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Kennedy slams Bush policy on environment at Sundance
http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=64514 ^
Posted on 09/18/2005 1:17:57 AM PDT by lunarbicep
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."
Those who would protect the environment must toe a narrow line, Kennedy said.
"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.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1
http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=64514 ^
Posted on 09/18/2005 1:17:57 AM PDT by lunarbicep
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."
Those who would protect the environment must toe a narrow line, Kennedy said.
"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.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1
If all the stuff laid out were true, we and the 'enlightened' Dems that have shown us the way, are supposed to believe this is all GW's fault? Oh yeah, along with the floods, the hurricanes, and perhaps a volcano erupting somewhere or other.
