Harvey Wasserman plans to participate in Earth Day next month. But he nonetheless takes a cynical view of the occasion.

Wasserman, a noted ecologist and author, said in a lecture Wednesday night at Husson College that he suspects the motives of large corporations such as Exxon, which is contributing $1 million to the nationwide Earth Day observance on April 22, with its focus on environmental awareness.

The company’s ship, the Exxon Valdez, was involved in the massive oil spill a year ago in Alaska.

“Seeing Exxon signing onto Earth Day is like seeing a rapist come out for motherhood,” Wasserman told less than a dozen people who attended Wednesday’s lecture.

Wasserman decried “ecological horrors” in a list that also included depletion of the earth’s ozone layer, the construction of nuclear power plants and the destruction of tropical rain forests.

He also aimed his ire at recent U.S. leadership.

George Bush, for example, wants to be known as the “environmental president,” but his administration differs little from the Reagan administration on environmental issues, said Wasserman, who criticized Bush for supporting nuclear power plants in Seabrook, N.H., and Shoreham, N.Y.

He attacked Bush’s chief of staff, John Sununu, as being “extremely smart, extremely dangerous and totally committed … to destroying the environment.”

In non-partisan fashion, however, Wasserman also blamed former President Jimmy Carter for the success of the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire.

Although Carter campaigned in New England on his opposition to the plant, said Wasserman, “the very first official act of his Environmental Protection Agency chief … was to sign into approval the Seabrook cooling system.”

Recent history provides cause for optimism, said Wasserman, who hoped that leaders would funnel money spent on nuclear weapons into cleaning up the environment.

“The coming-down of the Berlin Wall could be one of the best things that’s ever happened to the naturalist movement,” he said. Then he added, “I’m afraid that the Bush administration has yet to figure out that the Berlin Wall has gone down.”