Mason Trinca / New York Times, file
A tank farm containing untreated radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, on Aug. 10, 2022. The Natural Resources Defense Council is eliminating its longstanding program advocating nuclear safety and cleanup as donors focus on the climate crisis.
Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023 | 2 a.m.
A significant shift in donor contributions to nonprofits fighting climate change in recent years has left some of the nation’s biggest environmental organizations facing critical shortfalls in programs on toxic chemicals, radioactive contamination and wildlife protection.
The Natural Resources Defense Council is shutting down its nuclear mission and has laid off its top lawyer in the field, Geoffrey Fettus, who led decades of litigation against the Energy Department to force radioactive waste cleanup and halt the creation of a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The NRDC is not alone. The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Environmental Working Group, which have been at the forefront of efforts to clean up wastewater, regulate pesticides and adopt tougher standards for atomic power plants, are facing similar financial problems.
“Most environmental programs don’t have significant toxics programs anymore,” said Ken Cook, founder and president of the Environmental Working Group, which still devotes nearly half its budget to battling toxic substances in food, personal care items, cleaning products and water.
Meanwhile, global spending to fight climate change by environmental groups and other nonprofits reached $8 billion in 2021, most of it in the United States and Canada, according to a survey released in September by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Money has flowed into such groups as the ClimateWorks Foundation, which had revenues of $366 million in 2021. In its own report last week, ClimateWorks said international funding from foundations for climate work had more than tripled since 2015.
“Funders that had a nuclear program or a toxics program have left those fields entirely and have gone to climate change,” said Marylia Kelley, senior adviser and former executive director of a citizens oversight group that has long challenged the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California on releases of radioactivity and national security issues.
Leaders of some legacy environmental groups largely agree that climate change, given its wide range of increasing global effects, is a top priority. But they warn that toxic substances in communities across the nation remain an immediate threat to human health and animal habitats. There is also concern about the growing acceptance of nuclear energy as a “clean” source of electricity.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
