Robert F Kennedy Jr to Head EPA? and 4 Runners Up
by Kristin Underwood, San Diego, CA on 11. 7.08
Image source: Santa Clara University
While not officially nominated, the Washington Post reported yesterday that he is on the short list of new leaders for the US Environmental Protection Agency. Obama's Administration is also reported to be looking to hire women and minorities to lead "high-profile positions."
More on the potential nominees after the jump.
Robert F. Kennedy currently is a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council and a professor at Pace University School of Law and was once assistant district attorney for New York City. He also cohosts Ring of Fire on Air America Network. Son of Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy and Senator Edward Kennedy. Kennedy was arrested for trespassing on the US Camp Garcia in Puerto Rico for protesting training efforts there and was sentenced to 30 days jail. This led to his work at Riverkeeper to fulfill his 1,500 community service hours and his eventual founding of the Waterkeeper Alliance. He also codeveloped the Tears of the Clouds LLC bottled water company - all of the profits go to restoring the Waterkeeper Alliance.
His activism has grown in the last few years, as a he has written two books and authored countless articles, as well as being named one of Time.com's Hero of the Planet. He has a Bachelors Degree from Harvard College and a juris doctorate from University of Virginia, as well as a LL.M (master of law) from Pace University.
Whoever is chosen will certainly have their work cut out for them. The US EPA is currently led by Stephen Johnson and has had a troubled few years as the Administration has put heavy pressure on the agency to ignore and avoid issues, as well as weaken rules left and right. Many EPA bureaucrats and staffers left during this administration. The EPA Administrator is not a cabinet level position. With climate change looming large, its questionable whether this position will be elevated during the Obama Adminstration - attempts have been made in the past, but each time were voted down. The Agency has also been severely hit with budget cuts each year, effectively tying it his hands behind its back.
Other potential candidates for the position include:
A. Former Sierra Club President Lisa Renstrom
Image source: UN Omaha
Renstrom is the 51st President of the Sierra Club after joining her local North Carolina chapter 10 years ago and quickly moving up the ranks. She has spent many years working as a community organizer and small business advisor in Mexico. Her father invented several beauty products including Tip Top Hair Products, which made enough for him to build a retreat in Acapulco (Villa Vera Hotel) - years later it became a Hollywood playground and Elizabeth Taylor even married her third husband there. It was while she was trying to sell this property that she ended up in a Mexican jail for 6 months for refusing to back down to pressure. Back in the states she joined the Sierra Club and became Executive Director for Voices & Choices, a group that links business, government and the community to create environmental sustainability. She was also a judge for Treehugger.com's Convenient Truth's Contest. She has a finance degree from the University of Nebraska and a degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Business.
B. California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols
Image source: Day Life
Nichols previously served as Assistant Administrator in the EPA Office of Air and Radiation under the Clinton Adminstration, and was also a member of the Board of Directors for the California League of Conservation Voters. She previously served as the Air Resources Board Chair thirty years earlier from 1978-1983 before being asked to come back to the Board by Governor Schwarzenegger. She earned her Bachelors from Cornell University and a juris doctorate from Yale Law School. She implemented many of the first environmental laws in California as one of their first environmental lawyers. She was also Director of the University of California, Los Angeles Institute for the Environment and has been instrumental in pushing the state's climate change program forward. She has also worked as an environmental lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Law in the Public Interest. In addition, she was Executive Director of Environment Now in California and formed one of the first environmental justice working groups.
C. Pennsylvania Department of the Environment Secretary Kathleen McGinty
Image source: Penn Live
McGinty Chaired the Council on Environmental Quality under Clinton (the first and only women to ever hold that position) and was also Deputy Assistant to Former-President Clinton. She has a BA in Chemistry from St. Joseph's University and a law degree from Columbia University School of Law and spent several years working in the US Senate negotiating international environmental treaties. McGinty later worked with companies on international energy issues and spent a year at the Indian Tata Energy Research Institute. She advised Al Gore on his campaign and also the Democratic National Committee on environmental issues. As Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, she was the first woman to hold that position, but left in July 2008 after 5 and a half years.
D. Massachusetts Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles
Image source: Flickr
Under the Clinton Administration, Bowles was Associate Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and later Senior Director of the Global Environmental Affairs Directorate at the National Security Council. He first went on to work as a legislative assistant in the House of Representatives and then Vice President of Conservation Inernational. Outside of government work, Bowles spent nearly 20 years working in several clean energy technology firms. Ian Bowles earned a Bachelors in Economics from Harvard College and a Masters from Oxford University.
More on Obama's Environmental Challenges
Obama and McCain Discuss Global Warming, Environmental Views in Interview
All Things Obama
My Bottom Line is Green: McCain v. Obama on Renewable Energy
Barack Obama Faces Environmental Cleanup After Two Centuries of Bingeing: Bill McKibben
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- Focus on Focus Earth: Obama's Green Team
Canada, Germany Want to Work With Obama on Climate Change
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Eh? Robert K started a BOTTLED WATER company?
I find it interesting that Kennedy calls out those who deny climate change as not following the scientific evidence while at the same time holding that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism despite the scientific evidence.
That and while there should be a debate on nuclear power, his documentary on Indian Point was complete BS appear to FUD.
Robert Sussman is supposedly also on the short list.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/robert-sussman-obamas-sec_n_137686.html
Bad idea. The EPA is a department that needs people who understand and support science. RFKjr does neither. Here are some details of his unsuitability for this post.
@ Chris - At least its profits are going towards something good and not the fattening of his pockets.
I personally think that the head position of the EPA needs to be elevated to the cabinet. Obama promises us some strong change, so let's see some of the things that need to be done in order to achieve this change, like this kind of promotion.
If you have ever gone to one of his lectures you would know that he is exactly who we need running the EPA. I saw him speak at Ecodesign conference a couple years back. I was blown away. He is highly intelligent, inspiring and the kind of man to transform our countries relationship to our natural world.
Kennedy would be a lousy pick since he favors ideology over sound science. He concludes, contrary to the evidence, that vaccines cause autism and cell phones cause cancer. We certainly don't need someone using the EPA to promote bad science, we've already had 8 years of the Bush regime doing the same thing.
I don't care if he wasn't the greenest in the world. The fact that he protested Camp García makes me happy. I'm not saying he should be EPA head. I'm saying I applaud his efforts.
Camp Garcia was a disaster to the island of Vieques and its inhabitants. Social deterioration and ecological destruction are only the first two things you'll encounter on the long list of horrible things that went on down there.
The cleanup efforts have yet to happen.
D@\/$0t
RFK - Director of Interior - hopes this clears things up for everyone.
The job at the EPA calls for someone with a keen sense of both ethics and science. Kennedy is not that person.
The following letter was written in support of Robert H. Boyle (founder of Riverkeeper and author of The Hudson River, A natural and unnatural history) and others who resigned from Riverkeeper rather than support R. F. Kennedy, Jr.'s compromise of the principle that ethics must never be separate from science.
This letter was first published in the Putnam County News and Recorder, Cold Spring, New York, on August 30, 2000 and they have carried it on their website ever since for which they have my thanks. (AHS, 2008)
Letters:
Supports Former Riverkeeper Board Members' Action
Editor,
The Fishkill Ridge Caretakers, Inc. supports Robert H. Boyle, former president of the Riverkeeper, Inc. and former Riverkeeper, Inc. board members John Fry, treasurer, Nancy Abraham, Kathryn Belous Boyle, Pat Crow, Theresa Hanczor, Robert Hodes, Ann Tonetti and Alexander Zagoreas in the action they have taken in resigning from Riverkeeper in opposition to the hiring of a convicted environmental felon to serve in the position of staff scientist on the staff of Riverkeeper.
In issuing this statement of support, The Fishkill Ridge Caretakers wishes to emphasize that ethics cannot be separated from science and that the environmental movement will prosper best in an atmosphere of demonstrated personal responsibility and earned mutual respect.
We encourage individuals as well as environmental organizations to join us in similar expressions of support for the principled stand taken by Boyle and fellow board members in their defense of the ethical integrity of the environmental movement here in the Hudson River Valley.
Boyle and 8 of the 22 Riverkeeper board members resigned from Riverkeeper, Inc. in protest of the hiring of William Wegner. For eight years Wegner operated a ring of smugglers who stole bird eggs directly from the nests of protected cockatoo species in Australia. Wegner and his ring then smuggled the eggs by air to the United States. Birds that hatched and survived were then sold for as much as $12,500.00 each. A federal judge accepted Wegner's plea of guilty to charges of conspiracy and tax fraud and sentenced him to five years in prison. The judge also found that Wegner had attempted to obstruct justice by committing perjury at the trial of a co-defendant Wegner paid a $10,000.00 fine.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has stated that everyone deserves a second chance and notes that he himself had been given a second chance in that he had once been convicted of a drug offense.
We note, however, that Kennedy's offense was essentially a victimless crime while Wegner's offense was a crime against the environment, the people of Australia, the people of the United States and against the birds. In order to avoid detection during the flight, smugglers flushed newly hatched chicks down the plane's toilet
Although Wegner has been convicted and served his sentence, nothing he or anyone else can do will correct the damage he has done or make his victims whole again.
Wegner's prison sentence seems to have done little to improve his ethical sense. The resume Wegner submitted to Riverkeeper accounts for his period of incarceration without referring to the fact of the incarceration itself Wegner describes work he performed and omits the significant information that he performed this work while he was serving time as a prison inmate.
Kennedy overstepped his position as attorney for Riverkeeper when, in November of 1999, he hired Wegner. Boyle terminated Wegner after learning of the hiring and upon review of Wegner's resume, court records and media accounts. The matter came to a climax at a board meeting on June 20th when Kennedy insisted that Wegner be rehired over Boyle's objection.
While we hope Riverkeeper continues to work to produce changed human beings who think and act differently in regard to the Hudson River and all that pertains to it, we also recognize the primary mission of Riverkeeper is not the rehabilitation of Wegner or of those like him.
Sincerely,
Anthony Henry Smith
Fishkill
(for The Fishkill Ridge Caretakers)
(Fishkill Ridge Community Heritage, a separate organization, has also supported this letter from their beginning.)