I have no idea what this guys PhD is in, maybe idiocy:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., looking and sounding to us old-timers eerily like his martyred father, spoke of the degradation of our environment to a packed house last week at Rider University's Luedeke Center theater.

Kennedy, who has devoted his life to legal advocacy for our environmental heritage, passionately attacked the Bush administration and Congress, accusing both of reckless policies that threaten to turn back the clock to pre-1970 pollution levels and exploitation of our natural treasures and public resources.

Would that be the Kennedy who for wind power every where but in his neighborhood? Maybe the good Provost would take a little time to examine exactly which party was responsible for signing the strictest environmental regulations into law. NEPA, RCRA, TSCA, the Clean Air Act, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, etc.

At the talk's end, I asked Kennedy why, assuming that conservatives in Washington and the corporate polluters they seek to protect are intelligent people who love their children, his highly persuasive points appear to be unheeded.

He replied by citing a classic economic model - the Tragedy of the Commons. If everyone in the village is entitled to graze cattle on the town commons, this theory states, it's in every individual's best interest to graze as many cows as possible. The result, of course, is that eventually the commons becomes a desert.

The conservatives and the joined-at the-hip corporate polluters, wow. Yes we love our children, as a matter of fact we are in the midst of a war against people who wish our children dead. Mr. Kennedy broke out with some lame analogy, blah, blah, blah. Maybe all the cattle could survive if you used genetically modified crops.

Kennedy's contention is that polluters and their proponents in Washington are content to rape America's public lands, waterways and air because they can retreat with their profits to gated communities and exclusive resorts. They can leave the rest of us - especially the poor - to the pay the price of living with and cleaning up their mess.

Therefore, he concluded, use of public land, navigable waters and the atmosphere must be regulated. Otherwise, greedy capitalists and politicians, who are equally hungry for polluters' campaign contributions, will continue to rape the environment.

The "rape" of americas waterways has been dramatically cut back due to smart regulation and business incentives. Wake up you lefty lunatic, the waters and air are cleaner than ever before. By the way, where do you live, sir? I would imagine it's a pretty nice house in Lawrenceville or Princeton. I'm reasonably sure that you are not part of the poor. If so, you have to improve your salary negotiating skills.

His conclusion about the need for regulation is probably correct. But I wonder if he gives his adversaries enough credit. Dyed-in-the-wool free marketers might respond that the marketplace can be structured to compel conservation practices in the name of self-interest.

For example, "pollution swapping," a procedure in which permissible pollution is regulated and a high polluter can pay a low polluter for the latter's share of the total, is one such strategy touted by advocates of free enterprise. Such panaceas are more than just radical economic theories to these folks. They are tenets of their faith.

On a smaller scale, those of us who purchase gas-guzzling SUVs are buying more than just very big vehicles. Consider the names these behemoths bear: Durango, Explorer, Cherokee. Media maven Marshall McLuhan observed 35 years ago that Americans view life through a rearview mirror. Today, we may drive on crowded highways from suburban sprawl to suburban mall, but our mental landscape is still McLuhan's "Bonanzaland," the Wild West of the 1880s.

Ah, I get it, polluters must be only able to pollute equally. Perhaps we should take the same approach to taxes. Everyone pays the same whether wealthy or poor. How about that? By the way, SUV's are gas guzzlers, but you have as much right to tell someone what they can and can't drive as I do to tell them if abortion is legal or not.

While Kennedy is right about self-interest and greed being powerful motivators, this explanation is too simple. A compelling drama is being played out on the American stage. The protagonists face each other not merely across an income divide but, more fundamentally, across a philosophical divide.

The trouble is that one person's free-market philosophy is another person's asthma. As Kennedy said: "Our children will pay for our joyride."

The rugged individualist, whether a polluter for the sake of profits or in pursuit of an idealized free-market America, shifts the cost of pollution from his own bottom line onto the backs of the American public.

We need to climb down out of our SUVs and turn our backs on Bonanzaland. Otherwise, we will be saddled with poor health, degraded air and water, and denuded landscapes, all for the luxury of an American myth we can no longer afford to sustain.

James, Jimmy, with all due respect, you're a moron. The only weight on my back is the weight of too many social programs that I am funding, not to mention the NEA, NPR, and Bill Moyers. Perhaps you should take a closer look at the environmental business and maybe discover that the regulations currently in place are more than adequate if not too much so.