4 Wednesday, July 18, 1990 / University Daily Kansan Opinion THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN Environmental concerns President's lip service can no longer be tolerated; sacrifices must be made to ensure a clean planet A last week's economic summit in Houston, world leaders expressed concern about the environment, global warming in particular. How ironic that this took place at an economic summit rather than an environmental conference. It seems that President Bush found himself in the company of leaders of other industrial nations who care about what happens to our planet. uses like Earth After all, to purify the environment, or to at least clean it up enough to make it livable, it is necessary for all countries to work together; all are linked environmentally. All countries must want and work for a purer Earth. It also means that some hefty sacrifices on the part of big business and industry must be made. Bush was probably squirming, seeing as how the United States is hurting industrial when compared with relatively new economic powers like Japan and West Germany. These have to be sacrifices we are all ready to make. Sacrificing profit to ensure energy-efficient and non-polluting production is the first step. first step In the United States, the capitalist ideal doesn't lend itself to this change of attitude. Americans learn of the "American dream" at an early age — a dream rife with the importance of success through profit, and sometimes through exploitation of workers and the land. Those individuals who work the land bear some of the guilt for the present state of the environment. Loggers in the Northwest don't want to sacrifice money for the survival of endangered species. Fishermen don't want to give up their livelihood so intelligent marine life may survive. And we all know about the sacrifices many large corporations won't make. Been to the rain forest lately? There are many examples of the interconnectedness of the continents in relation to the environment. There are many more examples of big business and industry taking advantage of this planet. Maybe someday these leaders will take steps to create harmony between the earth and its inhabitants. Ideally, it should start with our own "environmental" president. It's time to quit with the lip service and take some action. The editorial board Animal treatment Animal treatment Rights. .and wrongs. .of activists' approach eat stinks Meat stinks! That's what country music star k.d. lang said about the many cattle being slaughtered each day for meat, leather and various other by-products of the industry. Now she's paying for it. Country music stations everywhere that rely heavily on listeners who farm and raise livestock have had some heavy decisions to make about airplay. Many, including Kansas City's "61 Country," have quit playing the otherwise popular singer's music. This stance may harm lang's career. But she had the choice to take it. The sponsors of the ad, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, have debated running the ad earlier than originally intended because of the controversy. Some animal rights activism can harm more than it helps. For example, this year's Top Dog World Championship Prairie Dog Shoot, in Nucla, Colo., was a huge success. Locals and organizers of the shoot say they have animal rights activists and the controversy they stirred up to thank for their booming weekend. The organizer of the event said he was planning to write thank-you notes to the shoot's protesters. The hunters shot nearly 3,000 prairie dogs this year and Nucla's mayor wore a flak jacket during the shoot because he had received death threats. However, the good that can come from protest takes a little longer than the bad — until the public catches on. Militant activism is needed for some revolutions, but for an animal rights revolution, threats to the mayor of the town are a little extreme. Even more extreme are the deaths of professors at U.S. universities, supposedly at the hands of animal rights activists protesting the use of animals in experiments. Somehow, the fine line between activism and terrorism needs to be drawn. What falls into the category of cruelty? The editorial board More than a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars in the making, the Hubble Space Telescope turns out to have blurry vision. It seems that one of its two main mirrors, which gather distant starlight, was made in the wrong shape. The error is tiny by most standards but by astronomical standards it is, well, astronomical. Other Voices Until the Hubble is repaired on a previously scheduled 1983 shuttle mission, the telescope only will be performed at about half its potential. What is tragic about all of this is that the telescope's flaws could have been discovered on the ground if the right tests had been performed. NASA tested Hubble's mirrors individually. Had NASA tested the mirrors together as a system, experts believe, the flaws would have been obvious and could have been corrected. NASA missions are extraordinarily expensive. American taxpayers expect the kind of precision that put men on the moon in 1969. NASA clearly is in need of a thorough The fateful decision on Hubble was made in the early 1980s, about the same time that the decisions leading to the Challenger explosion were made. The coincidence of those decisions with those made on the early shuttle program should have been enough to warrant someone taking a second look after Challenger. Apparently no one did. evaluation of their decision-making process. Its missions are too vital to be routinely bungled. New Uim, Minn. From the Journal, New Ulm, Minn., July 6. Mars. Marcas is not good for Philippine democracy which, for all its failures, offers the Filipino people freedom of political choice and the rule of law to institutionalize and protect that choice. On balance then, President Aquino is right: Mrs. Marcos is a source of instability. While the desire to bury one's husband in his country or to die there oneself is understandable, the needs of the country must come before those of the individual, even the second most powerful individual in the country, as she once was. There is no reason why ordinary Filipinos, who have shed so much blood already, should pay with life or limb only to please for Mrs. Marcos to return home and breathe in the fresh Philippine air which she and her husband did so much to poison. purpose From the Straits Times, Singapore, July 6. There is a rich vein of satirical material running through the agenda of the London summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization . . . NATO was founded to protect Western Europe against military aggression by the Soviet Union, a threat that has dissolved suddenly within a span of months. Some of its members are now casting about for a new potential enemy, like a timorous householder looking under the bed for a non-existent intruder; some believe that the old enemy may not be dead but sleeping; some are convinced that the time has come to transform NATO into a predominantly political pan-European cooperative, with a military arm to keep the peace. The success of NATO, in other words, confuses and alarms its beneficiaries who find themselves called out to disburse their finances at disturbing short notice. The usefulness of the NATO summit will be judged by the degree of its acknowledgement that NATO is an anachronism and that prolonged delay in changing it into a quite different kind of organization, with a new name, will be counterproductive. This does not mean that considerations of security have become irrelevant. What must be seen to be accepted is the challenge to organize for peace instead of war, and to build an interlocking system of trust and guarantee to replace the obsolete equipment of deterrence and Doomsday. From the Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland, July 5. Columnist thinks police tend to get carried away apologize. Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about the misunderstanding of the criminal mind. I discussed several instruments of that misunderstanding, including burglar alarm stickers, the engraving of identifying numbers on valuable objects and neighborhood watch signage. I was not tired to meet that my life and therefore my entire argument, was incomplete. I forgot any important item: cops who go overboard. Such an omission, obvious as it may seem, may not have occurred to me if it had not been for the Lawrence Police Department. You see, at the end of my column, I boasted that I had in my possession one of the very signs which I had spent the latter half of the essay degrading. Just days after publication, two brave centurions came to my apartment and confiscated the sign I was stunned. Now that I've had a few days to think it over, however, I have come up with three possible motivating factors behind the depart- They had nothing better to do. Highly unlikely, what with all the hooligans like myself running around out there. If this is the case, however, I'm glad to be of service. I must admit that it made my own life more M. Bennett Cohn Guest columnist interesting. too. interesting, too, to teach me a lesson. That lesson, exactly? Well, I figure it would either be "When writing about self-defeating law enforcement endeavors, don't forget to include us cops" (not likely), or, "Beware: don't mock the law!" Oops! Look like that's what I'm doing again! Now I feel all icky inside. Oh, well. The felt they the Lawrence area was in need of more neighborhood watch signs (that would be especially ridiculous because they wouldn't really do the world any good are the ones adoring the walls in the homes of vandals like myself, where they take on an artistic value). But hey — I'm not trying to put down the police force as a whole. After all, they do plenty of nice things. They keep the peace. They issue parking tickets. They catch hads and cops. They columnists something to write about. Thanks, copa. I'm really glad you're out there. > M. Bennett Cohn is a Prairie Village sophomore with an undecided major. News staff Dependent staff michael Lehman Business manager Audra Langford Director of special projects Burial Catcher Director of special projects Dave Taylor Production manager Leigh Taylor Manager Debbie Johnson Sales and marketing adviser Lie Hueben editor Kats Lee Manager editor Berry Wyldefer Planning/Campus editor Chris Biron Associate campus/Rsports editor Tom Sargander Editor Timothy Gershwin General manager, news advisor Timothy Gershwin General manager, news advisor Business staff Lorem ipsum should be typed, double-spaced and less than 200 words and must include the writer's name, name address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University of Kansas, please include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position. Guest columns should be typed, double-spaced and less than 700 words. The writer will be photographed. They can be the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kranen newsroom, 111 Staffer-Fletch Holl Letters, columns and cartoons are the opinion of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University Dalkan Kranen. Editorials are the opinion of the Kranen author board. A politician keeps a campaign promise U.S. Senator gives up seat after 12 years to run for New Hampshire Legislature U.S. Senator gives up seat after 12 years to run for New Hampshire Legislature One of these weekends there may be a political collision at a smalltown dump, a good place to find voters on a summer Saturday. Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey says he'll be working the dump circuit as he campaigns to swap his seat in the New Hampshire legislature. so will John L. Sherburne, seeking to move from the New Hampshire House to the state Senate seat Humphrey wants. Humphrey's campaign mission is easier because people know his name. He says he is campaigning intensively for the $100-a-year seat in the Legislature at Concord, knowing that nothing would alienate voters faster than for him to act as though he thinks the job is automatically his. While Sherburne tries to broaden his constituency, Humphrey has to narrow his focus to line up primary election support in the 14 townships that make up the largely rural district. The most voters know him from afar. "Whatever the outcome, nobody will say that Humphrey didn't work his butt off" the senator said. In the era of campaign consultants, television commercials and image-makers, the contest for the Republican nomination in New Hampshire's 17th Senate district is a clash of cultures as well as candidates. In the Republican primary two years ago, 4,444 voters turned out. There'll probably be more this time, perhaps as many as 6,000. Walter R. Mears Syndicated columnist "We've been going all-out for a long time," Sherburne said one evening last week, talking politics across the kitchen table at his Deerfield farmhouse, his home for 20 years after a career in the Air Force. "We obviously have a name recognition problem." He's working on it, with a network of volunteers trying to make his name and face known by word of mouth and campaign T-shirt, while he visits general stores, volunteer fire stations, wherever there might be a voter or two. "You've got to go out and root them out, meet them, find them at the dump," Sherburne said. "It's real basic, actually." "I don't think either one of us is going to see very big crowds," said Humphrey, contrasting his campaign past with his current objective. But he said the only fundamental difference between runners in this race was amassing for the state Senate that some of the issues are different. Some are not, notably taxes and abortion, topics on which Humphrey and Sherburne differ sharply. Humphrey, one of the most conservative of Senate Republicans, is a leading abortion foe; Sherburne favors abortion. That doesn't belong in the realities of politics. New Hamphire has no general income or sales tax. Sherburne favors a statewide referendum on taxes. Humphrey insists the Legislature should hold firm against a sales or income tax. "It's a good fight, and I want to go back and fight it." Humphrey said in an interview in his U.S. Capital office, a hideaway where he works at two computer terminals. New Hampshire share office spaces and staff help. "I'll miss all these goodies," Humphrey said, surveying the windowless office he calls his cockpit, two blocks from his Senate office building suit himself to my own room's cockpit in my barn back home." His home is in Chichester. Humphrey, 49, was a pilot on a commuter airline before his upset Senate election in 1978. He was reelected comfortably in 1984. He had said from the start that he would serve only two terms. Preaching what he practices, he is pushing a proposed constitutional amendment to limit congressional service to 12 consecutive years. Humphrey said he will keep up that campaign from New Hampshire. He has some other campaigns in mind, too. He says he will try to help other conservatives get involved with Humphrey would like to run for president of the state Senate next year. Says Sherburne: "I'm certainly interested," he said. "I'm interested in running for governor. I'd like to offer myself as a candidate some time." "He's trying to use this for higher office. A lot of people tell me they resent that . . . He expects to walk right into office and some people don't take kindly to it. He's a little gruff and demanding." Sherburn, 66, was a combat pilot in two wars, later an aide at the Pentagon. He's served eight years in the Air Force, house 12 as a selectman in Deerfield. The senator said 1,100 people signed his petitions, voters who presumably will support him in the primary. Humphrey said he doesn't expect to spend more than the limit, but wants the flexibility to do so if abortion rights organizations go after him. Humphrey began his campaign with a letter to district Republicans saying he needed notarized signatures from 500 of them by mid-June in order to quality the signatures. He needed the signatures because he did not accept the state's optional campaign spending limit, $15,000. "Don't see it's necessary, actually," he said. Sherburne agreed to the limit, and said his campaign probably would not spend that much. ally," he said. > Walter R. Mears is a vice president and columnist for the Associated Press. Editors' note: There is one more issue of the Summer Kansan left. As always, we encourage and appreciate your letters and views on matters of concern to the Lawrence and University communities. Donors needed Last week, the Philadelphia Inquirer recounted problems that occurred with the Red Cross Blood program. This is most unfortunate, especially as people are concerned about infections that can be conveyed through tainted blood. Undoubtedly, corrections in procedures will be more carefully monitored as a result of this word. Because of such news, we who are able to donate need to become more convinced and active in donating our good blood. Donating is safe — no one gets infections by donating. The Red Cross needs us now to provide life blood for the sick. Furthermore, summer is a slow time for donations — and the need for blood is constant. So now is a time to donate. It takes only an hour, but it may cost a life for someone who doesn't get blood This week, our local American Red Cross Blood Center. 329 Mis- sourt St.₂, is sponsoring a special appeal “A Donor is a Rare Bird,” with clever T-shirts for each donor, Call 749-3017 and schedule a time this week. Hours will be noon to 6 p.m., today, noon to 8 p.m., tomorrow and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday. I won't be there, because I gave in June. It was my 130th pint, but Lawrence needs more than my help. Donald L. Conrad Lutheran Campus Ministry