Short answers, pulled from the story.
The NRDC was founded in 1970. Its creation grew out of the legal battle over Consolidated Edison's plan to build the world's largest hydroelectric facility at Storm King Mountain in New York's Hudson Valley.
The Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission case established that citizen environmental groups had legal standing to challenge federal agency decisions. Lawyers Whitney North Seymour Jr., Stephen Duggan, and David Sive won that right in court, then used Ford Foundation funding to form the NRDC alongside Gus Speth and Yale Law School graduates Richard Ayres, Edward Strohbehn Jr., and John Bryson from the class of 1969.
Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council is a landmark Supreme Court decision in which the NRDC was a named party. It held that administrative agencies have broad discretion to interpret statutes and make policy choices when congressional intent is unclear.
In September 1979, Henry Ford II declared that groups receiving Ford Foundation money were 'antibusiness' and 'biting the hand that feeds them,' and the foundation withdrew funding from the NRDC and the Environmental Defense Fund. The NRDC had recently challenged the FDA's interim approval for Coca-Cola's first plastic bottle, made of acrylonitrile and styrene, which the FDA later suspended after test animals showed adverse effects including lesions in the central nervous system and growths in the ear ducts.
The NRDC argues that nuclear power poses public health and safety risks through nuclear waste and proliferation and is not a viable tool for addressing climate change. In 2014, president Frances Beinecke stated that the NRDC could not support nuclear power because it would lose donations.
As of 2019, the NRDC had over three million members and a staff of about 700 lawyers, scientists, and policy experts. It is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Bozeman, India, and Beijing.