Not only am I overjoyed to hear this, I would love to see Obama offer him the Cabinet post. He is perfect for the job. No one has fought harder for the environment, IMHO, than Robert Kennedy Jr.
Truthout has more on Obama’s considerations.
Obama’s transition planners are weighing several other celebrity-level political stars for Cabinet posts, including retired Gen. Colin L. Powell for secretary of defense or education, the officials said.
Kennedy’s cousin, Caroline Kennedy, who helped Obama lead his vice presidential search, is being considered for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, although some Obama officials doubt she would take the post. Obama is indebted to the Kennedy family for a hearty endorsement at a crucial point in the Democratic primaries.
The selection of Kennedy would be a shrewd early move for the new presidential team. Obama advisers said the nomination would please both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).
The EPA enforces clean air and clear water laws. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and son of the late senator and attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, has long championed a cleaner water supply for New York City.
As an officer and attorney for the environmental watch group Riverkeeper, Kennedy has taken on governments and companies for polluting the Hudson River and Long Island Sound.
Kennedy gained Washington experience by fighting anti-environmental legislation in Congress in 1995 and 1996, when Newt Gingrich took over as House speaker.
Kennedy talked to Huffington Post about the consideration of the EPA post.
“You know what, I would be of service in any way that the administration asked me to be,” Kennedy told the Huffington Post. “But I am also very happy and I believe I am being effective doing the stuff I am doing currently.”
This would give the EPA unprecedented stature unlike anything I can ever recall. It would also signal that Obama is going to make a strong commitment to the environment. After what we have witnessed with George W. Bush’s willful neglect and push to deregulate this agency; it will send a resounding message to the world that he is very serious about environmental issues facing our nation.
Update: Join me in the fight to protect our environment, our democracy, and our American Values.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s reputation as a resolute defender of the environment stems from a litany of successful legal actions. Mr. Kennedy was named one of Time magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet” for his success helping Riverkeeper lead the fight to restore the Hudson River. The group’s achievement helped spawn more than 130 Waterkeeper organizations across the globe.
Mr. Kennedy serves as Chief Prosecuting Attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper and President of Waterkeeper Alliance. He is also a Clinical Professor and Supervising Attorney at Pace University School of Law’s Environmental Litigation Clinic and is co-host of Ring of Fire on Air America Radio. Earlier in his career he served as Assistant District Attorney in New York City. He has worked on several political campaigns including the presidential campaigns of Edward M. Kennedy in 1980, Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.
Here is his website link. (H/T to muse)
TheZoo 
Thank You Lady Freedom for this thread…Putting Robert Kennedy Jr in charge of the EPA would be a great thing for Obama to do..Guess we will just have to wait and see….Blessings
I’m with you witch1 🙂 I honestly can’t think of a better person for the job.
I’ll miss him on Ring Of Fire. Hi Witch1! Hi Freedomrebel!
Good Afternoon, House of Roberts 🙂 What is Ring of Fire? I have never heard of it..
Freedomrebel,
Ring Of Fire is on Air America on Saturdays at 3pm EST live, and rebroadcasts on Sundays a couple different times. It is hosted by Kennedy and Mike Papantonio. What do you listen to while you’re chasing topics? There is so much out there now, I can’t keep up with it all. I start at Noon EST, with Hartmann then Randi Rhodes (on right now) on NovaM, then switch to Air America for Rachel Maddow. Back to NovaM at 9pm EST for Mike Malloy, if I’m not at work.
I would like to listen to more, but until I figure out the Ipod function on my phone, I’ll have to make do with live web radio.
Kennedy would be a powerhouse running the EPA–and he actually knows something about the environment, conservation, and climate change! what a concept after 8 years of having the EPA with its head in a hole…
The job at the EPA calls for someone with a keen sense of both ethics and science. Kennedy is not that person.
The following letter was written in support of Robert H. Boyle (founder of Riverkeeper and author of The Hudson River, A natural and unnatural history) and others who resigned from Riverkeeper rather than support R. F. Kennedy, Jr.’s compromise of the principle that ethics must never be separate from science.
This letter was first published in the Putnam County News and Recorder, Cold Spring, New York, on August 30, 2000 and they have carried it on their website ever since for which they have my thanks. (AHS, 2008)
Letters:
Supports Former Riverkeeper Board Members’ Action
Editor,
The Fishkill Ridge Caretakers, Inc. supports Robert H. Boyle, former president of the Riverkeeper, Inc. and former Riverkeeper, Inc. board members John Fry, treasurer, Nancy Abraham, Kathryn Belous Boyle, Pat Crow, Theresa Hanczor, Robert Hodes, Ann Tonetti and Alexander Zagoreas in the action they have taken in resigning from Riverkeeper in opposition to the hiring of a convicted environmental felon to serve in the position of staff scientist on the staff of Riverkeeper.
In issuing this statement of support, The Fishkill Ridge Caretakers wishes to emphasize that ethics cannot be separated from science and that the environmental movement will prosper best in an atmosphere of demonstrated personal responsibility and earned mutual respect.
We encourage individuals as well as environmental organizations to join us in similar expressions of support for the principled stand taken by Boyle and fellow board members in their defense of the ethical integrity of the environmental movement here in the Hudson River Valley.
Boyle and 8 of the 22 Riverkeeper board members resigned from Riverkeeper, Inc. in protest of the hiring of William Wegner. For eight years Wegner operated a ring of smugglers who stole bird eggs directly from the nests of protected cockatoo species in Australia. Wegner and his ring then smuggled the eggs by air to the United States. Birds that hatched and survived were then sold for as much as $12,500.00 each. A federal judge accepted Wegner’s plea of guilty to charges of conspiracy and tax fraud and sentenced him to five years in prison. The judge also found that Wegner had attempted to obstruct justice by committing perjury at the trial of a co-defendant Wegner paid a $10,000.00 fine.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has stated that everyone deserves a second chance and notes that he himself had been given a second chance in that he had once been convicted of a drug offense.
We note, however, that Kennedy’s offense was essentially a victimless crime while Wegner’s offense was a crime against the environment, the people of Australia, the people of the United States and against the birds. In order to avoid detection during the flight, smugglers flushed newly hatched chicks down the plane’s toilet
Although Wegner has been convicted and served his sentence, nothing he or anyone else can do will correct the damage he has done or make his victims whole again.
Wegner’s prison sentence seems to have done little to improve his ethical sense. The resume Wegner submitted to Riverkeeper accounts for his period of incarceration without referring to the fact of the incarceration itself Wegner describes work he performed and omits the significant information that he performed this work while he was serving time as a prison inmate.
Kennedy overstepped his position as attorney for Riverkeeper when, in November of 1999, he hired Wegner. Boyle terminated Wegner after learning of the hiring and upon review of Wegner’s resume, court records and media accounts. The matter came to a climax at a board meeting on June 20th when Kennedy insisted that Wegner be rehired over Boyle’s objection.
While we hope Riverkeeper continues to work to produce changed human beings who think and act differently in regard to the Hudson River and all that pertains to it, we also recognize the primary mission of Riverkeeper is not the rehabilitation of Wegner or of those like him.
Sincerely,
Anthony Henry Smith
Fishkill
(for The Fishkill Ridge Caretakers)
(Fishkill Ridge Community Heritage, a separate organization, has also supported this letter from their beginning.)