RFK Jr.: Democracy cannot survive with an uninformed public

Environmental advocate second speaker in Chistopher Reeve Lecture Series

By: Jake Uitti
   Democracy cannot survive with an uninformed public.
   That observation was at the crux of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s talk before a packed house at Princeton High School’s Trego-Biancassino Theater on Wednesday as part of the Second Annual Christopher Reeve Lecture Series, sponsored by the Princeton Public Library.
   Mr. Kennedy, son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, is a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for Hudson Riverkeeper and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance. He was named one of Time magazine’s Heroes for the Planet.
   The American public, he observed, knows more about Brad Pitt than it does about global warming.
   "The environment is not an issue that can be compartmentalized," Mr. Kennedy said. "The environment is intertwined with everything, particularly with democracy."
   A benchmark for democracy, he explained, is how the people of that democracy share their resources with the land, how they give back.
   "We did not inherit the earth from our ancestors," he said. "We are borrowing it from our children."
   The audience at Trego-Biancassino Theater enthusiastically applauded Mr. Kennedy, who signed copies of his book, "Crimes Against Nature," after his speech.
   During his talk, murmurs of exasperation could be heard rippling through the crowd as Mr. Kennedy rattled off the environmental transgressions of the Bush administration.
   Democracy is being threatened by the Bush administration’s "crony capitalism," Mr. Kennedy said, which is subverting the very principles America was built on and made this country revered by the world.
   Mr. Kennedy cited Herman Melville, Jack London and Henry David Thoreau as examples of what makes America great. He said it was these authors — these artists — who captured America’s wild spirit.
   All of the important religious epiphanies happened in the wilderness, he said, citing Moses on the Mountain and Jesus in the desert as examples. He noted that many of the parables in the Bible, such as the parable of the mustard seed, are related to nature and the environment.
   Mr. Kennedy asserted that President Bush has accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from coal and oil companies in exchange for abolishing or re-writing environmental laws. It is these practices, among others, he said, that have torn down the 230 years of disciplined leadership in American history for six years of poor management.
   "That’s the bitterest pill to swallow," he said.
   More than 18,000 people die every year because of air pollution, he said, noting, "That should be on the front page of every newspaper every day."
   Mr. Kennedy argued the media have given the Bush administration a free pass, and asserted that without an informed public, democracy cannot exist.
   "We have to keep big government at bay on our right and we have to keep big corporations at bay on our left — so we can walk the fine line of free-market democracy," he said. "To do that, we have to be informed. There is nothing radical about the idea of clean air and clean water."
   Investing in the environment, he said, is not just for "the sake of the birds and the fishes" but an investment in infrastructure.
   Mr. Kennedy cited several examples where pollution has gotten out of control.
   "Over one-sixth of American women have so much mercury in their wombs that their children are at risk for retardation and autism," he said. "We’re living in a science-fiction nightmare in this country where we can’t go fishing in the local fishing hole and come back home and eat the fish, because someone gave money to a politician."
   Mr. Kennedy, who was a close friend of Mr. Reeve and watched the TV show "24" with him regularly in the last two years of the Princeton-born actor’s life, said corporations are not intrinsically bad entities — but they must be separate and distinct from government.
   "I believe in the free market," he said. "But corporations should not be running the government. Corporations do not want the free market. They want to maximize their own profits."