Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s March 13 talk on “Our Environmental Destiny” drew one of the largest crowds in SUNY New Paltz Distinguished Speaker Series history, as guests filled Lecture Center rooms 100 and 102 to hear Kennedy share his views on the present state and future outlook of the environmentalist movement in America.
“I want to talk about a battle that we’re now engaged with in this country: a war between old energy and new energy,” Kennedy said. “It’s something that affects not just the environment, but also our democracy, our values and everything that makes us proud to be American.”
Kennedy argued that the best way to make energy industries run more efficiently and more cleanly would be to strip away subsidies that incentivize the use of “old energy” sources, and enable everyday citizens to power their own homes and neighborhoods with renewables.
“People have said to me, ‘What’s the most important thing we can do to heal and protect the environment?’ I’ve always said the same thing: true free market capitalism,” Kennedy said.
“A true free market promotes efficiency, and the elimination of waste. A true free market would require us to properly value our natural resources. It’s the undervaluation of those resources that cause us to use them wastefully. In a true free market you can’t make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich, and without enriching your community.”
Kennedy also took time during his address to offer an elegiac tribute to Heinz Meng, emeritus professor of biology at the College and close friend and mentor to Kennedy. Meng passed away in 2016.
“I went to boarding school in Millbrook in 1968, after my father was killed, and there were a bunch of falconers there,” Kennedy said. “One day we made a pilgrimage to see Heinz Meng, and after that I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with him. We trapped hawks every autumn; sometimes we’d catch 70 birds in a day, and one time we saw 20,000 hawks in one day.
“Heinz was an extraordinary person to hang out with in the woods,” Kennedy said. “He knew the name of every fungus, every mold, every insect and every tree. I had been birdwatching with the best birdwatchers since I was little, but Heinz birdwatched in a way that I’d never seen anyone do before: He’d go into the woods, sit next to a tree, and start making noises with his mouth. The birds would come to him – it was really something to see. He was a magical guy.”
Readers can learn more about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s environmental activism and advocacy online.
About the Distinguished Speaker Series
Launched in 2008, the Distinguished Speaker Series hosts speakers twice annually in order to connect SUNY New Paltz alumni, students, faculty, staff and community members with highly accomplished alumni, authors, policy makers, leaders, scientists, media experts, business people and other luminaries.
The spring 2017 Distinguished Speaker event is supported by the generosity of the following presenting sponsors: Buttermilk Falls Inn and Spa, Campus Auxiliary Services, the Capital Group, the Dorsky Family & the Dorsky Foundation, Liberty Mutual Insurance, M&T Bank, Sodexo, the SUNY New Paltz Foundation and Viking Industries.
