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

Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn Put NYC at Forefront of Fight Against Climate Change

Posted December 15, 2009 | 03:09 PM (EST)


While our world leaders gather in Copenhagen to address climate change on a global scale, here at home, New York City tackled the number one contributor to its own carbon footprint – its buildings

New York City firmly established itself as a leader in the fight against climate change...

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Driving Toward Clean Air at Our Nation's Ports

2 Comments | Posted October 28, 2009 | 09:54 AM (EST)


NRDC and Sierra Club are members of the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, supporters of the clean truck program.

"Cancer alley."  That's what many Southern Californians call the 23-mile rail and truck corridor connecting our nation's largest seaport to massive distribution centers east of Downtown Los Angeles.  In California...

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A Goal for Copenhagen: Keep the Focus on Enforcement

Posted September 24, 2009 | 02:52 PM (EST)


Countdown to CopenhagenFew seem willing to address the issue openly, but one of the toughest issues to address when delegates gather in Copenhagen in December for the global conference on climate change will be governance. Many developing nations attending have stressed and under-funded...

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Greening the U.S. Open

1 Comments | Posted September 2, 2009 | 05:49 PM (EST)


This weekend, I had the pleasure of participating in a US Open event.  No -- not a tennis match -- but something that is still an integral part of the US Open: the announcement of this year's greening initiative. 

This is the second year now that NRDC has worked...

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Making Smart Choices for America's Clean Energy Future

2 Comments | Posted June 19, 2009 | 12:10 PM (EST)


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According to an assessment by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world is going to invest more than $16 trillion in energy by 2030.

There are two ways that we can invest this money: a smart way and a dumb...

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Getting on Track: The President Lays Out a High-Speed Rail Plan

Posted April 16, 2009 | 04:06 PM (EST)


Visit NRDCs Switchboard BlogStanding in front of members of the transportation industry, policymakers, local and state officials, and NRDC staff (including Deron Lovaas, our transportation specialist, and me as representatives of the environmental community), President Obama this morning fleshed out his plans for...

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Green Jobs to Meet America's Economic, Energy and Environmental Challenges

Posted February 6, 2009 | 06:21 PM (EST)


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I had the pleasure of speaking at the national Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in Washington, D.C. yesterday. This was a truly remarkable event that brought together thousands of people -- from steelworkers to business leaders to students to...

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Describing the Devastation of Mountaintop Mining

Posted January 30, 2009 | 10:52 AM (EST)


As a lawyer, I've written about environmental harms quite often. Yet as I recently flew over several of the larger mountaintop mines in eastern Kentucky, I struggled to find the words to describe the devastation. The scars where trees, topsoil and many feet of unwanted rock have been ripped off,...

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