Reagan’s environmental attacks tripled green-group membership and quintupled donations

Evidence

At the beginning of the 1980s, the ten largest environmental organizations had a combined membership of 3.3 million. By the end of the decade, they boasted 8 million members. The perception environmentalists promoted that the Reagan administration was attacking federal environmental laws also boosted fundraising. By 1985, the ten largest environmental organizations had increased their combined receipt of donations to $218 million per year; by 1990, those donated sums had increased to more than one-half a billion dollars. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 528

Categorization

• CANDY: Concrete perversity — attacking environmental law made the movement’s biggest funders millions more, a great elevator fact.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Anti-regulation rhetoric backfired by confirming public fears of industry regulatory capture — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 525; U.S. environmental law has survived every political assault and grown stronger after each — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 21