Recently, the OpenSecrets blog revealed that the oil and gas industry poured $174 million into the political system in 2009. We don't have numbers for 2010 yet, but we do know that oil companies have put up most of the $8.2 million raised to block California's clean energy law -- a law that passed with bipartisan support and was signed by a Republican governor.
When one dirty industry can purchase that much influence, who will step into the ring for average Americans? Who will say that public health and public interest matter more than private industries' desire to pollute?
I am a firm believer in the ability of citizens to stand up for themselves and fight against the tide of corporate pressure. But sometimes, we need an expert to help carry our voices into the courtroom and into Congress.
For four decades, John Adams has been one of those voices. Since he helped launch NRDC in 1970, Adams has been the toughest, most tenacious champion of the notion that Americans should be able to drink safe water, breathe clean air, buy products free of toxic chemicals, and protect our natural heritage.
In a new book called A Force for Nature, Adams and his wife Patricia explain how they helped build the modern environmental movement. Their account of how NRDC wrote the laws and won the battles that cleaned up the environment is galvanizing -- a bracing reminder of how much can be accomplished by dedicated individuals.
I have known Adams since 1973. Back then, lots of environmental organizations were springing up, and I worked with many of them. But when I met Adams, it was clear that NRDC had a unique power: They could go to court.
You have to remember that holding polluters accountable in court was a new idea in 1970. There were only a few environmental laws on the book back then, and only a handful of attorneys in the country viewed themselves as environmental lawyers. Adams hired most of them.
By the time I got involved with NRDC, it had already begun to prove it could defeat the worst corporate polluters. At the same time, it was infinitely pragmatic: The message was, work with us to design solutions, and we'll do all we can to find common ground. Oppose us and we will see you in court -- and more often than not we will win.
But Adams didn't fight only in the courtroom. He went wherever the battle took him. I remember that as soon as President Reagan's Interior Secretary Hodel set his sights on opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, NRDC kicked into gear.
When proponents of drilling said it would lesson our dependence on foreign oil, NRDC got the geological data, ran the numbers and found that it would barely make any difference. And when oil companies up in Prudhoe Bay claimed their new extraction technology would prevent environmental damage, NRDC presented a report to Congress showing that between 400 and 600 hundred oil spills occurred every year on the North Slope and along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
This is the kind of expert knowledge we need to fight polluters' PR machines. Plenty of Americans want to keep the Arctic Refuge pristine and wild, but we don't always have access to information about what drilling would do to the landscape. It takes someone from NRDC to actually go to Prudhoe Bay, study it, and explain that "it is like flying over Gary, Indiana, for a hundred miles." That's not what we want to happen to the refuge.
NRDC is providing the same kind on information in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon blowout. In the face of BP's efforts to downplay the catastrophe, we need groups like NRDC to do independent analysis and identify the kind of clean-energy solutions that will prevent this kind of disaster from happening again.
The fact that America has witnessed a devastating offshore drilling accident more than 40 years after a massive spill occurred off the coast of Santa Barbara is a testament to why we still need people like Adams. It's why he built an organization that can fight for the long haul. There will be endless battles and frequent reversals of fortune. But in the end, you can outfight and outlast your enemies, and you can win.
So I say to my friend, John Adams, here's to the next forty years.
Are either of the Adams' willing to run for office? Do you have any suggestions on who would be a good green candidate? No real change will take effect until we either get rid of the lobbyists or get people in who will ignore the pleas and bribes of big corporations special interests. Otherwise, it's just like playing "whack-a-mole" at the carnival.
There was a time I lived on Weston road next to a house that looked like The Musters house on the TV series. This was the first house my mother moved me, my sister and awaiting the arrival of my grandmother, an original Rockette in the Zigfield Follies and the main understudy in Bandwaggon with Fred Astaire, who actually had to perform on Broadway while this actress got sick one night. My grandmother was so good they let her finish the week, to not throw the actors off I think. My grandmother born April 22, and died last year at the age of 94, was never impressed with even my fame with Tony curtis or even his. She thought Frank Sinatra and Broadway and the days of Gene Kelly, Shirley Temple, people you could never im mitate like yourself and Paul Newman, ...not even impersonatores like Anthony Hopkins - the best impersonator of all Tony Curtis told me, ...but I will say to you - the might before last, i let jeremiah Johnson, a movie you starred in play all night, and I lost a lot of sleep. I do remember the next night still needing to see it to sleep though.
You can view my recent keynote, presented last week at the West Coast Green Conference:
http://www.livestream.com/westcoastgreen2010/video?clipId=pla_7186def7-1799-4803-bdd5-f313a67af4e1&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
Or read the review in Treehugger here:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/10/highlight-west-coast-green-eric-corey-freed.php
I used OpenSecrets for most of the data on political campaign contributions. It is an incredibly valuable resource to our democratic process.
The polluters found a great solution, they just moved pollution to China. China has no democracy, and the NRDC would be crushed there like a bug, it's leaders put in prison (or executed) and the polluters would continue. After all, the government part owns so many factories and mines there, why would it allow people to harm it's own profits?
It is sad and naive that the labor and environmental movements have not internationalized, while corporations (ie, polluters) have internationalized since the 50s if not much sooner.
This is due to the stimulus. Small amts of govt money will stimulate private money to invest 4 times as much and we will be on the way to energy independence. 4 more plants are on the way.
I have full access; this is the information you seek, Robbie. Drilling will do nothing bad if no spills occurs. That is the task for the engineers. We have plenty of excellent engineers and workers. Like those who built your personal jet. You are not afraid to fly without it being examined each time by Barbara Boxer, or Obama himself, by chance?
Engineers are people. Corporations will squeeze them to cut costs and spills will occur.
The problem is that spilling is nonstop.
"We have plenty of excellent engineers and workers."
We have far too many oil spills too.
WE DO KNOW WHAT DRILLING ANS SPILLING DOES TO THE LANDSCAPE:
http://bit.ly/btySBJ