An environmental group is calling for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be investigated over a recently resurfaced incident described by his daughter in which he beheaded a whale carcass that had washed ashore near his home, the latest in a series of revealing anecdotes highlighting his bizarre personal life.
The latest story, shared by Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy in a 2012 interview with Town & Country Magazine, details how Kennedy once used a chainsaw to cut off the head of a dead whale carcass that had washed up on the shores of their family’s home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He then drove the whale’s head back to their home in New York on the roof of the family’s minivan.
“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kick Kennedy told the magazine. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.”
The story appeared to resurface on social media following tabloid reports last week romantically linking Kick Kennedy with actor Ben Affleck.
Read more at the link in @cnnpolitics’ bio.
📸: Rebecca Noble/Getty Images
Westminster’s refreshed National Planning Policy Framework signals a default yes to homes near rail hubs, accelerating sustainable urban development while curbing transport emissions. To secure durable value, schemes should embed whole life carbon assessment from concept stage, quantify embodied carbon, and optimise life cycle cost alongside placemaking and green infrastructure. Brownfield intensification that couples eco-design for buildings with resource efficiency in construction can cut the carbon footprint of construction and support net zero whole life carbon targets, aligning with BREEAM v7.
Energy remains the strategic risk. Developers are moving ahead with electrification regardless of policy noise, designing grid-ready sites, specifying heat pumps, and tightening controls to deliver energy-efficient buildings and net zero carbon buildings. The BCIA’s BEMS Delivery Framework gives clients a common standard for interoperable controls, improving building lifecycle performance and closing the performance gap. With over two-thirds of households already cutting energy use, demand is rising for sustainable building design that delivers verifiable lifecycle assessment outcomes and measurable carbon footprint reduction across operation and maintenance.
Rising summer temperatures are making resilience a core brief. Specifications now need passive shading, thermal mass, and material choices that balance embodied carbon in materials with durability and low-impact construction. Sustainable material specification should prioritise low embodied carbon materials and renewable building materials supported by environmental product declarations (EPDs), while enabling end-of-life reuse in construction through circular construction strategies. Adopting low carbon construction materials, green building materials and green building products within a circular economy in construction advances sustainable building practices, sustainable design and green construction. The result is low carbon design that de-risks delivery, supports carbon neutral construction, and accelerates decarbonising the built environment.
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