In this powerful and far-reaching indictment of George W. Bush's White
House, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the country's most prominent environmental
attorney, charges that this administration has taken corporate cronyism to
such unprecedented heights that it now threatens our health, our national
security, and democracy as we know it. In a headlong pursuit of private
profit and personal power, Kennedy writes, George Bush and his
administration have eviscerated the laws that have protected our nation's
air, water, public lands, and wildlife for the past thirty years,
enriching the president's political contributors while lowering the
quality of life for the rest of us.
Kennedy lifts the veil on how the administration has
orchestrated these rollbacks almost entirely outside of public scrutiny --
and in tandem with the very industries that our laws are meant to
regulate, the country's most notorious polluters. He writes of how it has
deceived the public by manipulating and suppressing scientific data,
intimidated enforcement officials and other civil servants, and masked its
agenda with Orwellian doublespeak. He reports on how the White House doles
out lavish subsidies and tax breaks to the energy barons while excusing
industry from providing adequate security at the more than 15,000 chemical
and nuclear facilities that are prime targets for terrorist attacks.
Kennedy reveals an administration whose policies have "squandered our
Treasury, entangled us in foreign wars, diminished our international
prestige, made us a target for terrorist attacks, and increased our
reliance on petty Middle Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are
hated by their own people."
Crimes Against Nature is ultimately
about the corrosive effect of corporate corruption on our core American
values -- free-market capitalism and democracy. It is about an
administration, the author argues, that has sacrificed respect for the
law, public health, scientific integrity, and long-term economic vitality
on the altar of corporate greed. It is a book for both Democrats and
Republicans, people like the traditionally conservative farmers and
fishermen Kennedy represents in lawsuits against polluters. "Without
exception," he writes, "these people see the current
administration as the greatest threat not just to their livelihoods but to
their values, their sense of community, and their idea of what it means to
be American."
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NATURAL
RESOURCES PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
