Advertise | About Us | My Account | Log In

 

Dialogues

Donnell “Trip” Van Noppen III

Environmentalist

    Donnell “Trip” Van Noppen III is the new president of Oakland-headquartered Earthjustice. A Yalie with a law degree from the University of North Carolina and extensive trial experience in the Southeast, he lives within walking distance of his office. Van Noppen, 55, headed the law firm’s litigation division for two years, so he’s been around long enough to count Yoshi’s, Luka’s and College and Piedmont avenues as favorite hangouts. Climate change and water issues make his list of most-pressing environmental concerns, and he’s definitely on board with the Earthjustice model for improving both.

What exactly does Earthjustice do?
    Principally litigation, using the courts to bring about environmental change. We work on protecting wild places and wildlife, on reducing air and water pollution, on climate change and on human health impacts of environmental exposures. We represent other groups as their lawyers.

What sets Earthjustice apart from other environmental organizations?
    Our strength is the legal work that we do. We don’t claim to be the best at the science or the economics or at the grassroots organizing parts of the environmental movement. We rely on the groups that we work with for that. People who support us are the ones who really believe that the use of the courts is crucial. It’s been really proven true in the last few years that the courts are essential because we’ve had a Congress and a White House really wanting to go in quite an anti-environmental direction, and the courts have been the backstop.

The Earthjustice tagline is “Because the Earth Needs a Good Lawyer.” What makes you think you’re up to the task?
    First of all and most importantly, we’ve got 55 great lawyers that tagline applies to who are actually doing the legal work. Mainly I’m proud to have that tagline because of all the great work that they do. I came to this job with 22 years of litigation experience with expertise in environmental law, labor law, civil liberties law and the broader idea of how do you use the courts to enforce our laws and improve them.

Earthjustice is a nonprofit, so fundraising is important. How do you like that?
    I thought that would be something I didn’t like at all. But once I saw how important the organization is and the work that it does, it was clear to me building and strengthening the organization and helping it thrive was just as important as doing the legal work. I have no problem with asking people to support it, because I totally believe in it. It’s not like trying to sell a used car.

What was your first awareness of Earthjustice?
    When environmental cases were first starting to be decided in the United States, many of them were being litigated by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. We’re talking about the 1970s. I also remember seeing publicity at the time of the name change to Earthjustice, and it rang very true for me—that combination of Earth and justice. When I saw that name change, I thought that’s exactly what I want to be.

Where does your passion for justice and the environment come from?
    In terms of justice, I was going to school in North Carolina at the time the schools were first being integrated, so there was conflict around school desegregation and civil rights. By the time I was in high school and into college there was the Vietnam War, so that was very politicizing for me. And on the environmental side, it was having a love of the outdoors and nature and then gradually getting more and more upset about what was happening.

What does it mean to be an environmentalist?
    What it means today mainly is that around the world, people more and more are connecting the dots between the environment and the economy, between the environment and health, the environment and poverty, the environment and climate change and energy. You can’t have a sound economy without sound environmental policy. We’re not going to have healthy people if we don’t have good environmental policy.