OPINION/COMMENTARY

Environment 9/11

In December 2003, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote "Crimes Against Nature," an extensive, sharply worded assault in Rolling Stone magazine on the Bush administration's environmental record, which Kennedy called "a ferocious three-year attack" on environmental protection. Under President Bush's leadership, Kennedy Charged, "corporate cronyism" was "strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures." The article was shocking — shocking, that is, in its inaccuracies and ad hominem attacks. It was astounding that a professional environmental lawyer and sometime environmental-law professor who, by his own account, had his work "rigorously fact-checked," could produce such a vitriolic and error-laden piece. Eight months later, Kennedy's article has become a book — and his attack has not improved with age. More time and more pages have only produced more errors and exaggerations. Kennedy's thesis remains the same: "Our president is engaged in the radical destruction of 30 years of environmental law." Worse, America under the Bush administration is, in Kennedy's estimation, comparable to Europe at the time of rising fascism in the 1930s. The author insists that readers can find documentation of over 300 Bush "rollbacks" of environmental protection in the work of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), yet several of his claims are contradicted on NRDC's own website. For instance, Kennedy claims that Bush has "rolled back" federal vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, while the NRDC website notes that the administration actually proposed a "minor increase." Similarly, Kennedy blames the mining industry for arsenic in drinking water, yet the NRDC website notes that much arsenic contamination comes from natural deposits. Other sourcing is sloppy, and some of the most inflammatory charges lack citations at all....Thanks to The Commons for the link