| Preaching
to the Choir
Limbaughites might suggest he is a dreamer, but not true. RFK is investing in complex methods of conserving energy and saving the environment. He is challenging dependence on oil, backing up what he says with examples of smart technology that were being developed around the world during the era of the Bush administration when our leaders hobbled our future by ignoring and discounting these viable options. He concludes that we have been offered false choices—poverty or a clean environment—propaganda sponsored by the oil industry.
He listed a number of issues needing to be addressed, from mercury to food quality, captured regulatory agencies and an unfree market policy allowing externalization of costs with the environment while putting the public at risk. He is setting the record straight about how polluters have corrupted not only the constitution but made every attempt to train Americans to accept their repetition of corporate lies. We are years behind the rest of the world on grid technologies. Our media misinforms the American public, primarily resulting from the elimination of the fairness doctrine. The education system is not working, and at every turn there are artificial barriers to changing from hydrocarbons, placed only to delay our ultimate end of the hydrocarbon- and pollution-driven economic era. Defining the problem, he eloquently offered solutions to fix these problems. Sound complex? It is. According to RFK, we are at the beginning of a major shift in world policy—a great moment in history where opportunity abounds and those who attempt to get in the way will not succeed in holding back this change. It was refreshing to hear complex answers to complex questions. RFK took the time to go from one end to the other in defining the intricate parts of the problems and posing specific solutions in this coming tidal wave. Examples of electric cars and a national system for battery exchange programs sound almost too good to be true, but some countries are installing electrical outlets at parking spots, and will provide electricity on a user basis that will cut the cost of operating a vehicle in half—or less.
Most frustrating to hear is how we have subsidized obsolete and polluting activities, creating an unfree market system that eliminates development of sustainable oil and coal replacement technologies. Explained by RFK in simple terms, we all know in our gut this is what has happened, and yet we are so far down the hole most of us don’t know how to get back out. He is definitely his father’s son. Those who remember is father know he was a serious and complex person with a great capacity to get to the root of a complex situation. Surprising to me was the crackle in RFK’s voice as he went about explaining these complexities to environmentally friendly Kansas Citians—whom I refer to as, “The usual suspects.” Yet, from his podium view, he was speaking to people from two red states, speaking truths that might be a first-time experience for many, speaking in an area thought to be possibly hostile to progressives. Though I am told his voice often crackles while speaking, he soon realized he was among friends, preaching to a sympathetic choir who gave him three standing ovations. It was the best two hours I’ve spent in a long while. |
