Since the dawn of the modern environmental movement, Frances Beinecke has been on its front lines, leading the charge for clean air, fresh water, healthy wildlife and fertile lands. As she prepares to retire as president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, The World We Create captures the story of her remarkable tenure as head of America's leading environmental advocacy organization and lays out her vision for the future of the movement and the environmental challenges in the years ahead. This is the personal story of one of the few women ever to lead a national environmental organization in this country. It is a forward-leaning story that puts Beinecke at the table and on the ground with the emerging voices shaping the next generation of environmental stewardship and with the challenges they will inherit to confront issues such as climate change, fracking, nuclear power, the Keystone pipeline, and many others. Most important, The World We Create is a story of solutions, lighting the path forward to the kind of country, and the kind of world, we must leave to our children.
Frances Beinecke is the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental advocacy group guided by its commitment to sound science, the rule of law, and the public interest. In 2007 she received the prestigious Rachel Carson Award, a premier award which honours distinguished female leaders impacting the environmental world.
Bob Deans is NRDC's Federal Communications Director, is a long-time Washington, D.C. journalist, and is the author of The River Where America Began: A Journey along the James, and Reckless: The Political Assault on the American Environment.
– Winner, Washington Book Publishers 2015 Book Design & Effectiveness Competition: Typographic Cover (Tied First Place)
"Frances Beinecke is not just our great environmental leader, she's also a remarkable thinker and writer. This book comes at a crucial moment in the environmental fight, and it will make a powerful difference!"
– Bill McKibben, Founder of 350.org
"Frances Beinecke has long been a leader in solutions-based environmentalism, working across the political spectrum to turn common sense into common ground. In this book, she trains that approach on the greatest environmental challenge of our time: climate change. She maps out a course of action, and she shows how it can prepare generations of Americans for success in the fast-growing global market for the clean energy solutions of tomorrow."
– Carol M. Browner, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1993-2001; Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, 2009-2011
"Our politics may be divided over the issue of climate change, but our people are not. Increasingly, Americans are united around the need to address this gathering threat and the urgency to act. In this book, Frances Beinecke, one of the nation's most effective environmental leaders, shows us how to do that in a way that can help make Americans more prosperous, more competitive, and more secure. That's an approach people of all political perspectives can surely get behind."
– William K. Reilly, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1989-1993; Co-Chairman, the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, 2010-2011