David Doniger
David Doniger is policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) Climate Center, where he helps to develop environmental and energy policies that reduce the threat of global warming. He is also an NRDC senior attorney.
Doniger focuses on the development of U.S. global warming legislation. He co-authored a November 2006 article entitled “An Ambitious Centrist Approach to Global Warming Legislation” (Doniger, Lashof, & Herzog, Science, Vol. 314. no. 5800, pp. 764 – 765), recommending a long-term declining cap, a new approach to cost-control, and strategic use of emissions allowances.
Doniger has played a key role in global warming litigation, including Massachusetts v. EPA, decided by the Supreme Court in April 2007. He has helped guide the broad state and environmental coalition’s defense of California’s clean car law (AB 1493), under which that state and 17 others have set or are setting standards curbing global warming pollution from new motor vehicles.
Doniger represents NRDC in global warming treaty negotiations, including the current round of treaty talks launched in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007.
Doniger also directs NRDC’s efforts to complete the phase-out of ozone-depleting chemicals under the Clean Air Act and the Montreal Protocol.
Doniger rejoined NRDC in March 2001 after serving for eight years in the Clinton administration, where he was director of climate change policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and, before that, counsel to the head of the EPA’s clean air program. He was a member of the U.S. negotiating team for the Kyoto Protocol. He also served for a year at the Council on Environmental Quality.
Doniger holds a law degree and a masters degree in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley and a bachelor of arts in history from Yale University. He is a member of the California and District of Columbia bars.