Courtesy of John and Patricia Adams

When John H. Adams and a group of fellow lawyers founded the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970, no one was entirely sure that the tiny organization would survive its first year. Today NRDC is one of the unquestioned leaders of the American environmental movement, with a powerful presence around the world. OnEarth articles editor, George Black, who worked closely with John and his wife, Patricia, on their new book, A Force for Nature, talked to them at their home in Beaverkill, New York, about the organization's history and some of the highlights, challenges, and lessons of the past 40 years.

GEORGE BLACK: It's hard not to start by talking about the Deepwater Horizon spill, partly because the Santa Barbara blowout in 1969 was so important to the origins of NRDC. Do you think the BP disaster is another of those moments that might change history?

JOHN H. ADAMS: Yes, because Santa Barbara was tied up with all sorts of other things, like the Vietnam War and massive air and water pollution of all kinds. I see this as another time when people are absolutely fed up: there's a massive coal mine disaster where 29 people died; there's mountaintop removal and the tar sands in the Canadian boreal; and there's the urgency of passing a carbon bill. The mood in the country is quickly shifting, so I think in the next year or two we'll see a renaissance in the environmental movement.

GB: It's striking how much your memoir talks about offshore oil drilling as something that runs right through NRDC's history.

JHA: No question about it. We always felt that in Alaska especially, with so little oil and the potential for damage to that wonderful fishing area, the risks were not worth it. Now we're seeing the oil companies going to the ends of the earth, doing everything that is physically possible to extract energy without knowing what the risks are. The technology allows them to think they can do anything. Well, we just learned in the Gulf that they can't.

GB: Let's talk about the book itself. How did the idea first come about?

PATRICIA ADAMS: John and I had actually been talking about doing a book together for many years. John knows the whole arc of NRDC's history, and I was interested in the stories, knowing most of the people who were involved. So when Chronicle Books came to us with the proposal to write the history of NRDC, it fit right into what we had been talking about, although it became a much bigger endeavor. After all, NRDC is now 40 years old and we have more than 400 people working here.

GB: Husband-and-wife writing teams don't always work smoothly. There must have been some bumps along the way.

PA: Well, guess what: our marriage actually survived! We developed a working method where John and I would talk about the particular cases or events, and then I would line up interviews with the people involved, be it lawyers, scientists, other staff, or board members. Before we were done, I had conducted about 150 interviews. And then you joined our team. I think the book is like NRDC: it's a team effort.

GB: It was tough sifting through those interviews. There were so many great stories, but no one was going to read a 1,000-page book.

JHA: But even if some stories didn't make it into the book, all the interviews will be kept. We have an agreement with Yale to create an NRDC archive, and the interviews will become part of that permanent record of our history.

GB: When you talk about the early days, I'm struck by how fragile it must have felt. Did you ever worry that NRDC was going to fold?

JHA: Our battle for tax exemption, which is spelled out in the book, was a real nail-biter. We lost a complete year of our life, and it was brutal. I believe that if we had not gotten the tax exemption within a month or so of the date that we did, the team would have broken up. Even then, until about 1980, I don't think we ever had more than $10,000 in the bank. You know, it was cash in, cash out, just enough to pay the bills. I didn't think about NRDC being around for 40 years; my planning horizon at that stage was no longer than five.

PA: I look back with wonder at that first year. It was extraordinarily difficult. We had a new child, I was still in school, we were living in this tiny apartment, and there was a real worry whether this endeavor was going to last. One reason I think we got through it is that we were young. But the strength and support and wisdom we got from Mr. [Stephen] Duggan, our first board chair, was a big part of my personal belief that we were going to survive.

GB: When I went to my first NRDC retreat six years ago, I remember being amazed at all these people being recognized for 20 or 25 or 30 years as staff members. What does that say about the organization's DNA?

JHA: Well, obviously loyalty is a trait that I like in the people who are at NRDC. And I would call it more than loyalty; it's something about family and respect for the people that you work and live with. It ties into my belief in integrity. It's about respect for your allies but also for your opponents, so that you are trusted by the larger community.

GB: You discuss several cases where a staffer suddenly starts working on something totally outside the box, like nuclear weapons or urban real estate, and board members say, "What do you mean? Those aren't environmental issues." But those ideas always seem to move ahead in the end.

JHA: Sure, the early board members were largely conservationists, and it took a little work to get everybody behind those things. But we were lucky that at every step of the way we had a leader who understood that these were very important opportunities for us. On nuclear, for example, our chairman, Bill DeWind, basically argued that a nuclear exchange would devastate the environment. And I would say that in each of these cases, the disagreement was ultimately resolved in a very civilized way. One of the great beauties of NRDC is you don't see disputes becoming warfare.

GB: The most contentious question in the early days was probably about whether to become a membership organization.

JHA: Yes. The Ford Foundation gave us funding at the end of the first year, which ultimately lasted for 10. But I was very preoccupied with the notion that you can't count on Ford -- or any foundation -- to continue supporting you indefinitely. I thought building membership was absolutely critical. After a decade, I remember that we had 35,000 dues-paying members. And now we're at 1.3 million members and online activists!

GB: You see the influence of members particularly over the issues of wildlife and wilderness. When you write about your travels together it's clear those things are also very important to you personally.

PA: Part of it is the incredibly diverse collection of people we travel with. That goes right back to the first trip we made for NRDC, to the Four Corners power plant in New Mexico.

JHA: I don't think you can talk about the environment unless you see it, get out in it, and really understand it. The more time that we have spent in nature, the more we've grown to feel a responsibility for the places that we have come to know and love. Patricia has always kept logs, so we have a rich record of our travels from Alaska to Russia to Morocco to Baja. And these are part of the permanent record of our life together, and of NRDC.

GB: You write about these wild places with great emotion, and then in the next breath you're talking about the need to work closely with major corporations. I guess some people might find that contradictory.

JHA: Times have changed, you know. We are not a little band of warriors off in a corner. And we're not going to have an environment that's worth anything unless corporate America plays a big role. We've seen a very important transition toward much better behavior. There are still lots of problems out there like BP, so we need to be careful. Our first obligation is to the environment. If people want to protect the environment, we'll support their efforts. If not, we'll play hardball.

GB: But sometimes it seems as if the forces arrayed against us are still very powerful and very obstinate. Just look at the fight for climate legislation. Doesn't that ever make you feel demoralized?

PA: I actually have a lot of belief in the human race -- that mankind does not want to destroy itself, and there will be ways found.

GB: Does that go for you too, John, even after the Deepwater Horizon?

JHA: I have to say this particular catastrophe has been very distressing. You know, I wake up swearing.

PA: He sure does!

JHA: I'm just angry, because it seems to me that this has happened for the sake of profits and because of a failure to be cautious, and the damage will not be overcome in my lifetime. On the other hand, I do think that this is a learning moment. So, yes, I am optimistic by nature. I mean, why not? Why wouldn't I be? We set up NRDC, and we've tackled unbelievable problems, and we usually win. Okay, now we are facing some of the biggest problems we will ever face, but we're bigger than we've ever been before, and so is the movement. We may not get a climate bill in 2010, but we'll get a better one in 2011 or 2012. I think we're going to win because we're right.