Environmental Defense Fund or EDF (formerly known as
Environmental Defense) is a US-based nonprofit
environmental advocacy groupAn environmental organization is an organization that seeks to protect, analyze or monitor the environment against misuse or degradation or lobby for these goals....
. The group is known for its work on issues including
global warmingGlobal warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C during the last century...
, ecosystem restoration, oceans, and human health. It is nonpartisan, and its work often advocates
marketA market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the economy. It is an arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to exchange things...
-based solutions to environmental problems.
The founders of Environmental Defense Fund, including Art Cooley, George Woodwell and Charles Wurster,
Dennis PulestonDennis Puleston was a British-born American environmentalist, adventurer and designer. He is perhaps best known for playing a key part in securing a nationwide ban in the United States on the use of the pesticide DDT, a decision regarded as the first important success of the emerging...
,
Victor YannaconeVictor Yannacone is a controversial, pioneering environmental attorney, who played leading roles in successful campaigns to ban DDT in the U.S. and expose the effects of Agent Orange on Vietnam vets.-DDT:...
and Robert Smolker discovered in the mid 1960's that the osprey and other large raptors were rapidly disappearing.
Environmental Defense Fund or EDF (formerly known as
Environmental Defense) is a US-based nonprofit
environmental advocacy groupAn environmental organization is an organization that seeks to protect, analyze or monitor the environment against misuse or degradation or lobby for these goals....
. The group is known for its work on issues including
global warmingGlobal warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C during the last century...
, ecosystem restoration, oceans, and human health. It is nonpartisan, and its work often advocates
marketA market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the economy. It is an arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to exchange things...
-based solutions to environmental problems.
History
The founders of Environmental Defense Fund, including Art Cooley, George Woodwell and Charles Wurster,
Dennis PulestonDennis Puleston was a British-born American environmentalist, adventurer and designer. He is perhaps best known for playing a key part in securing a nationwide ban in the United States on the use of the pesticide DDT, a decision regarded as the first important success of the emerging...
,
Victor YannaconeVictor Yannacone is a controversial, pioneering environmental attorney, who played leading roles in successful campaigns to ban DDT in the U.S. and expose the effects of Agent Orange on Vietnam vets.-DDT:...
and Robert Smolker discovered in the mid 1960's that the osprey and other large raptors were rapidly disappearing. Their research uncovered a link between the spraying of
DDTDDT is one of the most well-known synthetic pesticides. It is a chemical with a long, unique, and controversial history....
to kill mosquitos and weakening egg shells of the large birds. They started Environmental Defense Fund to seek a ban on DDT in
Suffolk CountySuffolk County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York on the eastern portion of Long Island. As of the 2000 census, the population was 1,419,369. It was named for the county of Suffolk in England, from which its earliest settlers came. The county seat is Riverhead, though many county...
, Long Island, New York. They were successful. They then campaigned to ban DDT statewide and succeeded as well. They then took their efforts national.
The group is headquartered out of New York, with offices nationwide, and scientists and policy specialists working worldwide. It is directed by
Fred KruppFred Krupp is the president of Environmental Defense Fund, a United States-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group.Krupp is a graduate of Yale University with a law degree from the University of Michigan and has taught environmental law at both schools....
who has served as its president since 1984.
The organization claims that it advocates using sound
scienceScience is in its broadest sense to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome...
, good
economicsEconomics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
and good
lawLaw is a system of rules, usually enforced through a set of institutions. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a primary social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus ticket to trading on derivatives markets...
to find solutions that work.
Some environmentalists have protested that Environmental Defense Fund has "sold out" to big business through their "market based" initiatives.
Key Accomplishments
Key accomplishments of Environmental Defense Fund include:
- 1967 - A small group of scientists forms the organization and sets out to win a nationwide ban on DDT
DDT is one of the most well-known synthetic pesticides. It is a chemical with a long, unique, and controversial history....
(in 1972), which had been harming wildlife and was found in human mother's milk.
- 1970 - Efforts bring all hunted whales onto the U.S. endangered species list.
- 1974 - An Environmental Defense Fund study of Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico....
water helps pass the Safe Drinking Water ActThe Safe Drinking Water Act is the principal federal law in the United States that ensures safe drinking water for the public. Pursuant to the act, the Environmental Protection Agency is required to set standards for drinking water quality and oversee all states, localities, and water suppliers...
, establishing the first comprehensive health standards for water nationwide.
- 1985 - Helped convince federal regulators to phase out lead from gasoline, leading to a dramatic decline in childhood lead poisoning
Lead poisoning is a medical condition caused by increased levels of the heavy metal lead in the body...
.
- 1986 - Pushed McDonalds to institute biodegradable food-packaging containers.
- 1987 - Played a key role in the treaty to phase out the use of CFCs, chemicals that many researchers believe damage the Earth’s ozone layer
The ozone layer is a layer in Earth's atmosphere which contains relatively high concentrations of ozone . This layer absorbs 93-99% of the sun's high frequency ultraviolet light, which is potentially damaging to life on earth. Over 91% of the ozone in Earth's atmosphere is present here...
.
- 1990 - Designed Title IV of the Clean Air Act
A Clean Air Act is one of a number of pieces of legislation relating to the reduction of smog and air pollution in general. The use by governments to enforce clean air standards has contributed to an improvement in human health and longer life spans...
, which incorporates market-based methods to cut air pollution and acid rainAcid rain is rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, i.e. elevated levels of hydrogen ions . It has harmful effects on plants, aquatic animals, and infrastructure. Acid rain is mostly caused by emissions of compounds of sulfur, nitrogen, and carbon which react with the...
., The measures reduce sulfur dioxide pollution faster than expected, and at a fraction of the cost.
- 1995 - Designed the Safe Harbor
The term safe harbor has several special usages, in an analogy with its literal meaning, that of a harbor or haven which provides safety from weather or attack.-Legal definition:...
planthat gives landowners new incentives to help endangered species on their property.
- 2000 - Seven of the world's largest corporations join Environmental Defense in a partnership to address global warming, setting firm targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
- 2001 - Helped create the 1,200-mile-long Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve.
- 2004 - The first FedEx
FedEx Corporation , originally known as FDX Corporation, is a logistics services company, based in the United States. The name "FedEx" is a syllabic abbreviation of the name of the company's original air division, Federal Express, which was used from 1978 until 2000.-History:FedEx Corporation was...
hybrid electric trucks hit the road, the result of a four-year partnership with FedEx to transform truck technology. The new vehicles cut smog-forming pollution by 65%, reduce soot by 96%—and went 57% farther on a gallon of fuel.
- 2006 - Co-authored the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006
The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 is an environmental law in California, signed into law by Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger on September 27, 2006. The bill establishes a timetable to bring California into near compliance with the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol...
with Natural Resources Defense CouncilThe Natural Resources Defense Council is a New York City-based, non-profit, non-partisan international environmental advocacy group, with offices in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Beijing...
.
- 2007 - Co-founded United States Climate Action Partnership (US-CAP), a coalition of major corporations and environmental groups supporting action on global warming, including a market-based carbon emissions cap. (Corporate participants include GE
Gê are the people who spoke Ge languages of the northern South American Caribbean coast and Brazil, their society is or was highly egalitarian and anti-authoritarian, because of which they resisted the Incas as well as the Spaniards...
, DuPontE. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company , commonly referred to as DuPont or Du Pont, is an American chemical company that was founded in July 1802 as a gunpowder mill by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. DuPont is currently the world's second largest chemical company in terms of market capitalization and...
and Duke EnergyDuke Energy , headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, is an energy company with assets in the United States, Canada and Latin America. It was founded by James Buchanan Duke....
; non-profit groups involved are Pew Center on Global Climate ChangeThe Pew Center on Global Climate Change is a non-profit advocacy organization that was established in 1998. Its board of directors includes Kenneth Arrow and Klaus Töpfer...
, Natural Resources Defense CouncilThe Natural Resources Defense Council is a New York City-based, non-profit, non-partisan international environmental advocacy group, with offices in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Beijing...
and the World Resources InstituteThe World Resources Institute is an environmental think tank founded in 1982 based in Washington, D.C. in the United States.WRI is an independent, non-partisan and nonprofit organization with a staff of more than 100 scientists, economists, policy experts, business analysts, statistical analysts,...
, a co-founder).
- 2009 - The Environmental Defense Fund, supporters of cap-and-trade plan, said National Association of Manufacturers
The National Association of Manufacturers is a lobbying group founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1895. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. with 11 additional offices across the country...
(NAM) was “manufacturing” numbers. “NAM’s numbers are about as trustworthy as the forged letters sent by their allies to members of Congress,” said EDF spokesman Tony Kreindler.
Helped negotiate an environmental platform of Texas Pacific's buyout of
TXUEnergy Future Holdings Corporation is an energy company headquartered in Energy Plaza in Dallas, Texas, United States. The company was known as TXU until its $45 billion leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs...
.
For contributions to the
Endangered Species ActThe Endangered Species Act of 1973 is the most wide-ranging of the dozens of United States environmental laws passed in the 1970s...
, including inventing the Safe Harbor concept
For initiating the recent campaign to remove the
O'Shaughnessy DamThe O'Shaughnessy Dam is a curved gravity dam on the Tuolumne River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley of California's Sierra Nevada. The dam is located in Yosemite National Park, and creates the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. It is named for former San Francisco chief engineer and the original chief engineer of...
in
Hetch Hetchy ValleyHetch Hetchy Valley is a glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in California. It is currently completely flooded by O'Shaughnessy Dam, forming the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. The Tuolumne River fills the reservoir. Upstream from the valley lies the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne. The reservoir...
in
Yosemite National ParkYosemite National Park is a national park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in east central California, United States. The park covers an area of and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain...
Regional offices more focused on local issues and policies include: Austin, TX; Boulder, CO; San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Sacramento, CA;
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
;
Raleigh, North CarolinaRaleigh is the capital city of the state of North Carolina, the seat of Wake County and the second largest city in North Carolina. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S...
; Boston, MA
Criticism
Critics on the American right have argued that not all of the EDF's policies have always been beneficial to either the environment or to humanity. Writer
Christopher C. HornerChristopher C. Horner is an attorney in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the author of two books on global warming....
, for example, has compared the spread of
malariaMalaria is a vector-borne infectious disease caused by a eukaryotic protist of the genus Plasmodium. It is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions, including parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Each year, there are approximately 350–500 million cases of malaria, killing between one and...
after the DDT ban that EDF sponsored to a deliberate genocide, citing a quotation from a spokesman of EDF saying: "This is as sure a way to get rid of them as any."
Jon Berlau, author of the book
Eco-Freaks, has also argued that EDF and later the Clinton administration, due to an "earth-worshiping mentality," interfered with operations of the US Army Corps of Engineers via judicial activism with the aid of Judge Charles Schwartz, resulting in the forestalling of levee reinforcement that led to Katrinagate shortly after
Hurricane KatrinaHurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the costliest hurricane, as well as one of the five deadliest, in the history of the United States...
. This, Berlau argues, was the prime motivation behind "contempt for human life and safety, all for the sake of a few fish and mosquitoes.
See also
- Sustainability
Sustainability, in a broad sense, is the capacity to endure. In ecology, the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time...
- Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or for the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems...
- Global warming
Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C during the last century...
- Recycling
Recycling involves processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower...
- Ecology
Ecology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the interactions between organisms and the interactions of these organisms with their environment....
- Earth Science
Earth science , is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet...
- Natural environment
The natural environment, commonly referred to simply as the environment, is a term that encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof....
- Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency
Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497 , is a U.S. Supreme Court case decided 5-4 in which twelve states and several cities of the United States brought suit against the United States Environmental Protection Agency to force that federal agency to regulate carbon dioxide...
Environmental Defense websites