For the 3 million Members and online activists of the Natural Resources Defense Council
NRDC Girds for Trump Court Battles
Suit Spurs California Action on Pesticides
NRDC Launches Campaign to Save “Serengeti of the Sea”
Giraffes Closer to Endangered Protections
Golden-winged warbler
Victory
CLIMATE SUPER-POLLUTANTS CUT
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule last fall that stands to have a ahem chilling effect on the emissions of a class of climate-warming super-pollutants. The rule sets new leak prevention requirements for hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and will require the use of reclaimed HFCs for servicing several major categories of existing equipment, such as supermarket refrigeration systems. The action builds on petitions to the EPA filed by NRDC and our allies, and will provide nearly $7 billion in net climate benefits to society cumulatively through 2050.
CLEAN VEHICLES CHARGE AHEAD
A report from the EPA released before President Trump took office finds that fuel efficiency for cars and pickup trucks has reached an all-time high, while carbon emissions are at a record low. Says Kathy Harris, director of clean vehicles at NRDC: “With record sales of cleaner vehicles, drivers saving money on fuel costs, and dramatic reductions in the air pollution harming our lungs, it’s clear that we should be fighting any attempt by the oil industry and its allies to derail this hard-won progress.”
WORLD ANTES UP FOR CLIMATE
The most recent international climate summit concluded with an agreement by the nearly 200 countries in attendance to invest $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 globally to reduce climate pollution and adapt to the impacts of climate change. At the core of the goal, wealthier countries agreed to mobilize $300 billion per year through 2035 through international public and private sector finance, along with a process to increase funding in coming years. Climate advocates hailed the deal as a “foundational blueprint for the future of climate finance.”
NRDC GIRDS FOR TRUMP COURT BATTLES
It's “a ll hands on deck,” says NRDC Chief Counsel Mitch Bernard. In the wake of last November’s election, Bernard and our entire legal team have been engaged in intense preparations for what is expected to be a furious campaign of litigation aimed at beating back the second Trump administration’s relentless assault on our environment and health. To meet the barrage of attacks head-on, NRDC has launched an emergency legal fund dedicated to fueling our courtroom battles to stop the Trump agenda.
As Nature’s Voice goes to press, our litigation team is confronting the first wave of attacks while honing the best legal strategies to counter an administration that appears determined to spend the next four years trying to reverse the failures of the first Trump administration to deliver on its promises to America’s dirtiest industries.
The polluter-funded wish list Project 2025, which among other radical anti-environment attacks seeks to reverse climate progress, gut the Environmental Protection Agency, ignite a fossil-fuel frenzy on our public lands, and strip endangered wildlife of protection, was crafted in response to those failures—a track record that, conversely, ranks among NRDC’s proudest achievements. During Trump’s first term, we filed more than 160 lawsuits and prevailed in nearly 90 percent of the cases resolved, racking up wins that ranged from derailing the administration’s attempt to resurrect the climate-wrecking Keystone XL pipeline to stopping it from fast-tracking oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
For Bernard, who helmed NRDC’s litigation team during the first Trump administration, the extraordinary success dramatically underscored
his conviction in the power of hard-hitting court action to protect our environment and health, yet he is under no illusions about the tough battles that lie ahead. “They’ve learned from their mistakes,” he says of the new administration. “Which means we’re going to have to be twice as smart and fight twice as hard.”
To make a special gift to NRDC’s Legal Fund to Stop the Trump Agenda, visit nrdc.org/legalfund. The environmental campaigns and victories featured in Nature’s Voice are all made possible through your generous support.
You can help NRDC defend the environment by making a special contribution: NRDC.ORG/GIVE
Suit Spurs California Action on Pesticides
Thanks to a court settlement won by NRDC and our allies, California could become the first state to address a legal loophole that has allowed seeds coated with toxic pesticides to evade critical regulatory safeguards as they’ve flooded the market. Seed coatings are currently among the most widespread uses of neonics, the pesticides that have been linked to the disastrous declines of pollinators and other harms. The settlement requires the California Department of Pesticide Regulation to take a hard look at pesticidecoated seeds and to undergo a public process that could lead to restrictions on their use.
Federal and state regulators have stubbornly declined to tackle the issue of coated seeds even as the damning evidence against their use continues to mount. Leading research consistently shows that some of the most common neonic seed treatments fail to deliver economic benefits for farmers. Meanwhile, much of the neonics on coated seeds end up leaching into the environment and causing widespread harm. The EPA has determined that the use of five leading neonic chemicals, for example, is driving more than 200 species toward extinction—evaluations that were also prompted, in part, by NRDC legal action.
Among the looming fights: stopping new oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
NRDC LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN TO SAVE “SERENGETI OF THE SEA”
For Joel Reynolds, the news bore an ominous sense of déjà vu. Back in the mid-1990s, the NRDC senior attorney had been at the forefront of the fight to stop Mitsubishi from constructing the world’s largest industrial salt plant on the Pacific coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula at San Ignacio Lagoon, a pristine natural wonder and home to the last undisturbed nursery for Pacific gray whales. Now, more than two decades after NRDC and our Mexican partners had succeeded in building a broad international coalition of environmentalists, fishermen, scientists, and wildlife defenders—including hundreds of thousands of NRDC Members—to defeat the wilderness-wrecking project, another natural treasure off the coast of Baja was facing an equally dire industrial threat.
Like San Ignacio Lagoon, the Gulf of California, which lies between the Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico, is a designated Biosphere Reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site, one that Jacques Cousteau called “the aquarium of the world” and celebrated Mexican poet and diplomat Homero Aridjis described as “the Serengeti of the sea.” Surrounded in large part by the rugged yet deceptively fragile Sonoran Desert, including its iconic towering saguaro cacti, the gulf’s turquoise waters contrast brilliantly with the sun-drenched landscape. Beneath the gulf’s surface, a bounty of wildlife thrives in what is widely considered one of the world’s most biologically productive seas, a dazzling array of nearly 900 species of fish, 90 of which are found nowhere else. Nearly 40 percent of the world’s marine mammal species exist here, among them 21 species of whale, including humpback whales, fin whales, and the largest animal ever known to exist, endangered blue whales. Many of these animals have evolved to rely on the gulf’s
narrow deep-water channel for their survival— for food, communication, mating, shelter, and safe passage. But if the oil and gas industry gets its way, that channel will become a super highway for an endless stream of massive tankers supplying Asian markets with climate-destroying fossil gas, also known as liquefied natural gas (LNG).
“If the Gulf of California looks like a marine paradise, that’s because, from an ecological perspective, it is,” says Reynolds. “We will never find a natural ecosystem more worthy of protection. For it to become a sacrifice zone to the very industry responsible for the climate crisis—which, let’s not forget, is also driving the biodiversity crisis—that would be tragic.”
At the center of the development scheme is Houston-based Mexico Pacific Ltd., which has proposed building a sprawling $15 billion LNG export facility in the coastal town of Puerto Libertad. Supplied by more than 650 miles of new pipelines, the “Saguaro Energia” project would produce 15 million metric tons per year of super-chilled LNG, which would then be purchased by oil giants such as Shell, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips, loaded onto ocean-going tankers more than three football fields long, and exported to Asia. Mexico Pacific has already signaled its intention to double Saguaro’s processing capacity to 30 million metric tons per year.
As Reynolds points out, the threats that
industrialization on this scale would pose to the Gulf of California, to its extraordinary wildlife, and to local communities are legion: chemical spills, explosions, air and water pollution, disturbance of some of Mexico’s most abundant fishing grounds. And for endangered marine mammals such as blue whales, the added risks posed by ship strikes and increased levels of ambient noise threaten to drive these magnificent animals closer to the brink.
“For animals that rely on hearing for almost every essential life function, too much noise can be lethal,” says Reynolds, who has also worked extensively to protect marine mammals from
“We will never find a natural ecosystem more worthy of protection.”
military use of low-frequency sonar and other auditory assaults. As for the decades of shipping traffic the Saguaro project would bring to the gulf, Reynolds says, “Let’s face it, even a 90-foot adult blue whale is no match for a 900-foot-long supertanker.” What’s more, the Saguaro LNG project would only add more fuel to the fire that is the increasingly urgent climate crisis. “The fossil fuel industry has been pulling out all the stops trying to position LNG as a ‘cleaner’ alternative to, say, coal, but that’s a load of you-know-what,” says Sujatha Bergen, NRDC director of global energy transition. “LNG is, of course, a fossil fuel—burning it releases carbon emissions. And the production process releases enormous amounts of methane,” a climate superpollutant. Indeed, a recent independent analysis found that if the industry succeeds in building out
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Clockwise from top left: The dazzling coral reefs of Cabo Pulmo are among the Gulf of California’s natural wonders; the gulf’s turquoise waters contrast brilliantly with the surrounding Sonoran Desert; 21 species of whale, including endangered blue whales, call the gulf home; a sprawling fossil-gas export facility, like the one pictured here, and its tanker traffic would forever imperil the gulf’s wildlife and local communities.
the $200 billion worth of LNG projects currently proposed, such as Saguaro, it would unleash a “climate bomb” equivalent to the annual emissions of all the world’s operating coal power plants. Saguaro alone would generate climate-warming emissions equivalent to adding more than 17 million additional vehicles to the road each year. “The industry’s goal is to get the infrastructure built so they can lock us into decades more dependence on fossil fuels, plain and simple,” says Bergen. Right now, Reynolds, Bergen, and their team at NRDC are working with partner organizations in Mexico to sound the alarm about the Saguaro LNG project and to build the kind of diverse coalition that successfully saved San Ignacio Lagoon from corporate plunder a generation ago. Key to that success was the passionate support of NRDC Members and online activists. “In six years, we generated more than a million letters of opposition to Mitsubishi, to the Mexican government, and to the World Heritage Committee—and today, thanks to the ongoing stewardship by our Mexican partners, San Ignacio Lagoon remains a safe haven for gray whales and worthy of its status as a World Heritage Site,” says Reynolds. “We’re determined to do the same for the Gulf of California.”
nrdc.org/saguaroLNG
Giraffes Closer to
Endangered Protections
For the first time, giraffes are poised for protection under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has proposed protections for four species of the towering African mammals, seven years after NRDC and our conservation allies petitioned the agency to take action. “Never give up!” says Elly Pepper, longtime wildlife advocate at NRDC, who has led our fight to prevail on FWS to list giraffes. “It’s great news that the United States finally seems ready to recognize
the significant role we play in giraffes’ decline.”
Indeed, populations of the iconic animal have plummeted 40 percent since the 1980s. While habitat loss is the primary driver of this tragedy, poaching and trafficking are key factors as well—and the United States is one of the world’s top importers and exporters of giraffe skins, bones, and other body parts. Securing federal endangered species protections would make such U.S. trade illegal while also creating new funding opportunities for giraffe conservation abroad. Pepper and other wildlife champions are now calling on FWS to move swiftly to finalize these protections before more of the magnificent animals are lost.
Court Battle Erupts Over New Lead Rule
In a seismic win for public health, the EPA last fall updated federal standards to require the removal of nearly every lead water pipe in the country within the next 10 years. Now the decades-long fight to secure safe drinking water for everyone in the United States, no matter their income or zip code, turns to defending those long-overdue standards in court. The American Water Works Association, a water utility trade group, has sued to challenge the EPA’s historic action. NRDC and our allies have moved to intervene in the lawsuit.
“Filing suit to keep lead in drinking water is
deplorable,” says Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health at NRDC. “Who supports lead-contaminated drinking water?” Olson notes that while water utilities have often given lip service to supporting the removal of lead pipes, they’ve waged a tireless campaign to kill even commonsense safeguards. Independent analysis has found that the health and economic benefits of removing lead pipes exceed the costs at least 14 times over. “We’re talking about one of the longest-running public health crises in U.S. history,” Olson says. “Any further delay would be unconscionable.”
Coalition Fights Dirty Wood Pellet Project
Thousands of NRDC Members and online activists joined grassroots organizations to sound off against a proposal to bring the dirty biomass industry to the West Coast. The strong public outcry came in response to the release by Golden State Natural Resources (GSNR) of a draft environmental impact report for the project, which would see two industrial-scale wood pellet plants built one in Northern California and one in the central Sierras as well as a storage and export terminal in the already pollution-burdened community of Stockton.
Although GSNR has been trying to sell its project to wildfire-weary Californians as responsible forest management, the draft report tells a far different story. To produce a million tons of wood pellets a year, “you must feed the beast,” as NRDC Forest Advocate Rita Vaughan Frost puts it. That means expanded logging in a massive area that would encompass 18 National Forests, imperiling habitat for scores of wildlife, including California’s fledgling population of endangered gray wolves. The project would inflict what even the company describes as “significant and unavoidable” air pollution on local communities. For those near the two production facilities, for example, the maximum individual cancer risk would soar between two to four times the state threshold. “What Californians want is clean energy and real solutions to wildfires,” says Vaughan Frost. “Not to see their forests ransacked and communities poisoned just to export climate-busting wood pellets overseas.”
What’s a “Sell By” Date? In California, Soon It Will Be
History
They’re two small words but eliminating them stands to make a big impact. Last fall, California became the first state in the country to ban the use of consumer-facing “sell by” dates, part of a landmark bill cosponsored by NRDC aimed at standardizing the dizzying array of date labels on food that have long confounded grocery shoppers. Too often, consumers mistake “sell by” dates which are used by stores for stock rotation for when a product is no longer safe to eat.
“Game-changing” is how NRDC food waste advocate Madeline Keating describes the move by California, which now stands as a model for other states. That might seem like an overstatement until you consider that nearly 10 percent of consumer food waste is associated with the misinterpretation of date labels, contributing to the shocking fact that approximately 40 percent of the food grown and produced in the United States is never eaten. By the middle of next year in California, the label “use by” will be used to communicate product safety and “best if used by” to communicate peak quality.
The new law was a big win, but it wasn’t the only highlight of a year that saw Keating and
the rest of her team make major strides as part of the nationwide campaign to reduce U.S. food waste by 50 percent by 2030.
NRDC’s Food Matters initiative provided technical support and resources to partners in 20 cities coast to coast, from Los Angeles to Detroit to Boston, diverting more than 35,000 tons of food waste from disposal via programs such as prevention, food rescue, and composting.
Keating’s team aims to replicate the success of these programs across an expanding network of U.S. cities. “Food waste is
a complicated issue with lots of factors, but that also means there are a lot of solutions,”
Keating says. The impacts are myriad as well. Each year the average American spends $788 on food that is never eaten.
Meanwhile, diverting good food from landfills can help feed the 13.5 percent of households in the United States that lack consistent access to nutritious food while yes also tackling the climate crisis: decaying food in landfills produces significant amounts of methane, a climate super-pollutant.
A New Era Dawns—and a New Resistance
By Matthew Tejada, Senior Vice President, Environmental Health
The first Trump administration was a disaster for the environment. I would know I was at the EPA working to protect our nation’s most-overburdened and at-risk communities while the agency was under siege. Now with a second Trump administration working to implement the Project 2025 agenda, the stakes are exponentially higher.
At its core, Project 2025 is a blueprint to hollow out federal agencies and shift power into the hands of political appointees and their industry taskmasters. This would transform agencies like the EPA into empty shells, incapable of carrying out their regulatory responsibilities. Instead of protecting public health and the environment, these “zombie agencies” would serve private
interests disguised as political priorities. As terrible as that is, it stands to be absolutely devastating for environmental justice communities. Leaders in these communities have fought for decades to enjoy things that so many of us take for granted, such as clean air to breathe, safe drinking water, and not worrying that the ground our children are playing on is contaminated. Under the previous administration, historic strides were made that greatly expanded the EPA’s focus on environmental justice. New mandates like Justice40 which ensured that at least 40 percent of the benefits of numerous federal environmental programs reached underserved communities exemplified the commitment to tackling generations of inequity
and outright environmental racism. All this progress is at imminent risk of being undone by Project 2025’s far-reaching agenda.
If we allow that agenda to fully take hold unchecked, the consequences will be dire. The EPA, an agency that has historically made progress protecting us from environmental pollution, will soon become unrecognizable. We all lose in this scenario. We lose protection, we lose momentum, and we lose progress toward achieving the society of equality that remains the unrealized dream of our nation. With so much on the line, we cannot let hope slip into despair. Taking inspiration from the determination of those before us who fought for justice, we must stand in opposition and fight back.
