Not On Our Watch–2018 Mid-Year Review by NRDC

NOT ON OUR WATCH 2018 Mid-Year Review

2018 Mid-Year Review

AN UNSTOPPABLE FORCE OF ACTIVISTS

Together, we’ve galvanized a movement. Faced with a federal administration that seeks to wage all-out war on our health and environment, NRDC, along with our partners at the city, state, and international levels, plus our growing corps of members and activists—three million and counting—is fighting back. While the Trump team takes actions that threaten to block essential climate policies, our basic rights to clean air and water, and the health of our planet and our communities, we continue to stand up and say: Not on our watch!

SHOWING UP

Through social media and email alerts, as well as our new grassroots advocacy platform, All In (allin.nrdc.org), NRDC helps rally supporters who raise their voices at marches, public hearings, and town halls across the country.

Offshore drilling After the Trump administration announced its proposal to expose almost the entire U.S. coastline to drilling, NRDC activists gathered in Sacramento, Raleigh, North Carolina, and Long Island, New York, to oppose the plan, which would pollute our air, damage ocean health and coastal economies, and worsen climate change.

The American people too often suffer the harmful impacts of government officials willfully ignoring the public interest and making unhealthful policy decisions in favor of industry. But communities on the front lines of health and environmental crises are not helpless victims. They are valued partners as NRDC works to defend their rights. NRDC and the Newark Education Workers Caucus, a group of educators who teach in Newark, New Jersey’s public schools, have joined forces to take legal action against state and city officials for failing to address high lead levels in the city’s drinking water. More than 200,000 consumers joined with NRDC and other organizations to push Lowe’s, the homeimprovement giant, to ban methylene chloride–based paint strippers, which have been linked to nearly 60 deaths. Lowe’s is now the first major U.S. retailer to remove these harmful products from their shelves. Coalitions of residents from Chicago’s Southeast Side, in partnership with NRDC and other health and environmental justice groups, are demanding that their city create new rules over how industrial facilities handle manganese, a neurotoxin that is polluting people's soil and air.

STANDING UP FOR CLIMATE ACTION

NRDC played a role in the worldwide consensus that was reached with the landmark Paris Agreement—and now that it has officially entered into force, global powers are moving forward to implement policies to tackle climate change. We’re working in China and India, both of which

Photo: Ian Tuttle for NRDC. Cover: Rick Gershon/Verbatim

Clean Power Plan With the Trump administration working to dismantle America’s very best chance at fighting climate change, hundreds of NRDC activists and concerned citizens turned up for U.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency (EPA) hearings in Kansas City, Missouri, Gillette, Wyoming, and San Francisco, with hundreds more rallying at listening sessions held elsewhere across the country.

JOINING FORCES

are transitioning from coal to wind and solar energy, lowering vehicle emissions, and increasing energy efficiency. Meanwhile, while our own federal government has abdicated its pledge, NRDC is helping states and cities step up to enact climate policies locally and keep the country on track to meet its Paris goals. We’re engaged in driving initiatives like Michael Bloomberg’s American Cities Climate Challenge, a multimillion-dollar effort that will help 20 big cities accelerate climate action. The U.N. Environment Programme, alongside NRDC and Philips Lighting, launched an initiative to help emerging and developing economies create a set of energyefficiency standards and speed the transition from incandescent and halogen bulbs to LEDs. Once implemented, the changeover will save the same amount of electricity as the entire country of Mexico consumes in a year and avoid 160 million tons of carbon emissions. California, following NRDC’s long-standing advocacy, adopted a new building energy code that will make most new homes electricity-neutral beginning in 2020. A combination of improved insulation and mandatory solar panels will offset all the electricity used each year for cooling, appliances, and lighting. New York announced a new energy-saving plan that will create thousands of clean energy jobs, cut customers’ bills, reduce power plant emissions, and help meet the state’s ambitious climate action goals. NRDC played an instrumental role in securing the plan though a yearslong campaign, and by 2025, the energy savings will be equivalent to the energy used by 1.8 million homes.

THE DEFENSE DOESN’T REST

“Right now, the courts are one of our best defenses against Trump. You can sue a president for the same reason you would sue anyone else: because he or she broke the law. If the president breaks the law, like when he signs an illegal executive order, NRDC sues him by name.”

—NANCY MARKS, SENIOR ATTORNEY

Since January 2017, NRDC’s Litigation Team has sued the Trump administration about once every eight days. Some of these cases name Donald Trump or a member of his cabinet as the defendant. Many defend existing environmental and public health safeguards that this administration is refusing to uphold. Here, a few of our latest legal victories: A court ruled against Monsanto and upheld California’s listing of glyphosate—the active ingredient in the company’s herbicide Roundup—as a carcinogen, a victory for public health.

A federal judge ruled that the Bureau of Land Management violated the law by failing to assess the environmental risks of vast fossil fuel development on the public lands of the Powder River Basin, which stretches across Montana and Wyoming. A court rejected the Trump administration’s gift to the auto industry, ruling that the U.S. Department of Transportation cannot indefinitely delay penalties on automakers for violating fuel economy standards, which are key to curbing carbon emissions.

On Nature, Health, & Our Future

NRDC will continue to advance environmental safeguards at the state, local, and international levels, and we’ll keep up the fight on Capitol Hill and in the White House with campaigns designed to protect:

SAFEGUARDS FOR CLEAN AIR, WATER, AND PUBLIC HEALTH

On behalf of the chemical, coal, and oil industries, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is rolling back essential rules protecting the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the products we use. NRDC is fighting his dangerous agenda in court, in Congress, and in cities around the country.

THE CLEAN POWER PLAN

As the Supreme Court has affirmed three times, the Clean Air Act compels the president to curb the greenhouse gas pollution driving climate change. We’re fighting to stop Trump from repealing this critical tool in the battle against climate change and replacing it with his Dirty Power Plan.

THE ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

Two-thirds of Americans oppose drilling in the Arctic Refuge. We'll continue to amplify public opinion and increase pressure on lawmakers to oppose the Trump administration’s push to expand fossil fuel extraction in the wildest of our publicly owned reserves.

OUR OCEANS AND COASTLINES

As we continue our battle in court to uphold the permanent ban on drilling in Arctic and Atlantic waters, we also stand with legislators, thousands of communities, tens of thousands of businesses and organizations, and millions of Americans demanding that all our coasts be preserved and marine wildlife be protected from damaging industrial activities.

And here’s proof we’re succeeding: After years of public pressure, we scored a victory in the battle against the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska, when Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals, the latest investor in the proposed project, pulled out. It was the fourth major investor to cut ties to the massive open-pit gold and copper mine—which would cause irreparable damage to this ecologically sensitive watershed. The decision was made just weeks after a delegation of local community leaders, alongside NRDC and other environmental groups, attended First Quantum’s annual shareholders’ meeting, arguing strongly against the company’s investment in the project.

JOIN US

The fight to stop the latest investment in the Pebble Mine included presenting a quarter of a million signatures asking for protection of Alaska’s Bristol Bay; 100,000 of those signatures came from NRDC’s friends and supporters. Three million members and online activists have united to support NRDC and our movement for change. To take action with us, sign up at allin.nrdc.org.

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