As an impartial candidate for the White Home, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims he could be “the very best environmental president in American historical past,” citing his previous as a New York air pollution lawyer.
However dozens of Mr. Kennedy’s former allies on the Pure Assets Protection Council are calling on him to withdraw from the race. Full page ads Sponsored by the group’s political arm it’s anticipated to seem in newspapers in six swing states on Sunday.
Individually, a dozen different nationwide environmental organizations has issued an open letter Calling Mr. Kennedy a “harmful conspiracy theorist and science denier” who promotes “poisonous beliefs” on vaccines and local weather change.
These concerned in each efforts imagine that Mr. Kennedy can not win the presidency however can get votes from President Biden and former President Donald J. Could assist elect Trump, who has referred to as local weather change a hoax and promised to loosen environmental legal guidelines and insurance policies.
“A vote for RFK Jr. is a vote to destroy that progress and put Trump again within the White Home,” stated the newspaper advert, which ran in Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Signatories embrace John Hamilton Adams, who co-founded the Pure Assets Protection Council and appointed Mr. Kennedy within the Nineteen Eighties, in addition to previous presidents and the group’s present president. They implore Mr. Kennedy to “respect our planet, depart.”
Mr. Kennedy was a senior legal professional for the Pure Assets Protection Council for almost 28 years, resigning in 2014.
In a phone interview Thursday, Mr. Kennedy shot again in opposition to the concept that he may deliver Mr. Trump again to the White Home.
“President Biden would not want my assist to lose to Donald Trump,” Mr. Kennedy stated. He prevented immediately addressing the actions of Mr. Adams and different former colleagues, saying solely that he and his advisers “disagree with one another on politics.”
As a substitute Mr. Kennedy criticized Mr. Biden in addition to the environmental motion, which he stated was “making the error of disposing of the items that the Biden administration gave us.”
Former colleagues in environmental circles have been unsparing of their assessments of Mr. Kennedy.
“The Bobby I knew is gone,” stated Dan Reicher, a senior vitality researcher at Stanford College’s Woods Institute for the Atmosphere. Mr. Reicher labored with Mr. Kennedy at NRDC and stated he had a long time of non-public friendship with Mr. Kennedy, together with amassing rivers in america and Chile.
Gina McCarthy was administrator of the Environmental Safety Company below President Barack Obama after which chaired the NRDC through the Trump administration, solely to return to nationwide service as a local weather adviser to Mr. Biden final yr.
“If individuals bear in mind him as an environmentalist, he isn’t,” he stated of Mr. Kennedy. “He is in opposition to science, he is in opposition to vaccines, he talks about local weather change. I do not know what he stands for. “
Mr Adams stated in a press release: ”I mentored Bobby as a younger environmentalist. I do not acknowledge the individual he has grow to be. His actions are a betrayal of our surroundings.
The rebuke from Mr. Kennedy’s skilled associates adopted that of his brothers and sisters and different members of the Kennedy household. Endorsed President Biden Thursday at a marketing campaign rally in Philadelphia. Mr. Kennedy ex-President John F. Kennedy’s nephew and former legal professional common and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy has sons. Members of the family have stated they’re involved that Mr. Kennedy may tilt the race towards Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump has been an ally Discussing ways to promote third-party candidates Like Mr. Kennedy in battleground states to wrest votes from Mr. Biden. They’re making an attempt to underline Mr. Kennedy’s background as an environmentalist in hopes of alienating some progressive voters pissed off by the truth that below Mr. Biden, The country has produced record levels of oil and gas.
“The trail to victory right here is clearly maximizing the attain of those leftist choices,” Stephen Okay. Bannon, the previous White Home chief strategist who additionally served as Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign chairman in 2016, advised The New York Occasions. Earlier this month.
Mr. Kennedy’s views on local weather change are unorthodox. He agrees with a lot of the scientific opinion that carbon dioxide and methane, two greenhouse gases, are warming the planet, and the proof is displaying. “All my senses are telling me that the warmth is rising,” he stated In a video He posted X in July.
However in the identical video, he additionally stated {that a} “struggle on carbon” was not the reply and that “this disaster is getting used as an excuse to cease authoritarian management.” He stated the actors behind the ban have been “intelligence businesses, the World Financial Discussion board, the billionaire membership at Davos” and their objective was to make the wealthy richer. However moments later, he stated free markets would remedy the local weather disaster.
Mr. Kennedy stated he opposed federal subsidies for carbon seize and storage, a expertise to seize greenhouse gasoline emissions from energy crops or industrial processes earlier than they attain the ambiance, the place they drive international warming. Mr. Kennedy referred to as it “ineffective and an enormous boondoggle for business” and criticized Mr. Biden for agreeing to incorporate these subsidies within the Inflation Discount Act of 2022, the president’s landmark local weather legislation.
Many environmental activists are additionally against carbon seize expertise as a result of they need the nation to cease burning fossil fuels and as a substitute change to wind, photo voltaic and different non-polluting vitality sources.
However Mr. Kennedy’s agenda contains no clear insurance policies to cut back greenhouse gasoline emissions.
On Thursday, he stated ending subsidies for fossil fuels and strictly imposing current legal guidelines such because the Clear Water Act and the Clear Air Act could be sufficient to combat local weather change. President Biden has tried 3 times To eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, and every time, Congress has reinstated them. And in current rulings, conservative majorities on the US Supreme Court docket have restricted the Biden administration’s capacity below current legal guidelines to manage greenhouse gases.
Mr Kennedy additionally stated the environmental motion was making “an enormous strategic mistake” in specializing in local weather change as a substitute of much less divisive environmental points.
He accused Mr. Biden of turning his again on the atmosphere by approving the Willow Venture, an $8 billion oil drilling challenge in Alaska; to observe file oil and gasoline manufacturing; and to signal the Inflation Discount Act, which ensures continued offshore oil drilling.
“It is exhausting to know how the environmental motion is now saying it is OK,” Mr. Kennedy stated. “I feel we want an even bigger imaginative and prescient for the atmosphere.”
Manish Bapna, president of the Pure Assets Protection Council Motion Fund, the political arm of the nonprofit environmental group, famous that Mr. Kennedy additionally criticized federal subsidies that encourage home manufacturing of electrical automobiles and batteries and photo voltaic and wind era. do In america.
“Voters who care concerning the atmosphere shouldn’t be fooled,” stated Mr. Bapna.
Mr. Biden has carried out probably the most aggressive local weather agenda of any president. Along with the Inflationary Discount Act, which offers greater than $370 billion for clear vitality over the following decade, it’s limiting emissions from cars, getting down to cut back carbon air pollution from energy crops and limiting future oil and gasoline manufacturing. Curbing drilling. Accessible tracts of land and water that firms can lease.
The political advert doesn’t talk about Mr. Kennedy’s file as a lawyer who helped clear up the Hudson River and launched a worldwide motion to guard waterways.
Mr. Kennedy was named a Planetary Hero by Time journal in 1999 for his work with the Riverkeeper group, one of many teams credited with cleansing up the Hudson. As founding father of the Waterkeeper Alliance, he efficiently fought to shut New York landfills that have been contaminating water provides and helped defeat dams in Chile and Peru.
