Environmental Defense Fund

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is an American environmental advocacy nonprofit agency, known for its work on climate change and its advocacy of a tripartite alliance between good science, good economics, and good laws to solve environmental problems and safeguard human health and environmental security. Their advocacy of market-based solutions has repeatedly drawn criticism from other environmental groups accusing them of softening their stance, selling out, or enabling big business's greenwashing. Dennis Puleston was the first chairman of the EDF; environmental lawyer Fred Krupp has headed the fund since 1984.

The group was founded as Environmental Defense in 1967 when environmentalists Art Cooley, George Woodwell, Charles Wurster, Dennis Puleston, Victor Yannacone, and Robert Smolker discovered a link between the pesticide DDT (used since 1939 and called [Page 204]into question in Rachel Carson's 1962 Silent Spring, the major text of the environmental movement) and the disappearance of large raptors like the osprey. DDT contributed to the weakening of these large egg shells, and having proven this in the laboratory, the environmentalists founded Environmental Defense in order to campaign against the use of DDT in Suffolk County, New York. Upon the passing of a ban in the county, they shifted their attention to the national level, opening a New York headquarters, with regional offices nationwide and a staff including both scientists and policy advocates.

By 1972, they had achieved a nationwide DDT ban. Other successes followed: the EDF was instrumental in the passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, the phasing out of lead in gasoline, the use of biodegradable food packaging by major corporate chains, the vilification of chlorofluorocarbons as substances damaging the ozone layer, and the drafting of Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act, which applied market-based solutions to the problems of air pollution and acid rain.

Since the turn of the century, more and more of EDF's efforts have directly involved corporations, fueling their fellow environmentalists' criticisms. In 2000, EDF organized the Partnership for Climate Action, for corporations that agreed on firm targets for greenhouse gas emissions. The group also began a partnership with FedEx to explore more environmentally friendly truck technology, which resulted in the rollout of hybrid electric FedEx trucks in 2004, with 57 percent greater fuel efficiency, producing 65 percent less smog-forming pollution and up to 96 percent less soot. More recently, the EDF cofounded the United States Climate Action Partnership in 2007, a group that includes both nonprofits (cofounding World Resources Institute, as well as the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change) and corporations (General Electric, DuPont, and Duke Energy).