Oregon daily emerald., November 16, 1978, Section A, Page 3, Image 3

Environmental lawyer tells students
Activists should concentrate on legislation
By CATHERINE SIEGNER
Of the Emerald
Environmental activists should
avoid fighting local, specific is
sues and concentrate instead on
getting good initial regulations
and legislation, environmental
lawyer Joseph Brecher told a
large crowd at the law school
Wednesday.
Brecher. a Golden Gate Uni
versity law professor and rep
resentative of the Sierra Club and
Friends of the Earth, said litiga
tion is the "least effective way to
use the limited resources of time
and money environmental groups
have.
"It’s difficult to do a good job
and make a good living as an en
vironmental attorney," he said.
“For each one of us, there are 10
to 20 people on the other side
with the ability to get their hands
on expert testimony and who
have access to high places."
Brecher recalled that prior to
1969 there was no National En
vironmental Policy Act (NEPA),
no strip mnining legislation or En
dangered Species Act.
"Today we have a huge body
of regulations to implement these
statutes," he added. "If any of
you have had the misfortune of
looking at the Federal Register,
you know the sheer volume of the
body of literature.
"But pushed back in there are
decisions that can determine how
the air smells today,” Brecher
cautioned.
One problem in past environ
mental lawsuits has been the
''burden of proof” placed on
groups attempting to come into
court and prove that some harm
may result from a specific project,
he said.
“Proponents of a potentially
harmful project should have to
prove that it is not harmful.”
Brecher said two things are on
the environmentalist’s side.
"We re right — that’s ail there is to
it. And I think the public perceives
that. The second thing is that
people are on our side. Legis
lators know we can turn out a lot
of cheering crowds.”
Often the population in a rural
area will take an anti
environmental stand, Brecher
said, because there appears to
be a conflict between the envir
onment and the local economy.
“We find ourselves in painful
clashes with people who say they
need a project to keep the local
economy going. Environmen
talists then seem to be in the posi
tion of an outside minority trying
to impose its will on the local ma
Author accuses schools
of crushing student creativity
Rebels should not be suppres
sed in the gutless classrooms ot
America and should be taught by
teachers seeking to subvert
domestication, said writer and
educator Jonathon Kozol in the
EMU BaHroom Wednesday night.
Kozol, who taught in Cuba for
nine months in 1976 and 1977,
praised the Cuban system for en
couraging irreverence and practi
cality in its students. He con
demned American schools for
squashing creativity and contact
with the real world.
“The world is not going to re
member the good American kids
who learned to file in lines in
school corridors and later
marched off to war," said Kozol.
So-called well-adjusted kids,
he said, are only adjusted to in
justice in the United States.
Kozol picked the school at
which he taught in Cuba on the
baas of its name. Originally to be
called the Che Guevara School,
the name was changed before its
dedication in 1970 to The Martyrs
of Kent State School.
Kozol said students were
taught political theory and sci
ences in the morning and in the
afternoon applied their science
lessons in work they did in the
fields around the school.
He contrasted this approach to
education to a school in Harlem
where he said "innovative”
educators and black students
play simulation gftmes such as,
"What life would be like if I lived in
the ghetto?"
Kozol called "spectacular” a
1961 Cuban program which, ac
cording to UNESCO statistics,
reduced the rate of adult illiteracy
from 25 percent to 4 percent.
He said UNESCO statistics
show a 20 percent illiteracy rate
in the adult American population
with a 44 percent rate among
black American adults.
“How can a black American go
out and look for work if he can't
even read a want ad?” asked
Kozol, calling for a national
crusade against adult illiteracy.
A long-time critic of the Ameri
can educational system, Kozol.
42, was fired from the Boston
school system in 1964 after he
read a Langston Hughes poem to
his class of 4th graders. School
officials said he was fired be
cause of "curriculum
deviation”—-the Hughes poem
was on the 9th grade, not the 4th
grade reading list.
Kozol described his Boston
teaching experiences in his Na
tional Book Award winning
Death at an Early Age."
His new book, "Children of the
Revolution" details the lessons
he learned teaching in Cuban
schools.
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jority."
Brecher discussed the Alaska
Lands Bill as an example of this.
“When members of Congress
went to Alaska, they found per
son after person favored de
velopment of Alaska and re
sented outsiders telling them
what to do with the land."
“The legislators opposed to
development in Alaska are from
Ohio and Arizona and places like
that,” he said. “But the members
from Montana and Alaska were
implacably opposed to what they
called instant wilderness.’ ”
"Wilderness has been there a
tong time,” Brecher quipped.
“The only instantaneous thing is
the oil derricks sweeping down
into the area!”
Brecher has been working
since 1973 to get the U.S. En
vironmental Protection Agency to
require installation of “scrubbers”
in coal-fired generation facilities.
The scrubbers help remove sul
phur dioxide from the air.
“There are definite health ef
fects from sulphur dioxide,” he
said. “There are also ecological
effects. Sulphates come back
down to earth as an ‘acid rain’
which has ruined some eastern
lakes at high elevations. It has
turned the pH so low the lakes
can’t support fish life."
“In the Southwest, power com
panies build plants on Indian re
servations and pay the Indians for
the coal. Then they send the
power to Phoenix, L.A., and El
Paso through transmission lines.
“Southern California Edison
says we’ve got clean, cheap
energy,’ Well, sure — the pollu
tion is falling on the Navajos!”
Brecher is going east in a few
weeks to hear EPA’s final deci
sion on the scrubbers. "They've
had five years to think about it,
and last month they said maybe,
perhaps, we may have enough
data to make a decision.’ "
“Well, I’m going to Washington
to see if they’re really going to do
it.”
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