Robert F. Kennedy, Jr : Opening bid on energy independence and global warming

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr delivers his opening statement during the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hearing, "Approaching Midnight: Oversight of the Bush Administration's Last-Minute Rulemakings" on December 11, 2008.

While this intervention is crucial; his speach at LIVE EARTH 2008 was the most explicit & aggressive as for the responsibility we all share in this...

Here's an excerpt...

The most important thing you can do is to get involved in the political process and get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington D. C. Who are nothing more than corporate toadies for companies like Exxon and Southern Company, these villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of American interests and ahead of the interests of all of humanity.

This is treason and we need to start treating them now as traitors.

And they have their slick public relations firms and their phony think tanks in Washington D. C. and their crooked scientists who are lying to the American People day after day after day.

And we have a press that has completely let down American democracy.

That's giving us Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton instead of the issues that we need to understand to make rational decisions in a democracy.

Like global warming.

And so I got to tell you this that the next time you see John Stossel or Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, these flat-earthers, these corporate toadies, lying to you, lying to the American public and telling you that global warming doesn't exist.

You send an email to their advertisers and tell them you're not going to buy their products any more.

And I want you to remember this; that we are not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds, we're protecting it because Nature is the infrastructure of our communities.

And if we want to meet our obligation as a generation, as a civilization, as a nation, which is to create communities for our children.

That provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment and good health and prosperity and stability as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting our environmental infrastructure.

The air we breathe, the water we drink, the wildlife the public lands the things that connect us to our past to our history that provide context to our communities and that are the source ultimately of our values and our virtues and our character as people and the future of our children and I will see all of you on the barricades.