Robert Kennedy Promotes Environmentalism

Environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. '77 told a standing-room-only crowd at the ARCO Forum last nigh that not only is protecting the environment from polluters possible, but it is a fundamental duty of Americans.

Kennedy, who is chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeepers, a conservation organization, said that his nearly two decades in environmental law have convinced him that ordinary Americans have the power to defeat "nameless corporate enteritis" in ecological litigation.

Most of Kennedy's time has been spent with the Riverkeepers, an organization founded in the late 1960s to protect the Hudson River and its fish population from chemical pollution.

Kennedy recounted the group's first major battle, against Penn-Central Railroad. Members of the fishing industry in the Hudson River Valley contended that because of a burst oil pipe, Penn-Central had polluted the waterways. The group went on to win other court battles against corporations in the valley and was instrumental in lobbying for the passage of the nation's first large-scale environmental accountability law in 1969.

For the next 10 years, Kennedy said, the Riverkeepers made money from fines assessed to polluters in upstate New York. Under the accountability law, the person or group bringing a complaint is often entitled to half of the fines assessed.

Kennedy joined the organization in 1984. For the past several years, he has also taught environmental law at Pace University in New York, where he gives law students a first-hand taste of pollution litigation.

"I and my partner [sponsor] 10 third-year law students. We give them three or four polluters to sue at the beginning of the semester. They file suits, go through discovery, go to trail," he said.

"Of course, if they don't win the case then they don't pass the course," he joked.

Kennedy focused much of his speech on recent attempts by a "foolhardy" Congress to "undo" environmental laws--attempts to rewrite laws including the Clean Air and Clean Water acts to favor the rights of private property owners. "They are trying to dismantle the investment we've made," he said.

Responding to the criticism that environmental regulation stilts economic efficiency, Kennedy said, "In 100 percent of situations, good environmental policy is good economic policy."

Kennedy alleged that although opponents of environmental legislation defend the free market, "you show me pollution, I'll show you a subsidy [given to the polluting company.]"

Kennedy, who is the son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy '47 and the nephew of former president John F. Kennedy '40, ended his speech with an appeal to "natural law."

He said what makes Americans American is their special relationship to the environment.

By protecting the environment, "we choose to memorialize the handiwork of God," he said.