Crimes Against Nature

Crimes Against Nature is a non-fiction book by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., published in 2005. In it, Kennedy attempts to demonstrate that the administration of George W. Bush was corrupt and beholden to powerful corporate interests.

The book begins with a short introduction in which Kennedy declares that his environmental work is non-partisan because he believes there are no Republican or Democrat children. He mentions how the Bush administration cloaks its anti-environmental policies in the language of environmental protection to hide their true purpose. He then asks the central question of the book: Why has Bush allowed these corporate interests to threaten our futures?

Kennedy details how Texas became one of the most polluted states in the country under the governorship of George W. Bush; Houston has more smog alerts than Los Angeles, and one-fourth of the rivers in Texas are too polluted to be used recreationally. This is in part due to the fact that environmental protection spending in Texas dropped to 49th in the country under Bush. Bush also championed tort reform that made it nearly impossible to bring class action lawsuits against polluters.



Kennedy then examines history, noting that up until the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, common law always protected the environment and the vital resources like air and water that people relied upon—but also charged those people with the care of those resources. When the Industrial Revolution came, it was suddenly believed that pollution was the cost of doing business and generating jobs. By 1970, when the first Earth Day was staged, this display of public anger spurred politicians to enact a range of environmental protection legislation. Corporations, worried these new laws would hurt their profits, formed charities and think tanks to fight back behind the scenes. These groups produce reams of studies and papers that the Bush administration has used to confuse issues and justify policies that are harmful to the environment. Kennedy also details some bad faith dealings where the administration has made promises to appease environmentally-concerned politicians like former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger—promises which it never intended to keep.

Kennedy notes that Bush made global warming and climate change a campaign promise in the election of 2000, but quickly reneged on it. Kennedy then offers a brief overview of climate change, from the first definition of the ‛greenhouse effect’ in 1896 to the modern day definition where scientists agree that mankind is producing more carbon dioxide than the Earth can safely process. Glaciers are shrinking, temperatures are rising, and global efforts are being launched to deal with these issues. Bush had the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide, but his newly appointed EPA Secretary, Christine Todd Whitman, received no guidance from the president and had difficulty engaging him on the topic. When the EPA announced more lenient limits on the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water, the public outcry and political fallout convinced the Bush Administration that they needed to adopt more secretive and subtle ways of gutting environmental regulations.

Kennedy then details how small farmers are being bullied and put out of business by large global industrial farming conglomerates, and how they tried to use environmental law to fight back, gaining what seemed like a major victory when a federal judge ruled that these large conglomerates were violating clean water rules. This victory was turned to a defeat when the Bush administration simply changed the regulations to render the lawsuit moot. This signaled the new subtlety used by the Bush administration to undermine environmental laws, helped tremendously by John Graham in his role as director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. Graham used the HCRA to publish studies and reports that gave legitimacy to Bush administration policies that actively harmed the environment and weakened regulations.



Kennedy delves into the ways the Bush administration twists and perverts science to their needs. They do this by picking and choosing which reports and data to release and by using marketing techniques—like re-branding ‛global warming’ as ‛climate change.’ Kennedy also notes the way the Bush administration disdains science and undermines the authority of experts. Kennedy highlights why the Bush administration is so eager to do so, noting the immense amounts of money donated to both the Bush campaign and the Republican Party by the energy industry. This has resulted in a corporate infiltration of the administration, with former CEOs occupying more cabinet posts than in any other administration. One major industry donating and supporting Bush is the coal industry, which Kennedy notes is especially harmful to the environment in a variety of ways, from the damage done to land by strip mining to the air pollution produced by burning coal. Yet the EPA and other government agencies have rolled back regulations in order to make it easier and cheaper for coal barons to mine and process coal.

Republicans used similar tactics to kill proposed energy legislation from the democrats, pretending to be interested in supporting it, then offering duplicitous and inferior studies and reports to undermine its apparent necessity and effectiveness. They then added many ‛poison pill’ amendments supposedly to make it possible to pass, but in reality to destroy its effectiveness.

Kennedy notes that despite the creation of the Department of Homeland Security after the events of 9/11, no serious oversight over the security practices of the energy industry have been implemented, because this would incur expense on the part of those corporate interests. Efforts to legislate some kind of security oversight were met with fierce resistance, and so dangers from toxic chemicals and other things continue.



Kennedy concludes by noting that despite the persistent rumor of a liberal media, the media has in fact been happy to go along with the myths of environmental rollbacks and pseudo-science, largely due to their own connections to the energy industry. He concludes that if the American people knew the truth, they would be angry at the president and his administration.