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The appended article about NRDC makes damned fine reading --- especially when supplemented with some background info.
The NRDC-Presidio National Park connection, mentioned in this article is very important. It was, and remains, one of the worst examples of privatization of our National Parks to come along in a very long time. Interesting, PEW was a big part of it.
http://www.forestcouncil.org/articles/guardian/anatomy_of_a_sellout.html
http://www.sfbg.com/News/32/02/Features/intro.html
http://www.sfbg.com/News/32/02/Features/time.html
http://www.sfbg.com/News/32/02/Features/found.html
... so were many of Big Greens - in addition to NRDC.
Here's a short quote from the San Francisco Bay Guardian:
"The major Local and national environmental groups that helped privatize the Presidio are now, finally, lining up in opposition to the commercial development of the national park. The Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Parks and Conservation Association..."
The NRDC-Industrial Tourism connection is also very important. The link is Laurance Rockefeller.
Laurance was/(probably still is if he's alive) a NRDC Board Member and Staff Attorney. Rockefeller created the "Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission" (ORRRC) in the early '60. This led (via Laurance) to the formation of Ronald Reagan's President's Commission on Americans Outdoors (PCAO). PCAO led (via the American Recreation Coalition) to the Industrial Strength Recreation Agenda that President Clinton introduced during his watch and which President Bush and Gale Norton will now attempt to 'perfect'.
For what it's worth, NRDC actively endorses Fee-Demo. So does National Parks and Conservation Association. I don't know about PEW.... but I expect we'll find out soon enough!
I find it curious that the Oil Fortunes of the early Rockefellers and the Pews seem to be playing such a major role in shaping public policy in the 21st Century. Very curious, indeed.
Scott
---begin quoted ----
San Francisco Bay Guardian
February 14, 2001
Guilty parties: The utilities got exactly what they wanted. The media went along. The
environmentalists sold out. Here's the real story of how we got into
this mess.
By Savannah Blackwell
.......
Help from the enviros The utilities' ace in the hole, however, was not
Peace but the Natural Resources Defense Council. A heavyweight
environmental organization staffed more by lawyers than activists, the
NRDC assumed the mantle of negotiator on behalf of the public interest.
Ralph Cavanagh, director of the NRDC's energy program, had spent years
preaching that utilities could be convinced to promote conservation –
as long as ratepayers footed the bill. In reality, however, the
utilities have ignored conservation programs and in some cases used
conservation money for purposes far different from what regulators had
in mind. As Marcus put it, "the utilities liked paper conservation more
than real conservation."
Still, Cavanagh liked to work with the power companies instead of
opposing them. His long-standing position that the utilities could be
reasonable, even good guys gave him a central role in shaping the final
deregulation bill – and his support helped cloak the bill in green.
Cavanagh made it clear early in the debate, according to many
participants, that he would support the utilities' most critical
demand: that consumers bail them out of the cost of their "stranded"
assets. In other words, the utilities were willing to go into the free
market – but only if consumers first paid off all of their existing
debts for expensive (and sometimes unnecessary) power plants, such as
the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. The bill for that bailout: $28 billion.
In exchange for supporting that giveaway, Cavanagh received a promise
that the utilities would set aside some money for renewable energy,
conservation, and other public interest programs. That was a great deal
for the utilities: the price of Cavanagh's support was $2.5 billion for
alternative energy and low-income-consumer programs, not even 10
percent of the money consumers would pay to cover old utility debts.
Cavanagh even squashed a report he had commissioned on how much the
utilities were spending lobbying legislators and how they were getting
what they wanted at consumer expense, according to Asmus, who wrote the
report.
Cavanagh's support was crucial: it gave liberal Democrats the ability
to support the utility-backed bill and still claim they were acting in
the interest of the environment. When the Bay Guardian asked liberal
legislators at the time why on earth they supported deregulation, some
faxed over Cavanagh's letter of support.
"His sign-off was what the legislators needed," Doug Heller, consumer
advocate for the Foundation for Consumer and Taxpayer Rights, told the
Bay Guardian. "He was cover. He went out there and said deregulation
would be good for the environment."
"What this guy did really sickened me," Graham Brownstein, a community
organizer at the Utility Reform Network (TURN), told the Bay Guardian.
"He really abdicated his responsibility. All he got was peanuts and
crumbs compared to what it has cost us and the environment."
TURN, as its leaders now regret, didn't oppose the original 1996
deregulation bill either, in part because of persuasion from Cavanagh.
But the group loudly and adamantly opposed the fall 1997 bill that
implemented the $28 billion bailout – $14 billion of which was for
money lost in development of nuclear power plants. Cavanagh's work was
subsidized by a grant from the Energy Foundation, which has its offices
at the Presidio National Park. The Energy Foundation had pulled the
plug on funding for groups that opposed making ratepayers responsible
for paying off all of the utilities' bad investments. The Pew
Foundation, which also funds nonprofits (as well as giving grants to
newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle), likewise steered
funding away from anyone who opposed deregulation.
The grassroots organizations that wanted to fight the utilities and
hoped to get a better deal from the legislature were essentially
thwarted by their inability to get funding, and thus overshadowed by
the NRDC.
"The Energy Foundation provided ample funding for the NRDC to
participate in this process, even though there was no agreement in the
larger public interest community that the NRDC's approach was the
correct one," Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen, a grassroots
group associated with Ralph Nader, wrote in a January 1999 memo. "Many
groups were concerned and were following the issue, but they did not
have the resources to be in Sacramento day and night for the three
weeks prior to the passage of A.B. 1890."
In fact, when Eugene Coyle, a TURN economist, wrote a report critical
of deregulation, his Energy Foundation funding was canceled.
For his part, Cavanagh told the Bay Guardian in a recent interview that he has "no regrets."
"The reason I don't have any regrets is because the legislation was
better than the alternative," Cavanagh said. "That would have killed
energy efficiency, renewables, and low-income programs."
The "alternative" was the plan formulated by the CPUC in 1994. True, it
contained no provisions for the programs Cavanagh mentioned. But the
plan contained a principle critical to consumers: it said they
shouldn't get stuck with the full tab of the utilities "stranded" costs. ...
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- Privatization 
