Democracy is messy, and it's hard. It's never easy.
Robert Kennedy, Jr.
Our landscapes connect us to our history; they are the source of our character as a peopl, as well as our health, our safety, and our prosperity. Natural resources enrich us economically, yes. But they also enrich us aesthetically and recreationally and culturally and spiritually.
I always saw pollution as theft, and I always thought, 'Why should somebody be able to pollute the air, which belongs to all of us, or destroy a river or a waterway, which is supposed to belong to the whole community?'
I'm very pro vaccine. I get all six of my kids vaccinated. I believe vaccines save millions of lives, and people ought to be getting vaccinated.
There were a lot of years that I was trying to do things that other people wanted me to do. But you have to follow your heart. Believe that you have a unique group of talents and abilities that are going to allow you to accomplish something in an area that interests you. Work at that and try to make some kind of contribution to your community.
There is abundant science out there that connects mercury exposure in vaccines to not only autism, but to ASD, to SIDS, to ADD, ADHD, language tics - which is like Tourette Syndrome - OCD, asthma, food allergies, and diabetes.
PBS was not a left-wing ideology. I mean, Air America was, but PBS was not. But anybody who tells the truth is now branded and marginalized. The devolution of the American press began in 1986 when Ronald Reagan abolished the fairness doctrine.
When my father started talking about strip mining in the Appalachia back in the '60s, I remember a conversation I had with him where he said, you know, this is the richest state in the country if you look at the resources and the land, but the poorest people after the state of Mississippi: the 49th poorest people in the country.
Lots of countries, like Israel, live with terrorism every day, and it doesn't impact their integrity. The big threat to America is the way we react to terrorism by throwing away what everybody values about our country - a commitment to human rights. America is a great nation because we are a good nation.
Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative that was in many American vaccines until 2003. It was removed from many of the pediatric vaccines, but it was put in the flu vaccine, which is now given to 53 million Americans.
A lot of life is about trying to turn bad experiences into something good. Usually if you work at it, you can figure out a way to do it. Even our worst misfortunes are gifts.
I have the kind of life where I can take my kids on trips with me. I can involve them in my work. I've always avoided politics because I didn't want to make commitments that would take me away from raising these children.
In 1932, the predecessor organization, the CDC, took 299 black sharecroppers from the South who had syphilis. They offered them free healthcare, hot lunches, and free burial. They said you can only come to us for healthcare. These were men who were sharecroppers, and they had syphilis. They were never told they had syphilis.
My father thought of America as the last best hope for humanity. He believed we had a historical mission to be a paragon to the rest of the world, to be about what human beings can accomplish if they work together and maintain their focus.
Obama came in really wanting to change things, but he hit a wall of corporate money, oil and coal money: when he tried to pass the Cap and Trade system of pharmaceutical money, when he tried to pass the Obamacare - which, of course, then got watered down into a much less effective, much less economical, program.
I always knew that I was going be an environmental advocate when I was very young.
I think global warming is the gravest threat. With global warming, it's the product of a war between old energy - between the carbon cronies, who, by the way, could not stay in business in a true free market capitalism.
There's many, many people who have been through a lot worse things than I went through. I lost my dad when I was 14 and to violence.
At the time of the Civil War, there were six democracies in the face of the planet. Today, there's 120 and they've been inspired by the American exceptionalism.
I'm comfortable reading science and dissecting it and discerning the difference between junk science and real science.
When I was 7 years old, I announced that I was going to write a book about pollution. I didn't get around to it until I was 29, but I always recognized that pollution was a theft. That it was a way of stealing something from the public - the common earth.
If you work hard at anything, you're going to experience some success. And the greatest gift is when you have something you really love to do and you can integrate that into your work life. I feel like it's a real privilege that I get to do something that is good for my community and good for the world. But it's also pleasurable for me.
Water keepers patrol local waterways and prosecute polluters. Essentially, they act as the community's coast guard.
We have very strong environmental laws in the United States and elsewhere around the world. The problem is that they're seldom enforced.
Democracy is about institutions: it's about having things like schools and judiciary and the Ford Foundation, or 'The Nation' magazine - you need progressive institutions, you know what I mean? Those are important institutions to make sure that the government functions.
