Robert F. Kennedy, JR. & Christine Todd Whitman Debate the Environment

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Outside Magazine November 2004

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Robert F. Kennedy, JR. & Christine Todd Whitman
The Environment: A Debate
What happens when you take two people with passionately opposing views, put them on a river in the middle of nowhere, and tell them to go at it? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Christine Todd Whitman debate the issue that no one's talking about.


	(Andy Anderson)

WITH ALL THE SHOUTING over military records, terrorism, and wartime leadership during this year's presidential campaign, it's easy to forget that there are issues besides defense. National security is obviously a major concern right now, but many domestic agendas—including health care, education, and one we're especially fervent about, the environment—have gotten less attention than the fine print on a rental-car contract.

Regardless of who wins in November, it's time to put green issues back on the front burner. Over the past three and a half years, the Bush administration has, for better or worse, executed the most dramatic shift in environmental policy in nearly a quarter-century. The White House has radically reshaped the Clean Air Act, ramped up logging in national forests, opened potential wilderness lands to oil and gas drilling, and walked away from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which has been ratified by more than 100 countries. These changes affect the air we breathe, the water in our rivers, and the land on which we hike, ride, and climb.

So, this past summer, we invited Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Christine Todd Whitman, environmental advocates from opposing sides of the political aisle, to meet over a campfire in Idaho's Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness for a no-holds-barred debate about the state of America's natural resources. As chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Kennedy has emerged as the most strident green critic of the Bush administration. His new book, Crimes Against Nature (HarperCollins), is a comprehensive indictment of this White House, charging Bush with eviscerating the landscape to pay back his big industrial campaign contributors. After serving as governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001, Whitman became Bush's first Environmental Protection Agency administrator and was the White House's most visible environmental official until her resignation in May 2003. Many political observers have claimed that she was frustrated with the administration's environmental policy, but Whitman has always maintained that she left for personal reasons. Though she defends Bush's record, she's also writing a book—It's My Party Too, to be published by the Penguin Press early next year—that advocates a Republican return to more moderate values, including the party's spirit of Teddy Roosevelt–style conservation.

For three days in July, Kennedy, Whitman, and their families joined Outside editors Hal Espen, Elizabeth Hightower, and Bruce Barcott, along with river guides from top western outfitter Outdoor Adventure River Specialists (OARS), for a float down Idaho's Salmon River. Every evening, we led the two adversaries to a quiet spot along the riverbank, turned on the tape recorder, and invited them to sound off. The result was a frank, impassioned discussion. There were pointed fingers and raised voices, harsh accusations and angry rebuttals. And there were also—surprisingly—some major points of agreement.

Wilderness has a way of pushing the essentials to the foreground. Without aides, cell phones, or 24-hour cable news, public figures are forced to knock off the posturing and talk more like ordinary human beings. That, at least, was our hope. The Whitman-Kennedy wilderness summit is our contribution to this fateful political season—a shadow debate about how we use our land, air, and water.

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