Bobby Kennedy: We should have solar on every rooftop by Giles Parkinson

In inviting Robert F. Kennedy Jr to become a director of its board, Australian renewable energy minnow CBD Energy has not only acquired a famous family name, it has also brought in one of the most committed environmental campaigners in the world, with a no-holds-barred approach to combating the immensely powerful fossil fuel industry, fighting pollution and promoting wind and solar.

In an exclusive interview with RenewEconomy in January – click here for the full transcript – Bobby Kennedy says the global energy system has been corrupted by the absolute power of immensely wealthy oil and coal companies, and the main hope to combat this is by “democratising” the energy industry through individual production, such as rooftop solar.

“The rules by which energy is regulated were written to favour the most poisonous, destructive and addictive fuels from hell, rather than cheap, clean, green, safe, abundant and patriotic fuels from heaven,” he told RenewEconomy. “We need to reverse that dynamic, it’s in our national interest to do so – of Australia and the US. It’s in the global interest of humanity to do so. We’re on a trajectory to a place where we are creating a planet that is a science fiction nightmare.”

Bobby Kennedy says the wealth and dominance built up by the fossil fuel industry over the past few decades, supported by huge and continuing subsidies, has not only corrupted the energy system, but the political one too.

“Wherever you see large-scale pollution, you will also see the subversion of democracy, you will see the compromise of public officials, the capture of the agencies they are supposed to protect; they become sock puppets of the industries they are supposed to regulate. You see that in the political system, the kowtowing  of the politicians who become indentured servants in the US and in Canada."

Now, he says, technology and costs of renewables – solar PV, in particular – has moved to the point where this stranglehold can be relaxed, or even released. This is part of the reason why Kennedy recently joined with David Crane, the CEO of US generation giant NRG, to push for the installation of rooftop solar in every household in the country.

In a joint opinion piece published in December in the New York Times, Kennedy and Crane said solar PV would "significantly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and our dependence on the grid.”