Articles by David Doniger

I'm the policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) Climate Center, and our chief global warming lawyer. I rejoined NRDC in March 2001 after serving for eight years in the Clinton administration, where I was director of climate change policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and, before that, counsel to the head of the EPA's clean air program. I also served for a year at the Council on Environmental Quality. This is my second stint at NRDC -- I first started here in 1978 and worked on clean air issues for the next 14 years, helping to win the Montreal Protocol to stop depletion of the ozone layer and the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990. Now we're working to pass legislation to cap and cut the pollution that causes global warming, and to reach a new treaty for global emission cuts.

Featured Article

Representative Issa, please step away from the car deal

David Doniger Technology

Rep. Darrell Issa.Photo: Gage SkidmoreCross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Last Friday, President Obama announced another historic clean car agreement, supported by car companies, the autoworkers union, environmental organizations, and states, that by 2025 will double new vehicles’ miles per gallon and cut their carbon pollution nearly in half. 

Car owners will fill up half as often and save $3,000 over the life of the car. American families will save $80 billion a year at the pump and cut our national oil addiction by 2.2 million barrels per day. And we’ll create up to 150,000 new American jobs. 

Rare good news for the planet, according to The New York Times. Everybody wins.

But not good enough for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He’s a climate skeptic and no friend of EPA or other federal health and safety agencies. And he’s not happy. 

According to The Hill, Issa’s got “serious concerns.” So, he’s launched an investigation and fired off letters demanding that the automakers preserve al... Read more

David Doniger Technology

All Articles

  • Chamber of Commerce and auto dealer group lose last-gasp lawsuit to stop clean cars

    Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. The federal court of appeals in Washington today rejected the last legal attack on California’s landmark greenhouse-gas standards for new cars built in model years 2012-16.  The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sought to overturn EPA’s waiver giving California the green light […]

    David Doniger Technology

  • AEI blogger celebrates the success of the acid rain program, without acknowledging its existence

    Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. For Earth Day, Steve Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute posted this shocker: “Energy Fact of the Week: Sulfur Dioxide Emissions from Coal Have Declined 54 Percent.” He includes some nice government charts, which I’m sure he won’t mind my reproducing below. But from Hayward’s blog, you’d think this […]

    David Doniger Health

  • Why the Supreme Court should let states sue the country’s biggest carbon polluters

    This post was coauthored by Matt Pawa. He and I represent the land conservation trusts in American Electric Power vs. Connecticut. Today, the Supreme Court hears oral argument in American Electric Power vs. Connecticut — a case in which six states and other plaintiffs are trying to put emissions limits on America’s five largest greenhouse-gas […]

    David Doniger Health

  • The Congressional Carbon Circus

    Photo: Thomas TotzCross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. There’s lots going on in the center ring of the Congressional Carbon Circus today. Both the House and Senate are expected to vote this afternoon on bills to block the Environmental Protection Agency from doing its job under the Clean Air Act to safeguard Americans from […]

    David Doniger Energy