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I think I would die and go to heaven if Bobby could pry himself loose from the Democratic-Fascist Party. I love the guy to itty bitty bits. He's like my father, with a sense of faithfulness about certain things that is unbreakable, even when the price is too dear, when his suffering has to be more than most of us think bearable.
SolFest XIV: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brings his environmental message to UkiahIn one minute, Ms. Groupthink her own self will be mounting the podium. I wish I were there to egg her.
26 September 2010
Listeners packed the seats under a massive shade by the main stage and stood in the hot sun to hear Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak Saturday at the 14th annual SolFest, held at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds in Ukiah.
Kennedy is an attorney specializing in environmental law, and was named a "hero for the planet" by Time Magazine in 2005, for his success helping the New York-based Riverkeeper organization restore the Hudson River, and has written several books.
Punctuated by applause and approving cheers, Kennedy spent a little more than an hour challenging the idea he says is pushed by "corporate crony capitalism" that environmentally friendly business can't be prosperous.
"One of the things that they've said, and that they've kind of ingrained in the American consciousness, is this mantra that we have to choose between environmental protection on one hand and economic prosperity on the other, and that is a false choice; in 100 percent of the situations, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy," he said.
Kennedy said continuing to use coal and other carbon-generating energy sources "is to treat the planet as if it were a business in liquidation," and could create "a few years of pollution-based prosperity," and generate "instantaneous cash flow, and the illusion of a prosperous economy, but our children are going to pay for our joy ride."
He continued, "Environmental injury is deficit spending; it's a way of loading the costs of our generation's prosperity onto the backs of our children."
Kennedy said as an environmental advocate he has spent 25 years combating the notion that "investment in our environment is a diminishment of our nation's wealth. It doesn't diminish our wealth; it's an investment in infrastructure."
He spoke at length about a "$200 million, 20-year propaganda campaign by the coal brothers and big oil and all that phony infrastructure, that has persuaded Americans that global warming doesn't exist, and abetted, incidentally, by a negligent and indolent press that we have in this country."
He went on to decry the idea that the "liberal media" exists, and said, "You can't have a democracy very long if you don't have an informed public."
He opined, "80 percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don't know what's going on."
Kennedy spent most of his time onstage talking about the "costs of carbon on our society," which he said is part of "our addiction to Saudi oil."
First, he talked about the harms of nuclear power, saying industry defenders cited no nuclear accidents since Chernobyl, a 1986 disaster involving nuclear fallout that spread from a series of explosions at the nuclear power plant in Ukraine, and is considered the worst nuclear accident in history.
The audience laughed at Kennedy's reference to the argument that there had been no nuclear accidents since, and Kennedy went on to say Russian scientists recently reported 965,000 people died as a result of that accident, as opposed to the few hundred reported initially.
The audience responded with sounds of astonishment and dismay.
"I always say, If you're safe, then get an insurance policy just like everybody else in this country.'"
Insurance companies are the "final arbiter of risk" in a capitalist society, he said, adding that an insurance policy for the nuclear industry would be "so high that (they) wouldn't be able to operate."
He cited the Price-Anderson Act as absolving the nuclear industry of responsibility for the costs of accidents at nuclear power plants.
"So they shifted all the costs to us - to you and me," telling listeners to check their homeowner's insurance policies, where he said they would find a clause that says the policy doesn't cover radiation from nuclear accidents.
"It's not a bunch of hippies in tie-dyed T-shirts from Mendocino with the hula-hoops saying you're (nuclear industry) not safe; it's guys in suits from AIG and Wall Street who are saying, We're not going to insure you,'" Kennedy said, over the audience's laughter and applause.
He went on to talk about the coal industry, first saying taxpayers fund the frequent and expensive maintenance of roads in West Virginia used by 90,000-pound coal trucks, to the tune of "millions" per inch of asphalt per mile of road.
"It's not the coal industry that's paying that cost, it's the people of the state and the people of our country - some of these are federal highways," he said.
Kennedy said part of the reason high-speed rail can't happen is "because coal gondolas are so heavy they've warped virtually every rail track in our country."
He continued, "That's part of the cost of coal they don't tell you about when they say it's 11 cents a kilowatt."
A five-year study issued by the National Academy of Science and the National Research Council showed every freshwater fish in the nation is contaminated with mercury, Kennedy said, adding that 80 percent of the mercury came from coal-burning power plants.
"We're living today, in our country, in a science fiction nightmare," he said.
A study on the Environmental Protection Agency's website says the healthcare costs from ozone particulates in the air is $156 billion - "from coal plants," Kennedy said.
"The big threat to our country ultimately is coming from corporate control turning us back into a feudal plutocracy, and this is exhibit one: they're privatizing all the public trust resources," he said, referring to fish and streams people have to pay to use.
More "costs of coal" Kennedy enumerated included the sterilization of one-fifth of the lakes in the Adirondacks by acid rain and destruction of the forests in the Appalachians from "Georgia to Northern Quebec."
"We are literally cutting down the Appalachian Mountains," he said, painting a verbal picture of 22-story machines that cut the tops off of the mountains to get at the coal seams and scrape the rubble into streams and orchards.
"If this happened in California people would be in jail," he said, referring to the flattening of 1.4 million acres and what he said the EPA called the burial of 2,000 miles of rivers and streams. "But because it's a poor, beaten state with virtually no democracy left, it just happens."
Kennedy said he and Riverkeeper sued the coal companies responsible and won, but not before the companies changed the law so that dumping debris in waterways requires only a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which he said can be easy to get.
"This is not just the destruction of the environment; it is the subversion of American democracy," he said. "If we had a true free-market economy in our country, where you couldn't get subsidies, nobody would be using anything but solar or wind, and coal would be a laughable joke, and nuke and all these others."
He said the wind in the Midwest could power the North American grid three times over, even if everyone owned an electric car.
Obstacles to rebuilding the grid, he said, include "putting a price on carbon," upgrading the transmission system to allow wind or solar energy generated to be distributed throughout the country and creating a "unified system" that would allow greater access to the grid.
Solar power, he said, would "democratize" the country's power system.
"The political system tends to mirror the economic system," he said. "If you have a marketplace where every American turns into an energy entrepreneur, every home into a power plant, and we can power this country based on American initiative and resourcefulness and intelligence rather than Saudi oil, it creates a resilient system," he said.
Solar, he said, "is free energy forever," and was applauded wildly.
Building the infrastructure needed to decarbonize the nation - at $3 billion per gigawatt - Kennedy said would cost $3 trillion, "less than the Iraq war."
He talked about competition with China, which is planning to increase its wind power deployment by 20,000 percent and solar power by 1,200 percent over five years.
Kennedy said America has spent the last 50 years "addicted to Saudi oil," and "they (China) want us in a position where we're going to spend the next 50 years addicted to Chinese wind turbines and solar panels."
In closing, Kennedy said people often asked him what is the most important environmental law.
"I always said, it's free market capitalism," he said. "The reason for that is that the marketplace inspires efficiency," defining pollution as waste.
"In a true free market, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community."
Touted as the "greenest show on earth," SolFest features speakers, vendors, information booths, workshops and activities centered around environmentally friendly practices. It continues today.
On the main stage today are speakers Ed Begley Jr. on "Live simply so that others can live simply," at 10 a.m.; David Orr on "sunlight, sustainability, security - a necessary marriage," at noon; Kent Halliburton on "funding renewable energy and energy," at 1 p.m.; and Arianna Huffington on "Third-world America and community building," at 4 p.m.
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