Bobby made his way down to the Gulf Coast yesterday, and a local paper was able to get an interview with him and got his thougts on the judge who overturned the Administration’s drilling moratorium. From AL.com:
Robert Kennedy Jr., said that he felt like he was living in crazy town when he heard that a federal judge reversed President Barack Obama’s moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
“To think of going back to the same old business offshore when we don’t even know what caused this accident, that seems insane,” Kennedy said Wednesday, after a flight over the Alabama coastline and a visit to beaches in Gulf Shores.
Kennedy toured the area with Casi Callaway, head of Mobile Baykeeper.
Kennedy and Philippe Cousteau were featured guests at Wednesday’s $500 per plate fundraising dinner benefiting the environmental group. Callaway said the capacity crowd at the 130-seat room at Space 301 helped raise about $50,000.
He is president of the New York-based Waterkeeper Alliance, of which Mobile Baykeeper is a member.
“I don’t think anybody responsible would advocate more drilling right now,” he added.
Kennedy noted reports that U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who blocked the drilling ban on Tuesday, was a Reagan appointee with stock in Transocean, the drilling company that owned the rig that exploded and set the Gulf spill in motion.
“That’s what we’ve come to,” Kennedy said. “That’s what has infiltrated our judiciary and our political system.”
Kennedy said he was stunned that government officials had allowed deepwater drilling, given data showing that blowout preventers — fail safe devices at the well head — sometimes fail. He said well owner BP PLC gambled that nothing would go wrong, even as it took risky shortcuts.
“They flipped a coin. It was heads we win, tails you lose. We lost the coin toss, the American people and particularly the people of the Gulf, which is looking at a loss of its culture, its industries, its fisheries.”
Kennedy called Callaway “a staunch defender of Mobile Bay, fighting against reckless development,” and said that Baykeeper had a lot of local support.
The full article can be read HERE.
