Frances Beinecke National Quotations

NEPA's common sense approach to foster discussion and collaboration about major development projects has worked well to protect our national treasures and resources.

Nearly every president in the past 100 years has declared national monuments, from Teddy Roosevelt creating the Grand Canyon National Monument to George W. Bush preserving 10 islands and 140,000 square miles of ocean waters in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument may be distant from our shores, but it will help us understand how healthy marine ecosystems work and how we can revive troubled seas closer to home.

Declaring the San Gabriel Mountains a national monument will make this natural wonder more accessible. It will welcome people from all walks of life and maintain the mountains' wild character at the same time.

The U.S. limits mercury, arsenic, and soot from power plants. Yet, astonishingly, there are no national limits on how much carbon pollution these plants can dump into our atmosphere.

I attended the climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, and back then, national governments waited until days before to submit climate plans, and the U.S. based its pledge on a proposed bill that would fail in the Senate.

The fossil fuel industry commands outsize sway over U.S. politics, markets, and democracy. I knew these companies were formidable, but when I served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, I got a close up view of how the industry disregards government safeguards.