For the last 30 years, the coal industry has been working closely with government regulatory agencies to keep the dangers of their toxic waste hidden from the American public. During the Bush administration, the industry became so entwined with the EPA that it was almost impossible to distinguish the two, and the industry was given everything it could ever want. The question we now have to answer is whether or not the Obama administration is going to stand up to Big Coal, or will they continue to tow the line. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. discusses how the coal industry managed to completely capture the government with Jeff Goodell, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine, and author of the new book “How to Cool the Planet: Geo Engineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate.”
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Mara,
Yes, your Mother Jones link is similar to the Michael Moore one.
Very devastating, the coal ash and other coal generated pollutants, and the video Really shows the gross and gruesome nature of the “externalities” of coal in a Very powerful way!!!!
And the Obama admin. does Not seem very willing, at all, to go after big coal. These big polluters keep getting free passes to destroy our world. As Jeff Goodell said, it’s like, oh, they’re “picking on” the polluters if any regulation is attempted.
Like so much, Obama is showing half-hearted attempts to do any regulating.
Paul Krugman just wrote a column today on the half-hearted (at best) attempts of Obama’s financial kings to do much about the economy. They’d rather “save face”, according to Krugman, than actually try to Help people.
I find that attitude to be so completely craven and pathetic. WHEN will this admin. Wake Up????
Oops, sorry, that photo is Not of Bobby!!!!!
(Hey, I really do Apologize, but RFK Jr. STILL Looks Really Good)!!!!
Damage control…..I don’t do that very well…..
Okay, onto the interview (I wish I would just calm down, sometimes)….
According to this Mother Jones article, the Obama admin. (which, after all, Does include Pres. Barack Obama, too!) is siding w/big polluters over a lawsuit to try to get them to curtail their polluting ways:
http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/08/obama-utilities-pollution-green-house-gases
Yuck…more than that…huge corporations do not care for us because they have accepted that these corporations are beyond the laws because their bottom-line are the $´s which fuel the American economy…because we have to buy from them. This cycle can be seen in the oil we get from Saudi Arabia..we use and buy the oil and gas..our $s go to the corporations…the $s are sent to the Kingdom and to the richest family…in turn they sent their aid $s Pakistan or Afghanistan or America to build cultural centers. A cycle that we cannot get out of.
This sounds like it’s going to be GREAT to listen to!!!!
(and GREAT new photo of Bobby! Whoa! He looks Good)!!!!
It seems Lisa Jackson is no better than Bush/Cheney EPA officials at wanting to regulate polluters. Another appointment who came in with such promise (I liked her at first, when she seemed like a decent person) who has become just another puppet of this administration who is told who she can or can’t police. Good luck at getting this administration to do anything about the coal industry cleaning up the ash piles. As Jeff Goodell said, “we will not be off coal anytime soon.” And all the clean energy talk from Obama is just another sham because it’s just one more industry he feels beholden to.