On the evening of November 11th, Goucher College welcomed guest speaker Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Kraushaar auditorium for a discussion titled “Our Environmental Destiny: How to Get There in Troubled Economic Times.” The preservation advocate and environmental attorney drew a large audience eager to hear his ideals on the benefits of environmental conservation.
Those present, mostly members of the student body, but also some Towson area residents, were open and attentive to his presentation. Though Kennedy digressed before getting into his speech, he commanded attention throughout the evening, in spite of, or possibly even as a result of, his strained voice, brought on by a vocal disorder known as spasmodic dysphonia.
Kennedy stated that environmentalism is something that benefits the community directly and should be given priority. “We are not protecting the environment so much for the sake of the fishes and the birds as we are our own safety, because nature, we recognize, is the infrastructure of our communities,” he said.
In spite of the importance of environmental conservation, Kennedy pointed out, there are many out there who still know very little about the subject. He named Exxon, Chevron, and the Ford Motor Company as some of the major corporations who, through the use of propaganda and public relations, have misled consumers and benefited from their ignorance. “They hire these crony tobacco scientists, we call them ‘bio-stitutes,’ who will come on TV…The big problem is we don’t have a media that works for our country. We have a media that is indolent and is negligent and has completely let down its obligations,” Kennedy said. We know more about celebrity gossip, he pointed out, than we do about the topics that are essential to us.
He expressed concern that the costs brought upon the public by the coal industry is the sort of information that isn’t making it into the mainstream media outlets. This industry’s slogan of “ ‘cheap, clean energy’ ” hides the fact that the publics’ tax money goes into 22in. asphalt highways needed by the coal trucks, compared to the 4in of the Massachusetts Turnpike, and the 4-6in of the New York City Thruway, according to Kennedy.
Kennedy added that the coal industry also fails to mention the costs to public health. He used the fishes in America, which are contaminated with dangerous levels of mercury, as prime example. “We’re looking at a science fiction nightmare,” Kennedy said. Not only do dangerous mercury levels limit a pass-time for some, including Kennedy himself, but it also puts the health of women and children at risk. He listed autism and blindness as just some of the diseases that can result from mercury exposure in the womb. Recounting a visit to the doctor’s office, he spoke of his own mercury level, and told that a woman with his levels of mercury in her womb would have children with cognitive impairment, and permanent brain damage. This conclusion was not a possibility, but a certainty of what his levels of mercury would mean to a woman with child. “These are part of the costs that we don’t see when they say it’s 9 cents a kilowatt.”
Taking a more positive tone, Kennedy delved into what countries have been gaining as a result of decarbonization. He mentioned Brazil who decarbonized its transportation system 18 years ago, and as a result of that choice “while the entire global economy is collapsed, Brazil continues to enjoy the longest most robust economic expansion in the history of Latin America.”
He closed his speech with plans for the environmental future of the United States. “What we want to do is build a market place,” he said. One example he provided of how to do this is the automobile company Better Place. The company’s goal is to transform every car in Israel into an electric car within the next three years. According to Kennedy, the market will consist of cars that can be taken to stations resembling car washes, known as sloughs, where the exhaustive battery will be taken out and replaced by a new one. Israel’s electric utility will then use these to store renewable power. Better Place’s cars will only cost about $10,000 each to manufacture, and the companies make money by charging a premium on the energy that the driver purchases over a contract for a number of years. There will be a tax on all the internal combustion engines which will be raised every year until the tax doesn’t have to exist.
Kennedy compared the program to a free cell phone given to a customer with charges for the plan, and believes it is a program that can succeed elsewhere, including the U.S. “If you listen to the big polluters, their indentured servants, what they’ll say to you is…we have to choose between economic prosperity on the one hand and environmental protection on the other and that is a false choice… In 100% of the situations good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy.”
RFK Jr. explains how to go green
Published: Thursday, December 10, 2009
Updated: Monday, August 9, 2010 20:08
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