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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Environment |
KENNEDY: No, we just made a general commitment that we were going to work together [on issues such as] this epidemic of chronic disease that is now disabled about 60% of our kids. When my uncle [John F. Kennedy was] President, only 6% of Americans had chronic disease.
It's hard to find a kid today that's not been damaged by it, and it's coming from our food supply, from pollution & toxics in our environment, and mainly from corruption in our government that allows that to happen.
The most profitable thing today in America is a sick child. Everybody is making money. The hospitals are making money. The pharmaceutical companies are making money. And we need to end those perverse incentives. We need to get the corruption out of FDA, out of NIH, out of the CDC and make them function as they're supposed to function, which is to protect public health and particularly children's health.
On the Hudson, Kennedy brought a series of lawsuits against municipalities and against industries, including Consolidated Edison and General Electric to stop discharging pollution and to clean up legacy contamination.
In 1995, Kennedy advocated for repeal of legislation during the 104th Congress which he considered unfriendly to the environment. In 1997, Kennedy wrote "The Riverkeepers" [book with John Cronin].
KENNEDY: I'm trying to unite the country. I'm not going to pick out people and say that they're evil, they should be cancelled, or whatever. I'm a Democrat. I know what my values are. I've always spoken to Republicans my entire life. During all the years that I was a leader of the environmental movement, I was the only environmentalist who regularly went on Fox News. I think the kind of tribalism that [the media] is advocating is poisonous to our country. I think it's toxic. It's created a polarization, a division, in this country that is more dangerous than at any time since the American Civil War.
Q: Isn't there a difference between disagreement and--
KENNEDY: I believe in the same America that my father and my uncle believed in--I don't care if they're Republican or independent, or what they are.
Kennedy has also promised, if elected, to protect wild lands by curbing logging, oil drilling and mining and containing suburban sprawl.
"We will become a global advocate for rainforest preservation and marine restoration," his campaign website states. "We will rethink development policies that promised economic growth while ignoring ecological sustainability, and ended up delivering neither."
Over time, perceptions of Kennedy shifted from widely respected environmental crusader to conspiratorial outcast. Pharmaceutical companies were pushing harmful substances on children, he argued, and U.S. regulators were lying about it the same way they had about river pollution.