Thursday, November 20, 2003


Source: How to Save the World

 

rfkjrYesterday, Salon carried an interview by David Tabot with Robert Kennedy Jr., a long-time environmental campaigner. It's worth a complete read, but here are some key excerpts, emphasis mine:
  • 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.
  • [Bush attaches] stealthy, anti-environmental riders to must-pass budget bills. In that way they can alter statutes without debate or public scrutiny. Furthermore, a lot of the environmental regulations are arcane and highly technical and require strict enforcement by the various agencies. The Bush administration is suspending enforcement or changing agency policies without altering the regulations. A lot of the changes are illegal, and groups like the NRDC will sue them and we will win the lawsuits -- but that litigation process takes 10 or 12 years, and by that time the damage will be done.
  • The National Academy of Sciences predicts that 30,000 Americans a year will die because of the Bush decision [two weeks ago to abandon the 'source performance standards' that regulate air pollution].
  • [My father's] book on organized crime was titled "The Enemy Within" -- and I think the enemy within is still the greatest threat to our country, but it's no longer the Mafia, it's corporate control of our country and our communities, it's the erosion of democracy. As Teddy Roosevelt said, American democracy will never be destroyed by outside enemies -- but it can be destroyed by the malefactors of great wealth who subtly rob and undermine it from within. And I see that process happening today. And just as there were a lot of people who denied that the Mafia existed at that time, today there's a huge lobby that is denying the fact that our democracy is really threatened by corporate control.
  • I helped Arnold [Schwarzenegger] put together an environmental policy, which Arnold read and then adopted. And it's probably stronger than [Al] Gore's policy.
[How to Save the World]
5:06:56 PM    trackback []     Articulate []