Wherever someone is ruining a party with an acoustic guitar, they are there. Wherever a roommate’s food lies unguarded and free to mooch, they are there. Wherever the mangy are welcome, they are there.

They are, of course, stereotypically known as hippies.

And if they’re not lecturing us about the importance of saving manatees or informing us about their friend that “blows unbelievable glass,” they’re off doing some other hippie bullshit, like recycling.

Once a year, these bastards get a whole week set aside for them; a week in which environmentalist babble and, subsequently, my hippie-tolerance reach critical mass. I’m speaking of none other than Earth Week.

During last week’s Earth Week, finding myself to be low on energy and in need of a good blood boiling, I decided to see what one of these long-hairs’ idols had to say. So I attended the aptly-dated Leopold Lecture about wildlife at the Ebling Center on April 20.

I soon came to regret this decision as I found myself in the very epicenter of hippie-ism; surrounded by students with dreadlocks and others wearing knitted mittens and older men and women wearing socks with sandals and bland, communistic, earth-toned clothing.

It was horrifying.

The guest lecturer and conservationist, Shane Mahoney, was no clean-cut WASP either. From the looks of it, he was a regular Dead Head, a real Frank Zappa-loving flower child. He had a long, white beard and hair that flopped softly over his ears. I cringed at the sight of him and prepared for the worst.

As part of his introduction, an emcee gave the audience Mahoney’s background, which turned out to be (what else) Canadian and rooted in environmentalism. He then listed off Mahoney’s accomplishments; a list of accolades that, shortened, surpassed the number of kilos that have passed through the nostrils of Lindsay Lohan (zing). Not a common characteristic of these granola-eating types.

My mood was changing.

After a brief round of applause, Mahoney began his lecture. His eyes, surprisingly devoid of redness, quickly sharpened and became intense. Glaring over the crowd, his words would start softly and then, as he raised his fists, crescendo, echoing off the walls of the lecture hall. Expecting him to be soft and mild mannered, Mahoney instead delivered an unexpected, passion-filled lecture, resembling a fire and brimstone sermon without the threat of doom.

He praised America for its achievements in the realm of conservationism. “Conservation is an American achievement. Born here and given to the world,” he told the audience.

The great accomplishment — and title of the lecture — he was referring to specifically was the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, which, as Mahoney put it, is “a complex machine that assures Americans their wildlife. Without the institutions, the funding mechanisms, the policies and the laws supporting this model’s functioning every day, there would not be a single animal species or ecosystem that would be safe. Wildlife does not exist by accident in this world anymore.”

Shane Mahoney had given Earth Week and all of its hippie constituents what it and Ryan Seacrest have always lacked: Some balls. This wasn’t some dude sharing his joint with you at a Phish concert, it was a seasoned veteran of conservation bestowing the audience with his years of wisdom. Unlike the flaccid feeling so many environmentalists leave you with, this felt like the first day of boot camp and, by the end of it, I was ready to gear up in Birkenstocks and a poncho and join the hippie ranks.

The general consensus on modern-day hippies seems to be one of understanding but also one of contempt. While many support environmental ideals, they still feel they must distance themselves from the hippie and his or her psychedelic enchantment, which, as everyone knows, only leads to longboarding and enjoying 30-minute guitar solos.

Hippies need more Mahoneys. They need more arguments saturated in facts and grounded in history channeled through charismatic and believable speakers like Shane Mahoney. Perhaps the most damning characteristic of the typical hippie mentality, which Mahoney did not portray, is the adamant condemnation of anything unnatural. The reality is, as long as people continue to want to eat, sleep and be clothed, pollution and land degradation is a sad inevitability. Accepting that and promoting sustainability and positive human involvement, instead of uncompromising hippie values like preservation and organic everything, is perhaps the only realistic and effective alternative.

As Mahoney put it, “The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation’s system of institutions is under threat every day by the extraordinary pressures of habitat loss, the explosion of population and wealth, the desire of individuals or groups to hold wildlife to themselves, by legislatures, and people’s lack of awareness of what it takes for wildlife to be protected. If you don’t inform them, they will think wildlife can exist without our help.”

If the environmentalist movement doesn’t find common ground with members of the indifferent or oppositional parties, little will be accomplished. Informing them will require a speaker worth listening to, and so many hippies are not. One environmentalist broke the preconceptions of at least one skeptic during Earth Week with his sound thinking. How many more could be convinced?

David Carter ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in forestry.