Robert F Kennedy Jr. was detained at the San Francisco Airport today as Mayor Kevin Johnson sweat it out biding time stalling nearly 500 Greenwise team members waiting in Sacramento to hear Mr. Kennedy speak at 10:30AM, that took a turn for the Clockwise.
Former All-Star basketball professional Johnson, who had made a living being on time to the whistle; found himself first graciously buying time by fetching his stealth support staff Lauren Altdoerffer to run video of Diane Sawyer’s coverage of China’s corner on the green economy.
When that was finished, and the applause ended, stares at the door brought no Mr. Kennedy.
Another video rolled to bide more time with Steven Colbert testing Van Jones on how green jobs are just the solution to the dilapidated economy. But still no Kennedy.
UC Davis Dean Currall surreptitiously had some slides with him to show of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent International Global Climate Summit held at UC Davis Monday and Tuesday culminating in the R20 government- private partnership at the subnational level were perfect to share and discuss………and then…..
The Clock struck noon
In he stammered with a strong and deliberate gait. The bold, and as Mr. Johnson cautioned perhaps ‘unfreshened’ Mr. Kennedy belted in such that he was greeted by the crowd’s backs- as was the unfortunate preparation in though that everyone had been poised for a standing ovation per Kevin Johnson’s direction, they faced a different door.
Kennedy was indeed wearing the demeanor the Mayor had told the crowd he thought the polished lawyer activist might after the airport encounter.
Perhaps this fueled the 25 year veteran of activist-meets-environmental policy choice of words when he referred to the:
- leadership of the United States as being run by ‘troglodytes',
- the reporting of Fox News as having been by ‘toadies,’
- scientists whom would agree to shill for polluting corporations for a price as ‘biostitutes,’
- and those within the political process as ‘sock puppets’ of corporations that were holding the United States back from the green economy that other leading nations are outpacing us with.
The Environment is the Economy, Stupid
Kennedy praised Mayor Johnson and his Greenwise initiative for standing up against the notion that to choose between the environment and the economy was a false choice, and an unfounded excuse put in place by those who would hold the nation back from progress.
He preached to the choir “Good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy in that it preserves the assets of our community. The toadies of Fox News treat our planet as though it were a liquidation."
Kennedy heeded,"Our children will pay for our generation’s joy ride. We must constantly confront the notion that it doesn’t diminish our wealth to protect our environment, its an investment into our infrastructure.”
ExxonMobile’s tobacco like disinformation tactics
Kennedy poised the problem of how we can as a world begin to extract, deploy, and distribute in an environmentally responsible way as to not compromise the aspirations of sustainable living.
He lashed out at Koch Enterprises and ExxonMobile’s tobacco like 200 million dollar disinformation tactics calling out the guilty parties who deployed the wrong information to confuse the public over whether a scientific concept published in peer-reviewed journals since the early 1800s was some kind of hoax.
True Free Market Free Energy Future
Coupled with the disinformation on global warming, Kennedy said was the war over the perception of the reality of a free market. “They [monopoly capitalists] hate free market capitalism. They lay the groundwork for monopolistic cleptocracies. What they want is just the opposite of a free market, the control of the government by corporations.”
Kennedy disclosed that the United States uses 1000 gigawatts of electricity at peak power. At 3 billion dollars for the construction of a power plant producing a gigawatt, this is 3 trillion dollars.
This means that for less than the cost of the current wars we are engaged in, estimated to be 4.3 Trillion by 2014, we could essentially drive down the price of clean energy production such that it becomes an affordable basic and universal service deemed ‘free.’
The meaning of ‘free’ here would be that once the power plants are constructed, unlike coal and oil, there are no ongoing mining costs, no oil spills in the ocean, or coal ash in our fresh water streams, and no health related costs over and above basic management and maintenance.
Borrowing a billion a day to buy imported oil at a billion dollars a day
If spending in the nation is an issue, we ought to look at how much money we borrow to buy oil Kennedy led. At the rate of a billion a day to import oil a day, we are looking at a figure of 1.3 trillion dollars per year as Terry Tamminen (2010) documents in his book Lives Per Gallon. Audio.
When you take into account the true cost of fossil fuels, that is factoring in:
- health care costs of over 60,000 deaths per year (EPA, N.D.).
- millions of asthma and respiratory diseases from the ozone particulates of coal burning power plants (EPA, N.D).
- one in six women bearing enough mercury from the burning of coal to put her unborn children at risk (CDC, N.D).
- dead forests and sterilized lakes from acid rain (EPA, N.D.).
- children with damaged brains and crippled health from mercury emissions (EPA, N.D.).
- poisoned fisheries in 49 states (EPA, N.D).
- millions of asthma attacks,lost work days, and thousands dead annually from ozone and particulates (EPA, N.D.).
- coal's most catastrophic and permanent impacts are from mountaintop removal mining (EPA, N.D.).
The nation would have more than enough money freed up to afford national healthcare by assuring a clean environment.
Kennedy made 4 recommendations as to what the nation ought to do
The short and riveting plea to Greenwise members concluded with a 4 step set of recommendations to the nation’s leaders-
- abolish direct coal subsidies and implement cap and trade system of measuring national carbon emissions to create a market to auction emission credits.
- revamp the nation’s antiquated high-voltage power-transmission system, so that it can deliver solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable energy across the country. In this way, the production and distribution of energy can be democratized.
- the federal government needs to work with state authorities to open up the grid, allowing clean-energy innovators to fairly compete for investment, space, and customers.
- construct efficient and open-transmission marketplaces and a green-power-plant infrastructure.
Getting rid of a carbon economy would free up the market and stimulate prosperity
Kennedy told the story of how Lord Putnam recalled the arguments of getting rid of slavery in Britain over 200 years ago, and how could making the moral choice hurt the economy such as the slave trade was 25% of the nations GDP, and the labor was free. Economists warned the British economy would collapse without slavery.
However, "instead of collapsing, Britain's economy accelerated. Slavery's abolition exposed the debilitating inefficiencies associated with zero cost labor; slavery had been a ball and chain not only for the slaves, but also for the British economy hobbling and stifling growth," he explained.
He finished by saying,"Creativity and productivity surged after slavery was abolished. Entrepreneurs seeking new sources of energy launched the industrial revolution and inaugurated an era of the greatest wealth production in human history."
Many examples of working green prosperous economies exist
Of a number of examples Kennedy shared in which nations who decarbonized their economies became prosperous, he mentioned that Sweden had announced in 2006 the phaseout of all fossil fuels (and nuclear energy) by 2020. In 1991 the Swedes enacted a carbon tax (now up to $150 a ton), closed two nuclear reactors, and still dropped green-house-gas emissions to five tons per person, compared to the U.S. rate of twenty tons.
As he wrote in the forward to Green Collar Economy, "Thousands of entreprenuers rushed to develop new ways of generating energy from sun, wind, and tides, and from wood chips, agricultural waste, and garbage. Growth rates climbed to three times those of the United States. The heavily taxed Swedish economy is now the world's richest by GDP."
A simliar return was seen for Iceland, Brazilian and Germany economies. In the case of Iceland, it had become the 4th largest by GDP in the world, however, as Kennedy stated post prosperity investments in bundled derivatives per decisions of a conservative government has caused Iceland its current problems.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the son of the internationally known figure of history and champion of social justice, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and nephew of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. He is President of WaterKeeper Alliance, a senior attorney for NRDC, and an author of many books on both history and the environment.
References:
Jones, V. (2008).Green Collar Economy. How one solution can fix our two biggest problems. Forward by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. NY. Harper One.
Kennedy, R. (November 29, 2007). Coal's True Cost. Huffington Post.
