In the early 1970s, as part of an internship with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Frances Beinecke spent a summer developing land use policies in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. That experience jumpstarted a long career of environmental advocacy that culminated in Beinecke becoming NRDC’s executive director in 1998 and its president in 2006. During her tenure, she built the organization into a powerhouse of lawyers and scientists that vocally advocated for green policies and forged connections with global organizations in China and India. From her office in midtown Manhattan, Beinecke, now retired, reflected on her career and conservation with NationSwell.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given on leadership?
The most important thing that I have learned is that it’s not about you. It’s about the other people you’re working with and motivating them to reach the result. When I was at NRDC (and I was there for a very long time), being able to be on boards in other organizations and really watch other people operate, to see how other people provided leadership and how other organizations worked, was absolutely essential to doing the best job that I could do at NRDC.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
Right now I’m reading Aldo Leopold’s “Sand County Almanac,” because I happen to be going out to give a talk in Wisconsin. In the early 80s, I had an opportunity to visit the shack that Leopold wrote about in the book, and I wanted to relive that experience in preparation for this talk. It’s interesting because Leopold was one of the early people to work on restoration of ecosystems. He had his old farm that had been exhausted by homesteaders, and he replanted the trees and restored the soil. A lot of what people are focusing on now is how do you restore these depleted ecosystems? How do you store carbon? So, it’s inspiring to read that.
This other book I’m reading is called “Braiding Sweetgrass,” also by an ecologist: Robin Wall Kimmerer. I recently went to Montana and visited this very exciting project called the American Prairie Reserve, where they’re trying to restore 3 million acres of prairie in eastern Montana right where Lewis and Clark took their Corps of Discovery through the Missouri River. One of the interesting things is all these lands were, of course, Native American lands. What our relationship is with that heritage is one that I felt I wasn’t thinking about enough. This is a book by a Native American ecologist about that relationship with the land.
What innovations in your field are you particularly excited about?
I’ve been working on climate for almost 30 years. In the early days — for the first 20 years, anyway — we talked about solutions, but it was hard to see how to put them in place. One of the things that has happened in the last three to five years is this very rapid deployment of renewable energy, particularly wind and, more recently, solar. Policies have been put in place to deploy it, and there’s been a drop in price. I get excited when I go around and I see wind farms or solar panels. If you go around the United States, you can see the difference in state policies by going across a border. Recently, I was in New York and we crossed over to western Massachusetts. There were a dozen wind turbines and every barn had solar panels — because they put these policies in place to make it very appealing for people to make the investment.
What do you wish someone had told you at the beginning of your career?
If you start in this line of work, you start very idealistically. You have hopes and you want to put solutions in place. One of the things that is very hard to understand is why doesn’t everybody think this way? If you’re very mission based, it’s so obvious. To be effective, it’s important to try to understand why people think differently. You can only be effective in advancing a solution if you understand why someone has a different perspective: their priorities are different. I didn’t understand that.
What inspires you?
[I]f you look back year-to-year, it’s hard to see progress. But if you look back 10 years, the progress is really significant. We used to say green jobs; now we can see green jobs. We used to hope we would have a strategy that would drive down emissions, but emissions are being driven down. We wondered if China would ever get on board to be a player on climate change, because they were going to be the largest emitter. Well, they are the largest emitter, but they’ve also agreed to capping coal at a certain point and they’re unleashing clean energy. One thing in the environmental sector that’s very different than the private sector is that the time frames are much more long-term.
How do you inspire others?
In the beginning, in the 90s, when we talked about climate change, we talked about it as a global problem, and then over time, we realized we had to break it down into a local problem. There was a lot of discussion about climate change in terms of how many parts per million or degrees in the atmosphere…Most people respond to things that are personal to them. That’s the way most people behave — if they’re concerned about their family’s health, their community’s well-being or what they are experiencing in their own lives. Being able to document that, tell the story and engage people in how things are happening in their community, rather than in abstract that the whole planet is heating up, provides a level of engagement that we never had before.
What’s your idea of a perfect day?
To spend some of it outside. I’m fortunate enough to have a dog who requires that on a daily basis, because, for me, being inspired by and connected to nature is essential to doing my work. And then, I like to feel during the course of the day that somehow I’ve been successful in either opening a dialogue or advancing a solution.
What’s something most people don’t know about you?
I have two adorable grandchildren. They’re nearly a year old, twins. The thing about that’s wonderful [about them], it gives you a time reference. My father is 102 years old. He was born in 1914. They were born in 2015. If they live long as he has, it’ll be 2117. Can you imagine? The thing about that is, that gives you a frame of reference for what you’re trying to accomplish. When we’re talking about climate change and 50 or 100 year increments, we know people who will be there then. It personalizes it in a much more significant way. It gives you even more motivation.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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Tag: Natural Resources Defense Council
Obama Promised to Make the Environment a Main Policy Issue. Did He?
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” That’s what Barack Obama promised in 2008 upon winning the Democratic nomination. Seven years later, he’s returning to his pledge as he ponders his legacy and his final 500 days in office.
Was this really the moment when climate change reversed course? NationSwell asked dozens of scientists, historians, jurists, former EPA administrators, legislators and presidential candidates a simple question: How will future generations judge Barack Obama’s record on energy and the environment? Not surprisingly, the responses vary. Some were glowing (“Barack Obama is destined to go down as the greatest climate change-fighting president in history,” says Ed Chen, national communications director for the Natural Resources Defense Council), while others were hesitant to issue a verdict: “It’s a very unfinished climate legacy, full of steps forwards, sideways, and back,” says Bill McKibben, former staff writer at The New Yorker and founder of 350.org, a grassroots climate change movement.
Indeed, the 44th president faltered on environmental legislation in his first term, preferring to expend his political capital on the Affordable Care Act. But Obama’s use of regulatory authority and his agreement with China likely ensure his place in the pantheon of modern environmental champions.
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BACKPEDALLING FROM CAMPAIGN PROMISES
It’s taken nearly two full terms to bring his labors to fruition. Shortly after defeating Sen. John McCain in the race for the Oval Office, Obama set two bills in motion on which he would stake his legacy: the health care law in the upper chamber, and in the lower, a comprehensive environmental bill that included a market-based carbon cap-and-trade system and renewable energy standards, co-authored by Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat whose amendments strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1990.
In June 2009, Waxman’s bill narrowly passed the House by a vote of 219-212. “There was an apparent window of opportunity” in that moment, says D. James Baker, a scientist who headed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under Bill Clinton, but by December, “the administration was eager for a quick victory and opted for health care.” The climate change bill became Obama’s “stepchild,” a senior official told The New Yorker.
Offering concessions to earn goodwill from the Republican caucus, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agreed to delay implementation of carbon regulations for another year. Soon after, the president announced huge sections of U.S. waters along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico open for drilling and withdrew support for the versions of Waxman’s cap-and-trade bill being negotiated in the Democratic-led Senate.
“Whether with Obama’s support [a nationwide cap-and-trade law] could have happened is a good question,” says Baker, “but there is no question that the decision to back off was demoralizing to the environment and climate change community.” Days later, as oil bubbled up from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Democrats hung their heads in defeat. “The missing piece of his legacy is national climate change legislation, which he and Congress failed to pass,” says Kenneth Kimmel, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
MAKING USE OF REGULATION, NOT LEGISLATION
That’s not to say Obama failed completely during his first term. The 2009 stimulus bill designated $90 billion for a bevy of green initiatives: retrofitting homes for energy efficiency, fueling development in wind and solar power, modernizing the grid, training employees for green jobs, building high-speed rail, researching carbon capture for coal-burning plants and manufacturing cleaner cars.
“The stimulus package gave President Obama a chance to invest in renewables early in his first term, allowing him to make progress on the issues unlike most other recent presidents, who have been forced for political reasons to leave critical environmental issues to their second terms,” says Baker. If anything, the president’s preference for working outside the legislature set the standard for his later environmental accomplishments. After the bruising battle over healthcare and the Republican sweep of the 2010 midterm elections, Obama took the path of least resistance.
Waxman retired last year after 20 terms, but you can still sense his frustration with the gridlock that killed his legislation. In an email, he tells NationSwell that Congress “refuses to learn from the overwhelming scientific consensus on the dangers we are facing.” He applauded President Obama for circumventing the increasingly partisan legislature by using “the power to act domestically and internationally based on existing laws on the books, even without Congress passing new laws.” Bolstered by a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 that George W. Bush’s administration had shirked their duties, Waxman’s Clean Air Act amendments provided all the authority Obama needed.
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In the past month, much of the focus has been on the Clean Power Plan, which will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants 32 percent by 2030. But that’s only the latest in a long series of administrative actions. During Obama’s first term, the EPA and the Department of Transportation set new fuel efficiency standards: All cars built after 2025 must get at least 54.5 miles per gallon. This summer, those same agencies proposed raising standards for medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles as well. Despite litigation that’s made its way all the way to the Supreme Court, the EPA slashed the acceptable levels of ozone that clouds city skylines, mercury released by coal-fired plants and methane billowing from oil fields, landfills and farms. When it comes to conservation, Obama’s designated more land and water as national monuments under the Antiquities Act — 260 million acres total — than any other president.
In creating “the first-ever framework for the United States to achieve long-term emissions reductions,” says Richard Revesz, former dean of New York University School of Law, these achievements will outlast Obama’s two terms — regardless of whom the next president is. “Even if the Democrats lose the White House in 2017, the new greenhouse gas regulations will still need to be implemented,” says Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia’s Earth Institute. Those guidelines, along with states’ actions, “will probably end the use of coal as a source of energy in the U.S.”
Despite the likely positive outcomes, several Republicans interviewed chastised the president for his reliance on regulations, instead of legislation. “It will be seen as a failure that he wasn’t able to get anything through that is enforceable,” says Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who was George W. Bush’s first appointee as EPA administrator. She argues that using the “heavy-handed tool” of the EPA “will make things more difficult for the agency going forward.”
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Others had even harsher words. “President Obama has dogmatically used energy as a political tool rather than a building block of renewed economic vibrancy,” says Mike Leavitt, former governor of Utah and Whitman’s successor as EPA administrator. Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association, agrees. “He was the president who deepened the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats over these crucial intersecting issues” of energy and the environment.
CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE HEAD ON
Perhaps because the president has been “hamstrung by politics,” as one historian phrased it, he’s not staking his legacy on any one bill or rule. Instead, as his recent photo-ops in Alaska demonstrates, Obama seems to be focusing on perceptions. His prominence on the global stage — including his role in negotiating the limited Copenhagen Accord in 2010 and the recent deal with China to curb their emissions by 2030 — “helped move the issue of global environmental sustainability to the center of the American and international political agenda,” says Cohen.
As the commander-in-chief prepares to convene with leaders from 196 countries to sign a treaty at the United Nations Climate Change Conference this December, his legacy on climate change “lies in his success in making climate change a central policy obligation,” says Carol M. Browner, Obama’s advisor who directed the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy from 2009 to 2011, when Waxman’s cap-and-trade bill foundered. If the president can get millions of Americans, industry and other stakeholders to think about it while also facing opposition from Congress, he’ll be remembered for changing how climate policy is developed and implemented.
As the effects of climate change become more visible, the challenges facing Obama aren’t disappearing like glaciers are. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the president’s loudest critics are on the left. They’re fuming over the Keystone XL pipeline and off-shore oil and gas exploration in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.
“With the president’s permission, Shell is now drilling for oil in the Alaskan Arctic, and his administration has authorized the future sale of 10.2 billion tons of coal,” says Annie Leonard, Greenpeace USA’s executive director. “It’s clear that President Obama is serious about cementing his climate legacy, but until he takes steps to ensure the vast majority of fossil fuels remain in the ground, his legacy is as vulnerable as an Arctic ice sheet.”
The Bison are Back. Here’s How These Roaming Beasts Are Restoring America’s Prairies
Out on the range, the buffalo are roaming once again.
After a nearly 200-year absence, a small herd of bison have been reintroduced to the Nachusa Grasslands in north-central Illinois, two hours outside of Chicago. This marks the first time since the 1830s that the shaggy beasts have set their hooves east of the Mississippi River. The bison were trucked in last October to graze, spread seeds and churn the soil — all essential to restore Illinois’s tallgrass prairies.
“The word that keeps coming up is surreal,” says Jeff Walk, director of science for The Nature Conservancy’s Illinois chapter, which is heading up the Nachusa preservation efforts. Walk rode with the animals during their eight-hour truck ride from Sioux City, Iowa, and stuck around late into the night to see them unloaded from their trailers.
It was a moment The Nature Conservatory staff had been anticipating for a quarter-century.
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Although it’s known as the Prairie State, Illinois alone has lost more than 99 percent of its grasslands — from 22 million acres to just 2,500 acres, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Starting in 1986, The Nature Conservancy, considered the country’s largest environmental nonprofit, began buying up neighboring farms in an effort to return a portion of the land to its original state. Today, it now owns or has conservation easements for 3,500 acres. Over an estimated 450,000 hours, volunteers and employees have been weeding out invasive species, regenerating the preserved land through controlled burns and sowing and harvesting seeds for wild petunias, hazelnuts and hawthorne berries. But the bison’s return — at a price of $6 million — is the final stage in the landscape’s restoration.
“We can go around and do the small prairie restorations, but a true native prairie ecosystem has to have bison in it,” Brook McDonald, president of the Conservation Foundation, a nonprofit preserving untouched land in northeast Illinois, tells the Tribune. “Bison were such a significant part of the prairie that whole ecosystems depended on them. Without them, those species go too.”
Aside from a roundup every fall when they are vaccinated, the bison run wild on 500 acres of land hemmed in by a wire fence. (This year, the project will expand to another 1,000 acres.) Standing six feet tall at their shoulders and weighing close to 1 ton, the animals chomp down grasses and avoid flowering plants, increasing biodiversity by creating more light and root space. “The other thing is poop,” Kirk Hallowell, a volunteer steward, tells onEarth, the magazine of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The manure fertilizes the soil and attracts insects, which in turn will hopefully bring back the prairie’s native birds, including the upland sandpiper.
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Like the grassland itself, the bison struggle to reemerge from the devastation that came with settling the West. When the first colonists arrived, up to 60 million roamed the continent; by the beginning of the 20th century, however, excessive hunting had decimated the population and only a few hundred remained, the Wildlife Conservation Society says. In tandem, two symbols of the American pastoral are slowly being restored.
“We know that bison will be good for the prairie,” Walk says. “This is a unique opportunity to understand exactly how they influence the natural habitat. It’s a chance to study and learn, and from there, we can share those results with grassland restoration projects around the world.”
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Here’s How Colleges Are Leading the Green Revolution in Sports
Here’s the beauty of sports: It unites people from every political, cultural and socioeconomic stripe. And when it comes to the environment, we also should be on the same team.
The amount of resources used to run a typical, large scale sporting event can be shocking. When thousands of people are gathered in one stadium, they consume a lot of food, create a lot of trash and use a lot of power. Of course, it’s all in the name of fun and games, but there’s really a better way.
With America’s green revolution taking off, the sports industry has also embraced this planet-friendly mentality. The U.S. Open recycles their tennis ball cans and has replaced all their virgin-fiber napkins with recycled ones. The Seattle Seahawks (NFL) and Seattle Sounders (MLS) are playing under the bright lights powered by solar panels. And the New York Yankees are composting.
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And now, the green movement in sports has passed the ball to the collegiate level. Thanks to efforts from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NDRC), which pioneered the movement in 2004, you’ll see solar panels, recycling bins and other green touches just as often as hot dogs at many college and university facilities these days.
As Sports Business Daily reports, the University of Colorado has a zero-waste program across its entire sports program. Ohio State seriously whittled its landfill waste from 15,000 pounds after an average home game to a shockingly small 447 pounds. Arizona State University has installed solar panels throughout its Wells Fargo Arena.
And the trend is only growing. Below, you’ll see some collegiate greening initiatives by the numbers (based on a 2013 survey by the University of Arizona via the NDRC):
At least 216 collegiate sports departments (97 athletics and 119 recreation) have installed recycling infrastructure throughout their sports facilities.
At least 88 collegiate sports departments (41 athletics and 47 recreation) have pursued LEED green building design certifications for new facilities, major renovations and/or existing facilities, with at least 24 certified sports venues to date.
At least 162 collegiate sports departments (68 athletics and 94 recreation) have installed bike racks and other infrastructure to promote bicycle commuting at their sports venues.
At least 116 collegiate sports departments (50 athletics and 66 recreation) have upgraded to water-efficient fixtures.
At least 83 collegiate sports departments (30 athletics and 53 recreation) have implemented an environmentally preferable paper purchasing policy that includes prioritizing paper with recycled content.
23 collegiate sports departments (8 athletics and 15 recreation) have installed on-site solar energy production systems.
And to encourage more colleges to get on board, Sustainable America announced in a blog post that NRDC has also released a free, first-of-its-kind online guide — called the Greening Advisor for Collegiate Sports — to improve sustainable programs and practices in collegiate athletics and recreation. It offers practical tips on how to start and fund recycling programs, engage students and create healthier environments.
College sports are helping us save the earth. Now that’s a winning formula.
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Sandy, Summer Standouts: The Top 35 Cleanest Beaches
Summertime and Fourth of July means barbecues, family, friends and beaches for most of us. But as people prepare to hit the sand, there’s nothing worse than taking a dip in polluted water. Have no fear, though, because last week, the Natural Resources Defense Council released its annual report on beach pollution, compiling results on 3,000 beaches to create a comprehensive list of the top 35 cleanest ones.
Contamination and pollution on public beaches across the country is a consistent problem. Most of it can be contributed to rain water, which, through its course over pavement, picks up different contaminants which are then transferred to the ocean water. A further problem is the water treatment facilities that handle storm water and sewage in the same system.
The Natural Resources Defense Council’s report used information on the pollution levels of the beaches surveyed from 2009 to 2013 to rank their cleanliness as well as offer solutions to clean up dirtier waters. In order to be a superstar beach, the location had to meet the water quality standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency. First, it could not exceed the 2009-2012 national water quality level by more than two percent. Second, it could not exceed the 2013 Beach Action Value water quality by more than two percent.
All of this sounds very scientific for most of us, but it can be boiled down simply. Beach Action Value is different from water quality level because it deals solely with beach quality and just acts as a guideline for when beach health warnings should be administered. It is a not a required criteria but can be used as a tool by the states. Therefore, superstar beaches were less than two percent above the EPA’s established safe water quality values.
Of the 35 top beaches, there are some standouts whose numbers were zero percent in every category for every year. Some of those include Long Beach City in New York, Back Bay Beach in Virginia, Dauphin Island Public Beach and Beach at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in North Carolina, among others.
So before you grab your towel and sunscreen, be sure to check to see where your favorite beach falls in the rankings. See the full list of superstars and offenders at Next City.
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