Video (2min 23sec): "A False Choice" - Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Robert F. Kennedy tells us that the conventional Washington wisdom of short-term economic prosperity versus long-term environmental stewardship is a false choice. "There is nothing radical about the idea of clean air and clean water for our children.
"We're not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds. We are protecting it for our own sake because we recognize that nature is the infrastructure of our community. And if we want to meet our obligation as a generation, as a nation, as a civilization, which is to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment and prosperity and good health 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 fisheries, the public land, the shared resource of our society, the commons, the public trust assets, the landscapes that enrich us, that connect us to our past or history, that provide context to our communities, and that are the source ultimately of our values and our virtues and our character as a people.
"And if you talk to these people on Capitol Hill that are promoting and orchestrating these kind of roll-backs, and I spent a lot of time doing this, what they invariably say in, 'well, the time has come in our nations history where we have to choose now between economic prosperity on the one hands and environmental protection on the other. And That is 'A False Choice'..."
