Water Quality
"Clean water is everyone's business. Everyone needs it. Pollution results from our improper use of rivers and the watersheds that drain into them. As population and production increase, we use our natural lands and systems ever more intensively, not only for recreation, but to generate energy and dispose of wastes.
"Moreover, the problems of rivers do not always begin with rivers. Whatever we do to a landscape can ultimately be seen in the river into which that landscape drains - and we have done terrible things to many landscapes. To achieve the goals of the Clean Water Act, we must stop using our rivers and landscapes as though they were disposable.
"But what polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves by lowering the quality of life for everybody else, and they do that by evading the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter; I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay his production costs. That's what all pollution is. It's always a subsidy. It's always a guy trying to cheat the free market. Polluters are externalizing machines. They're constantly figuring out ways to get somebody else to pay their costs of production." Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
"Moreover, the problems of rivers do not always begin with rivers. Whatever we do to a landscape can ultimately be seen in the river into which that landscape drains - and we have done terrible things to many landscapes. To achieve the goals of the Clean Water Act, we must stop using our rivers and landscapes as though they were disposable.
"But what polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves by lowering the quality of life for everybody else, and they do that by evading the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter; I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay his production costs. That's what all pollution is. It's always a subsidy. It's always a guy trying to cheat the free market. Polluters are externalizing machines. They're constantly figuring out ways to get somebody else to pay their costs of production." Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
