Environmental activist Robert Kennedy Jr. spoke about the financial benefits of natural energy resources Wednesday night to a packed main floor in John R. Emens Auditorium.
He told the audience he predicted the use of natural materials would save Americans enough money in gas and utility bills to jump-start the stalling economy.
"We need an industry that will push us out of this recession, like World War II pulled us out of the Great Depression," he said.
Kennedy's idea to rebuild the economy is to redirect money spent on oil and coal to the construction of solar panels and wind turbines. He said the $1.3 trillion in subsidies oil companies receive each year could buy enough solar panel grids to provide the United States with free, unlimited energy.
He compared solar energy resources to the spread in scope and decrease in price of Internet technology.
"IBM said [the Internet] was a dead-end technology," he said. "And what happened to the price of information [when it became more available]? It plummeted down to nothing.
"That's what will happen to the price of electrons after we build this."
KENNEDY AND BALL STATE'S GO-GREEN EFFORTS
Kennedy, the son of late Sen. Robert Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, visited Ball State as part of the Bracken Environmental Speaker Series.
Kennedy told the audience that after touring the campus Wednesday, he thought Ball State's advances in the go-green movement were on the right track.
"This university can be a flagship to show how efficient our resources are," he said.
Emens usher Cami Podell said Kennedy teamed up with Emens to promote environmentalism by suggesting boxes be available after his speech for audience members who wanted to recycle the evening's program flier. This is the first time Emens has promoted recycling since it began reusing Muncie Symphony Orchestra programs during each performance season, she said.
CROWD REACTION
Anne Hoover, retired Ball State landscape architecture professor, arrived at Emens an hour before Kennedy's speech. She said she had heard him speak at other environmental conferences and noticed his views fit her opinions on both politics and natural resource conservation. She said he visited the campus at the best time because of Ball State's recent pro-environment actions.
"His whole arena of issues has been on the back burner under the Republicans for so long," Hoover said. "Now he has the chance to be so broadly heard, and it's at a great time because we're now 'green' in so many disciplines on campus."
Biology graduate student Maggie MacNeil, a native of New York, said Kennedy's discussion of how pollution from the Midwest causes acid rain in New York interested her the most.
"It's amazing to see someone with this much influence talk about things I'm passionate about, too," she said.
Junior Ian Webb said he went to see Kennedy speak mainly because of the importance of the Kennedy name, but he also felt a personal tie to the speaker's cause. Because his father works as a manager at Potato Creek State Park near South Bend, Webb has lived in state parks all his life. He said he knows Kennedy's energy ideas could affect his father's work.
Junior Seve South said although his business administration major and Webb's telecommunications major do not directly relate to Kennedy's speech, the overall topic of environmentalism appealed to them.
"This affects everybody when we go out into the real world," he said.
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