happening to Our Wa ter? Plankton are microscopic plants which serve two purposes. First, plankton, microscopic sea—-ani mals, are the base of the whole fish food chain from anchovies to whales. What Whales? Without plankton there would be no fish. Secondly, plankton provide 70 per cent of the earth’s oxygen. It takes only 11 ppm of DDT in wa ter to kill off the plankton. No oxygen, no fish. Already this is happening in the estuarial areas close to land. The Potomac is a sewer for every town it passes. It is dry ing up and its ancient historic bones are now desecrating the scene. Its mudflats are now show ing, covered with garbage, old tires, junk, and human sewage. During cherry blossom time, it is the best-dressed cesspool in America. Lake Erie, 10,000 square miles, is biologically dead. Zero oxy gen. Beaches are unsafe, algae coats the bodies of swimmers, and piles up in foul smelling reefs at the shoreline. Fishing once a major industry is all but gone. Congressman Blatnik of Min nesota, author of the Water Pol lution Bill, points out that on the banks of the Mississippi, down below St. Louis, there axe signs warning picknickers not to eat their lunch on or near the bank of the river. The spray from the river contains typhoid, colitic, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. Here is another good example of ignorance and indifference in some public leaders. Instead of cleaning up the pollution, they shove it on down the river—chem icals, industrial crud, slaughter house waste, and human sewage on down the river. Thanks once again for a good job done, for poisoning the drinking water and destroying recreational areas along America’s rivers. In the past when man abused his environment he had a choice. He didn’t have to die. He could migrate. Today there is no place to which we can migrate. We have only one choice left. Con trol our population, conserve our plant and animal life, or die. Adlai Stevenson once said: “We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship — dependable on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace preserv ed from annihilation only by the care, the work, and the love we give our fragile craft.” It is time to create greater awareness of the problems of overpopulation and environmen tal deterioration, to identify real istic goals for action and to stim ulate cooperate activities between various segments of society. Get well, President Rudder.' Bulletin Board TONIGHT A&M Polo Club will meet at 7:30 p.m. in Room 203 Animal Science Building. San Angelo-West Texas Home town Club will plan spring activities at 7:30 p.m. Room 2B MSC. Environmental Teach-In plan ners will decide upon final objec tives for a spring Symposium for Environmental Awareness at A&M at 7:30 p.m. in the Archi tecture Auditorium. Students and faculty are invited to attend and contribute. FRIDAY MSC Chess Committee will meet at 7:30 p.m. in Room 3B MSC. MONDAY Iota Lambda Sigma will hear Dr. Irving Goldstein speak on forest products at 7 p.m. in Room 107, M.E. Shops. Campus Committee of Concern will meet at 7:30 p.m. in the Coffee Loft, UCCF. Lubbock-South Plains Home town Club will meet at Ralph’s Pizza at East Gate at 6:30 p.m. TUESDAY Student Psychological Associa tion will view the film, “People Who Care,” at 7 p.m. in Nagle Hall. WEDNESDAY Army Cadet Wives’ Club will plan semester activities at 7:30 p.m. in the Blue Flame Room, Lone Star Gas Co., Bryan. Chemistry Wives Club will have a Stanley Party at 7:30 p.m. in the Party Room of the Casa Del Sol Apartments. Nixon Orders Pollution By Stan Benjamin Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON UP)—President Nixon said Wednesday he is giv ing federal agencies three years and $359 million to stop polluting the air and water. It already has been federal pol icy to conform with existing air and water quality standards, but Nixon said previous orders were “ambiguously worded, poorly en forced, and generally ineffective.” Nixon issued an executive or der requiring all federal facilities —including “buildings, installa tions, structures, public works, equipment, aircraft, vessels, and other vehicles and property”—to complete or at least begin neces sary pollution abatement actions by Dec. 31, 1972, at the latest. Agency heads were ordered to send their plans for meeting that deadline to the Budget Bureau by next June 30. Funds appropriated to clean up federal pollution may not be used for any other purpose, Nixon or dered. Undersecretary of the Interior Russell E. Train, chairman-desig nate of the President’s Environ mental Quality Council, told newsmen the federal budget pro posed Monday for fiscal 1971 in cluded $92 million as the first segment of Nixon’s $359 million program against federal pollution —$40 million from “reprogram ing” of Defense Department ey and $52 million spread among the budgets of other agencies. By comparison, Train said, the funds appropriated for federal pollution abatement in fiscal 1968, 1969 and 1970 together to taled $129 million and not all of that reached its goal. Nixon said in a statement, “Over the past several years, the federal government has become one of the nation’s worst pol luters.” Train declined to estimate just how bad. Nationwide, he said, the federal contribution to air and water pollution might be a small fraction, “but in specific local situations it could be quite seri ous.” Halt Read Classifieds Daily LET US ARRANGE YOUR TRAVEL... ANYWHERE IN THE U. S. A. ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD Reservations and Tickets For All Airlines and Steamships — Hotels and "W** Rent Car Reservations Wm -Call 822-3737- Robert Ha (sell Travel Service 1016 Texas Avenue Bryan Send a LoveBundle for Valentines Week. Why squeeze a lot of Love into just one day? Order a LoveBundle to arrive early. It's a unique arrangement designed to stretch Valentine's Day into a week. Because the flowers will last. A special Valentine. Only at FTD florists. At a special price. Usually available at S'! 7 •** less than IX-. ♦As an independent businessman, each FTD Member Florist sets his own prices. available at— Aggieland Flower & Gift Shoppe HALLMARK Greeting Cards — Unusual GIFTS Box 2563 846-5825 COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS 77840 “Our Flowers Say It For You” €bt Battalion Opinions expressed in The Bettalion are those of the student writers only. The Battalion is a non-tax- supported, non-profit, self-supporting educational enter prise edited and operated by students as a university and community newspaper. LETTERS POLICY Letters to the editor should be typed, double-spaced, and must be no more than 300 words in length. They must be signed, although the writer’s name will be with held by arrangement with the editor. Address corre spondence to Listen Up, The Battalion, Room 217, Services Building, College Station, Texas 77843. 1969 TPA Award Winner MEMBER The Associated Press, Texas Press Association The Associated Collegiate Press Mail subscriptions are S3.50 per semester; $6 pe subscriptions subject t rnished iptions year; S6.50 per full year, sales tax. Adv' The Battalion, Room Texas 7784 tax. Advertising rate fur on, Room 217, Services Building, 13. school quest. Address: College Station. hers cha Lindsey, chairman ; White, Jollegi College of Agriculture. F. S. W1 College of the Student Publications Board are: Jim H. F. Filers, College of Liberal Arts ; , College of Engineering ; Dr. Asa B. Childers, Ja. Veterinary Medicine; and Dr. Z. L. Carpenter, publis Sunda The Battalion, a student newspaper at published in College Station, Texas daily except Saturd Sunday, and Monday, and holiday periods, May, and once a week during summer scL Texas A&M is ay pe daily except Saturday, riods, September through ool. Servic Fran Represented nationally by National Edue ices, Inc., New York City, Chicago, Los ncisco. Educational Advertising go, Los Angeles and San The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to the use for republication of all new dispatches credited to it or not. otherwise credited in the paper and local news of spontaneous origin published herein. Rights of republication of all other matter herein are also reserved. Second-Class postage paid at College Station, Texas. EDITOR DAVE MAYES Managing Editor David Middlebrooke Sports Editor Richard Campbell Assistant Sports Editor Mike Wright Staff Writers Tom Curl, Janie Wallace, Jay F. Goode, Pam Troboy, Steve For man, Gary Mayfield, Payne- Harrison, Raul Pineda, Hayden Whitsett, Clifford Broyles, Pat Little, Tim Searson, Bob Robinson Columnists Monty Stanley, Bob Peek, John Platzer, Gary McDonald Photographers Steve Bryant, Bob Stump Sports Photographer Mike Wright ENGINEERS-SCIENTISTS PICTURE SCHEDULE 1970 Aggieland Make-up pictures for Grads and Seniors thru February 14 New Freshmen pictures taken thru Feb. 14 Pictures taken from 8 a. m. to 5 p. m. BRING FEE SLIPS UNIVERSITY STUDIO 115 North Main North Gate 846-8019 mm. Program Diversification important foundation for your career in aerospace Industrial Engineering ShamnSck EMPLOYMENT SERVICE OCCUPATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES AWAIT YOU, THE ’70 GRADUATE ★ “EMPLOYERS PAY FOR OUR SERVICES.” • College Division • North Gate 331 University Dr. 846-3737 A division of ERG At Convair, we have always recognized the need to develop tomorrow’s leaders today. Among the college graduates who join us now are the individuals who will spearhead our unusually diverse engineering and scientific activities, 5, 10 and 15 years in the future. Convair’s unique degree of product-line diversification is your assurance of many open avenues toward personal progress. Typical of the broad spectrum of activity at Convair are these continuing programs . . . Space Launch Vehicles Reusable Space Shuttles Experimental Satellites Oceanographic Monitoring Systems Range Measurement Systems Large Erectable Space Structures Military and Commercial Aircraft . . . and, at the moment, 105 other studies and programs. For its continuing work in virtually every phase of aerospace, Convair is seeking individuals with degrees in Aeronautical, Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering and in Engineering and Computer Sciences. Outstanding fringe benefits .. . tuition assistance programs for advanced studies at the area’s four institutions of higher learning . . . and the unique cultural/recreational climate of San Diego are bonus add-ons to the opportunities provided by Convair’s unusual diversification. Our representative will be on campus soon. Contact your Placement Officer to arrange an interview, or write to: Mr. J. J. Tannone, Supervisor, Professional Placement and Personnel, 5453 Kearny Villa Road, San Diego, California 92112. GENERAL DYNAMICS Convair Division An Equal Opportunity Employer M/F PEANUTS By Charles ML Schnii