Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent candidate for the White House, says he will be “the best environmental president in American history,” citing his past as a tireless lawyer who went after environmental polluters in New York. He claims to be deaf.
But dozens of Mr. Kennedy's former colleagues at the Natural Resources Defense Council urged him to withdraw from the race in a full-page ad sponsored by the group's political wing scheduled to appear in newspapers in six battleground states on Sunday. I'm looking for.
Separately, more than a dozen other national environmental groups released an open letter accusing Kennedy of being a “dangerous conspiracy theorist and science denier” who spreads 'harmful beliefs' about vaccines and climate change. .
Officials involved in both efforts say that while Mr. Kennedy cannot win the presidency, he has siphoned votes from President Biden, called climate change a hoax, and promised to unravel environmental laws and policies.・He claims that there is a possibility that he could contribute to the election of former President Trump.
“A vote for RFK Jr. is a vote to destroy that progress and put President Trump back in the White House,” said a newspaper ad running in Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. “it is written like this. Signatories include John Hamilton Adams, a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council who hired Kennedy in the 1980s, as well as the group's past presidents and current chairman. They beg Mr. Kennedy to “respect our planet and leave the school.”
Kennedy served as senior counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council for approximately 28 years, retiring in 2014.
In a telephone interview Thursday, Mr. Kennedy pushed back against the idea that he might recall Mr. Trump to the White House.
“President Biden doesn't need my help losing to Donald Trump,” Kennedy said. He avoided directly addressing the actions of Mr. Adams and his other former colleagues, saying only that he and his mentors “do not see eye to eye on politics.”
Instead, Kennedy criticized Biden and the environmental movement, saying, “It would be a mistake to settle for the crumbs given to us by the Biden administration.”
Former colleagues in environmental circles spoke frankly about their evaluations of Mr. Kennedy.
“The Bobby I knew is gone,” said Dan Reicher, a senior energy researcher at Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment. Reicher said he had a decades-long personal friendship with Kennedy, including working with him at NRDC and rowing rivers together in the United States and Chile.
Gina McCarthy served as head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama and then became president of NRDC in the Trump administration until last year, when she returned to service as Biden's climate change adviser.
“Even though people remember him as an environmental activist, he is no more,” she said of Mr. Kennedy. “He's against science, he's against vaccines, he harps on the climate. I don't know what he stands for.”
Adams said in a statement: “I mentored Bobby as a young environmental activist. I have no idea what kind of person he became. His actions are a betrayal of our environment.”
The rebuke from Kennedy's professional colleagues comes after his brothers and sisters and other members of the Kennedy family endorsed President Biden at a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Thursday. Mr. Kennedy is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and the son of former attorney general and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. Family members said they were concerned that Mr. Kennedy could tilt the election toward Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump's allies have been discussing ways to push third-party candidates like Mr. Kennedy in battleground states to divert votes from Mr. Biden. They hope to mollify some progressive voters who are dissatisfied with the fact that the country is producing record levels of oil and gas under Mr. Biden. The aim is to highlight Mr. Kennedy's career as a
“The path to victory here is clear,” Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House chief strategist and Trump's 2016 campaign chairman, told the New York Times earlier this month. The goal is to maximize the influence of left-wing alternatives in the future.” .
Kennedy's views on climate change are unconventional. He agrees with the overwhelming scientific view that his two greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, are heating the planet, and the evidence is visible. “All of my senses are telling me that warming is happening,” he said in a video posted to X in July.
But in the same video, he also said that a “war on carbon” is not the solution and that “this crisis is being used as an excuse to crack down on totalitarian regulations.” He said that behind the crackdown were “intelligence agencies, the World Economic Forum and the Davos Billionaires' Club” whose aim was to make the wealthy even richer. But shortly after, he said free markets would solve the climate crisis.
Kennedy opposes federal subsidies for carbon capture and storage, a technology that captures greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and industrial processes before they reach the atmosphere, where they cause global warming. said. Kennedy called it a “huge, useless profit for industry” and criticized Biden for agreeing to include these subsidies in the president's landmark climate law, the Cutting Inflation Act of 2022.
Many environmental activists also oppose carbon capture technology, wanting the country to stop burning fossil fuels and switch instead to wind, solar and other non-polluting energy sources.
However, Mr. Kennedy's agenda does not include clear policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
He said Thursday that eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and strengthening enforcement of existing laws such as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act are enough to combat climate change. President Biden has attempted to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies three times, and each time Congress has reinstated them. And in recent rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority has limited the Biden administration's ability to regulate greenhouse gases under current law.
Kennedy also said the environmental movement was making a “big tactical error” by focusing on climate change rather than less divisive environmental issues.
He accused Biden of turning his back on the environment by approving the Willow Project, an $8 billion oil drilling project in Alaska. to oversee record oil and gas production; and for signing the Inflation Control Act, which guarantees the continuation of offshore oil drilling.
“It's hard to understand why the environmental movement is now saying this is OK,” Kennedy said. “I think we need a bigger vision when it comes to the environment.”
Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, the political arm of a nonprofit environmental group, said Mr. Kennedy also supported federal subsidies to boost domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles and batteries, as well as production of solar and wind power. He pointed out that he was criticizing it. In the US.
“Environment-minded voters should not be fooled,” Bapna said.
Biden has enacted the most aggressive climate change policies of any president in history. In addition to the Anti-Inflation Act, which provides more than $370 billion for clean energy over the next 10 years, he is poised to limit emissions from cars and reduce carbon pollution from power plants, and to reduce future oil and gas emissions. This is being controlled by restricting drilling. Land and water that companies can lease.
The political ad does not mention Mr. Kennedy's career as a lawyer who helped clean up the Hudson River and started a global movement to protect waterways.
Kennedy was named an Earth Hero by Time magazine in 1999 for his work with the Riverkeeper organization, one of the groups credited with cleaning up the Hudson River. As a founder of the Waterkeeper Alliance, he fought to close a New York landfill that was polluting water supplies and helped build dams in Chile and Peru.
