Robert F. Kennedy Jr. P'07 spoke forcefully on how public corruption is damaging the environment and decried the privatization of public goods during the Parents Weekend keynote lecture Friday.
Kennedy spoke briskly and passionately - without notes - for over an hour in a comprehensive, decidedly liberal talk that attempted to appeal to the religious, the intellectual, the capitalist and the maternal.
Kennedy, the son of former U.S. Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 after winning the California Democratic presidential primary, said he was trying to avoid being political, though he railed against the Bush administration for what he called "the rollback of decades of environmental law."
"The worst thing that could happen to the environment is if it becomes a province of a single political party," Kennedy said. He went on to cite a laundry list of environmental policy advisers in the Bush administration who were originally lobbyists or corporate officers for companies he described as "polluters."
Kennedy began working 22 years ago for the Riverkeeper organization, which sues polluters of the Hudson River, and is a lead attorney for the National Resources Defense Council. In addition to his legal advocacy, he co-hosts a radio talk show on Air America and has spoken and written extensively in defense of environmental causes. He has authored several books, most recently "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy."
He cited "an indolent, negligent press (that) has simply let down American democracy over the last decade" as one reason for government corruption, which he believes is a chief cause for environmental damage.
He tied that negligence to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, a regulation instituted in the 1920s by the Federal Communications Commission that required its broadcast licensees report in an unbiased manner. The regulation survived numerous constitutional challenges but was ultimately repealed in 1987 by a Republican-controlled board of FCC commissioners. "This was done by (former President Ronald) Reagan as a favor to the Christian right, who wanted to take over talk radio," Kennedy said, pointing out that right-wing talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh came on the airwaves in 1988 and claiming that the number of investigative journalists has declined by 88 percent since then.
"We're the best entertained, least informed people in the world," he said.
Kennedy said he does not think the country is divided by a fundamental difference in values, but rather that an ineffective media has misinformed much of the American electorate. "I get the same reaction (to my talks) from red-state audiences that I do from college liberal audiences," he said. "80 percent of Democrats are Republicans who just don't know what's going on."
Kennedy claimed public ignorance has allowed corporate interests to buy off political leaders' power to regulate the environment. "The only two states with freshwater fish clean enough to eat are Wyoming and Alaska, where the Republican-controlled legislature has refused to appropriate money to test the fish," he said.
He also spoke on his own efforts to fight polluters in civil courts, recalling how his organization convinced a conservative federal judge to enjoin strip mining in West Virginia.
Kennedy also made the case that free-market capitalism and environmental protection are not incompatible. "In 100 percent of situations, good environmental policy is good economic policy," he said. "Environmental injury is a form of deficit spending. ... We can't drain the pond to catch the fish."
"(People at the Riverkeeper organization) don't even consider ourselves environmentalists anymore; we think of ourselves as free marketeers," Kennedy said.
From the media to the environment, Kennedy said he believes government should protect "public trust goods" from corporations, which he said are rightfully focused only on profits. He also spoke on Americans' historical bond with the land, as evidenced in art and literature, and on the significance of nature in religion.
"We need an informed public that can recognize milestones of tyranny and an independent press that can speak truth to power," he said.
Negative, positive reaction
Writers and editors of the Spectator, Brown's conservative and libertarian publication, stood in the lobby of the Salomon Center as the audience entered, handing out copies of a special Parents Weekend issue that carried the headline "RFK Jr.: Another Joke from the Kennedy Family."
"Kennedy is a joke, whose mere existence is the real crime against nature," according to a Spectator column that accuses Kennedy of hyperbole in his criticism of the Bush administration and describes him as having "been consumed by his fervor to protect the environment."
"It is a shame that I am reconsidering my favorable opinion of the original RFK because of the idiocy of the son that he reproduced," the column reads.
Despite the time to read a "conservative" reaction before hearing Kennedy speak, many parents and students enjoyed the lecture.
"I was amazed at how articulate he was - at the passion of his convictions and the breadth of his knowledge," said Celine Woznica P'09.
"It was very exciting. (Kennedy's thinking) is how I think. All I can say is, 'thank you,'" said Anna Hutterlocher P'10.
