from the chairman of the board
RDC marked its 40th anniversary in 2010. Four decades is a powerful testament to NRDC’s staying power, but what is more extraordinary is what we have accomplished in that time. Our work has made the air safer, water cleaner, and landscapes better protected. This is the measure of our success. NRDC’s focus on concrete achievement started early. We opened our doors in 1970 when John Adams and a group of students from Yale Law School (James Gustave Speth, Richard Ayres, Edward Strohbehn Jr., and John Bryson are still actively advancing environmental issues today) decided to pursue an untested idea: holding polluters accountable in court. Within a matter of years, this young organization had won the nation’s first lawsuit to curb acid rain, sued the Army Corps of Engineers until it agreed to protect more of the nation’s waterways, and helped remove lead from gasoline by amending the Clean Air Act. NRDC’s victories continued throughout the decades. Some came after long-fought battles, such as protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling and, just this year, enacting a visionary national policy for reviving our oceans. But through it all, NRDC has persisted in its fight to secure stronger safeguards. As I’ve watched the organization grow, I have been struck by something NRDC does remarkably well: We stay true to our original mission, but we embrace change as well. Very few groups can say that, 40 years later, they are still surrounded by their founders and that the founding vision is just as present as it was in 1970. NRDC has the benefit of that continuity. We also have the benefit of innovation. We started as a small group of lawyers. But when circumstance called for it, we added scientists, legislative advocates, engineers, and economists. We emerged out of a fight on the Hudson River. But we went wherever we could make a difference, from San Francisco to Beijing to Mumbai. Now we are a membership organization representing 1.3 million people who share our dedication to the environment. NRDC’s ability to seize new opportunities and adopt new tools ensures that the next 40 years will bring as many victories as the first 40 did. With the guidance of NRDC’s Board of Trustees, the expertise of its staff, and the passion of its members and supporters, we can build on this legacy. We can draft the next generation of laws and win the next generation of lawsuits that will usher in a cleaner, more sustainable future for our children and grandchildren.
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Daniel R. Tishman Chairman of the Board
A Force for Nature Tells the Story of NRDC—Celebrating 40 Years—and Our Fight to Save the Planet When John H. Adams and a group of fellow lawyers founded NRDC in 1970, no one was entirely sure the organization would survive its first year. Today NRDC is one of the unquestioned leaders of the environmental movement. In their new book, A Force for Nature, John and Patricia Adams write about how we got here, chronicling 40 years of courtroom battles, legislative triumphs, natural wonders, and personal memories. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said of the book, “John Adams was in the thick of all the major environmental battles of the past 40 years, and his account of how the movement grew from a small group of visionaries into a powerful force for change is nothing short of inspiring.” And Norman Lear, producer, writer, and founder of People for the American Way, says “If you can use a tonic to help sustain your hope for the future, try A Force for Nature. Here is the amazing story of John Adams and his wife and life partner, Patricia Adams, who, through the powers of persuasion in offices and living rooms across the nation, and the years of litigation and legislation that followed, pioneered the modern era of environmental conservation.”