Reviewed by Tanya Lee

Whether it’s the N-aquifer underlying Hopi and Navajo lands, the vast expanses of Arctic wilderness, the once-teeming waters of the Gulf of Mexico, or the Charles River in Massachusetts, the federal government and multinational corporations are stealing and squandering our grandchildren’s birthright – to live in a clean environment where the "commons" – air, water, wildlife, wilderness, seeds, culture – are held in trust for their grandchildren. That birthright, and with it the right to life itself, could be gone within just a few decades.

"…[T]oday, if you ask [environmental leaders] to name the greatest threat to the global environment, the answer wouldn’t be overpopulation, or global warming, or sprawl. The nearly unanimous response would be George W. Bush," writes Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in his most recent book, Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy.

The "new world order" alliance of governments and multi-national corporations is taking control not only of our natural resources, but also of our language, using it in ways that are meant to obscure and confuse. "Healthy Forests" means logging old growth forests. "Clear Skies" means gutting the provisions of the 1972 Clean Air Act. "No Child Left Behind" means no public school left standing. "Climate change" means global warming.

Kennedy points out that George W. Bush’s anti-environmental federal agenda is simply a logical extension of the devastation done to the State of Texas during Bush’s governorship from 1994 to 2000. "Under his watch, Texas had the worst pollution record in the United States," says Kennedy, a record that included the highest emissions of CO2, the most chemical spills and violations of the Clean Water Act, and the highest production of hazardous waste.

In Texas, Governor Bush appointed energy industry representatives to run the environmental agency, just as he chose oil giant Halliburton’s Dick Cheney as his running mate, selected Condoleezza Rice, who served on Chevron’s board for ten years, as National Security Advisor, appointed Gale Norton, who has ties to Monsanto (genetically-modified seeds), Phillip Morris (tobacco), and Exxon (oil), as Secretary of the Interior, and former mining lobbyist Steven Griles as her deputy. Mark Rey, head of the Forest Service and an untiring proponent of the Healthy Forests Initiative, is a former timber industry lobbyist.

Large energy companies brought millions of dollars to the table during the 2000 election and are bringing millions more in 2004 (as of September 13, 75 percent of campaign contributions from the energy/natural resources sector have gone to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics), and early in the spring of 2001 Dick Cheney brought them (including Enron’s Ken Lay and Peabody Coal’s Irl Engelhart) to the table to negotiate in secret the nation’s energy policy.

The policy these industry representatives devised relied heavily on fossil fuels, all but stopped enforcement of provisions of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and made corporate profit its foremost priority.

Within a year of the Bush-Cheney team taking over the White House, California was experiencing an energy crisis of unprecedented scale as companies like Enron and Reliant masterminded huge corporate profits for themselves at the expense of the environment (not to mention ratepayers’ pocketbooks). A few months later we were – again – at war with Iraq, the nation that has the largest oil reserves in the world.

The passing of the "commons" – those essentials for life on earth that according to Western law from its beginnings and Indigenous ethics for millennia "belong" to everyone and therefore to no one – into private hands is perhaps the most dangerous and alarming development in modern history.

Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., HarperCollins, 2004, ISBN: 0-06-074687-4 (hardcover, $21.95)