Pacific Views

Bobby Kennedy Jr on the Environment

Salon has a fascinating interview with Bobby Kennedy, Jr. about the environment and in particular about how he is dedicated to finding a way to dump Bush to try to stop the damage he is doing to our world.

The NRDC Web site lists over 200 environmental rollbacks by the White House in the last two years. If even a fraction of those are actually implemented, we will effectively have no significant federal environmental law left in our country by this time next year. That's not exaggeration, it's not hyperbole, it is a fact.

As I say in the Rolling Stone article, many of our laws will remain on the books in one form or another. But we'll be Mexico, which has these wonderful, even poetic, environmental laws, but nobody knows about them and nobody complies with them because they can't be enforced.

Bobby Kennedy is angry and ready to do something about it. He believes that Americans will also be angry when they understand the extent of the betrayal.

But in the last six months, I've made a shift -- I'm going to be doing more public stuff, because I believe that we win this debate if the public understands it. And it seems so overwhelming a battle a lot of the time, because industry has so much money to get their arguments out there, and we have so little. But as Winston Churchill said, you just have to keep talking about it, you have to keep telling the story again and again and again. And ultimately the public will realize the truth. And I see that as my role. I'm going to do everything I can to tell this story to as many people as possible, with the hope that at some point the public will recognize the truth, and when they do, they'll share the same kind of anger and indignation that I feel.

I believe that George W. Bush is stealing my country, that he is absolutely stealing the environment from our children, stealing the breath from my children's lungs and stealing the Bill of Rights, selling off the sacred places, and trashing all the things I value about America. Our reputation across the globe, the love and admiration that other peoples and nations once had for America, the safety of our nation, the security of our children, the economy, the ability of our children to educate themselves for the future -- it's all being liquidated by this president for his wealthy friends and contributors. And I am so furious at this man for stealing the thing I love most, which is America, my country.

Well, Bobby, I for one am really glad to see that you are going to spend time on this. And I'll do my part to help you however I can.

This is an excellent interview and definitely worth your time. Because it is a Salon article, it is a subscription article - but the Salon policy is to allow you to get a day pass simply by clicking through the ads. I also urge you to pick up a subscription if you can afford it as we need to support the media outlets that do a credible job helping educate the citizenry.

Posted by Mary at November 19, 2003 03:12 AM | TrackBack