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Environmental Defense Fund

Environmental Defense Fund or EDF (formerly known as Environmental Defense) is a US-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group. The group is known for its work on issues including global warming, ecosystem restoration, oceans, and human health. It is nonpartisan, and its work often advocates market-based solutions to environmental problems.

History

The founders of Environmental Defense Fund, including Art Cooley and Charles Wurster, Dennis Puleston, Victor Yannacone and Robert Smolker discovered in the mid 1960's that the osprey and other large raptors were rapidly disappearing. Their research uncovered a link between the spraying of DDT to kill mosquitos and weakening egg shells of the large birds. They started Environmental Defense Fund to seek a ban on DDT in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. They were successful. They then campaigned to ban DDT statewide and succeeded as well. They then took their efforts national.

The group is headquartered out of New York, with offices nationwide, and scientists and policy specialists working worldwide. It is directed by Fred Krupp who has served as its president since 1984.

The organization claims that it advocates using sound science, good economics and good law to find solutions that work.

Some environmentalists have protested that Environmental Defense Fund has "sold out" to big business through their "market based" initiatives.

Key Accomplishments

Key accomplishments of Environmental Defense Fund include:

1967 - A small group of scientists forms the organization and sets out to win a nationwide ban on DDT (in 1972), which had been harming wildlife and was found in human mother's milk.
1970 - Efforts bring all hunted whales onto the U.S. endangered species list.
1974 - An Environmental Defense Fund study of Mississippi River water helps pass the Safe Drinking Water Act, establishing the first comprehensive health standards for water nationwide.
1985 - Helped convince federal regulators to phase out lead from gasoline, leading to a dramatic decline in childhood lead poisoning.
1986 - Pushed McDonalds to institute biodegradable food-packaging containers.
1987 - Played a key role in the treaty to phase out the use of CFCs, chemicals that many researchers believe damage the Earth’s ozone layer.
1990 - Designed Title IV of the Clean Air Act, which incorporates market-based methods to cut air pollution and acid rain., The measures reduce sulfur dioxide pollution faster than expected, and at a fraction of the cost.
1995 - Designed the Safe Harbor planthat gives landowners new incentives to help endangered species on their property.
'2000 - Seven of the world's largest corporations join Environmental Defense in a partnership to address global warming, setting firm targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
2001 - Helped create the 1,200-mile-long Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve.
2004 - The first FedEx hybrid electric trucks hit the road, the result of a four-year partnership with FedEx to transform truck technology. The new vehicles cut smog-forming pollution by 65%, reduce soot by 96%—and go 57% farther on a gallon of fuel.
2006 - Co-authored the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 with Natural Resources Defense Council.
2007 - Co-founded United States Climate Action Partnership (US-CAP), a coalition of major corporations and environmental groups supporting action on global warming, including a market-based carbon emissions cap. (Corporate participants include GE, DuPont and Duke Energy; non-profit groups involved are Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute, a co-founder).

Helped negotiate an environmental platform of Texas Pacific's buyout of TXU.

For contributions to the Endangered Species Act, including inventing the Safe Harbor concept

For initiating the recent campaign to remove the O'Shaughnessy Dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park

Regional offices more focused on local issues and policies include: Austin, TX; Boulder, CO; San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Sacramento, CA; Washington, D.C.; Raleigh, North Carolina; Boston, MA

Conservative criticism

Critics on the American right have argued that not all of the EDF's policies have always been beneficial to either the environment or to humanity. Writer Christopher C. Horner, for example, has compared the spread of malaria after the DDT ban that EDF sponsored to a deliberate genocide, citing a quotation from a spokesman of EDF saying: "This is as sure a way to get rid of them as any."

Jon Berlau, author of the book Eco-Freaks, has also argued that EDF and later the Clinton administration, due to an "earth-worshiping mentality," interfered with operations of the US Army Core of Engineers via judicial activism with the aid of Judge Charles Scwartz, resulting in the forestalling of levee reinforcement that led to Katrinagate shortly after Hurricane Katrina. This, Berlau argues, was the prime motivation behind "contempt for human life and safety, all for the sake of a few fish and mosquitoes." This was offered as a counter to the conspiracy theory that the Bush administration was behind Katrinagate in an effort to wipe out blacks.