Humphrey in 1970: 'There is no room for halfway efforts'

[Editor's note] In last week's Pine Knot News, writer Steve Korby shared memories of an extra-

ordinary week at Cloquet High School in 1970. Students and staff organized a weeklong seminar on the environment, called SCARE, an acronym for Students Concerned about a Ravaged Environment. The opening speaker for the week was former Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. The following are excerpts from his speech on April 6, 1970, setting the tone for the week. The speech and notes have been preserved with the Minnesota Historical Society's cache of Humphrey materials from his political career. For Korby's story on the event, go to our website at PineKnotNews.com.

I want to get right down to business because this is a busy day for you, and we're here on very important business. We're here on the business of your future. And that includes the overwhelming majority of this audience. I am talking to a group of young people to whom the year 2000 is just around the corner. ... at least 85 percent of this audience will be alive and in the prime of life at the year 2000. ...

Now some scientists tell us that by the year 2000, unless we change our ways, that will be the beginning of the end. And I must say candidly that other civilizations have disappeared. So don't think that ours is eternal, necessarily. So you have to be quite objective about it and realistic. ...

The big problem today is not just the land or water or air, but it's the people. ... Environment is not only the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the land that we touch, it is where we live, our neighborhoods, our cities. It is the environment of violence in this country, crime and lawlessness, the problems of unemployment and an unstable economy, the problems of race relations, which surely provide an environment in America and not too healthy a one at this moment, the problems of the arms race, and the increasing international tension under which our young American men and women live every day of their lives. ...

We can do something about this. I don't think you inspire people to succeed by pointing out failures. I do think the only reason we should list our problems is to increase our awareness of them and to marshal the resources to do something about them. And we have the resources. We've made amazing progress in the last decade with all our problems. Don't give up and don't let anyone sell you a bill of goods that this country can't do what it wants to do. I'll tell you what it takes. It takes the same kind of attitude that made this country a great country and we can make it even greater. You have to pledge your lives, if need be your fortunes, and your sacred honor to this effort. That's the way things started in this country, not with a halfway pledge. There is no room for halfway efforts anymore. We have to get in there and pitch.

I'll bet most of you never heard the word "ecology" mentioned until the last two or three years. Now it's everywhere and what it means is a "balance in the forces of nature" - the delicate balance. Just as balance is required in the forces among the nations of the world and needed in your own personality, so that you are not hung up one day and dragging around the next day and tearing yourself apart. ...

In the last 50 years, the amount of energy available to us by machines and electricity has increased 300 percent. And we're using it up. Six percent of the world's population consuming 40 percent of the world's goods. And lots of it we waste. Each year two hundred million tons of smoke and fumes are spewed out in the atmosphere in the United States. ...

Back yard

The St. Louis River could be one of the most beautiful rivers in Minnesota. It's polluted and we've got to do something about it. We could make a great recreation area out of this and make it worthwhile for generations yet unborn. ... Our waters are being polluted by sewage, chemicals, and thermal and radioisotope pollution. Fish kills because of chemical, sewage, and thermal wastes have become numerous.

I want young Americans in this audience to go around this beautiful state and see what's happened to our lakes. See the algae, the weeds, and ask why, why, why? There are reasons for it. Ten years ago that wasn't the case. I live out by a little lake called Lake Waverly. Ten years ago, you could drink water out of that lake. Within the last three years, it's been so close to permanent pollution, that no one would dare touch it, and it has become a pile of weeds and green algae and this will increase unless we treat it year after year. And what we're treating it with may hurt it more than what was in it. Do you want to see every lake in Minnesota like this? Of course you don't. And you are going to have to see that something is done. ...

Now what's the answer to all this? We've been designing laws and regulations for a long time. ... In 1948, the first important Federal Water Pollution Control Act was introduced and it provided for the development of sewage disposal plants which you have today and that take care of organic waste, but do not take care of chemical waste. And the greatest threat to life today is stated to be by microbiologists, not organic waste, but chemical industrial waste. We have not yet developed the kind of treatment facilities for chemical industrial, non-organic waste that really works. ...

Let it be a matter of record that the first man who introduced major pollution control legislation and took a beating for it because of being considered a zealot and radical, was the congressman from this district, John Blatnik. He was the author of the major basic piece of legislation that offers any hope for water pollution control. It provided grants to help local communitltes build sewage disposal plants. Then, in 1961, the same congressman introduced another bill to propose a Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, a separate Federal administration that would exercise strict control with strict standards. ...

Make noise

By the way, young friends, why don't you ask your county commissioners here and your state legislators and your governor and other people why we're letting raw sewage run from homes along lakeshores in lakes. They have no right to do this. What would you think if somebody came up and decided to empty their toilet in your front yard? I'll tell you the police would be right on them. Every lake in this state is part of your front yard. When people start polluting the air, polluting the rivers, dumping their sewage into the lakes and rivers, spewing up their smoke and fumes into the atmosphere, what they're really doing is taking a great big garbage truck and just driving up to your house and dumping it. ...

I want you to start right here in Cloquet. I propose a community coalition for clean environment, a mobilization of public and private efforts of all age groups in all segments to coordinate all of the essential efforts in such a program, I would suggest that the state through the Governor's office or the legislature, establish a citizen's advisory board on environment, in which there is industry, lay public, labor, young people and interested citizens. An advisory board on environment, conservation and recreation. And what state has more to offer than we do? The state board would work with similar boards at a local level....

Regular reports should be issued out of the governor's office as to the beautification of environment and protection of our state, including how we're cleaning up automobile graveyards, what we're doing about our parks, beautification of local communities, and what we're doing about our neighborhoods. I don't want this society, after 10 thousand years, when they dig around to be labeled in conversation as "Apparently everybody just lived in their car," or "We seem to find beer cans all over the place." ...

Change our ways

So I ask this question: Can we as a nation entertain the painful possibility that our proud effort to conquer nature and to tame the frontier may very well have been destructive and can we reverse our course? I think the structure of our federal government needs to be reorganized to establish a whole new department on environmental control. We take for granted the air that we breathe; we take for granted there is an unlimited supply of water and there isn't. One of the shortest resources in the world today is clean water and we take for granted that there is lots of land and living space. ... We have a high standard of living and if we don't watch out, we're going to have a higher standard of dying. This is what this conference is all about.

Adlai Stevenson, in his last address before the United Nations, summed it up for us, and listen to this. That is why I've covered the international, as well as the local, aspects. These are the words of this wonderful, beautiful man:

"We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, our world, dependent on its vulnerable resources of air and soil, all committed to our safety, to its security and peace, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work (and I will add, the love) that we give our fragile craft."

He reminded us that we will be preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and the love we give this fragile craft. And to my young friends who have shown so much concern these recent years to a world that would be free of violence, and to the many young people who say today that what the world needs is love rather than hate, and to the young people who say that what we need is to be more concerned and considerate of each other, rather than unconcerned or antagonistic, the best way I know how to do it is to take care of the air you breathe, the water you drink, the land upon which you live, and the community in which you will spend the days of your life.