Eric A. Goldstein (he/him)
NYU Alumni Changemaker of the Year
(LAW ’80)
Co-director, NYU Environmental Law Clinic
Helped to get lead out of gasoline, eliminate fossil-fuel based polystyrene foam containers and one-use plastic bags, rid low-income neighborhoods of noxious odors from sewage-treatment facilities, and safeguard drinking water at the source.
As a kid growing up in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, Eric Goldstein saw that environmental burdens were unfairly shouldered by the disadvantaged. Clouds of pollution hovered over so-called “tough” neighborhoods, but wealthy communities gleamed. So when he was hired to do a nine-month study on the city’s air quality by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)—a national environmental nonprofit—he saw a potential home for his advocacy. Forty years later, he’s still there, and his fingerprints are on just about every aspect of NYC environmental policy.
Although Goldstein frequently defers credit to coalition partners, his legal and ethical contributions to environmental advocacy are impressive. A partial list: Goldstein helped lead the fight to get lead out of gasoline; to eliminate fossil-fuel based polystyrene foam containers and one-use plastic bags; to rid low-income neighborhoods of noxious odors from sewage-treatment facilities (“they never want to build these things on the upper East side,” he notes); and to safeguard drinking water at the source, through pollution-prevention measures around the city’s reservoirs.
Goldstein’s vision—of an environmental reality that does not feature winners and losers—includes inspiring the next generation of advocates. For twenty years he’s been the co-director of NYU’s Environmental Law Clinic, the same program that gave him his start. His students may be inheriting the complex emergency of climate change, but Goldstein believes in putting your head down and doing the work. “A real activist,” he says, “never gets to the bottom of their inbox.”