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.
Interpretation
Global warming poses a severe risk, driven by outdated energy practices and economic interests.
In this quote, Robert Kennedy Jr. emphasizes the critical nature of global warming as a significant threat to humanity and the environment. He suggests that it stems from a conflict between traditional energy companies, which he believes would not survive in a truly competitive market, and the pressing need for innovative solutions to combat climate change.
In practice
In a speech about climate change awareness, reference this quote to highlight the urgency of the situation.
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.
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.
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.
When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their 'tea,' you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about. ... A little tea or coffee restores them. ... There is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his cup of tea.
Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval [tropical] forests, ... temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature. No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
A week of sweeping fogs has passed over and given me a strange sense of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day, yet I can see nothing anywhere but a mass of wet rock, a strip of surf, and then a tumult of waves.
The moon shines bright. In such a night as this. When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees and they did make no noise, in such a night.
Nature herself makes the wise man rich.
Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.
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