Kennedy slams Bush policy on environment at Sundance

Speaking to about 70 paying Sundance guests on Saturday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. discussed his new book, "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country and Hijacking our Democracy."

"It is extremely critical of this president," Kennedy said of his book. "Not because he's a Republican, but because he did bad things on this issue. This is the worst environmental president in this nation's history."

Introducing Kennedy as part of Sundance's Tree Room Author Series, Robert Redford called Kennedy an articulate voice for environmental causes who has taken the time and spent the energy to study the issues and facts.

"Talk is not enough," Redford said. "It has to go to action and that is where we are right now."

Our economy, prosperity and humanity depend on a healthy, living Earth, Kennedy told those gathered.

"We are not protecting the environment for the sake of fishes and birds," he said. "We protect it because it enriches us. The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment."

Those who argue against investing in the environment try to persuade people that "the time has come in our nation's history where we have to choose between economic prosperity and the environment," he said, calling the argument a false choice. "In 100 percent of choices, good environmental policy is the same as good economic policy."

A study found that many Republicans were not aware of President Bush's stance on key issues, Kennedy said.

"What they found was that people who voted for Bush were dramatically misinformed," he said. "Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don't know what is going on."

Corporations and industries have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to support the Bush administration, and in return Bush has appointed corporate lobbyists as managers in many federal agencies, Kennedy said.

In turn, those managers rewrite policy, allowing corporations to shift the economic burden of production from themselves to the American people, he said.

"Some treat the planet as if it were a business in liquidation," Kennedy said. "We can generate a cash flow now, but our children are going to pay for the joyride. Environmental injury is deficit spending. It is a way of loading the cost onto the backs of our children."

That attitude must be "confronted with the idea that investing in the environment is investing in our wealth," he said. "There is no stronger advocate for free market capitalism than myself. The free market encourages self-sufficiency and not waste, and pollution is of course waste."

Those who pollute the air or foul water systems are using government subsidies, he said.

"They are constantly figuring out ways to have someone else pay their production costs," Kennedy said. "What all federal environmental laws were meant to do was force actors in the marketplace to bring the true cost of their product to the market. What we do is enforce the law. We are free marketers and we catch cheaters and polluters and force you to internalize the cost the way you internalize the profit.

"There is nothing wrong with corporations; I own a corporation. They are good for us, they put people to work, but they should not be running the government, because corporations don't want democracy and free market, they want profits."

Forty-eight states, including Utah, now have warnings on one or more fishing streams because of mercury and other industrial poisons found in fish, he said.

"I pay 30 bucks a year for a fishing license but I can't eat fish anymore," he said. "The fish belong to the people. Everyone has a right to use them. These people are privatizing the commons, stealing something that belongs to the commons. Millions of kids with asthma are being brought up in air too poisonous to breath, and millions of kids can't fish because someone paid politicians to privatize the commons."

"We have to hold big government at bay with the right hand and big corporate power at bay with the left hand and we need an educated public and an independent press and we no longer have that. We have an indolent and negligent press in this country that has absolutely let down this country and democracy. That is the primary threat to American democracy today."

Corporate news providers "don't have any ideology except line their own pocket books," he said. "Their only obligation is to their shareholders. How do they do that? By not giving us the news that we need to make decisions but by entertaining us with sex and celebrity gossip. They give us people like Michael Jackson, Laci Peterson, Kobe Bryant.

"We are the best-entertained and least-informed people on earth and that is a huge threat to democracy."

When nature is destroyed, "we diminish ourselves and impoverish our children," he said. "We preserve the forests because we believe trees have more value for humanity's standing than if we cut them down.

"I want my kids to be able to see men and women who use the same fishing methods as the Algonquin natives. I want my kids to see men and women in tiny open boats with ash poles and gill nets and understand they are part of something larger than themselves, part of a community. I don't want them to just see 400-ton factory trawlers that sit on the ocean without interface with the community, and no family farms, but companies raising animals in factories and treating animals and workers with unspeakable cruelty.

"I don't want my children to grow up in a world where we've lost touch with seasons and tides and the world before there were laptops."

God speaks to humans "nowhere with such texture, clarity, force, grace and joy as through nature," he said. "We know our Creator best by immersing ourselves in creation, particularly in wilderness, which is the undiluted work of deity."

All prophets in all religious traditions have "come out of the wilderness, and it was this daily connection to nature that gave them special access to the Almighty," he said.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Biography

The way Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has assumed command of the Water Keeper Alliance, you’d almost think he started the environmental movement on his own. But he actually stumbled into it as a result of a 1984 criminal conviction for heroin possession. A judge sentenced him to 800 hours of community service, which he satisfied with volunteer work for the Hudson River Foundation. After his 800 hours were used up, the organization (now operating as the Hudson Riverkeepers) hired Kennedy as its “chief prosecuting attorney.”

In the years since his drug conviction, Kennedy has also gone to work for the Natural Resources Defense Council and assumed a professorship in the law school at Pace University. Kennedy also started Pace’s environmental law clinic specifically to sue governments and businesses on behalf of Riverkeeper.

Robert Kennedy approaches environmental law with a brash, take-no-prisoners approach that tends to alienate many who might otherwise be his allies. After working with him on a $10 million New York City watershed agreement, Putnam County (NY) legal counsel George Rodenhausen told reporters that “he separates himself from good science at times in order to aggressively pursue an issue and win.”

In July 2003, a major U.S. pork producer obtained an indictment against Kennedy in Poland for committing slander during an inflammatory rant against the company’s Polish subsidiary. The indictment charges that Kennedy spouted “untrue information” and “consciously manipulated the facts” with the intent to “discredit the company.”

Kennedy’s harshest public thrashing to date, however, came from one of his closest colleagues, Riverkeeper founder Robert Boyle. Along with seven other Riverkeeper board members, Boyle resigned in 2000 after Kennedy insisted upon hiring a convicted environmental felon as the group’s chief scientist. At the time, Boyle told the New York Post that Kennedy “is very reckless,” and added that “[h]e’s assumed an arrogance above his intellectual stature.”

Reflecting on the episode later, Boyle gave the New York Times an apt summary of Kennedy’s attitude regarding his environmental crusades: “I thought he was thinking of himself and not the cause of the river,” Boyle said. “It all became his own greater glory.”

Background
President, Water Keeper Alliance; Chief Prosecuting Atty. Riverkeeper; Sr. Attorney, NRDC; Co-director, Pace Univ. Law School Env. Litigation Clinic; former Asst. District Attorney, New York City; Co-founder & Chairman, Keeper Springs Water

******

Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., often referred to as RFK Jr. or Bobby Jr., (born 1954) is the third of eleven children born to Ethel Skakel Kennedy and the late Robert F. Kennedy. He is a lawyer, environmentalist, and radio host on the Air America Radio network.

Kennedy graduated from Harvard University and obtained a law degree from the University of Virginia Law School. In 1984, he joined the River Keepers organization as an attorney and worked with that organization to prosecute polluters of the Hudson River. With fellow environmental attorney John Cronin, Kennedy has created a partnership between the Hudson Riverkeepers and Pace University Law School. Pace University's Environmental Law Clinic allows second and third year law students to try cases against Hudson River polluters (under a special court order). Kennedy has credited the energy and intelligence of the students, as well as access to the Pace law faculty and library, to several legal victories over clients represented by New York's richest and most prestigious law firms. Kennedy currently serves as a Senior Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC.

Kennedy divorced Emily Black and later married Mary Richardson. In 1983, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was arrested in South Dakota for heroin possession and went into drug treatment for his heroin addiction; he has been clean for over twenty years. Unfortunately, a year later, his brother David Kennedy died of a drug overdose of Demerol and cocaine.

Kennedy, who currently co-hosts Ring of Fire on Air America Radio, was considered to be a possible candidate for Attorney General of New York in 2006. However, on January 25, 2005, Kennedy announced that he had ruled out a candidacy for the office. Should Kennedy have decided to run, he likely would have faced off against former brother-in-law Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary.

Kennedy had written various books and articles on environmental issues, including The Riverkeepers and Crimes Against Nature. He contributes to Sierra Club publications, such as Sierra, as well as to reports authored by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and president of Waterkeeper Alliance.

******

July 2005

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s article claiming a massive conspiracy between the government and drug companies to "poison a generation of American children."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.