Obituary: Philip E. Clapp, 54, Environmental Activist

Philip E. Clapp, an environmental activist and the creator of an organization that is now part of the Pew Environment Group, died of pneumonia September 17 while on vacation in Amsterdam, reports The Washington Post. He was 54.

Mr. Clapp spent three decades in Washington working on such causes as reducing global warming and pollution and on ocean conservation, focusing on solutions that were international in scope. In 1994 he started the National Environmental Trust, a policy and advocacy organization in Washington. The group worked to block attempts by Republicans in Congress to roll back environmental laws and also sought to mobilize grass-roots activists. The group merged with the Pew Charitable Trusts in January to form the Pew Environmental Group.

“In a community that’s more policy wonk than political, Phil was the political one, always,” said Timothy E. Wirth, the United Nations Foundation president, for whom Mr. Clapp worked when Mr. Wirth was a member of Congress. “He was the single-most-effective person in terms of pushing for change and pushing people to actually do things.”

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