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Real Patriots Ask Questions

From the June, 2005 issue of THE magazine. www.themagazineonline.com

Photographs by Guy Cross

RFK Cover, June, 2005 issue of THE magazine

"It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."

— U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, 1950

ON THE PUBLIC TRUST

The most telling aspect of a government is how it distributes the goods of the land. Does it safeguard the public trust assets on behalf of the public? Or does it allow the shared wealth of our communities to be stolen from the public by corporate power? The environmental laws passed after Earth Day 1970 were designed to protect the land. Since then, children have less lead in their blood and higher IQs as a result. These laws have protected the stratospheric ozone layer, reduced acid rain, saved threatened wildlife, and preserved some of the last remaining wild places that make this country so beautiful—they protect the America that we all hold in common. But George W. Bush’s policy advisers somehow don’t see the benefits we’ve received from our investments in our country’s environmental infrastructure. All they see is the cost of compliance for their campaign contributors—a group that is led by the nation’s most egregious polluters. This myopic vision has led the White House to abandon its responsibility to protect the public trust.

ON POLLUTION AND HEALTH

Scientists agree that we are now pumping out vastly more CO2 than the Earth’s system can safely assimilate—glaciers are shrinking worldwide, mountain ranges are losing their snow pack, the fringes of Antarctica’s ice are melting, temperatures are higher everywhere, even the timing of the seasons has begun to change. Ecosystems are starting to shift. Plants, animals, and insects are appearing in places they didn’t before. There is growing evidence that dramatic climate change may occur suddenly. A report commissioned by Andrew Marshall, the father of Star Wars, describes the human disasters that would occur if the climate shifted abruptly in a decade or two: most of Holland and Bangladesh would be submerged by violent storms and rising seas. Northern Europe would freeze because of disruptions to the Gulf Stream, millions of environmental refugees would gather at the frontiers of the developed world, driven by wars, famines, and floods. The report paints a picture of the United States as a giant, gated community insulating itself from the world it helped to create—isolated and despised by its angry, jealous neighbors.

When corporations violate our antipollution laws like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, they are stealing something that belongs to the American public—the purity of our land, waterways, healthy air, and abundant fisheries. They have lulled people into accepting unhealthy, unsavory fish and meat and have gained a stranglehold on U.S. commodity production that poses a genuine threat to our food independence and national security.