Stands Sprout Earth Day Specials

In its 53-year history, Life magazine has altered the color of its trademark red and white cover logo only once--when President John F. Kennedy was killed, LIFE appeared in white and black.

But with its May issue, the magazine breaks tradition again. Anyone who hasn’t heard or can’t guess the substitute color hasn’t paid attention to what’s going on with magazines lately.

In the past year or so, the environmental crisis has become as integral to mainstream publications as UFO abductions are to the tabloids. Environmental pieces have been among the best stories to appear in print, period; all sorts of publications, from National Geographic to Good Housekeeping, are launching regular features on the fate of the Earth.

This month, virtually every environmental publication dedicates itself to Earth Day, and several mainstream publications also present major Earth Day packages. All do a fine job.

Life, with a one-shot white-and-green logo, takes a single-issue approach to its environmental coverage. The issue is trees and forests, and the presentation ranges from the quasi-mystical musings of editor-at-large Roger Rosenblatt to an examination of the old-growth forests debate. Life comes down firmly on the side of preservation.

The photographs alone, though, would seem sufficiently inspiring to turn Paul Bunyan into an Earth First!er.

The May 3 Rolling Stone is more encompassing. Most of the rockzine’s attention is lavished on easy-to-grasp, graphically gripping eco-lists. The Hall of Fame, for instance, profiles de rigueur Greenniks such as Sting but also features surprise appearances by low-profile groups such as The Mothers of East Los Angeles, who helped keep a hazardous waste incinerator out of their neighborhood.

Similarly, the Hall of Shame includes standbys Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Japan, but also the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Environmental Protection Agency Superfund. The package also includes a list of environmental magazines.

But the core of the Rolling Stone spread is an excellent, fact-filled expose titled “America’s Worst Polluter,” which shows how our government of the people, by the people and for the people generates enough pollution to choke the people.

The April Discover magazine, a popular science publication, throws its hat into the Earth Day competition with seven eco-articles. Its strongest pieces discuss the threat to the sea’s life-sustaining phytoplankton, a feature on cultivated bacteria that attack environmental toxins, and a discussion of the antagonistic population polemicists Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon.

But the Discover article that is at once most discouraging and encouraging is titled “Ecoglasnost.”

“Picture the filthiest industrial center in the United States in 1955, with smokestacks pouring unfiltered smoke into the air and pipes dumping untreated waste into the water,” the author writes. “Now imagine that the situation continued for more than 30 years without the improvements brought about by environmental activism and government regulation. That is the situation in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union today.”

Smithsonian magazine is exactly the same age as Earth Day, and was inspired, in part, by the same concerns. So it’s no wonder that the entire April issue is devoted to the environment, nor that the Smithsonian package overall is the best on the newsstands.

Smithsonian is also more optimistic than most magazines in its reportage. Among the dozen major articles is a piece outlining progress made since Earth Day 1970, profiles of innovative activists working to make the planet more habitable and a feature on modern naturalist artists.

The essential piece in the compilation is author Wallace Stegner’s history of the American conservation movement, which helps explain why it took us so long as a nation to realize what now seems so obvious: We can’t keep fouling our own nest. At the heart of the Smithsonian viewpoint is the endorsement of a simple belief now being called “sustainability.”

“As envisioned by environmentalists,” the editors write, “a sustainable society is one whose demands upon the Earth in no way diminish the lives of future generations.”

While most editors take Earth Day as seriously as a spotted owl takes a wailing chain saw, Outside magazine’s crew seems to have suffered overexposure to Spy. Traditionally strong in its commitment to the ecological health of the planet, the magazine’s snide approach this month annoys some high-rise eco-activists, since increasingly Outside seems to cater to the color-coordinated Goretex good-time gang that plays in the wild while others endure the tedium of defending it.

Yet it might be argued that encouraging people to get out in the wild to sample clear water (filtered for giardia, of course) and smell clean air, is an important motivating factor for environmental change. Outside’s photo feature on the 30 best campsites in America and Annick Smith’s moving paean to rivers--”The Blackfoot Years”--will certainly motivate.

Besides, Henry David Thoreau himself would probably be rolling his eyes by now, given the hoopla surrounding Earth Day. So Outside can hardly be blamed for refusing to jump on what its editor calls the “big, fuzzy, low-impact bandwagon” and instead taking a “lighthearted look at the whole biodegradable ball of wax.”

It’s possible that the current glitz blitz of reportage will prove too much to absorb, and the public will lose its appetite for eco-articles completely.

Still, some philosophers, such as Thomas Berry, have suggested that to survive, humanity must realign its spiritual instincts with ecological awareness.

If that happens, Earth Day could become an annual holiday.

Maybe we’ll celebrate springtime each year with major eco-events, and the public will encourage a Christmas and Easter-like media bombardment of Earth Day information and entertainment, and magazines will produce excellent environmental packages year after year.