SALT LAKE CITY — Don't get your science from Glenn Beck.
That's the message environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to bring to citizens and media across the country, and recently he brought it to Utah.
Americans should be trying to prevent further global climate change and environmental destruction for economic and national security reasons, but an "18-year propaganda campaign" by oil and coal companies has misled the public and media on their dangers, Kennedy said.
"The science on global warming is stronger than it is on tobacco and cancer, yet we still have these myths that create doubt," he told the Deseret News. "The right wing media are ignoring the consensus in peer-reviewed research."
Speaking as part of a lecture series sponsored by the Utah Museum of Natural History, the son of former U.S. attorney general and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy said popular "fables" are preventing vital environmental and energy reforms in the United States, which could lead to dire consequences in the future.
America needs to start protecting its "environmental infrastructure" to ensure national security and economic viability, he said.
Kennedy, a New York-based attorney who has crusaded for environmental and green energy causes, said current energy policies and practices are crippling the economy and destroying the environment, potentially leading to disaster.
"Our children will pay the price for our joy ride," he said.
"Incumbent" energy companies, such as those using oil, coal and nuclear power, are hogging taxpayer resources and hiding the true costs of such energy, Kennedy said.
"When they say it's clean, we know it's a dirty lie. When they say it's cheap, we know it's a bigger lie," he said.
And the impact extends beyond the environment, he warned. "Whenever we see wide-scale destruction of the environment, we see the subversion of American democracy."
Commenting on the recently passed Utah law that allows the state to use eminent domain to seize federal land, Kennedy told the Deseret News that, as an attorney, he considers the law "most likely" unconstitutional.
"In the long term, it's good economic policy to keep those lands protected," he said.
Kennedy acknowledged there are several impediments to reforming energy in America, including subsidies for energy companies, no national power grid and "irrational" energy rules.
"We need a marketplace that turns every American into energy entrepreneurs," he said.
Fears that green energy polices would hurt the economy are unfounded, Kennedy said, pointing out that abolishing slavery, a major economic force, spawned the Industrial Revolution.
"Environmental laws are not meant to restrict business, but rather they are intended to ensure long-term economic viability by protecting our natural infrastructure," he said.
e-mail: jsmith@desnews.com