Environmentalist Kennedy Name-Calls During 'Live Earth'

     Despite claims of “Live Earth’s” bipartisan, non-political nature, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had some strong words for the political opposition at the July 7 New Jersey concert.

     “Get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies … [1]This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors,” said Kennedy.

     “Live Earth” was [2] presented to Congress as a non-partisan event when some politicians and Chad Griffin, an adviser to “Live Earth,” attempted to get permission to hold an event on the Capitol grounds. But when an event is hosted by a former vice president lobbying for political change, you still have to call a spade, a spade.

     The concerts ran on several networks, including NBC. Dan Harrison, an NBC senior vice president, also defended “Live Earth” as a non-political effort.

     [3]"I really don't think climate change is a political issue," Harrison said according to Howard Kurtz’s July 9 Washington Post column.

     In the case of liberal environmental activist Kennedy, he did talk politics.

     “[Y]ou hear this from the oil industry and the coal industry and their ‘indentured servants’ in our political process that global climate stability is a luxury that we can’t afford,” said Kennedy without specifically naming names. 

     He also offered an unusual economic perspective on environmentalism: Kennedy called choosing between economic prosperity and environmental protection “a false choice.”

     “Good environmental policy 100 percent of the time is identical to good economic policy if we want to measure the economy based upon how it produces jobs and clean environments and how it preserves the value of the assets in our community over the generations, over the long term and that’s really what we’re fighting for,” Kennedy concluded.

     Kennedy clearly wasn’t factoring in the taxpayers who would shoulder enormous financial burdens in his equation.

     A July 1 New York Times op/ed by Al Gore advocated pressuring the federal government to sign on to an international “climate crisis treaty” by the year 2009. It would require a 90 percent cut in “global warming pollution” for developed nations in addition to a 50 percent reduction in the developing world.

     Cuts that severe would cost much more than the Kyoto Treaty, which called for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut to 7 percent below 1990 levels. Government estimates during Clinton’s term, estimated that Kyoto would have cost taxpayers [4]several hundred billion dollars each year.