Environmental lawyer and climate change activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. won’t give up his cell phone and car even for the cause of reducing carbon emissions.
PJ Media correspondent Michelle Fields caught up with Kennedy at yesterday’s People’s Climate March in New York City. Fields first asked him if the event itself damaged the environment considering all the fossil fuels that were burned up in order to stage it. Kennedy, 60, a multimillionaire son of the late U.S. Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy (JFK’s brother), responded that the event was necessary to save the planet and combat man-made climate change.
Fields then asked him about whether he would set a personal example in environmental protection and the fight against global warming by giving up his cell phone and automobile (coal, for example, apparently produces about 40 percent of U.S. electricity). A visibly upset Kennedy nixed both ideas, but in a somewhat confused response, he said he would and then wouldn’t lead by example in reducing his own carbon footprint. He also blamed the lack of progress with global warming legislation on big money players Koch Brothers who he claimed have corrupted both Republicans and Democrats.
When Fields tried to ask him about the political activity of billionaire Tom Steyer, who (along with people like George Soros and other one-percenters) is pouring money into Democrat political campaigns in this election cycle, Kennedy appeared to get a little hot and grabbed her microphone to continue on with his rant. Kennedy, who has an active social life along with his political activism, admitted that he doesn’t want to reduce his quality of life. See embed below and draw your own conclusions.
RFK Jr. also wants to throw climate change deniers into jail.
Other global warming celebrity crusaders like Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore who usually travel by private jet, ride around on land in gas-guzzling limos and SUVs, and live in huge mansions also attended the climate march. Gore even sold his TV station to Big Oil for millions, and he is now embroiled in a legal dispute over payment with the new owner, Al Jazeera.
Kennedy and his new wife, Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines, just bought a $5 million gated luxury estate in Malibu, California.
Parenthetically, marchers at the climate rally apparently left lots of trash behind. This is in sharp contrast to events staged by Tea Party members, for example, who reportedly leave venues cleaner than when they arrived.
Accepting an award from the Clinton Global Initiative last night, DiCaprio declared that “Climate change is compromising the very livability of our planet.” When Fields encountered DiCaprio at the march and attempted to question him about whether his lavish lifestyle squares with his concerns about global warming, a handler blocked access to the actor. See below. In the same video, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (an Independent who almost always votes with the Democrats) insisted that the global warming debate is settled.
A former Obama administration official in the federal Energy Department, however, disagrees with Sanders and all the others who share the belief that climate change is settled science. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, physicist Steven Koonin explained in part that…
The idea that ‘climate science is settled’ runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future… Even though human influences could have serious consequences for the climate, they are physically small in relation to the climate system as a whole… We often hear that there is a ‘scientific consensus’ about climate change. But as far as the computer models go, there isn’t a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences… Understanding climate, at the level of detail relevant to human influences, is a very, very difficult problem.
Added Dr. Koonin, “Policy makers and the public may wish for the comfort of certainty in their climate science. But I fear that rigidly promulgating the idea that climate science is ‘settled’ (or is a ‘hoax’) demeans and chills the scientific enterprise, retarding its progress in these important matters. Uncertainty is a prime mover and motivator of science and must be faced head-on.”
Koonin is not the only global warming skeptic or semi-skeptic. That being said, even if one accepts the climate change consensus and supports unilateral action by the U.S. government, global economic powers like Russia, China, India, and others have shown no inclination to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that may threaten the world. Several of these countries have declined to attend Tuesday’s United Nations global warming summit.
Do you think that well-heeled climate change activists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. behave in a hypocritical fashion in relation to their own lifestyle choices?