It wasn’t long after Lloyd Marbet moved to Portland following his tour of duty in the Vietnam War that he became entrenched in a new battle – one that would last a lifetime.
Marbet became exceptionally alarmed with the dangers of nuclear power after reading the book “Perils of the Peaceful Atom.” Around the same time, Portland General Electric proposed building the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant near Rainier. It would be Oregon’s first foray into nuclear energy, and it was less than 50 miles away from the city where Marbet lived.
Marbet attempted to intervene by opposing PGE’s application, making a strong case against it. While the Trojan plant was eventually built, Marbet didn’t give up. He filed several ballot measures attempting to shut it down, costing PGE $4.5 million in counter-campaigns. When the measures failed, he resorted to onsite protests and civil disobedience, which for a while led to his arrest on a frequent basis.
By the time the Trojan plant shuttered in 1992 due to cracks in its steam generator, Marbet had cemented himself in history as the plant’s most persistent critic and one of Oregon’s most tenacious anti-nuclear activists.
Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Marbet lobbied in Salem on behalf of numerous bills aimed at regulating and preventing nuclear activities – most of which failed. He co-directed Don’t Waste Oregon, a organization devoted to addressing the nuclear fuel cycle and global warming; he joined the board of Hanford Action of Oregon; and he served on the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board. In 2000, Marbet ran an unsuccessful campaign for Oregon secretary of state on a platform of campaign finance reform.
But not all of Marbet’s battles were lost. He was a co-sponsor and chief petitioner of Ballot Measure 9 in 1984, which created the most stringent law governing the disposal of low-level radioactive waste in the U.S. He was also successful in stopping the addition of two additional PGE nuclear power plants in Eastern Oregon at Pebble Springs when a lawsuit he filed made its way up to the Oregon Supreme Court. The delays his case created have been credited with allowing nuclear activists the time needed to pass the state’s voter-approved moratorium on building any new nuclear power plant unless it’s approved by voters and there is a permanent place to store its radioactive waste. Now, nearly 40 years later, the moratorium still stands.
Since 2004, Marbet has served as the executive director of the Oregon Conservancy Foundation, and he’s continued his activism, pushing for action on climate change, campaign finance reform and a ban on corporate personhood.
About 10 miles from his home in Boring, Marbet holds a peace vigil each Saturday in Estacada. He’s also continued his fight against nuclear energy, testifying against legislation in recent years that sought to carve out an exemption to Oregon’s moratorium on new nuclear energy for small-scale nuclear reactors.
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The Dalai Lama awarded Marbet for being an “Unsung Hero of Compassion” in 2001.
What’s the most difficult lesson you learned in your activism?
Lloyd Marbet: Well this answer is quite short. I would call it lessons, learning patience and perseverance.
Can you elaborate on how you learned to be so patient and to persevere?
Marbet: In the process of doing activism, you, of course, want to achieve results. And that’s almost like pushing a rock up a hill, I think there’s a mythological example of that. And in my activism, I suffered defeat, a lot. So that’s what allows me to understand, first of all, how important patience is, and the other thing of course is perseverance – and that is kind of like a form of introspection. You have to ask yourself: Why am I suffering defeat? Why am I confronting these obstacles? And that of course challenges the truth of what your activism is about – and that’s where perseverance comes from. The truth is there; the perseverance is the lesson that I learned from it.
What kept you going at times when winning seemed impossible?
Marbet: I could find no other dignified alternative except to continue addressing the issue. And if you’re going to ask me for an example of that, I think the best example is offered in a book that I am now reading, by Dahr Jamail, entitled “The End of Ice.” In the last chapter of that book, which I highly recommend, he discusses what I had tried to explain about the lesson of perseverance, how you try to confront issues of such magnitude and of such darkness that you have to basically ask yourself, why is it that you continue doing what you do, and I think that the last chapter in that book is the best answer.
And what does Dahr say?
Marbet: I wanted to entice people to read that book. So I’m not going to give it away.
What do you think young activists today are doing right?
Marbet: That also is quite simple, I think standing up for what they believe in and speaking out. Those are two very important elements of activism.
What are they doing wrong?
Marbet: In a general sense, I do not think activists are doing anything wrong. What we confront are life and death issues. And those issues are difficult to address, and I don’t think that they can be resolved violently. But I do think that we must do everything that we can nonviolently, including committing civil disobedience where necessary, and that’s especially after all other peaceful avenues to change have been tried. And then most importantly, what Mahatma Gandhi said is true: We must “be the change that we wish to see in the world.”
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What other advice do you have for young activists today?
Marbet: I believe that truth is something that exists outside of ourselves. And so it’s important to always be open to finding the truth, and in the darkest hour, may it shine light on your way.
When you look back over your years of activism, can you describe a moment that you feel defined your legacy?
Marbet: In January of 1993, the Board of Directors of Portland General Electric decided to permanently close the Trojan Nuclear Plant. This was after they had defeated each of our ballot measures, in 1986, 1990 and 1992, spending, at that time, the most amount of money in the history of Oregon’s ballot measure campaigns. They broke their own spending record in each successive election. We did not shut down Trojan, but what we did do, in our perseverance, rising up again after each defeat and presenting the truth regarding the failures of nuclear power, ultimately shut Trojan down.
Several days after PGE announced the closure of Trojan, I happened to be walking in downtown Portland when a man came up to me who I did not know. He said that for many years he thought my activism was pure folly, and I was dead wrong about nuclear power, but now he knew that I had told the truth and he wanted to thank me for the long years of my work. He then shook my hand and I never saw him again, but I think that moment defined my legacy.
Advice For Young Activists is a periodic series where accomplished Oregon activists offer lessons learned to young people fighting for social and environmental justice today.