John H. Adams - A Force for Nature: The Story of NRDC and the Fight to Save Our Planet

A Force for Nature

The Story of NRDC and the Fight to Save Our Planet

John H. Adams & Patricia Adams
with George Black
Foreword by Robert Redford

Text copyright 2010 by Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

eISBN: 978-0-8118-7875-3

Chronicle Books LLC
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San Francisco, CA 94107

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Why NRDC? And why John Adams? Of all the superb environmental organizations that have grown up over the past forty years, why did I choose to spend most of my adult life associated with this one?

When I was a kid in California, I grabbed every opportunity I could to escape to unspoiled wild places. Those experiences exposed me to all the majesty of the natural world, but at a time when the threats to it seemed to be growing exponentially. We had few environmental laws to speak of; even calling yourself an environmentalist led most people to write you off as some kind of crazed extremist. But John Adams, a man Id never met, was figuring out some answers. If there were no laws, make themand then enforce them. If there were no lawyers, find them, train them, and set them loose in the courtroom. If environmentalism was seen as a fringe issue, take it into the mainstream. If environmentalists were condemned as naysayers, show that they had real, practical solutions.

In January 1970 John and a group of like-minded lawyers set up an organization that they called the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC. Forty years later many people (myself included) regard it as possibly the most effective environmental organization on the planet.

I first met John in 1973. Lots of organizations were springing up around this time. I worked with many of them and admired what they were doing, but when I met with John it was clear that NRDC had a unique concept, a power. They could go to court.

The tiny organization had already begun to prove that it could defeat the worst corporate polluters. At the same time, NRDC was infinitely pragmatic: the message was, work with us to design solutions and well do all we can to find common ground; oppose us and we will see you in courtand more often than not we will win.

I joined Johns board in 1974. Part of his genius was to see that protecting our environment would take generations, so he set about creating an organization for the long haul. Start with the smartest lawyers you could find and steadily add the best scientists, economists, communicators, fundraisers, administrators. Remain unswervingly loyal to these people, and they would repay you in kind. NRDC is full of people who have been there for twenty or thirty years or more. Can any other organization make that kind of claim?

To me, membership is a vital key to NRDCs phenomenal success. John and his colleagues have helped draft many of the nations most important environmental laws; they have won landmark cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But lasting social change comes ultimately from the grass roots, and NRDC has built a community of 1.2 million members and online activists. That is real power.

But you never rest on your laurels. The biggest challenge of our generation is to fight global warming, and it involves standing up to the most powerful corporate and political adversaries. To NRDC, thats the whole point of building an organization for the long haul. There will be endless battles and frequent reversals of fortune. But in the end, you can outfight and outlast your enemies, and you can win.

So, John, my friend, heres to the next forty years.

Robert Redford

We dedicate this book to NRDCs extended family, to our children, Kate, John Hamilton, and Ramsay, and our nephews, Tom and McCrea Burnham.

We are indebted to our founding chairman, Stephen Duggan, and his wife, Beatrice Abbott Duggan, for their warmth and commitment in building a strong foundation for NRDC. Whitney North Seymour Jr. created a model for NRDC that we have followed ever since. Bill DeWind led us into the international arena. Fritz Schwarz guided us through the transition to new leadership under Frances Beinecke. Our fourth chairman, Dan Tishman, has kept us secure through the recent economic crisis.

The intellectual leadership of Gus Speth, Ed Strohbehn, John Bryson, Dick Ayres, Tom Stoel, and Dick Hall in the new field of public interest law set the standard for our work. Founding board members David Sive, Jim Marshall, Adele Auchincloss, George Woodwell, Boris Bittker, Bob Gilmore, John Oakes, John Robinson, and Larry Rockefeller were mentors and friends.

Simpson, Thacher, and Bartlett has always given us superb pro bono representation, from Stephen Duggan to Dick Beattie, Tom Cashel, Chuck Koob, Sarah Cogan, and Pete Ruegger.

Countless people have made NRDC a great place to live and work. Pattie Sullivan has played a key role for nearly all the forty years of our story. Judy Keefer, our chief financial officer, and Laurie Alemian-Derian, our comptroller for many years, made us a much more professional organization. Our development team, led by Jack Murray and including Robert Ferguson, Priscilla Bayley, Abby Schaefer, Jennifer Chapin, and Denise Schlener, accomplished miracles. Linda Lopez and Stephen Mills made our membership program a great success.

Many others have been critical in supporting NRDCs work, including Bob Allen, Ned Ames, Peggy Ayres, Bill Beinecke, Sally and Martin Brown, Anna Scott Carter, Graydon Carter, Ann Clark, Jim Compton, Larry Condon, Sheryl Crow, Joan Davidson, the Edgerton family, the Favrot family, Michael Fisher, Bill Haney, Cindy Horn, Ray and Beth Huger, Burks Lapham, Elizabeth McCormack, Barnabas McHenry, Scott McVay, Sam Rose, Ed Stack, Fred Stanback, the Wallace Family, and Julie Walters.

Members of the Green Group have been our partners in the tireless effort to protect the environment, particularly our colleagues at the Open Space Institute, led by Kim Elliman and Joe Martens and assisted by Susan Barbarisi; Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters; George Woodwell of the Woods Hole Research Center; Jim Moorman, former head of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund; Rodger Schlickeisen of Defenders of Wildlife; Bill Meadows of the Wilderness Society; and our colleagues at Environmental Defense and the Sierra Club. We remember three friends who are no longer with us: Rick Sutherland, Peter Berle, and Jay Hair. Thanks also to Duke University for supporting our work over the years.

The support of Chronicle Books chairman Nion McEvoy and editors Sarah Malarkey and Jennifer Kong is greatly appreciated.

We conducted more than 150 interviews for this book. By necessity, this involved some tough editorial decisions, and many stories had to be edited out that were just as important as those that remained. All of these stories will be permanently preserved in our archives.

Finally, our thanks to our friend, advisor, and supporter Ann Roach, who played a special role in the creation of this book, and to George Black, who worked tirelessly with us to shape NRDCs many stories into a book we hope you will find rewarding.

John and Patricia Adams
BEAVERKILL, NEW YORK, APRIL 2010

I sat on a bench in Battery Park in lower Manhattan, eating a liverwurst sandwich. As the Hudson River flowed by, I idly watched lumps of raw sewage float right in front of me. It was outrageous to me that this could be happening in the greatest city in the world. My parents had come here from Ireland in the 1920s in search of a new life, and I had been born here. The city had been good to me; I had worked in a Wall Street law firm and after that had been in the U.S. attorneys office for four years.