In his State of the Union Message. President Nixon boasted of a $10 billion program to halt deterioration of the environment of the United States. The $10 billion, he proclaimed, would provide for municipal sewage plant construction over the next five years. Only $4 billion of this, however, would be provided by the Federal government. State and local governments would finance their $6 billion share of the deal through tax-exempt bonds.

A Glittering Sham

Congress had already passed a bill allocating $800 million for sewage control plants. The President, though opposed to the measure, signed the bill while indicating that he would not spend the money. Even in financial terms. Nixon's glittering scheme to fight pollution is nothing but a sham.

In order to understand the extent of the Administration's claborate joke, one has simply to realize that the projected costs for pollution abatement in New York state alone are $1 billion. Even "Laugh-In" can sense the claborate ruse: " If Nixon's War on Pollution is as successful as Johnson's War on Poverty, we're going to have an awful lot of dirty poor people around. "

MOREOVER, the type of sewage plants that the Administration plans to construct is the type that fouls up the water with phosphates and nitrates. Meanwhile, the Administration, instead of fighting industrial polluters, gives them six months to prepare "plans" to lower pollution flow, even when one of the polluters, Jones and Laughlin Steel in Cleveland, continues to discharge cyanide, of all things, into the Cuyahoga River (which caught fire last spring). Yet the government refuses to raise the cost of polluting our rivers and streams.

When Senator Muskie presented a moderate bill calling for a pilot program to test means of recovering and recycling solid wastes such as beer cans, plastic, paper, and "no-return" bottles. HEW Secretary Finch testified against it. Such a program is too expensive, Finch said.

Meanwhile, preparations continue for the national Environmental Teach-In. Conceived in the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson, blessed by HEW, the foundations, and the Urban Coalition, and augmented by liberals who had been frightened away from the angry rhetoric of the Panthers and the antiwar movement, the Environmental Teach-In presents a flashy, pre-pack-aged campaign which tells us that it is, of course in the interests of everyone (including the polluters) to clean up our smelly environment.

At Boston University, the John Birch Society is helping to organize the B. U. teach-in. The Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce is assisting the teach-in there. And the oil industry was so pleased with the idea that it offered the national teach-in office financial support for the teach-ins.

"The April 22 teach-in is a vital first step," declared Sen. Nelson. "But after that day, we will also need well-organized, non-partisan, sustained political action nationwide to restore the quality of our environment. Americans must start now to take stands, aid candidates for office who support environmental programs, use every device within the political process to get action."

The Environmental Teach-In, to be sure, is a commendable idea of which any liberal politician can be justly proud. The deterioration of the natural environment of America has reached a critical point. In a nation which reckons its yearly success on the continued bloating of the very Gross National Product, environmental concern is long overdue.

Vietnam vs. Anti-Pollution

Billions of dollars are urgently needed to halt the destruction of our air, land, and water. Yet billions of dollars are not forthcoming. The Administration has no intention of forcing business and industry to finance anti-pollution schemes. And the government itself, quietly pursuing its military misadventures in Southeast Asia, cannot afford more than a few gimmicky schemes designed to appease the rising ride of criticism among angry youth.

Yet even though Administration officials seek to divert attention from its $25 billion annual program to kill Vietnamese peasants by encouraging concern for the deteriorating environment among possible activists, the issue will inevitably return to our war policies.

First of all, until the war in Vietnam is ended, no money will be available to fight the war against pollution. As long as war, feeding a huge corporate military-industrial complex, continues to dominate our budget allocations, only a few showy schemes, financed with paltry sums, motivated by public opinion polls, will be initiated by the politicians in Washington.

Ultimately, ecologists, tired of talk, committees, commissions, and feasibility studies, will realize that as long as the American government runs on a militarized national budget, they can expect little in the way of useful aid from the Nixon Administration. They will gradually sense that no strong anti-pollution war can be funded with the scraps remaining after the Defense Department grabs its share of the budger.

A strong anti-pollution campaign would, in fact, probably remove funds from such programs as the anti-poverty campaigns instead of the Vietnam war.

Ecology, as it is presently conceived by most persons, is an ideal design for the co-optation of young people into ineffectual campaigns waged at the expense of suppressed peoples overseas and suppressed minorities at home.