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Indybay Feature

Natural Resources Defense Council Brings Big Oil’s Agenda to North Coast

by John Lewallen
On California’s North Coast, the NRDC is working in tandem with the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation to make sure the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPAI) gets the Foundation-preferred alternatives enacted on tight schedule.
Natural Resources Defense Council Brings Big Oil’s Agenda to North Coast

by John Lewallen, only one member, Public Ocean Access Network, oceannetwork [at] mcn.org

There has to be another word to define the “foundation-funded corporations” such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which calls itself an “environmentalist” organization. Created by oil money and awash in Pew Charitable Trust funds, the NRDC brings big oil’s agenda wherever it operates.

On California’s North Coast, the NRDC is working in tandem with the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation to make sure the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPAI) gets the Foundation-preferred alternatives enacted on tight schedule.

Karen Garrison, may she enjoy good health, is NRDC’s lead employee in helping other foundation-funded corporations deal with problems met in the MLPAI process of trying to separate California’s ocean food providers from public ocean waters and intertidal zones.

Now operating on California’s North coast, the MLPAI is operating a cruel private process of imposing permanent zones where sustainable ocean food providers are permanently banned.

My wife Barbara and I were “processed” in the North Central Coast by the MLPAI, where ancient tribal food-gathering areas were permanently closed, along with vital, sustainable abalone diving, fishing, and seaweed harvesting habitats.

Karen Garrison of the NRDC both was a “conservation stakeholder” in the stakeholder process involving ocean food providers, and acted as an MLPAI official in doing interviews in the Point Arena area. I have seen Karen Garrison encourage complaining ocean food providers to make their own “external array,” which is a complete closure plan. Then I saw her organize mobs of ill-informed “conservationists” to come to key hearings and tell Fish & Game Commissioners to ignore the voices of ocean food providers present, and enact the Integrated Preferred Alternative.

In the North coast, the NRDC and another foundation-funded corporation, the Ocean Conservancy, have hired field agents from the community to promote and advance the MLPAI agenda. I believe it is a conflict of interest for any NRDC employee to participate in any of the community “external array” processes now in progress.

At best, a good-hearted community member employed by the NRDC is in danger of being used by the NRDC to advance their corporate agenda in community groups.

Now we environmentalists must distinguish between democratically run and membership-funded groups such as the Sierra Club (usually), the Ocean Protection Coalition and the Mendocino Environmental Center, contrasted with foundation-funded corporations such as NRDC, heavily funded and influenced by big corporate money.

The Natural Resources Defense Council was founded with a big Tides Foundation grant (see ActivistCash.com). The Tides Foundation is the first money-laundering foundation, doing “donor-advised giving,” open about where the money goes, but not where it comes from. Other sources show that the Pew Charitable Trusts has poured over $40 million into Tides.

The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation (Foundation) is also a money-laundering foundation. Who is really directing MLPAI Executive Director Ken Wiseman, my beautiful friend so transparent in deception? The money trail leads to the Resources Law Fund, a legal group committed to donor confidentiality.

The MLPAI team, who are all Foundation employees, are running the MLPAI with no legislative oversight, under authority given to them by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the California Resources Agency. This is a very destructive and divisive process, and I believe this MOU should be cancelled as soon as possible.

I could find only two grants made by the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation in 2002: $500,000 to the NRDC, $264,000 to Tides. Now the Foundation funds and controls the MLPAI, and even has granted modest sums for North coast external array participants.


The Pew Charitable Trusts: Oil Money


Started by Joseph Pew with profits from the oil company he founded, Sun Oil, the Pew Charitable Trusts now deploys the biggest profits ever made in the history of profits, oil company profits, into managing America in a direction oil companies like.

Of the two top NRDC financial supporters, the first, Energy Foundation (almost $15 million between 1991-2005) was founded by a Pew grant, and the second is Pew itself (almost $13 million from 1991-2000).

The presence of Katherine Reheis-Boyd, CEO of the Western States Petroleum Association, on the MLPAI North coast Blue Ribbon Task Force is further sign of oil industry influence in the MLPAI process. Nothing in the MLPAI would stop the ongoing process of opening offshore oil and gas drilling along the North coast, a major Petroleum Association goal.

Ms. Reheis-Boyd is also the oil industry’s international expert on climate change policy. This leads to “cap and trade,” a moneymaking shell game that big polluting corporations and the NRDC love, but real pollution control activists hate.


NRDC, Cap-and-Trade, Draining Salmon Habitat: Real Environmentalists React


A Nov. 30 Huffington Post story covered the Mobilization for Climate Justice Demonstration against the NRDC. The NRDC has joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, along with America’s great oil companies and greenhouse gas emitters. “U.S. CAP played a pivotal lobbying role in drafting the massive Waxman-Markey climate bill in the House which, while calling for modest emission reductions, will also create an exponentially lucrative carbon trading market...what some activists call a new system of climate profiteering,” wrote Joseph Huff-Hannon.

California Delta water activist Daniel Bacher reports that NRDC representatives worked out backroom deals supporting the water legislation package, ramrodded through the Legislature by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg in early November, that creates a clear path to the construction of the peripheral canal and more dams. “Northern California water activists--tribal leaders, environmentalists, fishermen, Delta family farmers and community leaders--feel sold out by the NRDC in their signoff on this water catastrophe for Northern California,” said Bacher.


The External Array Process: Cruel Deception


By encouraging the external array process and even hiring a community member to participate in it, the NRDC is both setting community members against each other, and stimulating the community to get organized to support sustainable ocean food providers. Both the NRDC and the Foundation would be wise to ask the new Resources Secretary, Mr. snow, to join in stopping the MLPAI process. We ocean food providers of the North Coast always are, have been, and will be, ready for government help in protecting our vital and sacred home, the ocean ecosystem and intertidal zone.

I am afraid the vain hope that the MLPAI process may be good for people and ecosystems if citizens help make closure maps--the external array process--sometimes keeps people from the inevitable task of organizing to stop the privatization of California resources management. It is not sustainable to try to close huge, vital public areas of North Coast Ocean and intertidal zones, rapidly and with no reason, in the beginning of a spiraling depression that already has almost one-third of Mendocino County residents food-insecure.

The NRDC, the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, and other foundation-funded corporations are going to fail in their bid to privatize public access to the North coast’s ancient and sacred ocean food habitats. People are an integral part of the North coast ocean ecosystem. Dear foundations, please spare our society this suicidal, exhausting attack on the North Coast’s sustainable ocean food providers!
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Comments (Hide Comments)
To be sure - The proposal to close an area of kelp beds and shoreline from south of the mouth of Big River at Mendocino to Caspar has been kept tightly under wraps. It is a proposal put together by Conservation First! - mostly a bunch of card carrying Sierra Club heavy hitters. On the intent to file are Bernie McDonald and Bill Heil, Linda Perkins, and Mary Walsh.

This is all public information under the letter of intent to file.

Members of Conservation First are members of Sierra Club, and the Sierra Club Redwood Chapter almost exclusively, and along with the NRDC and The Ocean conservancy and others such as EPIC & Humboldt Baykeeper (a subsidiary of the Trees Foundation) make up the North Coast Conservation Coalition.

Once upon a time, these same groups fought against MAXXAM, Dr John Mick Seidl, and Barry Munitz and Gray Davis. But now the money train is coming back, and it's painted green - all aboard! These cultural despots, Seidl and Munitz, are intricately tied to the MLPAi and North Coast politics and economic collapse of ecosystem function and services lost on a scale that would pay for all unemployment related to their actions as Presidents of Boards and Trustees.

Do a search - MAXXAM and MLPA.

It was Kaitlin Gaffney of the Ocean Conservancy (instrumental in the MLPAi North Central Coast Region) who signed on to Oil Drilling back on 012609 at Tranquillon Ridge and also Paul Mason Deputy Director of the Sierra Club. See my article "When Big Green Isn't Enough: Go For The Gold, Black Gold.

Here's a riddle-
What do old forestry activists do when the trees are gone?
They look out across the Pacific Rim and talk cap and trade.

The Pacific Rim is the rim opposite the side of the wine glass that is touching the lips when looking towards the horizon.

Tomas DiFiore
This “article”, is a reprehensible piece of rubbish. As a long-time member of NRDC -- a group that I love for its effectiveness, transparency, and integrity -- I can attest that this article is a disruptive, hateful pile of lies. For the record, NRDC IS a MEMBERSHIP-funded organization, supported by over a million members, as well as foundations, which just about every non-profit with any actual FUNCTIONAL EFFECT is.

Why do you spew false “facts” about an organization that is probably one of the most effective in the country at protecting our natural resources?

Mr. Lewallen, do you drive a car or turn on your lights? Unless you’re living fully off the grid and never pump a gallon of gas, than I’d say you’re IN BED with BIG OIL. For years I’ve paid my membership dues to NRDC because they work tirelessly to sue big polluters and protect our lands, skies, waters and oceans from the ravages of big business. I’m sure Big Oil would have a BIG LAUGH at the notion that they support the work that NRDC does.

Lewallen, if you and your integrity-free Yellow Journalist cohort DiFiore have so much time on your hands to write articles, why are you wasting it attacking an organization that does so much good? Why do you try so hard to divide the environmental community (oh, right, because YOU are not really an environmentalist?)! If you care so much, why don’t you get busy on the fights that really matter, such as stopping greenhouse gas emissions that are leading to the acidification of our ocean, or combating the PXP proposal off Santa Barbara, or advancing the CLIMATE BILL? Marine protected areas are a good idea – even if you don’t agree, there is a way to publically get involved, even if you don’t like the outcomes that the science recommends.

P.S., to Mr. DiFiore – I love that you suggest that readers search MAXXAM and MLPA to validate the truth of your conspiracy theories – I did so and what popped up? Dozens of articles YOU wrote. Here’s something you’d learn in Investigative Journalism 101: just because YOU decide to write something down, does not mean it’s true.
by Tomas DiFiore
Don't know the term.
But if you actually read my articles, you would find that they are heavily footnoted or annotated and sourced with direct links to indisputable data. I leave interpretation of the raw data up to the individual. But it is all an accurate, and as best I can tell, a more accurate assessment of local history and politics than others I am reading.

As far as having the time, hah, you obviously have no idea of who you speak of. In terms of time spent, accomplishments accrued, outreach, community involvement, a life history of involvement in social justice issues and environmentalism.

My particular working and social movement history goes back 40 years to the Civil Rights movement, and I don't mean sitting comfortably gathering signatures - not to diminish the importance of that. Let's see, the 2nd EF! meeting in CA happened at my house, I was at the first.

And I was once told by these same enviros in the middle of the 3rd Timber Wars that "I couldn't shut down the State Forest in Mendocino County. When it became apparent that it could be shut down I was told "not to shut it down". Many long stories may never be told. My work ended up being used to shut it down, a Citizen's Advisory Committee which continues to this day was because of the work of FOG. Friends of Old Growth. CDF attempted to double the cut in one year to pay for a ruling class wage lawsuit to cover overtime while transferring funds generated by cutting public trees to cover THP review. And all these big enviro groups were ok with that.

Yeah, I'm back. Most of my work still stands. Camp Gualala, Russel Brook, 13 Old Growth Groves in JDSF when the public only knew of 4, I did my time in Headwaters too!

This is a waste of time compared to the workload I have, the people I am challenging know me.

These are the same people who would speak up if anyone else tried to sneak anything into this community. I live here, and have for 29 years, yeah we all know each other. And we have been on both sides of common goals.

Reread my stuff and follow the links. Why is it MAXXAM and ENRON are no longer on Seidl or Munitz' bios where their name appears on Boards? Gray Davis (the clearcut governor) signed AB993 (MLPA) into law, and Barry Munitz was there as transition team leader. History should not be forgotten.

Heck, just follow the links.

Tomas DiFiore





by NRDC Sucks!
John and Tomas

Thanks so much for writing such well-documented exposes of NRDC and Wall Street "environmentalists."

I applaud your efforts to oppose corporate greenwashing on the North Coast and elsewhere.

It is about time that somebody exposes how the oil industry and other corporations have funded these phony carpetbaggers!

You rock!

NRDC Sucks!
by Leila Monroe
This article is false and misleading -- its really unfortunate and a slap in the face to those of us at NRDC who have devoted our careers to helping to protect the health of the environment, including our ocean ecosystems. Here is a list of a few of NRDC's efforts to raise awareness and combat the threats to our ocean ecosystems and economy posed by new offshore oil and gas exploration activities (this doesn't touch on the decades of work done before our staff started blogging). You can find the links and more information here: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/lmonroe/nrdc_vs_offshore_oil_gas_new_d.html

• In January 2010, NRDC and other conservation and Alaska Native groups called for a timeout on oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean's Chukchi Sea, filing a legal challenge against Shell Oil's permit to drill in the region next summer. - Chuck Clusen, 1/20/10

• Throughout 2009 and into 2010, NRDC and nearly three dozen California environmental organizations have strongly opposed a proposal --included in the Governor’s budget for 2010-11 -- to allow the first new offshore oil drilling in California waters in over 40 years. – Leila Monroe, 7/23/09

• For decades, NRDC’s senior attorney Sarah Chasis and senior policy advocate Lisa Speer fought for protection of sensitive ocean areas from offshore leasing through litigation and then congressionally-established moratoria. Unfortunately, these decades-old protections were lifted as a knee-jerk reaction to the high gas prices delivered to consumers by the Big Oil companies in the summer of 2008. This was especially bad news for those concerned about the impacts of oil spills . – Kate Slusark, 3/24/09

• Although President Bush did oversee the creation of a large National Marine Sanctuary, overall he had an abysmal record on the environment, including a major assault on our oceans by opening up our waters to new oil drilling off our beaches.– Sarah Chasis 1/7/09

• Offshore oil and gas drilling could cause permanent damage to our beaches and coastal economies - threatening serious impacts to our $32 billion commercial fishing and $60 billion tourism and recreation industries. Tourism alone supports more than 3.5 million jobs in the coastal U.S. states - and the number of jobs in states with new drilling would pale in comparison to those that rely on oil-free beaches. New drilling risks oil spills from Florida to Maine, and all along the Pacific Coast. This could not only cause tremendous damage to fishing and tourism industries, destroy habitat for plants and animals, but also hurt all of us who live, work and vacation in these places. We all remember the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez spill. If that occurred on the East Coast, it would have extended from Massachusetts to North Carolina. No one wants that. – Sarah Chasis 2/11/09

• No amount of new offshore drilling is going to satisfy the world's growing demand for the fossil fuel. Moreover, it's a needless risk -- to our environment and coastal economies -- at a time when there are better solutions to provide efficient, clean energy for America. – Rob Perks, 10/31/08

• Offshore drilling is a needless risk, and there are better solutions to provide efficient, clean energy for America's future. – Frances Beinecke, 10/23/2008

• Proponents of drilling like to position themselves as trying to save Americans money at the gas pump. Yet Congressional allies of the oil industry have voted against efficiency and energy independence bills 61 times [in 2008] alone--effectively delaying relief from high gas prices and America's addiction to oil. – Frances Beinecke, 9/16/08

• The President is making an effort to set aside underwater national parks in the Pacific Ocean – that action is important and should not be discounted. However, if Mr. Bush wants to be known for leaving behind a blue legacy – he can't push to lift the moratorium that protects our nation’s coastlines from oil drilling. – Kate Slusark, 9/4/08

• Offshore oil gets dragged once again onto the political scene, it’s worth remembering the environmental costs that led to the adoption of an offshore moratorium in the first place. One of the seminal events in the modern environmental movement was the 1969 blow-out of Union Oil Platform A, which sent millions of gallons of crude into the Santa Barbara Channel and tarred beaches for miles along the California coast.” -- Michael Jasny, June 19, 2008
Leila

You can spout your corporate environmental propaganda all you want, but please answer the following questions: Why did NRDC completely embrace the oil industry agenda in the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative?

Why did you support the leadership of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast by Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association?

Why did you support the creation of so-called "marine protected areas" that fail to protect the ocean from fracking, oil drilling, pollution, military testing and all human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and gathering?
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