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While
much of America turned their attention this weekend to further
endless coverage of cable news reporters standing in heavy
rain and wind making powerful determinations that 'this
weather is ferocious', Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addressed an
issue close to his heart, the environment. And he didn't
pull any punches. Speaking on Friday at Unity College's
40th anniversary celebrations here in Maine, Kennedy called
the Bush administration 'the worst environmental White House
we've had in American history, bar none.'
 Recently
Kennedy courted controversy when he declared in a blog on
HuffintonPost.com that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour
as well as President Bush held some degree of responsibility
for Hurricane Katrina given both leaders' roles in dismissing
issues of global warming and U.S participation in the Kyoto
Protocol. While asserting a direct connection between
failing to sign Kyoto and Hurricane Katrina emerging in
the Gulf Coast is questionable, Kennedy still made an important
point about how the current administration has consistently
and clearly placed environmental issues on a low-priority.
Kennedy,
aligned with several environmental alliances but perhaps
most prominently the Hudson Riverkeeper organization which
works on improving water quality in New York's Hudson River,
referred to the prevailing government's concession of environmental
concerns to corporate and other interests as 'deficit spending'
that would leave future administrations and generations
to 'pay for our joy ride'. Specifically, he cited the Clinton
administration's establishment of new rules regarding the
restriction of mercury levels, and their direction to the
Justice Department to pursue the 75 worst offending plants
in America for excessive pollution. Both the rules and the
lawsuits were scrapped with Bush in office, and the over
$100 million in related industry corporate donations made
to his successive Presidential campaigns have to be considered
key in such developments. Indeed as Kennedy pointed out,
some of those corporate donors were the same still under
indictment from the previous administration for environmental
misdeeds. The year he was first elected, Bush also famously
appointed an oil and mining lobbyist as deputy secretary
of the Interior, thus placing an individual arguably connected
to the creation of pollution in a position directly related
to regulation of that pollution.
But
Kennedy also pointed blame at what he cited as an ineffective
media, one that fails to regularly report on environmental
issues and, when it does, often fails to do so accurately.
In this he dismissed those who would argue that a liberal
bias exists in the media, especially given the existence
of an entire Fox News Network that represents conservative
views, Kennedy adding in his speech that the word 'conserve'
certainly held no connection to 'conservative'.
 As
outspoken and inflammatory as many might consider Kennedy's
position on the environment to be, most are far too quick
to dismiss the issue as one worthy of our attention, even
as this writer will concede that troop deaths abroad, economic
hardship and local hurricane devastation would seem to be
matters that demand more immediate action. That said, failure
to address these issues in the short'term will, as obvious,
well founded (and non'corporate funded) scientific fact
tells us, cause more long term disruption, economic turmoil
and death than any current crisis has the potential to fulfil.
For
a comprehensive account of the Bush administration's economic
track record, visit the Natural Resources Defence Council
at www.nrdc.org/bushrecord
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Reading is out every Monday.
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