''When I was little, everywhere I went people said, 'Oh,
you're
Bobby's son, you're Ted's nephew or Jack's nephew," recalls
the son of
the former US attorney general. ''Now I speak at a lot
of colleges.
It's a younger audience, and so they often say, 'Oh, you're
Arnold's
cousin," a reference to Arnold Schwarzennegger, who married
his cousin
Maria Shriver.
Far more well-known is his cousin John F Kennedy Jr, the
dashing son
of the former president and the publisher of George, a
new political
magazine, who recently made front-page news and broke
many a woman's
heart by getting married.
But if Kennedy (Robert, that is) has a chip on his shoulder,
it
doesn't show; perhaps because he has chosen his lot, and
seems content
with it.
And to be sure, in certain circles - environmental ones,
to be precise
- he is very well known indeed. One of America's foremost
environmental advocates, he is extremely active in the
northeastern
US, and increasingly further afield.
The first question that has to be asked is the most obvious
one: Why
doesn't he go into politics, where he could have even
more impact than
he does now as a lawyer fighting in the courts?
No doubt there are many reasons, but his answer is simple:
''I like my
job," he said on a recent trip to Bangkok.
Kennedy was appalled by the condition of Thailand's environment.
While
being driven around Bangkok's traffic-clogged streets,
one of the
first things he noticed was that many pedestrians wore
masks to try
and filter out the air pollution.
Asked for his impressions, Kennedy pulled no punches. Thailand
had
followed the bad example of many Western countries in
''liquidating
its natural resources to turn them into cash". The difference
is that
in the US, starting on Earth Day in 1970, people took
to the streets
in outrage. This led to the passage of 19 federal statutes
which
''have succeeded in protecting large chunks of the American
environment".
This process is just beginning in Thailand, and Kennedy
is not content
to wait it out. Instead, he and a group of US environmentalists
have
set up a ''Shrimp Tribunal", which has succeeded in placing
an embargo
on all shrimp imports from countries with destructive
shrimping
industries. Thailand, he added, is the ''principle target"
of this move.
Kennedy was not in the best of shape during his visit.
Battling to
overcome a recent bout of pneumonia, and perhaps a bit
of jet lag, his
voice would often crack, forcing him to cough and pause
while he
recovered his composure.
Nevertheless, on Monday he managed to give a rousing, hour-long,
off-the-cuff speech on just why it is so important to
protect our
environment. His breadth of knowledge, eloquent delivery
and youthful,
lean good looks so entranced the audience - a group of
travel agents
from the US - that they responded with a standing ovation
at the end.
It was a case of pure Camelot.
But there is more to Kennedy than just being a Kennedy.
As he recounts
stories from his youth, it becomes clear that he has long
been a
passionate outdoorsman. One of his favourite pastimes
is hunting on
his estate in Westchester, New York - with trained hawks.
''I've trained hawks since I was 11 years old," he explains.
''When my
uncle was in the White House, I could walk up Pennsylvania
Avenue and
see an Adam's Peregrine Falcon, the most beautiful predatory
bird that
we have in America.
''[There were] two of them nesting at the old post office,
they would
come down Pennsylvania Avenue and kill pigeons 40 feet
[12 metres]
above the heads of the pedestrians, and very few people
saw it, except
for me and a few falconers.
''That bird went extinct the next year, because of DDT
poisoning. My
children will never be able to see that bird." DDT is
an insecticide
still sprayed in rural areas of Thailand to kill mosquitoes.
The irretrievable loss of species, and the implications
of this for
future generations, is an enduring theme of Kennedy's
speech, and
perhaps his life. Even in his private moments, Kennedy
often draws a
connection between his love for his children and his love
for nature
in all its bizarre and wondrous forms.
Last Sunday, for instance, he visited the Weekend Market,
where he
waded through the crowds, seeking out new acquisitions
for some
unusual hobbies. Wherever he travels, he picks up local
specimens for
his children's insect collection (he bought a scorpion),
and for his
bone collection (the tongue of an Indian ray and a long-horned
buffalo
skull are new additions to his lifeless menagerie).
''I've collected bones since I was young," he explained
enthusiastically, while waiting for his purchases to be
wrapped. ''If
my kids and I are in the car and we see a dead animal
by the side of
the road that we don't have, we get out, cut its head
off and take it home.
''Then, to clean off the skin and tissue, I stick it in
a jar of
dermistead beetles, which do a very efficient job of eating
off all
the flesh. It usually takes about six weeks. Finally I
put it in the
dishwasher, and it comes out looking just great."
Talk about skeletons in the closet - even Teddy couldn't match that.
As for his professional life, Kennedy is best known for
his fight to
clean up the Hudson River and protect New York City's
water supply - a
battle which could set a precedent in the campaign to
clean up rivers
like the Chao Phya.
As chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper,
a New
York-based environmental organisation, he represents a
group of
small-scale fishermen trying to survive the onslaught
of modernity.
Meanwhile, he teaches at Pace University Law School in
New York, where
his students have been given special permission to practice
law under
his supervision as if they were professional attorneys.
''The fishermen run a patrol boat up and down the river
finding
polluters, and at the beginning of the semester, we give
each of the
students a polluter to prosecute. They file complaints,
they go to
court, they argue the case.
''Of course, if they don't win the case, they don't pass
the course,"
he quips, laughing.
''We've fought [more than] 100 successful cases over polluters
in 13
years. We've forced polluters to spend US$200 million
[Bt5 billion]
doing remediation on the Hudson, and today the Hudson,
partly as a
result of our work, is one of the richest water bodies
in the world."
As senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defence Council,
he has
worked on issues all over the world, from the battle to
save the
Bio-Bio River in Chile to Clayoquot Sound in Canada. But
it hasn't
always worked out happily for him. His efforts to mediate
in a dispute
between natives in Ecuador and an American oil company
led to
accusations of ''environmental imperialism".
Kennedy still winces at the memory of the controversial
deal: ''I
still have a lot of scars left over from that one," he
says quietly.
In his speech, Kennedy highlighted many of the the themes
echoed by
environmentalists around the world: Good environmental
policy is also
good economic policy; investing in the environment is
as important as
investing in infrastructure; industrial pollution is in
fact a public
subsidy for businesses.
But the most interesting part of the talk was when he highlighted
the
spiritual connections between humans and their surroundings.
Much of
our language and many of our myths are derived from our
links to
nature, he noted.
''It is a connection recognised by spiritual leaders throughout
time,"
but is especially strong in America, whose culture and
politics were
defined by a fascination with the frontier and a love
for wilderness.
''America's first great author [John Fenimore Cooper, whose
Leatherstocking Tales told the story of Natty Bumppo],
a child of
the American wilderness, who had all the virtues that
people thought
the wilderness gives to you," said Kennedy.
And that may be who Kennedy himself, a child of Camelot,
aspires to
be: a hero of the American wilderness. ''I love my job,
and I love
going to court, and I love going out on the river and
I love fighting
against the bad guys," he declares quite openly.
''What does it say about us as a generation when half the
species on
the planet go extinct in our lifetime? For students entering
college,
that's what they will see by the time they reach retirement
age if
trends continue."
And just maybe, when those future generations look back
on our time,
the people they pick out as heroes won't be the celebrities
of today,
but rather those like Kennedy Robert Jr who
fought to save all the
creatures of creation.