PLEASANTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a room of California mayors Thursday that the planet can be saved and the country can be pulled from its economic slump with a national green energy grid.
Kennedy, the son of Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, was the keynote speaker at the regional meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors Water Council. Pleasanton Mayor Jennifer Hosterman is co-chair of the council and host of the two-day meeting at the CarrAmerica Conference Center in Pleasanton.
One of Rolling Stones’ “100 Agents of Change” in 2009 and one of Time Magazine’s “Heroes of the Planet” in 1999, Kennedy, 56, has spoken throughout the world on environmental protection. He is the chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance — both work toward the protection and preservation of the nation’s waterways and watersheds.
Addressing a crowd California mayors, business people and city officials Thursday, Kennedy said good environmental policy and economic policy go hand in hand.
“We have a marketplace that operates under rules that were rigged by the incumbents to reward the dirtiest, most poisonous, most destructive most addictive fuels, rather than the cheap, clean, green abundant indigenous fuels,” said Kennedy about the coal and oil industries. “What we need to do is change the dynamic around.”
To do that, Kennedy said the country needs an economic market with rules that serve the public interest. The way out of our economic slump is for a national energy grid to provide solar and wind energy nationwide, he said.
He cited the Internet’s advent in 1979 and how it cut the cost for information, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996’s effect on cutting telephone rates. Energy could be the same, if resources are put into a national grid for solar and wind energy, he said.
“We can have a nation where we have free energy forever and that is the biggest permanent tax break,” he said. “It would make everything we produce in this country cheaper because the biggest cost for American business is their energy, but we need to build a marketplace.”
Kennedy’s talk came just weeks before Californians will choose whether to suspend AB 32, the state’s landmark bill aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“(It would be) tragic to have California back off on something that everybody agrees is working,” said Kennedy, about the efforts behind Proposition 23. “New York and other states have passed legislation that is based on the California model. It is kind of insane to be throwing that out because of a few polluting industries who are pumping money into the political process to lie to the public.”
The mayors meeting, which is not open to the public, ends today.
Robert Jordan covers Pleasanton and Dublin. Contact him at 925-847-2184.
