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October 9, 2009

Consumer advocate and former Presidential candidate Ralph Nader delivered this year’s first Russell Lecture on Sustainability on Tuesday, October 6 in Belk Auditorium. Afterwards, he answered questions from students and signed copies of his new fictional work, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”

Nader led off his talk by discussing the importance of being involved in civic pursuits. He pointed out that while everyone in the crowded Belk Auditorium has likely been to a shopping mall, McDonald’s, or Wal-Mart, not many have been to a city or town council meeting.

“We don’t get enough civic experience,” Nader said, “and without enough civic experience, democracy doesn’t work.”

Nader shared his story of how be became interested in automobile safety, which began his career as America’s foremost consumer advocate. He said that when he was in college in the ‘50’s, he knew many people who were either killed or seriously injured in automobile accidents. In his third year at Harvard Law School, he wrote a paper on the subject that included recommendations. The paper later eventually became the 1965 book Unsafe At Any Speed, which led to automobile safety laws and regulations.

Nader, who has also made a career addressing environmental issues, said the best way to define pollution is that it’s a form of violence.

“It’s a silent, cumulative form of violence,” he said. “Whether it’s beryllium, lead, arsenic, sulfurs, whatever. It attacks the health of human beings. It damages the genetic inheritance of the human being. And it contaminates property. It makes air, water, and soil less safe in the biosphere.”

Nader said it is interesting to study what forms of violence people are most concerned about.

“Other forms,” he said, “produce far more deaths, injuries, or disease, even though both are preventable.”

For example, the 9/11 terrorist attacks killed 3100 people. However, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration says that this year 58,000 Americans will die from work-related disease and trauma, 65,000 from air pollution, 100,000 from incompetence medical negligence in hospitals, and 45,000 because they can’t afford health insurance to get treatment, according to Nader.

“They get little media attention, compared to a terrorist attack,” he said. “But why, if they’re both preventable? Why, if everyone who dies is innocent?”

Nader said that in the past the environmental issues mostly covered were ones that had visual interest. The burning of the Cuyahoga River was widely covered because people found it interesting to see water on fire, for example.

While many forms of violence, then, haven’t received as much media coverage as other forms, regulating industries has improved the safety and health of the public over the years. Coalmine safety regulations have significantly decreased the number of cases of black lung. Further, work with pesticides, land erosion, and drinking water contamination has also improved.

“We’re programmed biologically to in effect say if it doesn’t pinch, it doesn’t hurt,” Nader said. “But the whole wave of toxics in our global environment indicates that we’ve got to have an intellect that can anticipate, foresee, and forestall even though it isn’t hurting us right now and it doesn’t come with the shock of the street crime, for example.”

Nader told students that many of them will face environmental issues after they graduate. He said it is important not to get discouraged.

“Look to your work as, ‘How are you going to feel when you’re 65?” he said. “Are you going to be proud of what you passed on to your children and grandchildren? Or are you going to say, ‘Geez, I had all these opportunities to make a more just society and world, and instead I was updating my profile on Facebook.’”

Nader offered several pieces of advice for college students to create a better world now. He said they could look at their college and make it better ecologically.

“When you make a model out of the college where you spend four years, you’re going to have some good habits coming out of the college,” he said.

He also recommended that students connect their courses to the real world. For example, in biology or chemistry class they can study water quality and make their findings public. In political science class they can create a voting registry or even take a civics skills course to learn how to put on a news conference and use the Freedom of Information Act.

Nader said it’s also a good idea to look at what other countries are doing better than the US and see how we can duplicate.

“Personal freedom is not civic freedom,” Nader said. “Civic freedom is having participation and power.”

Nader shared an ancient Chinese proverb illustrating the point: “To know and not to do is not to know.”