A Force for the Future

In 1970, a group of young lawyers launched a new kind of organisation and helped secure the country’s bedrock environmental laws. Ever since, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has harnessed its legal and scientific expertise to become one of the fiercest protectors of public health and the environment. In this recounting of NRDC’s 50-year history, cofounder John Adams tells the ongoing story about fighting the world’s most powerful polluters and winning. Alongside archival photography and insider accounts, Adams celebrates a half century of victories, everything from saving whales to getting lead pipes out of Flint, Michigan, to protecting treasured landscapes, like Alaska’s Katmai National Park & Preserve. But the book is also a road map for the future, offering hard-won lessons on how to tackle problems that lie at the intersection of science and society. Today, as humanity faces the climate crisis, the stakes have never been higher nor the solutions more complex which is why NRDC remains uniquely positioned as the earth’s best defense.