Peter Lehner
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Peter Lehner is the Executive Director of NRDC. He is responsible for guiding NRDC’s policy positions and advocacy strategies, supervising NRDC’s litigation, and managing NRDC’s six offices. Before returning to NRDC, Peter served as chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s office for eight years. He supervised all environmental litigation by the state, prosecuting a wide variety of polluters and developing innovative multi-state strategies targeting global warming, acid rain, and smog causing emissions from the country’s largest electric utility companies. Peter previously served at NRDC as a senior attorney in charge of the water program. Before that, he created and led the environmental prosecution unit for New York City. Peter holds an AB in philosophy from Harvard College and is a graduate of Columbia University Law School, where he continues to teach environmental law. He also has extensive experience in sustainable farming and green business. He blogs on NRDC’s Switchboard.

Blog Entries by Peter Lehner

Farming Better, Eating Better: On the Ground Solutions From the Growing Green Awards

(1) Comments | Posted May 23, 2012 | 12:58 PM

The evening was foggy, but the mood was upbeat at NRDC's fourth annual Growing Green Awards, held in San Francisco last week. It was inspiring for me not only to meet our winners in person, but to see how our work making food and agriculture more sustainable has...

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Superbug Suit: Antibiotics Victory Will Preserve Medicines for Sick People, Not Healthy Livestock

(0) Comments | Posted March 26, 2012 | 2:51 PM

Thursday night, a federal court ordered the Food and Drug Administration to take action on the practice of giving antibiotics to livestock through animal feed. This victory will help protect American families against superbugs and other drug-resistant bacteria.

Right now, the vast majority of the nation's antibiotics...

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New York City Commits to Green Solution for Sewage Overflows

(1) Comments | Posted March 20, 2012 | 1:12 PM

With a landmark announcement this week, New York City has officially joined a growing number of cities around the country in embracing a smarter -- and paradigm-shifting -- approach to reducing water pollution. Using a suite of techniques like strategically located street plantings, porous pavements and green roofs,...

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Global Phase-out of Lead in Gasoline Succeeds: Major Victory for Kids' Health

(0) Comments | Posted November 1, 2011 | 12:24 PM

Thursday marks a major victory for the world's children, and the people of developing nations around the globe.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), working with NRDC in the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles, today announced toxic lead has been removed from gasoline in more than 175...

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Government Has Long History of Promoting Innovation; It Should Do the Same with Clean Energy

(10) Comments | Posted October 10, 2011 | 11:26 AM

President Obama had some strong words about the value of innovation on Thursday. He was responding to a comment made by Representative Cliff Stearns (R-FL), who said, "We can't compete with China to make solar panels and wind turbines."

"I don't buy that," Obama said...

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Car Dealers Want to Block Standards that Will Save Drivers Money and Cut Oil Use

(13) Comments | Posted September 20, 2011 | 5:00 PM

The National Automobile Dealers Association is trying to put a major bump in the road for Americans drivers. The lobbying group for car dealers wants to block new fuel efficiency standards that will save drivers $80 billion a year at the pump and give us more choices for...

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Keystone Pipeline, Tar Sands Oil, and Climate Change Are Not in Our National Interest

(6) Comments | Posted September 1, 2011 | 11:45 AM

Over the next few months, the State Department will examine whether the proposed Keystone XL pipeline running from the Alberta tar sands oil fields to the Texas Gulf Coast is in America's national interest.

To answer that question, you have to decide what kind of...

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New Smog Standards Will Prevent Respiratory Illness, but Polluters Don't Want to Clean Up Their Mess

(2) Comments | Posted August 10, 2011 | 6:04 PM

American homeowners know that companies don't have the right to dump garbage in our backyards. If we found a pile of solid waste on our lawn, we would demand they haul it away. Even if we learned it would cost the company money to clean it up, we wouldn't just...

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Gas Mileage Gains Move the Country Forward

(15) Comments | Posted July 31, 2011 | 2:28 PM

Last week, my colleague Luke Tonachel and I represented NRDC at the Washington ceremony where President Obama announced a triumph of American leadership, the single largest step we can take to break our costly addiction to oil.

By 2025, new cars and light trucks in this county will

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Lawsuit Filed to Preserve Antibiotics for Sick People, Not Healthy Livestock

(5) Comments | Posted May 25, 2011 | 5:31 PM

Today NRDC and our allies filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration to finally end the use of antibiotics in animal feed -- a practice that's contributing to the rise in drug-resistant superbugs and endangering the health of our families.

Roughly 70 percent of all...

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Approaching the BP Spill's One Year Anniversary: The Disaster in the Gulf Lives On

(2) Comments | Posted March 4, 2011 | 5:55 PM

In about 50 days, America will mark the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blowout that unleashed the largest peacetime oil spill in history. BP will likely tell us that everything is fine now; they've clean everything up. But residents of the Gulf of Mexico offer a starkly different story,...

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A Republican Rampage

(27) Comments | Posted February 20, 2011 | 7:25 PM

With the nation challenged by two grinding wars, a struggling economy and mounting debt, House Republicans used their new majority status this week to go on a reckless rampage against essential health and environmental safeguards Americans everywhere both depend on and expect.

Under the guise of deficit reduction, the...

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An Environmental State of the Union: Opportunities for the Administration and the New Congress

(5) Comments | Posted January 24, 2011 | 4:43 PM

When he delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama will present a report card on how the nation has fared the past year, offer up an agenda that seeks to bridge our partisan divide, and share with the American people his vision of where he wants...

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The EPA and Lisa Jackson: What Stands Between You and Polluters

(1) Comments | Posted November 29, 2010 | 2:23 PM

I met with Lisa Jackson last week, and I was once again struck by how forcefully she fights to protect the health of American families. As the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, she is helping make our air safer to breathe and getting toxins out of everyday products.

...
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Voters Support Clean Energy and Climate Solutions

(0) Comments | Posted November 3, 2010 | 11:52 AM

Yesterday, American voters made plain their anger over the economy and their frustration with the party in power. But they often did something else: they supported clean energy where they could.

California voters defeated an oil industry attempt to undermine the state's climate law, and most members of Congress...

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Stories Told by Gulf Residents Burst BP's PR Bubble

(53) Comments | Posted October 20, 2010 | 11:56 AM

"If this whole environment gets demolished, what good is a boat?" That's the question raised by George Barisich, a third-generation commercial shrimper from Louisiana and president of the United Commercial Fishermen's Alliance in a story recorded by a partnership of StoryCorps, NRDC, and Bridge the Gulf.

The boat...

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Six Months After the Spill, What We Still Need to Do to Prevent Another Disaster

(2) Comments | Posted October 20, 2010 | 8:29 AM

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It was six months ago that the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 men and sending 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion continues to reverberate half a year later.

Up to 50 percent...

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Drilling Moratorium Should Stay Until Panels Issue Their Safety Recommendations

(1) Comments | Posted October 13, 2010 | 10:50 AM

Both the epic scale of the BP disaster and its aftermath have made clear that prevention is the only real option for protecting coastal communities and marine life from devastating spills. Whether or not you agree with the Obama Administration's decision to lift the moratorium on deepwater drilling,...

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Why Attack the Clean Air Act? -- It Prevents Our Air From Looking Like Beijing's

(1) Comments | Posted October 8, 2010 | 12:47 PM

On a recent visit to China, air pollution was so dense I hardly ever saw the sun. In Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Shanghai, the smog obscured buildings that were just a mile away.

The trip gave me a renewed appreciation for the Clean Air Act -- the law that...

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Congress, the Mabus Report, and Why Gulf Restoration Matters for All of Us

(1) Comments | Posted October 1, 2010 | 3:39 PM

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus' new report on how to restore the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP oil disaster is a sound foundational document. It lays out five critical goals for reviving the ecosystem, and it underscores the administration's commitment to the Gulf and its...

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