Thursday, November 06, 2008

Robert F. Kennedy for EPA?

When you're as phenomenonally popular as Barack Obama you enjoy a pretty wide choice in staffing your new administration. The Politico is reporting that Obama is seriously considering Robert F. Kennedy to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Talk about turning a major department on its head. After eight years during which environmental protection meant whatever industry wanted it to mean, the arrival of an actual environmentalist could put the "protection" back into EPA.

Other notables also rumoured to be possibles are billionaire Warren Buffet and former Republican secretary of state, general Colin Powell. This could be a blockbuster cabinet.

Oh, just one other little point. Robert Kennedy is an avowed critic of the Athabasca Tar Sands which may give Steve a bit of pause. The Canadian papers are full of some bold global warming initiative Steve is trying to nudge under Obama. Chances are that won't get very far. I think the Democrats in the White House and the legislature are going to want to think through their own climate change positions and policies before entertaining any fanciful ideas from their arch-conservative buddies in Ottawa.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope he does it. It'd be as though Obama was deliberately picking a fight with the Republican and Republican-minded Democrats, especially with his selection of Rahm Emanuel for his chief of staff.

Scruffy Dan said...

RFK is also a anti-vaccination crank, despite the large body of evidence that vaccines are good and do not cause autism, which leads me to believe he is as anti-science (though in a different way) as Bush.

The head of the EPA should be someone who accepts the science regardless of what it says, and RFK is not that person.

Anonymous said...

You know I have to agree with you scruffy dan....and I am going to go where most people won't. RFK Jr. is a staunch Roman Catholic and as such, has been instilled with the unfounded idea science is a pagan idea. Religion is such a destroyer of free thought. A. Morris