It has hot and sticky, so the 300 or so fans who had come to listen to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak at the Forecastle Festival were trying to stay cool, but they weren’t missing a minute of the impassioned environmentalist’s speech.

Maybe I was in the minority, but I didn’t know a lot about RFK, Jr., except for his famous lineage. But I knew he was known for his environmental work and I wanted to hear what he had to say. I wasn’t disappointed.

Kennedy, who has an afflication called spasmodic dysphonia that causes his voice to quaver, nonetheless was a powerful and passionate speaker. He was interrupted frequently for applause, especially when he pointed out the environmental record of the Bush Administration, which he called the absolute worst in history. But Kennedy wasn’t giving some rote speech — he admitted to wandering off topic — and gave example after example of policies that have resulted in environmental disaster.

The stats are unsettling — 1 in 4 African-American children have asthma because of air quality, it’s unhealthy to eat fish because of mercury levels, mountaintop mining has devastated communities — and Kennedy reeled them off one after another.

The main point was this — Kennedy maintains that doing the right thing environmentally always, 100 percent of the time, results in positive economics. He said it forces entrepreneurs to come up with economic solutions. He pointed out how, in Iceland and other forward-thinking countreis, reducing dependence on oil has resulted in an conomic boom.

Kennedy’s biggest cause is the protection of waterways, and told how he’d been tested for mercury. Simply from eating fish, he said, his mercury level was dangerous. The same level in a woman would almost certainly result in lower cognitive ability if she had a child.

Kennedy’s appearance was made possible, i.e. paid for, by UPS, and UPS Airline chief Bob Lekitas a chance to talk about his airline’s impressive environmental moves. Also featured was U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, who’s become fast friends with Kennedy and recently appeared on Kennedy’s Air America radio show.

Yarmuth referred several times to coal-burning power plants in Kentucky, just downriver, and Kennedy picked up the ball and did the same.

You couldn’t listen to Kennedy’s speech without being concerned with the way U.S. environmental policy has been corrupted under George Bush.

You can see a portion of the speech on video here.

photo by Antz Wettig, Wettig Photography.