Lasting lessons in responsibility

CARY -- It was the afternoon after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered.

Like most of the nation, the campus of N.C. State University was shrouded in shock and gloom. Students filing into the classroom in Harrelson Hall were uncharacteristically quiet. Many wore black armbands.

James Wallace, instructor for History of Science 422, entered the room, placed his sheaf of papers on the desk and peered over his glasses at each of the 60-odd students --a surprising action for a teacher who usually began lecturing the moment the bell rang.

Finally he spoke. "You don't really want to deal with this" -- he swept his hand toward his notes -- "do you?"

The shaking of heads and murmurs of "No" were virtually unanimous.

Whereupon Professor Wallace began speaking words something like these:

"Ever since this nation's inception, we have proceeded upon some assumptions -- fallacies, all -- that we have unlimited space, unlimited resources and unlimited time. Now is a day of reckoning."

Then, with no notes, he continued, pausing only to draw breath, for 55 minutes. When he finished, the students lept to their feet for a long standing ovation.

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NEVER HAD I SEEN SUCH A PERFORMANCE. Never, as student, teaching assistant or professor, have I seen such since. And although I have forgotten exact words and details, the burden of that lecture is permanently burned into my memory, those three points becoming more relevant every passing day. Here is the gist:

* SPACE -- For generations, the western territories acted as a relief valve for those who felt bounded by encroaching settlement. We have reached beyond the Pacific now, into Hawaii and Alaska, and there are no more territories for pioneers to explore and exploit. We can't just ravage a region and move on; we have to make the most and the best of the space we have.

* RESOURCES -- We have been prodigal with our resources, devastating forests, depleting soil, creating and carelessly tossing aside mountains of often-poisonous garbage, and thereby polluting air, soil and water.

* TIME -- For over a century, we have employed Jim Crow and similar practices to keep African-Americans just a few levels above slavery. Although knowing we were wrong, like Scarlett O'Hara, we would "think about it tomorrow"-- only "tomorrow" has never come. Now with their most brilliant spokesman dead, African-Americans are finished waiting. "Tomorrow" has indeed arrived, and we need to deal with it.

The enthusiastic reaction to that lecture 40 years ago demonstrated that we recognized the truths in Wallace's oration, and throughout the decades since I've been repeatedly reminded of its cogency. Most recently, I've especially recalled his warnings about our resources, for scarcely a day has gone by without more news of how we have squandered them and despoiled our environment.

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ONE OF THE MOST DRAMATIC CURRENT EXAMPLES IS OUR STATE'S WATER SHORTAGE. Yes, this year we have indeed suffered severe drought. How much of this situation can be charged to changing weather patterns due to global warming, we don't know. What we do know is that in this country we've grown accustomed to using water as if the supply were never-ending.

Unlimited fountains and swimming pools, 10- or 20-minute showers, drenching great expanses of lawn and immense expansions of industry make demands even a large reservoir such as Falls Lake cannot supply indefinitely.

Our unbounded use of water is of course only one example of our wastefulness. Hummers and other oversized private vehicles lap up gallons of gasoline (and, not incidentally, affect the cost of gasoline and our dependence on foreign oil). Perfectly usable houses -- some of them elegant! -- are crushed and dumped into landfills. They are replaced by mansions which consume immense amounts of building material, then demand large quantities of natural gas and/or electricity to keep everything lit and humming -- which of course requires more fuel and power plants.

In this affluent culture, our mantra seems to be, "If I can afford it, it's fine for me to have it." This stance ignores both Professor Wallace's point that resources -- all of them -- are indeed limited, and the fact that individuals do not exist in a vacuum, that every action each of us takes has an effect on others. The fumes I burn driving to town affect the air you breathe. The water that goes down your drain affects the shortage in the whole region. The lights or television we leave on (often when no one is using them) may require that another mountaintop in West Virginia be removed to make coal more accessible.

If Professor Wallace were alive today, I feel sure that he would preach the gospel of conservation with all his accustomed fervor. If Martin Luther King Jr., always sensitive to ethical quandaries, were still with us, I've no doubt that he would eloquently delineate our moral imperative to use resources wisely and protect ourselves and the finite Earth on which we dwell.

(Sally Buckner is a writer and Peace College professor emerita of English.)