Primary Source Documents

Ralph Nader Takes on Pollution^*

Ralph Nader is best known as an advocate for consumer rights. But by 1970, Nader was also addressing environmental issues. He was concerned that corporate greed, which could saddle the public with shoddy goods, also imposed enormous hidden expenses on the environment. His solution in almost every case was an aroused public willing to force government to impose needed rules and regulations in the public interest.

Three additional points deserve the attention of concerned citizens:

First, a major corporate strategy in combating anti-pollution measures is to engage workers on the company side by leading them to believe that such measures would threaten their livelihood. This kind of industrial extortion in a community -- especially a company town -- has worked before and will work again unless citizens anticipate and confront it squarely.

Second, both industry spokesmen and their governmental allies (such as the President's Science Adviser, Lee DuBridge) insist that consumers will have to pay the price of pollution control. While this point of view may be an unintended manifestation of the economy's administered price structure, it cannot go unchallenged. Pollution control must not become another lever to lift up excess profits and fuel the fires of inflation. The costs of pollution control technology should come from corporate profits which have been enhanced by the use of the public's environment as industry's private sewer. The sooner industry realizes that it must bear the costs of cleanups, the more likely it will be to employ the quickest and most efficient techniques.

Finally, those who believe deeply in a humane ecology must act in accordance with their beliefs. They must so order their consumption and disposal habits that they can, in good conscience, preach what they actually practice. In brief, they must exercise a personal discipline as they advocate the discipline of governments and corporations.

The battle of the environmentalists is to preserve the physiological integrity of land, air, and water. The planet earth is a seamless structure with a thin slice of sustaining air, water, and soil that supports almost four billion people. This thin slice belongs to all of us, and we use it and hold it in trust for future earthlings. Here we must take our stand.

1		In the 1970s a popular bumper sticker declared "Out of work? Hungry? Eat an environmentalist." How does Nader's first point reflect on that sentiment?
2		What does Nader seem to assume is the primary motivator of corporate behavior? Do you agree? What might more conservative economists suggest is the primary motivator of corporate behavior?
3		What does Nader see as the relationship between the government and corporations?
4		Why does Nader believe that the burden of environmental cleanup costs will spur more environmentally responsible corporate behavior?
5		In what ways is Nader an idealist and what ways a realist in his approach to the environment?