DAMAGE DONE - Part 2 of 3

From "Junk Science:"  

   ...Science, like theology, reveals transcendent truths about a changing world.  At their best, scientists are moral individuals whose business is to seek the truth.  Over the past two decades industry and conservative think tanks have invested millions of dollars to corrupt science.  They distort the truth about tobacco, pesticides, ozone depletion, dioxin, acid rain and global warming.  In their attempt to undermine the credible basis for public action (by positing that all opinions are politically driven and therefore any one is as true as any other), they also undermine belief in the integrity of the scientific process."
        ... The Bush Administration has so violated and corrupted the institutional culture of government agencies charged with scientific research that it could take a generation for them to recover their integrity even if Bush is defeated this fall.  Says Princeton University scientist Michael Oppenheimer, "If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge and in a search for the truth, this White House is an absolute disaster."

RFK, Jr. is becoming an ever-more-important voice in environmental politics today.  if our wildest dreams come true and a Democrat wins the November election, i hope there's a spot in the highest levels of government reserved for this Kennedy.  head of the EPA?  Secretary of the Interior? it's time that  undoing the damage of the past two decades of environmental evils assumes an importance on a level with Homeland Security, or perhaps even higher.

Continued in Part 3