section_path: Political views/Environmental policy
section_name: Environmental policy
paragraph_text: Environmental policy
  
  In 2023, Kennedy said he was "arguably the leading environmentalist in the country". He promotes populist and anti-establishment environmental policies, claiming that " Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum and the billionaire boys' club in Davos" have hijacked the climate crisis. In a 2015 interview, Kennedy said of politicians skeptical of global warming that he "wished there were a law you could punish them under". He has said that environmentalists' priority should be to tackle the "carbon industry". He has called the current society and economy unsustainable and largely based on a "longtime deadly addiction to coal and oil" and contended that the economic system rewards pollution. In 2020, Kennedy said: "Right now, we have a market that is governed by rules that were written by the carbon incumbents to reward the dirtiest, filthiest, most poisonous, most toxic, most war-mongering fields from hell, rather than the cheap, clean, green, wholesome and patriotic fields from heaven."
  
  Kennedy has advocated for a global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, but has opposed hydropower from dams. He has argued that switching to solar and wind energy reduces costs and greenhouse gases while improving air and water quality, citizens' health, and the number and quality of jobs. Kennedy's fight to stop Appalachian mountaintop removal mining was the subject of the film The Last Mountain.
  
  In one of his first environmental cases, Kennedy sued Mobil Oil for polluting the Hudson. He had been an early supporter of natural gas as a viable bridge fuel to renewables and a cleaner alternative to coal, but said he turned against this controversial extraction method after investigating its cost to public health, climate, and road infrastructure. As a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo 's fracking commission, Kennedy helped engineer a 2013 ban on fracking in New York State.
  
  In 2013, Kennedy assisted the Chipewyan First Nation and the Beaver Lake Cree in fighting to protect their land from tar sands production. In February 2013, while protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline Kennedy, along with his son, Conor, was arrested for blocking a thoroughfare in front of the White House during a protest.
  
  In August 2016, Kennedy and Waterkeepers participated in protests to block the extension of the Dakota Access pipeline across the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation 's water supply.
  
  Kennedy has maintained that the oil industry remains competitive against renewables and electric cars only due to massive direct and indirect subsidies and political interventions on the oil industry's behalf. In a June 2017 interview on EnviroNews, he said of the oil industry: "That's what their strategy is: build as many miles of pipeline as possible. And what the industry is trying to do is to increase that level of infrastructure investment so our country won't be able to walk away from it". Kennedy supported Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 's Green New Deal resolution, saying in a 2020 interview, "I think the Green New Deal and all that stuff is important. We ought to be pursuing it. My approach is more market-based than kind of top-down dictates. You know, I believe that we should use market mechanisms like carbon taxes and the elimination of subsidies."
  
  Kennedy has spoken against geoengineering, saying that geoengineering solutions are an attempt by big business to profit from climate change.
  
  Kennedy has expressed support for regenerative farming, and in May 2023, he voiced support for agrarian movements, saying, "If we want to have democracy, we need a broad ownership of our land by a wide variety of yeoman farmers, each with a stake in our system." In 1995, Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta declared Kennedy persona non grata in the province due to his activism against Alberta's large-scale hog production facilities. In 2002, Smithfield Foods sued Kennedy in Poland under a Polish law that makes criticizing a corporation illegal after he denounced the company in a debate with Smithfield's Polish director before the Polish parliament.
  
  Kennedy has opposed conventional nuclear power, arguing that it is unsafe and not economically competitive. In June 1981, he spoke at an anti-nuclear rally at the Hollywood Bowl with the musicians Stephen Stills, Bonnie Raitt, and Jackson Browne. He believes nuclear energy is a profit-making venture promoted by corporate lobbyists rather than environmental activists, and has claimed insurance companies are unwilling to insure nuclear plants, saying in a 2023 interview, "It's not hippies in tie-dyed T-shirts who are saying it's dangerous; it's guys on Wall Street with suits and ties."
  
  Throughout the presidency of George W. Bush, Kennedy was critical of Bush's environmental and energy policies, saying Bush was defunding and corrupting federal science projects. Kennedy was also critical of Bush's 2003 hydrogen car initiative, arguing that, because of plans to extract the hydrogen from fossil fuels, it was a gift to the fossil fuel industry disguised as a green automobile. In 2003, Kennedy wrote an article in Rolling Stone about Bush's environmental record, which he expanded into a New York Times bestselling book. His opposition to the Bush administration's environmental policies earned him recognition as one of Rolling Stone ' s "100 Agents of Change" on April 2, 2009.
  
  During an October 2012 interview with Politico, Kennedy called on environmentalists to direct their dissatisfaction toward Congress rather than President Barack Obama, reasoning that Obama "didn't deliver" due to having a partisan Congress "like we haven't seen before in American history". He said politicians who do not act on climate change policy serve special interests and sell out public trust. He said Charles and David Koch —the owners of Koch Industries, Inc., the nation's largest privately owned oil company—subverted democracy and made "themselves billionaires by impoverishing the rest of us".
  
  Kennedy has spoken of the Koch brothers as leading "the apocalyptical forces of Ignorance and Greed". During the 2014 People's Climate March, he said: "The Koch brothers have all the money. They're putting $300 million this year into their efforts to stop the climate bill. And the only thing we have in our power is people power, and that's why we need to put this demonstration on the street."
  
  In a 2020 interview on Yahoo Finance 's "Influencers with Andy Serwer ", Kennedy called President Trump's environmental policies a "cataclysm" and said Trump is "simply the radical step of a process that's been happening in our country and in the Republican Party from the past—really, since 1980—which is a growing hostility towards the environment, a growing orientation to representing the concentrated corporate power and power, particularly of the oil industry and the chemical industry and some of the other large polluting industries."
  
  In 2023, Kennedy said he was "arguably the leading environmentalist in the country". He promotes populist and anti-establishment environmental policies, claiming that " Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum and the billionaire boys' club in Davos" have hijacked the climate crisis. In a 2015 interview, Kennedy said of politicians skeptical of global warming that he "wished there were a law you could punish them under". He has said that environmentalists' priority should be to tackle the "carbon industry". He has called the current society and economy unsustainable and largely based on a "longtime deadly addiction to coal and oil" and contended that the economic system rewards pollution. In 2020, Kennedy said: "Right now, we have a market that is governed by rules that were written by the carbon incumbents to reward the dirtiest, filthiest, most poisonous, most toxic, most war-mongering fields from hell, rather than the cheap, clean, green, wholesome and patriotic fields from heaven."
  
  Kennedy has advocated for a global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, but has opposed hydropower from dams. He has argued that switching to solar and wind energy reduces costs and greenhouse gases while improving air and water quality, citizens' health, and the number and quality of jobs. Kennedy's fight to stop Appalachian mountaintop removal mining was the subject of the film The Last Mountain.
  
  In one of his first environmental cases, Kennedy sued Mobil Oil for polluting the Hudson. He had been an early supporter of natural gas as a viable bridge fuel to renewables and a cleaner alternative to coal, but said he turned against this controversial extraction method after investigating its cost to public health, climate, and road infrastructure. As a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo 's fracking commission, Kennedy helped engineer a 2013 ban on fracking in New York State.
  
  In 2013, Kennedy assisted the Chipewyan First Nation and the Beaver Lake Cree in fighting to protect their land from tar sands production. In February 2013, while protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline Kennedy, along with his son, Conor, was arrested for blocking a thoroughfare in front of the White House during a protest.
  
  In August 2016, Kennedy and Waterkeepers participated in protests to block the extension of the Dakota Access pipeline across the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation 's water supply.
  
  Kennedy has maintained that the oil industry remains competitive against renewables and electric cars only due to massive direct and indirect subsidies and political interventions on the oil industry's behalf. In a June 2017 interview on EnviroNews, he said of the oil industry: "That's what their strategy is: build as many miles of pipeline as possible. And what the industry is trying to do is to increase that level of infrastructure investment so our country won't be able to walk away from it". Kennedy supported Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 's Green New Deal resolution, saying in a 2020 interview, "I think the Green New Deal and all that stuff is important. We ought to be pursuing it. My approach is more market-based than kind of top-down dictates. You know, I believe that we should use market mechanisms like carbon taxes and the elimination of subsidies."
  
  Kennedy has spoken against geoengineering, saying that geoengineering solutions are an attempt by big business to profit from climate change.
  
  Kennedy has expressed support for regenerative farming, and in May 2023, he voiced support for agrarian movements, saying, "If we want to have democracy, we need a broad ownership of our land by a wide variety of yeoman farmers, each with a stake in our system." In 1995, Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta declared Kennedy persona non grata in the province due to his activism against Alberta's large-scale hog production facilities. In 2002, Smithfield Foods sued Kennedy in Poland under a Polish law that makes criticizing a corporation illegal after he denounced the company in a debate with Smithfield's Polish director before the Polish parliament.
  
  Kennedy has opposed conventional nuclear power, arguing that it is unsafe and not economically competitive. In June 1981, he spoke at an anti-nuclear rally at the Hollywood Bowl with the musicians Stephen Stills, Bonnie Raitt, and Jackson Browne. He believes nuclear energy is a profit-making venture promoted by corporate lobbyists rather than environmental activists, and has claimed insurance companies are unwilling to insure nuclear plants, saying in a 2023 interview, "It's not hippies in tie-dyed T-shirts who are saying it's dangerous; it's guys on Wall Street with suits and ties."
  
  Throughout the presidency of George W. Bush, Kennedy was critical of Bush's environmental and energy policies, saying Bush was defunding and corrupting federal science projects. Kennedy was also critical of Bush's 2003 hydrogen car initiative, arguing that, because of plans to extract the hydrogen from fossil fuels, it was a gift to the fossil fuel industry disguised as a green automobile. In 2003, Kennedy wrote an article in Rolling Stone about Bush's environmental record, which he expanded into a New York Times bestselling book. His opposition to the Bush administration's environmental policies earned him recognition as one of Rolling Stone ' s "100 Agents of Change" on April 2, 2009.
  
  During an October 2012 interview with Politico, Kennedy called on environmentalists to direct their dissatisfaction toward Congress rather than President Barack Obama, reasoning that Obama "didn't deliver" due to having a partisan Congress "like we haven't seen before in American history". He said politicians who do not act on climate change policy serve special interests and sell out public trust. He said Charles and David Koch —the owners of Koch Industries, Inc., the nation's largest privately owned oil company—subverted democracy and made "themselves billionaires by impoverishing the rest of us".
  
  Kennedy has spoken of the Koch brothers as leading "the apocalyptical forces of Ignorance and Greed". During the 2014 People's Climate March, he said: "The Koch brothers have all the money. They're putting $300 million this year into their efforts to stop the climate bill. And the only thing we have in our power is people power, and that's why we need to put this demonstration on the street."
  
  In a 2020 interview on Yahoo Finance 's "Influencers with Andy Serwer ", Kennedy called President Trump's environmental policies a "cataclysm" and said Trump is "simply the radical step of a process that's been happening in our country and in the Republican Party from the past—really, since 1980—which is a growing hostility towards the environment, a growing orientation to representing the concentrated corporate power and power, particularly of the oil industry and the chemical industry and some of the other large polluting industries."