Ask any young, left-leaning, politically savvy guy or gal what they think about Ralph Nader, and their answer will probably be a unique blend of reverence and resentment.
An American activist lawyer and three-time presidential candidate, Nader is used to a fight. From going up against General Motors on car safety in the sixties, when the mere concept of wearing a seatbelt was a joke, to inspiring groups of bright-eyed government lobbyists-known as “Nader’s Raiders”-to advocate for countless environmental and consumer protection issues, he has left his mark on U.S. policy for the last four decades.
Although he drew scorn from the left for allegedly “splitting” the Democratic vote in the last two elections, inadvertently helping usher in eight years of the greater of two evils, Nader is a survivor, and he’s still fighting. In advance of his talk about how social justice can provide the answer to climate change this Friday at Ryerson University, Nader sat down with The Varsity to talk about what’s getting him mad right now (hint: it’s black, slick, and will soon be gone).
The Varsity: I want to ask you about something that’s on everybody’s minds right now, the energy crisis. What happens when the oil runs out? Will alternative fuels really be able to replace the amount of energy the world is currently consuming?
Ralph Nader: Yes, but that depends on a few variables. One is that as long as the price keeps going up, the more they find oil that it was not [previously] economic to drill for or produce, offshore or onshore. And that’s true for natural gas, too, and coal. Unfortunately, there are far more fossil fuels available in the world than we can environmentally utilize. So, the problem is not are we running out, but are we melting down. If you look at what’s going on in the Arctic and the northern provinces, it’s not theoretical at all. It’s extremely accelerating the melting of the permafrost and ice caps.
The second thing is that as the price of oil goes up, solar becomes far more immediately economic. And of course, it’s always been superior environmentally and also superior geopolitically, because it wouldn’t get us into wars.
V: But as superior as solar is politically and environmentally, there isn’t enough of it to sustain the kind of lifestyle that we currently lead.
RN: Well, actually, there is. It’s just a matter of vested interests blocking it. I mean, wind power alone could produce all the power the U.S. needs. I define solar as wind power, biomass, like industrial hemp, which you can grow in your country but we can’t grow in ours, photovoltaic, solar, thermal. There’s huge amounts of solar; the problem is, why should the oil, coal, and gas industry do anything but obstruct its advance?
Canada has enormous resources of wind power, geothermal power, biomass, but you have the same vested interests up there. That could be Canada’s curse-you have too many underground fossil deposits. If you had a scarcity scenario, like China, maybe you’d move faster.
V: In our prime minister’s appearance on CNN, he warned softly against drilling in the Arctic, and offered the U.S. oil from tar sands as a kind of replacement. Do you think that the Canadian government standing up to Bush and his administration as much as it could be? What role do you see Canada playing at the upcoming UN Summit on Climate Change in Montreal?
RN: I don’t think Canada [is standing up to Bush], and I think part of the reason is Ralph Klein and Alberta. Your provincial power is more powerful than our states in such matters. You’ve got to show your independence from the United States, and say energy’s too important for world peace, too important for the environment, too important for economic efficiency, to follow the Bush administration. This is a government marinated in oil.
Ottawa’s got to be more assertive. If Chretien can say no to Bush in the invasion of Iraq, then everything else is easier. That’s the hardest thing Canada’s ever done.
V: What will happen globally to the Kyoto Protocol? British PM Tony Blair recently criticized it, and the Gleneagles G8 Summit statements downgraded climate change from a “threat” to a “challenge.”
RN: Kyoto was designed for failure. It excludes India and China, and the U.S. has backed off…There has to be a new imprimatur against global warming. You start with efficiency for the pocketbook, then pollution control, then you go to reduction. People are more concerned about the price of gas than anything else.
V: How is taking charge of our citizenship the key to solving our environmental problems?
RN: Well, you have to ask, where is the initiative going to come from to convert to energy efficiency and solar? You’ve got to countervail corporate pressure on the government with organized citizen demand, consumers, small businesses, people who will benefit from efficiency. Right now, sellers of energy love SUVs because they sell more gasoline. They have a vested interest in wasteful technology. Do you think the coal companies want a 50 per cent improvement in generating capacity? Why would they?
V: Are you planning on running for president in 2008?
RN: It’s too early to tell. But I am committed to and engaged in a lot of electoral reform activities, and I still want to break the two-party election dictatorship.
V: Do you ever think it might be more profitable to try to reform from outside instead of from within the system, for example, by returning to advocacy and lobbying?
RN: Well, this is reform from outside, a form of outside. You have to have a lever, a foothold inside if you’re going to mobilize from outside, because it becomes too abstract for people just to say electoral reform.
If you put enough pressure from without [on the process], like more competitive candidates, it’ll start changing it from within. The only language they understand is when they lose votes.
