Dunlap and Joe Browder, Biographical Information
As leaders whose work in the 1960s and 1970s helped shape the modern environmental movement, in government service, and as consultants to industry, governments and the public interest, Louise Dunlap and her partner Joe Browder have contributed to strategies that influence the relationship of business, technology and markets to environmental protec
tion and social responsibility. Louise Dunlap, the first woman to be CEO of a major national U.S. environmental organization, joined the firm in 1986. Louise Dunlap...
has been instrumental in the development of national strategies and federal policies to make energy efficiency America’s most effective response to global climate and energy security challenges. Louise played a key role in lobbying to achieve 2005 Congressional passage and 2008 reauthorization of federal tax incentive programs for energy efficient homes, schools and commercial buildings: programs which will significantly reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, reduce the need for electric power generation, and reduce prices for natural gas. In 20l1 and 2012 she helped citizen groups from across the nation organize, through the Citizens Coal Council, a campaign to save the federal office Office of Surface Mining and Enforcement (OSM) from being illegally merged into a federal coal development agency. Louise advises Global Cool Cities Alliance founder and global energy efficiency leader Art Rosenfeld, Citizens Coal Council about community and environmental impacts of coal mining, the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds on coal and watershed issues, the Abandoned Mine Lands Campaign, serves on the Board of the Environmental Integrity Project, and has advised The Energy Foundation about energy efficiency. She coordinated Congressional strategy for the community and watershed groups who in 2006 succeeded in re-authorizing the federal Abandoned Mine Lands program, and works, with coalfield citizens, against abusive mining practices. Louise Dunlap created and led one of the most effective campaigns in the history of the environmental movement: the seven-year national citizens’ effort to enact federal legislation, the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, requiring the coal industry to protect valuable farmlands, streams and wetlands and to reclaim all surface mined lands. Louise remains a strategist and advisor for citizens in the coal fields. The national environmental group she co-founded in 1972 supported the publication of the first popular book about the urgent need for energy efficiency and alternative energy to sustain the global economy (Energy for Survival, Wilson Clark, Anchor Press 1974). Louise became an advisor on energy efficiency to the California Energy Commission in 1987, providing CEC with strategic insights about national developments influencing efficiency, fuels and transportation issues. She participated in the earliest California and U.S. alternative fuels and reformulated gasoline efforts, and was central to the development of markets and state and federal regulatory systems for alcohol fuels and fuel additives. Louise was a principal strategist and lead lobbyist working on behalf of the Chair of the California Energy Commission for enactment of the federal Alternative Motor Fuels Act of 1988, and advised the Chair of the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission regarding automotive fuels and the Clean Air Act of 1990. Louise Dunlap began working on environmental and energy issues in 1969, as legislative advisor to the President of the National Parks Conservation Association. In 1971, Louise became Assistant Legislative Director of Friends of the Earth, helping to coordinate FOE’s strategy in the first national environmental campaign to raise energy efficiency and climate protection issues: the successful effort to stop federal subsidies for a proposed U.S. commercial fleet of supersonic passenger planes. From 1976 until 1986, Louise was President of the Environmental Policy Institute and Environmental Policy Center, groups she co-founded in 1972, which under her leadership grew into the national environmental community’s largest public-interest environmental lobbying organization in Washington. Louise Dunlap has been a member of the Board of Visitors of the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment, was a founding member of Duke’s Women’s Studies Council, of Senator Jay Rockefeller’s National Alternative Fuels Task Force, and of the Democratic Women’s Leadership Forum, chairing the WLF Environment and Energy Task Force. In 1984 Louise was elected an Alternate Delegate from Maryland to the Democratic National Convention. She has also served on the boards of the League of Conservation Voters, Clean Water Fund, Scenic America, Environmental Policy Center, and National Clean Air Coalition. Louise Dunlap is a 1968 graduate of Duke University, was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and lives with her husband and partner Joe Browder in Fairhaven, Maryland. Joe Browder...
is active in the network of environmental thinkers and scientists working for more accurate and transparent analysis of the environmental and greenhouse gas consequences of technologies proposed as solutions to the global climate crisis. He has contributed to understanding about the consequences of industrial development and energy strategies in the U.S. He is an authority on electric power planning and development, working to assure renewable energy development that does not also expand greenhouse gas emissions from coal. In 2013, Joe was invited to describe changes in the US energy economy to Chinese government officials. Joe is Chair of the Cosmos Club's Natural Resources Group, is a member of the Advisory Committee to Carnegie Mellon University's Electricity Industry Center, and from 2007 until 2013 advised Exxon Mobil on climate and related environmental issues. In 2007, U.S. and global food manufacturing companies asked Joe to help organize and participate in the industry’s analysis of how food production is affected by the economic, natural resource and environmental impacts of current-generation biofuels. Joe’s early national environmental leadership is the topic of a social studies textbook edited by the late historian Alex Haley and distributed to middle schools throughout the U.S. (Save the Everglades, Stamper, Steck Vaughn, 1993). His historic work for the Everglades is described in detail in the biography of his friend and colleague the late Marjory Stoneman Douglas (An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the Environmental Century, Davis, University of Georgia Press, 2009), and in Michael Grunwald’s 2006 book The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise. Joe Browder is an advisor to Toyota’s Advanced Technologies Group. Joe has advised the Heinz Endowment on electricity issues and the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation on national environmental issues and natural gas. From the late ‘90s until 2010, Joe Browder and Louise Dunlap advised Honda regarding alternative fuels and technologies, global climate change, fuel economy, and other environmental and energy policy issues. Joe is a member of the Circle of Advisors to the Hopi people’s organization Black Mesa Trust, helping Hopi leaders consider how coal development and renewable energy affect Hopi economic opportunities and environmental goals. In the 1960s Joe Browder was a television news producer and volunteer Audubon environmental leader in Miami, Florida, before joining National Audubon Society’s staff and becoming the Everglades Coalition’s founding Coordinator in 1968, then moving to Washington, DC in 1970 to be the first Conservation Director of Friends of the Earth. Joe was the first Treasurer of the League of Conservation Voters, the national environmental political campaign committee. In 1972, he, Louise Dunlap and other Friends of the Earth environmental advocates and analysts left FOE to found the Environmental Policy Center, and Joe directed EPC’s work until he joined the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign in 1976. When President Jimmy Carter became the Democratic Party nominee in 1976, he appointed Joe Browder to coordinate Carter Mondale Presidential Campaign energy and environmental transition planning. From 1977 until 1981, Joe served in the Carter Administration as an advisor to the Secretary of Interior on energy, resources and environmental matters. Joe Browder played a major role in the Carter Administration's programs for managing federal coal resources and electricity policy, coordinating with state governments in planning the use of federal lands as sites for transmission lines and power plants to serve California and other western states, and coordinating federal land and resource management policies with national energy policy. Joe was a key figure in Carter Administration decisions to relocate proposed energy facilities and mineral development that would have degraded Native American lands and western National Parks. In the early 1980s, Joe Browder advised both the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Railroads and the Governors of the western states about environmental and social consequences of increasing western coal production. For the Navajo Nation and Public Service Company of New Mexico, Bechtel, General Electric, and Combustion Engineering, he helped plan the first proposed merchant powerplant to serve California markets. In the late ‘80s, Joe worked for European fuel suppliers and with US automotive interests to help Brazil deal with ethanol shortages. For European and Canadian fuel and chemical companies, in the 1990s Joe served on the policy and technical committees of the Oxygenated Fuels Association. For twenty years, until its merger with a British firm, Joe advised one of the larger global mining companies, BHP, about mining projects from Papua New Guinea to the Caribbean, and about global environmental issues. In 1993, Joe Browder Co-Chaired, with Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul Environment Secretary, the Natural Resources section of the first InterAmerican Dialogue on Water Management. Joe was a founding member of the Advisory Council of the InterAmerican Water Resources Network (a project of the Organization of American States). Joe was a Host Committee member for the Third Inter-American Dialogue on Water Resources (Panama 1999),and chaired the Water and Indigenous Peoples section of the World Water Council's Water Vision for the Western Hemisphere program (Panama 1999). During his years with national environmental organizations, Joe was principal strategist for efforts to protect Everglades National Park, leading campaigns that secured a permanent water supply for the Park, prevented development of a destructive commercial airport in the Everglades, and that have added almost 900,000 acres of lands and waters to the National Parks system in south Florida. Joe continues to participate in national citizen efforts to protect the Everglades. He has helped assure the rights of hunters in the Everglades and worked with hunters as they collaborate with ranchers and state and federal officials to save more Everglades lands. After helping to develop the Everglades restoration program adopted by the Everglades Coalition in 1991, Joe served as National Chair of the Everglades Coalition in 1994 and 1995, and has advised the Conservancy of Southwest Florida about strategies for protecting the Florida panther. Joe Browder is a Steering Committee member of the California Clean Energy Roundtable, member of the Advisory Board to Citizens for a Better South Florida, a Board member of Friends of the Big Cypress, and has served on the Boards of the René Dubos Center for Human Environments, Florida Audubon Society, Tropical Audubon Society, Friends of the Everglades, Environmental Policy Center, Environmental Policy Institute and Friends of Jug Bay. Joe and his wife and partner Louise Dunlap live in Fairhaven, Maryland.
