8/14/2019 Something That Took Generations Upon Generations Upon Diplomacy

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Joanna Quattrone

ENG 205

October 7, 2008

“We Could All Be American Entrepreneurs”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came to speak at Xavier last Tuesday about the environmental and economic crisis inour nation and what he and his colleagues have done to rectify the problem. He calls the state of our world and the

chomping at the bit for control of oil a “science fiction nightmare.” He and his contemporaries have done and

invested in unbelievable amounts of research to find alternatives for this nightmare, which if properly utilized, he

says could turn every American into an entrepreneur and every American home into a power plant.

Calling our current status a “science fiction nightmare” is a persuasive scare tactic, and a dramatic one at

that, not to call it untrue or unnecessary. He wants us to realize the gravity of the crises at hand and just how badlythe Bush administration has set us back both environmentally and economically, not to mention in the eyes of 

foreign countries. Kennedy criticizes the media for shielding the general public from this information. One topic he

touched on while demonstrating the corrupt affiliations between the Bush administration and the oil companies was

the essential reversal of the Clean Air Act instituted by the Clinton administration.

During this movement, 52 of the biggest illegal polluters were being prosecuted; keeping in mind that one

in eight American children have Asthma today. Unfortunately, when Bush came to presidency, many of these

companies were contributors to Bush’s campaign, and it just so happened that charges again four of his largest

contributors/illegal polluting companies were dropped. That is the only example of its kind in American history, andin order to legitimize it, Bush had to throw out the New Source Rule, which Kennedy said was the “heart and soul”

of the Clean Air Act.Because of selfish moves like this performed by the Bush Administration to make room for his oil company

and coal mining contributors, it is now unsafe to eat freshwater fish in nineteen states because of mercury content.

One in six women of childbearing age have so much mercury in their bodies that their wombs would be considered

unsafe to harbor a child, because Clinton’s mercury rules were substituted with rules that were written by ones

authored by utility advocates of sorts.

Kennedy also talked about, with utter disgust, drag mines in the Appalachian Mountains that he claimed

were literally cutting down the mountains. That was some powerful imagery. Telling us that 2500 tons of dynamite

was used to blow into the mountains, then drag their tops into the valleys and streams, which was illegal until a 1-word definition was changed by, whom other than, Bush’s administration.

These could be considered a good example of the rhetorical rule of three, as he uses three drastic examples

of how in the last seven years, under the Bush Administration, environmental efforts have been squashed and/or ignored. They are powerful images and notions that we can all relate to and consider when we think about our 

world around us. Like Robert Kennedy said, we are not making the effort to save our world because of the fishes

and the birds, but because it is the infrastructure of our communities and our families. He shows us that there have

 been efforts made, but unfortunately, the political powers that be for the last seven years have not been advocates in

this particular respect; however, all is not lost.Robert Kennedy is affiliated with a venture company called Vantage Point that aims to make a cleaner,

healthier and better impact on the world. One of their sectors, Better Place, is working on rewiring Israel right now,

after which they will essentially give away electric cars and tax gas-powered cars until they go out of business.

They currently have contracts to do the same in Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Hawaii. They hope eventually

to do the entire United States.

Some express concern that a change this drastic will bankrupt the economy, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

counters by showing us examples of countries who have decarbonized and experienced almost immediate prosperity.

For example, not too long ago, Iceland was one of the poorest countries, but now that they have decarbonized, theyare 100 percent energy dependent, the fourth richest country by gross domestic product, and one of the highest

exporter of energy in the world. Similar examples include Sweden and Brazil following degrees of decarbonization.The main problem we have facing us in a switch of this magnitude is the fact that our grid is “archaic”

according to Kennedy. If we were to attempt to use the power we could generate from the wind farms and solar 

sources, which is incredible, it would diminish to being essentially useless traveling in our grid. He projects the cost

of this new grid to be about a half-trillion, otherwise known as one-ninth of the cost of the projected cost of the Iraq

War. That comparison was an interesting tool of saying to the audience, “Hey, you be judge… Where would you

want your money spent?”

The other problem with the grid is that the utilities own it, and very rarely grant access to anybody else. If 

8/14/2019 Something That Took Generations Upon Generations Upon Diplomacy

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they would unlock it, energy could be bought and sold much more efficiently once the grid was redone from all sorts

of sources. If we made this grid work, we could make use of all these smaller, cheaper, more efficient ways to create

energy, even within our own homes everyday. He claims we could be making our own energy to live off of and then

sell the rest onto the grid, making us all entrepreneurs in our own right and our homes mini power plants. Energy

would be much cheaper and the average American would be richer, especially if we stopped relying so much on fueland switched over to his electric car policy along with Israel and Denmark. The amount of money that would be

saved seems infinite.I thought this speech was incredibly powerful, eye opening, and informative. It comes at an awesome time,

the day, in fact, that I sent in my voter registration. My whole family is pretty liberal and I had a good idea about

my voting, but still wanted to research some issues to be better informed about my decision, and this speech was a

great jumping off point. I thought he was charismatic and persuasive, personable as possible when not actually

speaking to him directly, and patriotic with his love and concern for the country, but realistic enough not to follow

 blindly whichever leader happened to accidentally fall into the Whitehouse… twice.I never imagined such a change for the better of our environment with alternative energy sources being so

 prominent so quickly was right on the horizon if we get the right people and enough of us behind it, but it is pretty

cool that it can happen. He took some very complex concepts and made it easy enough for the layperson to grasp.

He also made the issues relevant to your average American family, with the childbearing women, asthmatic children,

and making all of us our own businessperson, not to mention the air we all breathe everyday.

Perhaps the conservatives would not have enjoyed the occasional jabs at the Bush and Reagan

Administrations, but I thought they were well warranted. His accusations of the media being negligent on account

of Reagan’s repeal of the Fairness doctrine is something we’re definitely paying for with a poorly informed public,or at times even misinformed, which should be a crime. He accuses both of being affiliated with propaganda, even

if it’s indirectly by affiliation with the oil companies. I walked out of the speech feeling much more informed andempowered because of that information.

One of his last anecdotes, which I thought was one of the most powerful, was dealing with international

relations, clearly not a strong suit of the Bush Administration. When he told us that he used to go abroad with his

father and always felt a sense of pride at being an American because the foreign people seemed so thirsty for that

American leadership, something that took generations upon generations upon diplomacy and more generations

 build, and that it only took seven years for one administration to run it into the ground, my heart sank. But it made

me feel aligned even more with his other platforms, and I am more than satisfied this class gave me the opportunity

to hear him speak.