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The Rice Thresher
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by Rachel Rustin Thresher Editorial Staff
The lecture, "A Contract With Our Future," was the fourth in this year's President's Lecture Series. Provost Eugene Levy began the evening by explaining President Malcolm Gillis' absence. "Unfortunately, President Gillis could not be here tonight," Levy said. "He's the victim of an insurrection by the campus radio station. He's under detention in the basement of KTRU, where he is being forced to listen to all manner of sounds of undetermined origin. "In fact, President Gillis is in Europe." Levy introduced interim Associate Provost Walter Isle, who introduced Kennedy, a professor at the Pace University School of Law. Isle described several cases Kennedy has worked on and read aloud from a book, The Riverkeepers, which Kennedy co-authored with John Cronin. "The battle to save the planet lies with each of us and progresses when we each resolve to take responsibility for preserving little bits of it," Isle quoted from the book. "Our planet is destroyed piece by piece and it will only be saved in the same manner." Isle talked about Kennedy's work with the Riverkeepers, a river protection group formed by citizens in 1966 living along the Hudson River. The founders of the organization were not typical environmentalists, Kennedy said. They were fighting to protect the river from pollution in their own community. The Riverkeepers began meeting to brainstorm ways to protect the Hudson River from pollution. After contemplating violence as a way to fight back, the group decided to use the law instead of breaking it. They found an old law stating that there was a penalty for polluting any waterway in the United States. The group also learned that the people who turned in the violators of the law received part of the fine. Although the law had been on the books for 80 years, the Riverkeepers did not know of it being enforced. The group sued the local polluters and started what is now a national organization. Kennedy has been the Riverkeepers' full-time prosecuting attorney since 1984 and he continues to fight against corporations who pollute. Kennedy explained that he works to protect the environment because it is the principal source of dignity in today's industrial age. "To me, the environment isn't about protecting nature for nature's sake, but recognizing that we protect those things because they are critical to our own enrichment," Kennedy said. Kennedy said many people on Capitol Hill have a false impression of how environmentalism affects the economy. They feel the country must chose between environmental protection and economic prosperity. "That is a false choice," Kennedy said. "In 100 percent of the situations, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy." Treating the planet as if it should be liquidated, as many want to do, would give a few years of pollution-based prosperity that our children would have to pay for, Kennedy said. "Environmental injury is deficit spending," Kennedy said. "It's a way of passing the cost of our generations' prosperity and loading it onto the backs of our children." He said he believes that a true free-market economy would benefit all involved, including the environment. "In a true free market, you can't make yourself rich without making other people rich, too, and without improving the quality of life and enriching your community," Kennedy said. The current system, he said, is a way "of making a few people rich by making everyone else poor." Corporations are benefiting by using their political clout to buy influence and the people's land is being damaged. Kennedy also discussed how the political system affects policy. "Democracy and the environment are intertwined," Kennedy said. "You don't get environmental protection except in a democracy. The reason for that is that the animals and the future generations don't vote. They don't have a voice in the political process, so the only way they are heard is if you have strong, locally based democracies where people can stand up." He said this accounts for the correlation between the level of tyranny and the level of environmental degradation in the countries of the world. Kennedy described how, even in a democracy, corporations use political clout to exempt themselves from federal environmental laws. When mining or logging occurs on federal lands, he said, companies pay virtually nothing to taxpayers. "In a true free-market system, it would be reflected in the price of [General Electric]'s product when it makes it to the marketplace," Kennedy said. "But what GE was able to do and every polluter is able to do is to use political clout to escape the discipline of the free market." Environmental laws, he said, are meant to force companies to internalize their costs by paying to bring their product to market. "When we destroy nature, we diminish ourselves," he said. Kennedy said nature enriches people through a variety of means: aesthetically, recreationally, culturally, spiritually and historically. Although Americans don't share a common color or culture, we do share values, a commitment to constitutional democracy and the land. "It's about recognizing that we have an obligation to the next generation and to the members of our society who don't participate in the political process," Kennedy said. Kennedy concluded by sharing a saying of the Dakota people often used by people involved with the environmental movement. "We don't inherit this planet from our ancestors," Kennedy said. "We borrow it from our children." He added some of his own words. "If we don't return to them something that is roughly the equivalent of what we received, they have the right to ask us some very difficult questions." The fifth lecture in the series, entitled "Guns, Germs and Steel," will be given April 10 by Jared Diamond, a writer and professor from the University of California at Los Angeles.
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