Renowned environmentalist Lois Gibbs described her transformation from housewife to environmental activist to a crowded MacMillan 115 Thursday night. Her talk, entitled "Love Canal ... 30 Years Later," described the circumstances surrounding the 1978 toxic waste scandal that enveloped her upstate New York community of Love Canal and made her famous.
As a 27-year-old stay-at-home mom with a husband, house and family, Gibbs said, "I believed I had achieved the American dream." But when her usually healthy son developed symptoms ranging from asthma to epilepsy, Gibbs found out that his elementary school in their Niagara Falls neighborhood was built on 20,000 tons of chemical waste that was poisoning 900 families in the surrounding neighborhoods.
Gibbs later discovered a report completed two years earlier that described the toxic nature of land in Love Canal, but a plan to remedy the danger was not enacted because of its cost. Gibbs expressed indignation that authorities had allowed families go on living in an area with known health hazards. "How dare they!" she said of the "cost-benefit analysis" that had judged the health of Love Canal citizens not worth the investment.
Gibbs said Love Canal "taught us a lot about the way decisions are made in this country." She said many corporations focus on making profits and make decisions about the environment based on what they can get away with. She said decisions should be made to prevent as much harm as possible, not how much harm people think the environment can tolerate.
The world has a climate crisis today "because man thinks he knows" how much the planet can tolerate, Gibbs said. She and other members of her generation - the "gray-hairs" - would not experience climate change's full effects, she added. But, she told the students in the audience, "It's you and your children who are going to wonder where" to get clean drinking water.
Change is "not as easy as just screwing a new light bulb in," Gibbs said. People need to change government and public culture.
Gibbs also discussed the toxicity of polyvinyl chloride plastic and the work she has done to encourage companies to use safer packaging materials. Because corporations covet the brand loyalty of 18-to-25-year-olds, she said, they will be more likely to listen to students' calls for change.
Several students who attended said they found Gibbs' lecture inspiring. "I thought she had a good synthesis of consumer advocacy projects and government advocacy work," said Allison Ehrich Bernstein '09. "What she was talking about has to be fought on both fronts."
Amanda Labora '12 tagged along to the lecture with friends who are interested in environmental studies. But she said listening to Gibbs renewed her faith that individual people can bring about change. "I actually got chills," she said.
