Werbach urges activism for youth

Youngest Sierra Club President comes to OC

Sierra Club president Adam Werbach was eight when he found the "Oust James Watt" - James Watt was Secretary of the Interior under Reagan - petition on his parents' coffeetable. He signed it because he had been practicing his signature in school.

He went on to become the youngest president of the Sierra Club, at age 24. His speech Tuesday, "Activism in the 1990s" was the first stop on a month-long tour to reach out to people urging them to become active, even if the action is at the most basic level.

"I couldn't drink, couldn't drive and couldn't go to war, but I could do something," Werbach said of his first activist involvement. Even now, he faces challenges because of his age. "Jenny McCarthy has a TV show and I can't rent a car?" he asked the audience. "Maybe that touches on the ageism in this country."

But Werbach is using his age to his advantage. He's rallying against the Generation X, or "Generalization X" stereotype as he calls it, and the idea that people of his age group are apathetic about issues that concern them. "There is a lack of faith in the future, but it's not acceptable because it's not honest," Werbach said. "We haven't been honest and said we can do it."

He proceeded to list off a number of frightening environmental statistics such as the 4,000 people in Ohio that die prematurely each year because of air pollution and related anecdotes to many of those numbers. He continued by saying that focusing on the successes was the way to keep the environmental movement going.

He pointed out that April 7 marks the last thousand days until the turn of the millenium.

"I could go on with the list of problems" Werbach said, holding up a printed list he likes to carry around, "but it's time, right now, to look at these thousand days and question what we're going to do."

He told a story about when he visited the elementary school P.S. 41 in South Bronx, where over half the students bring an inhaler to school. He said that the school fired the nurse to hire a respiratory specialist. Asthma, Werbach said, is the number one cause of hospitalization of children.

"We can actually point to success," Werbach said. He said water is cleaner than in was 20 years ago, pointing out that while in the '70s less than half the lakes in the United States were safe to swim in, over 70 percent are now.

While most of the lecture was spent relating facts and anecdotes, he did offer a few ways to get involved. He challenged people to become active at the grass roots level, calling the PIRG agendas "kickass."

He also feels that politics is not the whole solution, but that media blitzing is the way most information is communicated to today's youth. "If Nike can sell you a pair of shoes you don't want in five seconds, we should be able to sell ours in three," Werbach said.

The end of the lecture left students with questions as to how they could become involved with the environmental movement, pushing Werbach to address what he didn't in the lecture.

"You just need to do what you can," Werbach said.