A Force For Nature...

Reading John Adams’s blog today about his new book, A Force for Nature, reminded me of so many moments over my nineteen-plus years at NRDC. 

I’ve already read the book, and recommend it highly to anybody who is interested in NRDC or in the history of the environmental movement since the first Earth Day in 1970.

In a sense, this book is a story about some of the issues that have been at the center of NRDC's work for four decades.  But it’s equally a story of the incredible people at NRDC who worked on those issues over the years.   As such, it gives great flavor to the work that we’ve done around here for so many years.

For me, it was a thrill to read the John and Patricia Adams version of the diesel work that I’ve been doing since the 1990s.  John was an early booster of this work – from the very beginning, he saw that diesel pollution was a serious issue in New York City, he saw that nobody else was covering it as deeply as NRDC could, and he saw that he had a young lawyer (me) with fire in his belly to do something about it.  And, one of John’s many, many attributes has always been to recognize when his lawyers want to go after an issue—and then let them go do it. 

When I came to NRDC on a three-year grant, I never imagined that I’d still be here two decades later.  Throughout our diesel campaigns (and throughout our close work together to create NYC’s Hudson River Park), John was a generous and gracious guide, a fierce competitor who always wanted NRDC to win, an intensely loyal boss, and the master of the well-timed note of thanks and encouragement.   We’ve been in some tough fights together, and we’ve celebrated many great victories together.  

NRDC is filled with people like me who came for a couple of years and have stayed for decades.  John and Patricia, together, are a big part of the reason why we have all stayed for so long.

So, read their book, and enjoy an inside look at 40 years of NRDC.