Nature's Voice Summer 2023

NATURE ’ S VOICE

NRDC Sues to Stop Willow Project

Tongass Wins Back Trump-Axed Protections

Risks, Urgency Mount in Battle Over Bee-Killing Pesticides

NRDC Prepares to Defend Bristol Bay in Court

For the 3 million Members and online activists of the Natural Resources Defense Council

NRDC works to safeguard the earth—its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends.

More Arctic drilling would imperil caribou and other wildlife while igniting a “carbon bomb.”

Victory

COOL! FRIDGES GO GREENER

Updated energy efficiency standards for residential refrigerators and freezers may not do anything to tackle those suspicious leftovers lurking behind the lettuce, but they’re a big win for consumers and the climate. The new standards from the Department of Energy are projected to save consumers more than $1.8 billion a year while preventing nearly 180 million tons of climate­warming carbon pollution over the next 30 years. “Fridges can be found in almost every American home,” says NRDC energy efficiency advocate Joe Vukovich. “So these savings will go far and wide.”

Victory WILDLIFE PROGRAM GETS BOOST

Congress has nearly doubled funding for an innovative program that aims to prevent human–wildlife conflicts and thereby spare the lives of such iconic animals as grizzlies and wolves. The increase is in response to the early success of a new Nonlethal Initiative under the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program. The initiative seeks to break old cycles of loss and killing by investing in proactive solutions such as electric fencing to prevent bears from accessing calving pastures, and trained range­riders to deter wolf activity near livestock.

Victory NYC WILL “SKIP THE STUFF”

For anyone who’s accumulated a guilty hoard of unwanted ketchup packets, this one’s for you. Takeout and delivery services in New York City will soon be prohibited from providing plastic utensils, condiments, or napkins unless explicitly requested by the customer. The landmark measure, dubbed “Skip the Stuff,” is expected to add up to substantial savings for restaurant owners while cutting down on the more than 20,000 tons of plastic foodware and other mostly unrecyclable waste that is discarded every year in the nation’s largest city.

NRDC SUES TO STOP WILLOW PROJECT

Amajor battlefront in the fight to secure a clean energy future has moved to the courtroom, now that NRDC and our allies have sued to block a massive expansion of oil drilling in Alaska’s western Arctic. The suit was filed less than 48 hours after the Biden administration announced it was green-lighting the so-called Willow project. The approval came despite a massive show of public opposition, including from tens of thousands of NRDC Members and online activists who called on President Biden to reject oil giant ConocoPhillips’s bid to extract a staggering 600 million barrels of additional oil from the fragile Arctic.

“Our Members have made their voices heard loud and clear: They do not want any more of our public lands handed over to an industry that is hell-bent on locking us into decades more dependence on its climate-wrecking fossil fuels,” says NRDC Chief

Counsel Mitch Bernard. “And when the stakes are this high, our Members know that we’ll take quick legal action to defend our environment, no matter who’s in the White House.”

A ticking climate time bomb, the Willow project would unleash the equivalent of roughly 260 million metric tons of carbon pollution over its lifetime, about the same as the emissions from adding nearly two million gas-burning cars to the roads. It also threatens a host of wildlife species already struggling to survive on the front lines of the climate crisis, including polar bears, migratory birds, and the region’s iconic caribou.

Even as last year saw President Biden sign legislation that marked the most sweeping investment to date in setting the country on a path toward a clean energy economy, the administration has failed to stand firmly against the fossil fuel industry. NRDC

is fighting in court as well to stop the sale of offshore drilling leases across vast portions of the Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. “No one benefits from more drilling,” says Bernard, “except the oil industry.”

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

Tongass Wins Back Trump-Axed Protections

More than nine million acres at the heart of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest are once again protected from industrial logging and roadbuilding, the culmination of a fierce battle that erupted after the Trump administration stripped Roadless Rule protections from Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. NRDC and our allies sued to block that attack, and we have been fighting alongside Indigenous communities in southeast Alaska for the Biden administration to restore the protections. The Tongass not only stores more carbon per acre than almost any other forest on the planet, but also provides habitat for more than 400

wildlife species, including brown and black bears, bald eagles, all five species of Pacific salmon, and rare Alexander Archipelago wolves. Today nearly 60 million acres of U.S. forests are safeguarded under the Roadless Rule, the historic federal protections that NRDC helped win in 2001. “NRDC is built to do things like the Roadless Rule—those big, sweeping changes that fundamentally reshape the legal landscape to advance environmental protections,” says Nature Program attorney Garett Rose. “And part of that is being there after the ink is dry to keep defending them from the attacks that inevitably come.”

More Arctic drilling would imperil caribou and other wildlife while igniting a “carbon bomb.”

Tongass National Forest, Alaska

RISKS, URGENCY MOUNT IN BATTLE OVER BEE-KILLING PESTICIDES

For NRDC Senior Scientist Jennifer Sass, the results of a recent study examining the exposure of pregnant women in the United States to industrial chemicals were as alarming as they were exasperating. The study, whose authors included scientists from the University of California and other leading institutions, found that an overwhelming majority of participants—more than 90 percent— had neonicotinoid pesticides in their bodies. What made the findings alarming was that previous research had shown that the neurotoxic chemicals, commonly known as “neonics,” can pass effectively from mother to fetus through the placenta during pregnancy, and that children exposed to neonics in the womb are not only at risk for birth defects of the developing heart and brain but have an increased risk of autism spectrum disorder. What made the results exasperating was that Sass and her colleagues had just celebrated a hard-won victory over another neurotoxic pesticide, chlorpyrifos, which the EPA had finally banned for use on food crops in the United States after decades of foot dragging.

“For my entire career at NRDC, more than 20 years, we’d been fighting to get chlorpyrifos out of

our food supply, and the scientific evidence against it just kept piling up, in terms of its impacts both on wildlife and on people, particularly children,” says

Sass, who is also a lecturer in George Washington University’s department of environmental and occupational health. “Now it’s like déjà vu with neonics.”

To be sure, Sass and the team behind NRDC’s Pollinator Initiative have been sounding the alarm about neonics for more than a decade, as researchers have amassed evidence that the chemicals— now the most widely used class of insecticides in

the United States and around the world—are a key factor in the precipitous declines of bees and other pollinators. “Of course that’s worrisome enough,” says Sass, pointing out that 85 percent of flowering plants, from those that support countless wild ecosystems to the crops that provide one out of every three bites of food we eat, require pollination. “But more and more, what we’re seeing when it comes

to neonics is that bees are like the canary in the coal mine.”

Today neonics are applied to an estimated 150 million acres of U.S. crops, and in the decades since the chemicals first came to market in the mid 1990s, American agriculture has become nearly 50 times more harmful to insect life. What makes neonics so incredibly lethal to bees and other insects is that they permanently bind to receptors in the insect’s nerve cells, overstimulating the nerves to the point of paralysis and death. “But those same receptors are present in the brain and central nervous system of many other species as well, including people,” says Sass. That means, just like for other neurotoxins such as lead and mercury, there may be no “safe” level for neonics in people who are exposed early in life during crucial periods of brain development. What’s more, laboratory studies have also suggested a link between neonics and a variety of other potential health concerns, including altered thyroid function, poor sperm quality, and activation of a gene associated with hormone-dependent breast cancer.

Their toxicity is but one of the factors that make neonics a “triple threat,” according to Pollinator Initiative Director Dan Raichel. The chemicals can remain active in the environment for years, and they’re also highly mobile. “One of the most common uses of neonics is in neonic-treated seed,” says Raichel. “But only a tiny fraction of the chemicals is absorbed into the plant, which means up to 98 percent ends up contaminating the soil or washing into waterways.” Indeed, sampling routinely finds neonics in lakes, rivers, and streams across the country, including in highly populated areas. An analysis released last year by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, for example, detected at least

“When it comes to neonics . . . bees are like the canary in the coal mine.”

Clockwise from top left: Neurotoxic neonic pesticides were detected in the bodies of more than 90 percent of pregnant women in a recent study; the pesticides have long been linked to the alarming decline of bees and other pollinators; neonic­treated corn kernels are dyed to warn of their toxicity; up to 98 percent of neonics on treated seeds leach into the environment, including lakes and other waterways.

one neonic in 92 percent of the urban water samples in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego.

The risks to human health posed by exposure to neonics are in addition to the risks they pose to pollinators and, in turn, to our food supply. Seventy out of 100 major crops, including many of our healthiest fruits, vegetables, and nuts, depend on bees and other pollinators yet recent science has found that wholesome favorites such as apples, cherries, and blueberries were “pollinator-limited,” meaning that fewer pollinators led to lower crop yields. A Harvard study last year went further. Researchers found that a decline in pollinators has already resulted in a 3 percent drop in global vegetable production and a 5 percent drop in both fruit and nut production, which they estimated could lead to more than 425,000 early deaths in people from heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases associated with lower consumption of healthier foods.

The rapid accumulation of damning scientific evidence has only served to redouble the determination

of Sass, Raichel, and their colleagues at NRDC to put an end to the agrochemical industry’s neonic binge. Our Pollinator Initiative team continues to push for the EPA to impose long-overdue restrictions on the neurotoxic chemicals while also advocating for state-level bans. NRDC has filed a landmark lawsuit in California aimed at closing a gaping loophole by requiring the state to regulate neonictreated seed. And we continue to fight to move federal farm policy away from subsidizing pesticideintensive agriculture, simultaneously ratcheting up public pressure on makers of neonics like the German chemical giant Bayer.

Sass admits that the fight against chemicals as ubiquitous as neonics sometimes seems daunting, but she also sees cause for hope. After all, last year’s ban on chlorpyrifos coincided with the 50th anniversary of the ban on another infamous, once-popular pesticide, DDT. “In both cases,” she says, “science was the catalyst for the public to demand change.”

nrdc.org/stopneonics

NRDC Prepares to Defend Bristol Bay in Court

Despite a momentous victory in the 20­year campaign to stop a proposed open­pit copper and gold mine from destroying Alaska’s spectacular Bristol Bay wilderness, it appears the fight isn’t over yet. As this issue of Nature’s Voice went to press, local Indigenous communities and their allies, including NRDC, were girding for what is anticipated to be an aggressive and well­funded legal attack by Canadian mining company Northern Dynasty Minerals to resurrect its nightmare Pebble Mine project.

At issue is the hard­won veto that the EPA announced earlier this year, aimed at protecting the Bristol Bay watershed and its thriving runs of wild salmon from the potentially “catastrophic” threat posed by the Pebble Mine and its billions of tons of toxic mining waste. Last summer a record­breaking 78 million salmon returned to Bristol Bay.

Early signs that Northern Dynasty was digging in its heels came when the company signed on with one of Washington D.C.’s top white­shoe lobbying firms. It also

disclosed that it had inked a deal with an undisclosed dark­horse investor to receive up to $60 million over the next two years to fuel its legal assault on the EPA’s wilderness­saving protections.

“Our coalition remains as strong and united as ever,” says NRDC Western Director Joel Reynolds. “We’ll keep on fighting alongside the people of Bristol Bay for as long as Northern Dynasty refuses to take no for an answer. And we are determined to win.”

country’s wetlands, fisheries, water, and air. In 2006 he left to join the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco, and he later served as vice president of litigation at Earthjustice. Now he has returned as NRDC’s new chief program officer. We spoke to him recently about the challenges—and opportunities ahead.

Welcome back! A lot has changed in 17 years. What changes have struck you at NRDC?

A: One difference is just the sheer size: I would guess that when I left there were no more than 250 people working at NRDC which seemed really large at the time! Now we’re almost three times that size.

I definitely feel today what I felt when I first arrived 30 years ago there’s just this incredible sense of shared purpose and enterprise and an amazing amount of professional skill.

You’ve said that establishing equity is crucial for solving our most urgent environmental problems. In what ways can NRDC’s programmatic work further environmental justice?

the past by sidelining equity issues, creating new problems as we try to solve existing ones. We need to center equity in terms of what we prioritize, how we show up as a partner with communities, and how we function as a staff.

How do you think your experience as a federal prosecutor will serve you now?

Drew Caputo is no stranger to NRDC. He first joined the organization as a senior attorney back in 1993 and spent more than a dozen years in court defending the

And NRDC now has nearly three million Members and supporters. We would not have been able to expand our size, scope, and the scale of our impact without that partnership. I’ve been so impressed by the level of involvement and action from our supporters.

Some things haven’t changed, though. NRDC has always been filled with people who make stuff happen.

A: There are three great global crises right now: climate, biodiversity, and public health. The last one doesn’t get as much attention as the other two, even though about nine million people around the globe die prematurely from pollution every year. These deaths don’t fall evenly; they fall inequitably along lines of race and class. That’s totally outrageous, and it doesn’t have to be this way. The solution is to make sure that we are, first and foremost, paying attention to those whose health, communities, and livelihoods are suffering the brunt of environmental harms. We can’t allow ourselves to make the same mistakes we’ve made in

A: When you first become a prosecutor, they hand you a whole bunch of cases. As a lawyer especially early in my career I wanted to understand every last aspect of every problem before making a decision and moving forward. But that takes a long time. So one of the things I learned as a prosecutor early on is: You’ve got to keep moving. Those three planetary crises I mentioned earlier? They’re only getting worse. We can’t press the pause button on them while we try to figure out the optimal approach. I want to help NRDC be ready and able to jump into action as fast as we possibly can. We may not get it right out of the box the first time. But I think, as a general matter, there’s no time to waste. We need to be swinging for the fences.

Bristol Bay’s pristine salmon­spawning rivers would forever be threatened by the colossal Pebble Mine.

No Time to Waste: “We Need to Be Swinging for the Fences”

Drew Caputo, NRDC’s new chief program officer

People Power! A Community Took On a Dirty Coal Power Plant—and Won

A landmark court settlement is being hailed as a model for transforming communities that have long borne the brunt of pollution from the fossil fuel industry as we transition to a healthier, clean­energy future.

For years the aging E. D. Edwards coal­fired power plant near Peoria, Illinois, had routinely violated federal pollution limits, belching unhealthy levels of fine particulate matter (aka soot) into the air and taking a terrible toll, contributing to premature deaths, heart attacks, and asthma attacks in the community. Local residents

organized and, partnering with NRDC, filed suit under the Clean Air Act. It took six years of litigation, but persistence paid off: Not only did the plant’s owners agree to shutter it, but the company paid $8.6 million into a settlement fund for community­based projects.

“It can seem like just getting the plant shut down would be a great victory for the community, and it is,” says NRDC Senior Attorney Jared Knicley, who was one of our lead litigators on the case. “But we also want to make sure that communities like Peoria aren’t left

high and dry, whether we’re talking about dealing with the lingering health impacts from pollution, helping displaced workers transition, or redressing long­standing inequities.”

As residents rang in 2023 by celebrating the long­awaited closure of the Edwards plant, grants from the settlement fund were already being put to good use. The projects run the gamut from new electric buses to lung­health screenings to the launch of a two­year Renewable Energy Training curriculum at the local technical high school. Solar panels have been installed atop a local arts center and new fire station. Hundreds of homes of low­income residents, many of them elderly, have received new windows and other energy­efficient retrofits. A faith­based nonprofit that focuses on employment has helped to place more than 100 residents in new jobs. Even the old power plant is going greener: It’s slated to be turned into a battery­storage facility for renewable energy.

Says Knicley: “This story really is a win­win­win all around.”

U.N. Treaty a Game Changer for Ocean Wildlife

By Lisa Speer, Director, International Oceans Program

After two decades of discussion and nearly five years of negotiations, including a harrowing 48­hour marathon of down­to­the­wire bargaining, the global community has finally done it: We now have a United Nations treaty to protect and conserve the astounding array of biodiversity in our high seas. This is a moment of extraordinary consequence. Without it the goal of preserving 30 percent of the earth’s oceans by 2030 simply would not be possible. That’s because more than 60 percent of the ocean lies outside any one country’s jurisdiction. And though these international waters are home to millions of species—with more being discovered every day—

only about 1 percent of this vast expanse is currently protected. The rest is subject to a hodge­podge of international agreements that have failed to prevent rampant overfishing, untold damage to deepsea corals and other fragile underwater habitats, or the slide toward extinction of various species of whales, seabirds, sea turtles, and more. Together with climate change, the current system has pushed our oceans to the brink, and the new treaty comes not a moment too soon.

One of the treaty’s most important provisions secures a pathway for establishing large, fully protected marine parks where struggling wildlife can thrive, shielded from industrial human activity. Such parks are what scientists tell us are

needed to help reverse the decline of the oceans and boost their resilience to climate change. Outside these protected areas, the treaty will also help strengthen the management of fishing, shipping, and other industrial activities. Together these two elements of the treaty will give our oceans a fighting chance to recover. In bringing modern standards of conservation to the high seas, the U.N. treaty is a win not only for marine wildlife but for the billions of people for whom healthy oceans are vital to sustaining their nutrition, livelihoods, and cultural heritage. Now the race is on to win ratification of the treaty and lay the groundwork for implementation, so we can move full steam ahead toward saving our high seas.

A new electric bus debuts in Peoria.