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Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy

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Overview

In this powerful and far-reaching indictment of George W. Bush's White House, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the country's most prominent environmental attorney, charges that this administration has taken corporate cronyism to such unprecedented heights that it now threatens our health, our national security, and democracy as we know it. In a headlong pursuit of private profit and personal power, Kennedy writes, George Bush and his administration have eviscerated the laws that have protected our nation's air, water, public lands, and wildlife for the past thirty years, enriching the president's political contributors while lowering the quality of life for the rest of us. Kennedy lifts the veil on how the administration has orchestrated these rollbacks almost entirely outside of public scrutiny -- and in tandem with the very industries that our laws are meant to regulate, the country's most notorious polluters. He writes of how it has deceived the public by manipulating and suppressing scientific data, intimidated enforcement officials and other civil servants, and masked its agenda with Orwellian doublespeak.

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Author Information

Bio of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper, and president of Waterkeeper Alliance. He is also a clinical professor and supervising attorney at the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University School of Law. A former assistant district attorney for New York City, he is the coauthor of The Riverkeepers: Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right.

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Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

819.40 KB

Number of Pages

288

eBook ISBN

9780061156762

Awards

  • American Book Award

Excerpt from: Crimes Against Nature by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Chapter One
The Mess in Texas
As you fly over the Houston Ship Channel at twilight, thousands of flares seem to ignite in the approaching darkness. Smokestacks from more than a hundred massive chemical factories, oil refineries, and power plants have suddenly become steel towers of light and fire. From the air, it's not hard to understand why some call this area the "golden triangle." This concentration of industry, which includes a 3,000-acre ExxonMobil facility the planet's largest oil refinery -- generates enough wealth for its owners to make the Texas economy bigger than the gross domestic product of most nations.1

It is a different scene on the ground. There the twilight flares rumble, the ground shakes, the air hisses. Plumes of black smoke belch upward and acrid odors permeate the atmosphere. The smell of money, some call it. But from this earthly vantage point -- especially for low-income residents living downwind in eastern Harris County -- it is less a golden triangle than a scene out of Dante's Inferno.

The ubiquitous highway signs warning "Don't Mess With Texas," haven't deterred the state's polluters one bit. Here are some basic facts about the Lone Star State: According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, fully one-quarter of Texas's streams and rivers are so polluted that they do not meet standards set for recreational use.2 Half of the state's 20 million people reside in areas where the smog pollution surpasses federal limits.3 In 1999, Houston overtook Los Angeles as America's smoggiest city. Texas also ranked first in toxic releases to the environment, first in total toxic air emissions from industrial facilities, first in toxic chemical accidents, and first in cancer-causing pollution.4 Also in 1999, 15 of the nation's 30 highest smog readings were all taken in Texas.5 Every major urban area -- Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, and Longview -- either failed to meet the EPA's minimum air quality standards, or was on the verge of failing.6