EDF Cites Streisand Charity For Funding Climate Change Effort

(25 Nov., 1997 ? New York) The Streisand Foundation, headed by filmmaker/entertainer Barbra Streisand, has awarded a $26,200 grant to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) climate change program. The generous grant will be used to focus efforts on achieving a strong international treaty to control global warming at the Kyoto Climate Meeting to be held in Japan from Dec 1-10.

“Ms. Streisand’s funding of our work in Japan this December is the latest in a series of gifts she has made to the Environmental Defense Fund,” said EDF chief scientist and atmospheric physicist, Dr. Michael Oppenheimer. “Ms. Streisand’s support of EDF work is a model of how a foundation can help further public policy in crucial fields.”

The Streisand Foundation’s initial grant to EDF of a quarter million dollars in 1989 established the Environmental Defense Fund’s Barbra Striesand Global Atmospheric Change Chair. A subsequent donation of $500,000 raised in conjunction with Ms. Streisand’s 1994 concerts underwrote much of the EDF research leading up to the Kyoto meetings. Her recent gift assures that EDF’s policy and technical teams can be present at the Kyoto meetings.

“The Kyoto Summit will be historic,” said Oppenheimer. “Until now, participating countries observed greenhouse gas emission guidelines only on a voluntary basis, and this is the chance to make these essential rules legally binding. The Earth’s climate urgently needs a Kyoto treaty with strong controls on greenhouse gas pollutants.”

“There is no doubt that global warming is the environmental problem of our generation,” said Oppenheimer. “No environmental issue is more critical to the Earth or raises the possibility of so many tragic economic, ecological, and human consequences as global warming.”

Margery Tabankin, Executive Director of The Streisand Foundation said, “It is very rare in philanthropy that a foundation is able to start with something from the beginning stages and get to see it accomplished. How rewarding to see this go from a scientific theory to a concern of every government in the world. The whole planet has a vital stake in the Environmental Defense Fund’s accomplishing its objectives in Kyoto.”