Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In San Diego

Citizens Oversight (2012-03-03) Ray Lutz

This Page: https://copswiki.org/Common/M1244
Media Link: http://youtu.be/KoQ2UfOjrLo%2c%20http://youtu.be/vMynVQTmIdo
More Info: Energy Policy

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Spoke at the Forging a Sustainable Future Symposium.

It was an amazing speech -- worth your time to view it.

Part 1

http://youtu.be/KoQ2UfOjrLo

Part 2

http://youtu.be/vMynVQTmIdo

Some notes, (paraphrased)

what is the best thing we could have? True free market capitalism. Free markets are a very good thing, we should try it sometime. What we have in this country is crony capitalism There is nothing more important than innovation. The other forces are ignorance and greed. If you release innovatio with true free market we would be able to address these issues. Nature is the infrastructure of our communities. Start by protecting our environmental infrastructure. All the public trust assets, by their nature are not owned by anyone person but by everyone. What you hear from the big polluters is you have to choose between protecting the environment and economic prosperity, and that is a lie. The polluters treat our world as if it is on sale, then we can make some money but our children are going to pay for it.

Some of the big issues are all rooted in how we use and treat energy. Whether it is Fukushima, BP oil spill, Iraq War... All the things we care very deeply about.

Almost everyone agrees about global warming, but some say we need to move slowly or we could damage our economy. When slavery was legal, they said the economy would collapse, because most work was down by human labor. WHen it was abolished, the economy did the opposite.

We are spending a billion a day to import a billion dollars of oil every day. We give the oil industry 100s of billions of dollars of support. $1.3 trillion of direct federal subsidy every year. Protection of pipelines... Cost of BP spill.. Valdez spill... We would not be in those messes were it not for oil. 500 billion to the nuke industry. "too cheap to meter" as turned into the most expensive way to boil water. And coal is the most heavily subsidized. What are the true costs? They are not talking about the hidden costs of coal. In West Virginia. Won the biggest judgment in the history of the state. Were being driven on a highway that was so very smooth. Normal roads are horrible. Why is the road so smooth.. there are 22" of asphalt on this road. Most have 4" or 6" to 8". Those WV roads are so thick because the coal trucks are so heavy. The benefits go the coal industry, but we pay for it. 3000 miles of coal roads in WV. One reason we can't have high speed rail is because the railroads have been warped by the heavy coal train.

Now, every fresh water fish have dangerous levels of mercury. There is no safe level of mercury. We used to go fishing to the local fishing holes and safely eat the fish. now you can't. 649 peer reviewed studies that are very clear and frightening... there is a connection between the coal plants and mercury in fish. Most women have dangerous levels of mercury in her womb. levels high enough to cause heart disease, liver disease. That is another cost when they say it is only 11 cents a KWHr. 345 billion dollars, we can pay for Obamacare many times over just by eliminating ozone from coal fired power plants.

There has been a ruthless and systematic reduction of the workforce in coal mining and converting to huge machines and explosives, thus the money moves up to wall street interests. They manipulate the political process so they can liquidate the state for profit, and that is what they are doing.

According the the EPA they have take down 500 of the largest mountains in WV, buried 2200 miles of rivers and streams... all the way down the ohio to the Mississippi. And it is all illegal. You cant dump this into the water.. So we sued them, and we won, in front of a conservative judge. Its all illegal. So he stopped all the mountaintop mining.

They changed the meaning of one word... filth.. which basically overturned that decision. Whereever you see large scale destruction nfo our environment, you will also see large scale subversion of our democracy. And also subversion of the press. That's what they want to do to this whole country. It is a colonial model. In order to break the law, they have to compromise the democratic process.

The massive influx of money is distorting our democracy. Wherevery you see tyranny, you will also see destruction of the public trust. Iceland in 1970 was the worst country in Europe. The govt decided they wanted to change that. there were naysayers. in 15 years they decarbonized the economy, using geothermal. They went from the worst to the best. Unfortunately, they invested all their new wealth in derivatives, so they are now at the bottom again, but they are back on top.

England is building a large off shore wind farms. Sweden in 1997 they decided to decarbonize and closed their two biggest nuke plants. They slapped a large tax on carbon, and now they are an economic leader.

Brazil is a similar story. Has replaced France as the 5th economy in the world.

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End of part one.

We have in the US much greater geothermal resources than Iceland. It's a resource that is very under utilized because the appearance that coal energy is cheaper, but coal is paid out of different pockets. virtually every home in the us could be powered by it. Coal seems cheaper but that is due to all the hidden investments. In a recent article in Scientific American, The windiest place on earth is North Dakota. We have enough harvestable wind resources in North Dakota, Montana, and Texas to provide 100% of all the energy needs in the entire US, three times over, even if every American owned an electric car. We have enough solar energy, according to the same study, in an area 75 miles by 75 miles, to provide the energy for the entire grid in the US.

Of course you wouldn't do that. It is just to give you an idea of the scale and the available power. ...

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