Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be in neghboring Moore County next month to talk about energy independence.
Son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, the 59-year-old enviromentalist was named one of Time magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet” for his work in helping Riverkeeper, New York’s clean water advocate, lead the fight to restore the Hudson River.
Kennedy’s talk will be held at March 1 at 7:30 p.m. at Owens Auditorium on the Sandhills Community College campus in Pinehurst.
Admission is free and open to the public with no tickets required.
Kennedy’s talk is entitled “The Green Gold Rush: A Vision for Energy Independency, Jobs, and National Wealth.” The talk is part of the 2012-2013 Sam Ragan Memorial Lecture of the Ruth Pauley Lecture Series. It is sponsored by The Pilot newspaper and the Sandhills Area Land Trust.
“What’s the most important environmental law that we could pass? I’ve always said the same thing, it’s free market capitalism,” Kennedy has said. “Because true free market promotes efficiency, and efficiency means the elimination of waste. And pollution is waste. But what polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves by lowering quality of life for everybody else, and they do that by escaping the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter, I’ll show you a subsidy. I’ll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and force the public to pay as production cost.”
Earlier this week, Kennedy was arrested at a White House protest where activists from the Sierra Club cuffed themselves to a gate. The group was protesting the Keystone pipeline, which opponents say will contribute to global warming while transporting “dirty oil” from Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. Protesters are also concerned about the potential for an oil spill along the proposed Keystone oil pipeline.
Change agent
Kennedy’s clean water group helped spawn more than 160 water-keeper organizations across the globe. In 2009, he was named one of Rolling Stone’s “100 Agents of Change.”
RFK Jr. was also featured in the acclaimed environmental documentary “The Last Mountain,” the Sundance 2011 official selection. The film examines the struggle to save Coal River Mountain in Coal River Valley, W.Va. - the last mountain in the area untouched by the mining practice of mountain top removal.
Kennedy is a professor of environmental law at Pace University School of Law and serves as co-director of the school’s environmental litigation clinic.
He also serves as senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper, president-at-large of the Waterkeeper Alliance, is a partner on the CleanTech investment team of Silicon Valley’s VantagePoint Capital Ventures, is the environmental adviser to Napo Pharmaceuticals, and serves on the board of Westing-house Solar. Earlier in his career, he served as assistant district attorney in New York City.
He is a graduate of Harvard University. He studied at the London School of Economics and earned his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School. Following graduation, he attended Pace University School of Law, where he earned a master’s degree in environmental law.
The lecture was first scheduled for November but was postponed when Kennedy was unable to visit the area due toHurricane Sandy.
The Ruth Pauley Lecture Series is sponsored by Sandhills Community College, the Moore County League of Women Voters, the Sandhills Branch of the American Association of University Women, and the Moore County Schools.
Past speakers have included Sandra Day O’Connor, Newt Gingrich, George McGovern, Frank Deford, Jack Hanna and Jack Nicklaus. Lectures are free and open to the public with no tickets required.
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