From 1976 to 1979, Bryson served as chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board, and from 1979 to 1982, he served as president of the California Public Utilities Commission.
Bryson led Edison International until retiring on July 31, 2008, to be replaced by Ted Craver.
Bryson is also a director of The Boeing Company, W. M. Keck Foundation, and The Walt Disney Company, a Director/Trustee for three funds in the Western Asset funds complex, a trustee of California Institute of Technology, and co-Chair of the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves or has served on a number of educational, environmental, and other nonprofit boards, including his tenure as chairman of the California Business Roundtable and as a trustee of Stanford University.
The Boeing Company (pronounced /ˈboʊ.ɪŋ/ boh-ing) is an American multinationalaerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois[2] since 2001. Boeing is made up of multiple business units, which are Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA); Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS); Engineering, Operations & Technology; Boeing Capital; and Boeing Shared Services Group.
Boeing is among the largest global aircraft manufacturers by revenue, orders and deliveries, and the third largest aerospace and defense contractor in the world based on defense-related revenue.[3] Boeing is the largest exporter by value in the United States.[4] Its stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The W. M. Keck Foundation is an American charitable foundation supporting scientific, engineering, and medical research in the United States. It was founded in 1954 by William Myron Keck, founder and president of Superior Oil Company (now part of ExxonMobil). The Foundation's trust fund currently has assets in excess of 1 billion U.S. Dollars.
From its founding until his death in 1964, the Foundation was led by W. M. Keck. From 1964 to 1995, it was led by W. M. Keck's son,Howard B. Keck. Robert A. Day, W. M. Keck's grandson has been chairman and president since 1996.
The Foundation provides grants in five broad areas: science and engineering research, undergraduate science and engineering, medical research, liberal arts, in Southern California. Some of the more notable projects that have received funding from the Keck Foundation include:
- The W.M. Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience Training at Rice University in Houston, Texas
- Construction of the W. M. Keck Observatory at Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii
- Expansion of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California
- Creation of the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, California
- Sponsor of the Keck Computer Science Lab at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California
- The W.M. Keck Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at University of California, Irvine
- The William M. Keck Building at the California Institute of Technology
The Keck Foundation has been a long-time supporter of public television in Southern California, including underwriting the broadcast ofSesame Street on KCET since the 1970s.
The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) (commonly referred to as Disney) is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue.[4] Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studiothe company was reincorporated as Walt Disney Productions, Ltd. in 1929, and became publicly-traded as Walt Disney Productions in 1938. Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and travel. Taking on its current name in 1986, The Walt Disney Company expanded its existing operations and also started divisions focused upon theatre,radio, publishing, and online media. In addition, it has created new divisions of the company in order to market more mature content than it typically associates with its flagship family-oriented brands.
The company is best known for the products of its film studio, the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, and today one of the largest and best-known studios in Hollywood. Disney also owns and operates the ABC broadcast television network; cable television networks such as Disney Channel, ESPN, and ABC Family; publishing, merchandising, and theatredivisions; and owns and licenses 11 theme parks around the world. The company has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since May 6, 1991.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a New York City-based, non-profit, non-partisan international environmental advocacy group, with offices in Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Beijing. Founded in 1970, NRDC today has 1.3 million members and online activists nationwide and a staff of more than 300 scientists, attorneys and other specialists.
NRDC runs a number of programs pushing for environmental stewardship:[11]
- The Air/Energy Program focuses on clean air, global warming, transportation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and electric-industry restructuring.
- The Health Program works on issues involving drinking water, chemical harm to the environment, and other environmental health threats with the goal of reducing the amount of toxins released into the environment.
- The International Program works worldwide on rainforests, biodiversity, habitat preservation, oceans, marine life, nuclear weapons and global warming, often in conjunction with other programs.
- The Land Program works to protect the national forests, parks, and other public lands, to improve management of private forest lands, and to reduce consumption of wood products.
- The Nuclear Program analyzes developments on a variety of nuclear weapon issues.
- The Urban Program focuses on environmental problems in urban centers and surrounding areas. Issues include air and water quality, garbage and recycling, transportation, sprawl, and environmental justice.
- The Water and Oceans Program works to protect the nation's water quality, fish populations, wetlands and oceans. It also operates regional initiatives such as the Everglades, San Francisco Bay, the San Joaquin River, the Channel Islands of California, and the New York/New Jersey Harbor-Bight.
- The Latino Outreach Program or La Onda Verde de NRDC works to inform and involve Spanish-speaking Latinos in the full array of environmental issues on which NRDC works. http://www.nrdc.org/laondaverde/
- In July 2008, the NRDC and Robert Kennedy Jr. launched a direct mail campaign to encourage citizens to voice opposition to Shell Oil's exploration for oil off the Alaska coast.
- OnEarth magazine is a quarterly publication of the NRDC that looks at environmental challenges from a variety of perspectives
The NRDC has been involved in some of the most important Supreme Court cases interpreting United States administrative law. Most of these decisions came out against the NRDC. See, for example:
- Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U.S. 519 (1978), which held that courts could not impose additional procedural requirements on administrative agencies beyond that required by the agency's organic statute or theAdministrative Procedure Act.
- Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), which gave administrative agencies broad discretion to interpret statute to make policy changes if Congressional intent was unclear. Chevron is now the most-cited case in American case law, even more so than all the citations to famous decisions such as Marbury v. Madison, Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade combined.[15]
In November 2010 Edison sold its 48% interest in the Four Corners coal-fired power plant in New Mexico (units 4 and 5 while units 1,2 and 3 will be closed because of being older) for $294 million to Pinnacle West Capital Corp (of Arizona Public Service). The move was the direct result of a new California law requiring utility companies to exit coal-fired power production (even the renewing of contracts is disallowed), and forces Edison to purchase more power from the market.[4]
Later that month, on the 24th of November the Environmental Protection Agency (Illinois) approved a request made by Edison's Midwest business (Edison Mission Energy) to install pollution control equipment to its coal fired power plants (as a last resort to shutting down the plants; stricter rules and costly penalties related to air quality forced Edison into that position). The equipment makes use of a sodium based, dry scrubbing system intended to reduce SO2 emissions (there's also the alternative, removing the sulfur components of coal before burning it as fuel). Edison hasn't made any final decisions but the EPA ruling gives Edison's Waukegan power plant (coal, unit 7) in Illinois an alternative to shutting down.[5]
