"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today..." The Green Skeptic at 20

Today, twenty years ago, I typed out my first blog post with a mix of uncertainty and conviction. “Why Blog? and Why The Green Skeptic?” the title asked—questions that would shape my next decade and a half of writing about environmental pragmatism, clean energy, and social innovation.

As The Green Skeptic, I carved out a unique space between environmental advocacy and market-based pragmatism. Working at The Nature Conservancy then, I saw firsthand the need for voices that could bridge ideology with practical solutions. One of my most effective early posts, “Caring, or A New Conservation Ethic,” first posted in 2005, challenged traditional environmental messaging and advocated for a more inclusive approach to conservation that acknowledged economic realities and people’s concerns. 

A 2008 post, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Protecting and Saving,” argued that everything we thought about saving or protecting ecosystems and habitats was wrong and we needed to unleash human creativity to find new technological solutions as well as new ways of living with nature.

The blog evolved to tackle emerging challenges and opportunities. My piece, “The Coming Disruption—Lead It or Follow It,” from 2011, argued that partisan ideology on both sides was getting in the way of facing the systemic problems of our way of life. (Still true today!) Another 2011 post, “A Tale of Two Cleantech Companies” offered a critical analysis of what worked—and what didn’t—in the emerging green economy, a deep dive I explored in a case study format at the IMPACT investor conference that year. Exploring the intersection of faith and environmentalism in a two-part post on “The Evangelical Environmental Movement” sparked important conversations about building broader coalitions for climate action.

Some of my proudest moments came from highlighting changemakers like Kalyan Paul and his work with Grassroots International, showing how social entrepreneurship could drive sustainable development. The post “What Keeps You Up at Night?” resonated deeply with readers, examining the personal stakes of environmental challenges. My analysis of “Philanthropy & Environmental Change” pushed for more effective deployment of charitable resources to support environmental causes. (It also led to my being introduced to the woman who is now my wife.)

As clean technology and social entrepreneurship emerged as critical areas of interest for me—I moved from the Conservancy to the social venture capital organization Ashoka, and then into my own consulting practice, VerdeStrategy, before landing with EY’s cleantech and power and utilities practices—expanding the blog’s focus into these areas. This evolution led to unexpected opportunities, including a three-year run as a commentator on Fox Business with Varney & Co., where I brought these nuanced perspectives to a broader audience.

The Green Skeptic on Fox Business in 2010

For ten years, I maintained a steady dialogue with readers about everything from microfinance innovation to personal environmental choices, as captured in posts like “Falling Up, Or The Choices We Make May Be Our Own,” part of which led me to write a short memoir called Falling Up, several years later. The blog became a space not just for commentary, but for imagining better futures, exemplified in pieces like “IMAGINE The Man Who Cared,” my reflection on John Lennon’s inspiring legacy of activism. Another post explored the impact of one of my boyhood heroes, Roberto Clemente, who died tragically trying to deliver aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. 

While The Green Skeptic’s final post came in September 2019, its spirit of questioning assumptions and seeking practical solutions lives on in my current writing—from regional features and profiles in Berkshire Magazine to exploring new frontiers in psychedelic-assisted therapy for Terrain.org and Lucid News. I still have another, occasional blog, Scott Edward Anderson’s Poetry Blog, where I post mostly about poetry, and my essays are regularly published in various publications.

The media landscape has transformed dramatically since 2004, with Substack and Medium newsletters replacing individual blogs. But that early blogging experience taught me something invaluable: the power of putting thoughtful perspectives into the world without perfectionism getting in the way.

Twenty years later, we need independent voices willing to challenge assumptions and bridge divides more than ever. So, here’s to The Green Skeptic—not just for what it was, but for how it helped shape the conversations we’re still having today about building a more sustainable future.

10 Favs; 10 Years: Caring, or A New Conservation Ethic

My son Jasper tagging a saltwater croc,
Mexico, January 2005. Photo by the author.

This post originally appeared on The Green Skeptic in October 2005. It clearly demonstrates my concerns about the disconnect between people and conservation and articulates my view of the need for a new conservation ethic.

Over the past several weeks, in the conference centers of Monterey, the wilderness of Yosemite, and the halls of my company's offices in suburban Washington, our talk has been about drawing a closer connection between conservation and people.

We've come a long way, but still have miles to go before we can say we've expanded the boundaries of our own conservation ethic.

I've been thinking a lot lately about conservation ethic. One phrase that keeps coming back to me is Robert Michael Pyle's statement that "People who care conserve, people who don't know don't care." It's a powerful truism and one to which we should pay heed.

Our movement is often accused of being elitist and defeatist and, frankly, those criticisms are far too often accurate. Beautiful photos of pristine places beg the question, "What about the people?"

(Pyle's words came back to me during tonight's playoff battle of the Sox. It was late in the game, my beloved Red Sox had bases loaded and blew several chances to tie the game or take the lead. Johnny Damon was up, surely ready to play the hero. My nine-year old son, who learned to care about baseball -- and my team -- during the 2003 ALCS, was on tenterhooks: would Damon do it? When the Caveman struck out, stranding three base runners and turning the BoSox into WoeSox once again, my son was apoplectic. "Now I know you are a true fan," I told him. "You really cared." I haven't seen him that upset since he learned that polar bears were losing habitat to global warming!)

We need a new conservation ethic that clearly redefines the human + nature equation: that human beings are not apart from, but rather a part of nature. We need to articulate the real connections between conservation and restoration of the earth's natural functions -- also known as ecosystem services -- and their real implications for the people of the earth.

Moreover, that we care about people as much as the earth's other species. Without this, we will sink in a downward spiral of our own making.

Whether we're talking about food, fuel, fiber for clothing or paper or a myriad of other goods and services nature provides, we need to stop "seeing the natural world as a resource for the economy," as James Gustave Speth writes in his book, Red Sky at Morning, "rather than seeing the economy as nested in the natural world."

We have obligations to the world that go beyond our self-interest, to paraphrase Aldo Leopold, and until we own up to this our conservation ethic will ring false for the majority of the world's people. Our new conservation ethic must be as inclusive as it is pragmatic, and as interconnected to the other issues of our time -- poverty alleviation, terrorism, AIDS/HIV -- as to the natural world we hold dear.

We need to remember this whether we're on higher ground in one of this nation's important National Parks, the sterile corridors of an office in northern Virginia, or the cozy confines of that little bandbox of a ballpark that is Fenway.

10 Favs; 10 Years: What We Talk About When We Talk About Protecting and Saving

This post originally appeared on The Green Skeptic in March 2008, when I was about to speak at the Aspen Environment Forum. It was a pivotal time for conservation and I think some of the strides that my former organization, The Nature Conservancy, and others in conservation have made are reflective of some of my espoused views. There's more progress that can be made, but it's a start.

##

Village children on Batanta Island, Indonesia. Photo by the author.

Everything we think about saving or protecting ecosystems and habitats is wrong.

This week, I'm at the Aspen Environment Forum, where tomorrow morning I'll be on a Panel called "Nature's Place: Saving Ecosystems and Habitats."

For the better part of 15 years I worked with The Nature Conservancy to save some of the world's "Last Great Places" around the world (I left in August; see my posts reflecting on my career at TNC
and here.

I consider myself a conservationist, not an environmentalist. What I mean by that is a conservative and prudent approach to our use of resources that requires us to manage them for the long-term -- for the benefit of people today and for future generations.

The Green Skeptic grew out of an increasing concern about our relationship to the natural world and how we protect it. I am a skeptic in the sense that I believe we need to constantly challenge the assumptions we have about "saving ecosystems and habitats."

In my view, we operate under four basic assumptions:

1. We can continue to "save" or "protect" ecosystems and habitats from harm in perpetuity;
2. We can ignore basic human needs and treat poverty alleviation as a separate issue from the environment;
3. We can entrust protection to governments and corporate NGOs;
4. We can't trust human ingenuity and community to manage its own resources.

First, I need to step back and look at the words we use. (I am a poet, so words matter to me.) Specifically, "protecting" and "saving."

Both imply we need to keep ecosystems and habitats from something. The American Heritage Dictionary defines protecting as "To keep from being damaged, attacked, stolen, or injured; guard." When we use the word protecting in terms of ecosystems and habitats, we are guarding nature from something or someone, presumably humans.

Saving is a little less problematic, as it implies a conservative approach to the future (as in saving seed corn for next year's sowing). Still, the AHD's first definition is "To rescue from harm, danger, or loss." It's not until definition number three that we get to the conservative impulse: "To avoid spending (e.g. money) so as to keep or accumulate it."

The question is not about what we should save, but how and for what purpose.

Is it hubris to assume we have protected or saved anything? We promote the fact that percentages of ecosystems or habitats are protected, but they continue to be encroached upon -- see the Amazon Rainforest for example.

What have we really saved if massive changes from climate change or the drive for much-needed economic development will have significant impact on the future status and makeup of places, habitats, and ecosystems?

Climate change will disrupt many ecosystems that exist today -- much as the Internet disrupted print media, the travel industry, TV, bookstores, you name it. It will change everything.

So the question is what are we really protecting when we talk about protecting ecosystems and habitat? Will the places we select for protection today be the same 10-20 years from now? Probably not.

Ecosystems are constantly changing, either from "external" (human) or "internal" (natural) forces. Change is inevitable and could, in the face of global warming, be dramatic.

Shouldn't we be preparing for the changes and begin to think about how we adapt to some of the most likely changes, those brought on by climate change or economic development or basic human needs, such as for food and energy?

Demand for energy and food will drive economic development for years to come and we can't continue to ignore these drivers to "save" the natural, non-human world.

This leads me to assumption two, which is about ignoring basic human needs. It's irrational for us to think that people in developing countries, many of whose basic human needs are not being met, will care deeply about the non-human natural world.

Yet, we continue to have blind faith in our cause and ignore the needs of real people.

I recently returned from India where the extreme poverty is evident almost everywhere you look. Also evident is a growing middle class that strives for the kind of lifestyle we have here in the west, specifically the US, with its inherent accelerated pace and impacts.

Who are we to say that people in developing countries have no right to the kind of lifestyle we have exported for decades? We can not convince, persuade or cajole or even pay people -- Americans as much as people in developing nations -- to "come around to our way of thinking," and yet this is what I hear whenever I talk to environmentalists.

And we can't ask poor people around the world to forgo the comforts of the lifestyle we have been living, and which they wish to copy, "for the sake of the planet" or to set aside their habitats and ecosystems for the sake of humanity. No country wants to become an ecological reserve for the world, especially if it means it cannot pursue economic prosperity.

Try floating this idea with people who go hungry every night for lack of food or money to buy food and see what kind of reaction you get.

In the end, poor people matter. And the governments of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and African countries must be concerned first and foremost with the well-being of their people. I'm not saying that human well-being isn't tied to ecosystem health; I'm a strong believer that economic growth is tied to those resources.

I believe we can no longer separate the issue of economic development and poverty alleviation from ecosystem health. We also can't expect that governments whose people aren't meeting basic needs to protect their habitats over the economic well-being of their people.

Which leads me to assumption three: increasingly, we are entrusting protection of habitats and ecosystems with the wrong people. Governments have a mandate to improve the economic health of their country and people.

Yet we continue to have faith that these governments will "do the right thing" and enforce laws protecting their forests or other ecosystems in the face of seemingly insurmountable economic obstacles.

Why do we think that is a good strategy? What indicators do we have that tell us this strategy will succeed where it hasn't in the past? Why do we think that the World Bank program to pay countries to "avoid deforestation" will be any more successful than their previous grand plans?

The same goes for NGOs. NGOs are basically corporations that serve a set of shareholders (donors in this case) who subscribe to a specific idea of Nature and a specific set of outcomes, outcomes that may not necessarily be shared by all stakeholders.

This idea of Nature has for a long time discounted the needs of people both today and in the future. To illustrate this, one only need look at the environmental community's approach to government debt.

Conservation groups (my old employers among them) have promoted using a country's debt as leverage to gain conservation protection. The debt-for-nature swap was an innovation of the past couple of decades and a noble one. But it was also painfully ignorant of the true nature of that debt -- in many cases "dictator debt" incurred by regimes that did not have its people's best interests in mind.

Now that we have a more clear understanding of how that debt was derived, and can no longer ignore its immoral origins, we need to give up or adjust the debt-for-nature swap concept and join the call for debt forgiveness. That will free some countries from having to exploit their natural resources to pay down that debt.

Yet, many in the environmental community continue to push the debt-for-nature strategy, because they can't let go of a good thing that advances their agenda.

How is this different from any corporation -- a sector many environmentalists attack -- that advances its agenda at the expense of people here and abroad? Can we really trust ecosystems and habitats to big government or big international non-governmental corporations?

In the end, wouldn't a better approach be to put our trust in the people and the communities where these ecosystems and habitats are found? They have the most at stake in managing these resources, as their needs and livelihoods are most closely tied to the lands and waters.

I believe human beings are basically good. I also believe that, given the opportunity, communities will manage their common interests and keep each other in check. This is the open-source community approach one finds in social networks and in business models such as eBay.

I also believe that human beings are the most creative and adaptable species on the planet -- just look at the variety of habitats, climates, and conditions we inhabit. Our resilience as a species is astounding. I argue that we need to embrace this resourcefulness and apply it to overcoming ecological shifts, climate change, and loss of ecosystems and habitats.

We need to unleash the power of human creativity to find new ways to "save" those places for future use by both human and non-human species.

Unleashing this human capacity will require suspending our assumptions. We will need to focus more on community-based or "commons-based" management (as Jonathan Rowe of the West Marin Commons in California calls it in a recent essay in The State of the World 2008).

We need a people-centered conservation that addresses the real needs of real people, and to empower individual entrepreneurs and communities to manage their resources cooperatively rather than impose grand plans from Washington.

We need to clearly draw the lines connecting economic prosperity with ecological health and human well-being.

And, finally, we need to unleash human creativity to find new technological solutions as well as new ways of living with nature.

This may, in the end, be our only hope to really save habitat and ecosystems – and, ultimately, to save ourselves.

10 Favs; 10 Years: Philanthropy & Environmental Change -- Should Social Capital Markets Take Over?

Back in October 2007, I had an exchange with my friend Lucy Bernholz about philanthropy as an agent of change in the environmental sphere (I was still working for The Nature Conservany). Lucy, as it happened, introduced me to my (then future) wife, Samantha, via LinkedIn a few days after this post with the immortal words, "You two should know each other." Thank God for social media...

Here is my post on "Philanthropy & Environmental Change -- Should Capital Markets Take Over?"


I'm taking up a friendly challenge here.

Lucy Bernholz, who writes the excellent blog Philanthropy 2173, and I started a blogalog (Did I just coin that term?) between our blogs about the state of philanthropy and environmental change.

The author, Samantha, and Lucy in New York, 2012.

It began in response to Lucy's listing of green blogs in the wake of Blog Action Day last Monday, and her noting the lack of discussion of philanthropy on the sites listed (including mine).

My defense stemmed from a concern about philanthropy and its effectiveness as an agent of change in the environmental sphere, which actually was the origin of this blog. I have grown increasingly concerned about the ability of traditional philanthropy to effect lasting change at a pace commensurate with the global challenges we face.

I expressed this concern in my essay for GreenBiz, "Confessions of a Green Skeptic," several years ago about the Earth Charter.

Back then (March 2003), I wrote, "we need to demonstrate how profitable being green can be, and how essential it is to a truly global sustainability. If we can turn the greed motivation to green motivation, effectively turning it on itself, does the means justify the end? Hard to say. But if greed isn't going away anytime soon, we are left with trying to redirect the motivation any way we can. Guilt has worked, but only gets us so far. 'Envy trumps guilt' every time."

This sentiment was influenced by Thomas Friedman's thoughts on the subject expressed in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, that "if conservationists are going to get ahead of the greedy we need to move faster. 'For now, the only way to run as fast as the herd is by riding the herd itself and trying to redirect it,' Friedman writes. 'We need to demonstrate to the herd that being green, being global, and being greedy can go hand in hand.'"

And it was echoed by Gretchen Daily and Katherine Ellison in their book, The New Economy of Nature, from which I quoted, "the record clearly shows that conservation can't succeed by charity alone. It has a fighting chance, however, with well-designed appeals to self-interest."

Things have changed quite a bit since I wrote that essay -- the world has gotten flatter, green has become the new black, Al Gore won an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize for his work on climate change, and the herd has started to move to greener pastures.

But a lot hasn't changed. In Philanthropy, as Susan Raymond points out in a two-part piece called "Does Philanthropy Scale?," the "vast majority of American nonprofits are small; 60 percent or more...have less than $100,000 in annual revenue." And, Raymond notes, "the average foundation grant to nonprofits is on the order of $25,000."

Raymond also points out that "the number of nonprofits with $10 million or more in revenue has increased by 73 percent in the last decade," and asks, "when $25,000 is the average grant, is philanthropy the answer to organizational growth? Indeed, is it even relevant as a source of capital?"

I'm going to quote one more thing from Raymond's essay: "The evolution of microfinance teaches that, when what had been a philanthropic initiative matures and proves its worth, alternative capital sources step in and redefine the opportunity. Is achieving scale, then, the clue for philanthropy to either evolve or exit? And, if so, do we need to rethink what we mean by 'philanthropy' for large organizations or proven initiatives in social markets?"

I quote Raymond's piece at length because it corroborates some of my own thinking on this subject. She rightly points out that the biggest advantage of philanthropic capital is its "ability to take significant risk, to seed a promising idea and recognize that all promising ideas can be failures."

So risk tolerance or tolerance for failure, playing on the field of ideas and at at the edge of problems "where the probabilities of success are unknown, is the key playing field for philanthropy."

For many ideas, perhaps chief among them those addressing environmental issues, it may be time for other types of capital to be brought to bear. I'm particularly interested in what Raymond describes as "a multiplicity of approaches to organizational finance in the nonprofit sector...for self-reliance, sustainability, and (yes) profit" to come to the stage.

This is not far from what Lucy refers to as "tri-sector solutions," such as the B Corporation she has described or the bond purchase strategy Raymond describes in her piece. (In the latter, Raymond explains, "'Donors' took on the role of guarantor rather than funder, and the resources flowed at levels that donations would never have been able to sustain.")

Elsewhere in the web pages of onPhilanthropy, John Bloom of RSF Social Finance, posits that "social finance holds that the purpose of money and finance is to support human initiative and to foster the evolution of new community."

And, Bloom suggests, social finance recognizes "the human and environmental consequences of economic activities...[and] presents a picture of a healthier sustainable future -- and one that leaves behind the industrialist model of philanthropy..."

I will continue this dialogue here on The Green Skeptic, because I think it is an important one, and part of an ongoing, evolving thought process for me that started over four years ago and which led to this blog. Thanks to Lucy for calling me out about it and fostering this dialogue.

10 Favs; 10 Years: The Evangelical Environmental Awakening, Part 1

I've long been concerned by the exclusiveness of the environmental movement and was especially struck by the suspicions aroused in the deep greens when the Christian right started getting interested in climate change and the environment, as if the environment was an exclusive club of left-leaning liberals. It's one of the reasons I agreed to go on Fox Business when they asked me. I didn't want to preach to the converted. I wanted to open the tent and let all the human family in.

Here's Part 1 of my post on The Evangelical Environmental Awakening from 2005:

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Several years ago I attended a conference hosted by one of the country's progressive environmental and cultural institutions.

Invited were writers and artists, environmental activists, conservation practitioners, and a host of others.

The event was held on the beautiful campus of the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia, a venue which exists because a forward-thinking Republican from that state marshaled the resources necessary to bring it to reality.

I arrived on that first evening with a sense of excitement; we were in for a few days of intense dialogue, debate, and communion among the conservation concerned. After checking into my room and making a quick tour of the grounds, I walked up to the first evening's festivities, an invocation and series of readings by some of the nation's best and most influential "nature" writers.

After the reading, we all ambled up to a high point on the property for what was described as a "Summer Solstice Celebration." A bonfire was lit, a circle of the tribe gathered, and there was song and words of inspiration shared by the mostly white, mostly male participants, decked out in what ranged from outdoors uniforms to neo-hippy chic. This was the Birkenstock and granola crowd.

Bonfire

As the celebration continued it spiraled into what I can only describe as pagan ritual, with a few diatribes against those who were not in attendance – the despoilers of the land.

I had a sinking feeling that I didn't belong and started to move away from the crowd. This was despite the fact that I am both a writer who draws inspiration from the natural world and a professional conservation practitioner.

Why did I feel like an alien in my own land, among what should have been my tribe? As I observed the group from down the hill, its music and dancing seemed to take on a decidedly Gaia-worshipping tone, as participants gyrated and "grocked" to their own brand of eco-spiritual convergence.

The discomfort I felt at that celebration was that of a stranger in a strange land. I felt like an outsider, an interloper, like I didn't belong there. I almost left that evening, but the promise of four days of learning and connecting kept me from the road.

My feelings were compounded by questions that began to form in my head: What if I was an outsider, observing this ritual from another, differently held worldview? How would it appear to me?

"I see the pagans are at it again," said a voice off to my left.

I was a good hundred yards or more from the site and hadn't noticed anyone else around me. I didn't catch this fellow's name, but there he stood shaking his head between drags on a cigarette. He looked like a federal employee; at least, he was dressed like a park ranger.

"Why does every one of these gatherings have to kick off with rituals like this?" I asked.

"Because we think prayer circles are for psycho-Christians," my neighbor quipped. "Imagine if we tried to start a conference like this with a prayer circle, we'd be ridiculed – or stoned."

And, yet, I thought, we're comfortable with these types of displays, as if they are desirable because they are so patently other than more traditional, western religious practices.

In fact, anything but rituals adopted from Judeo-Christian traditions seemed to be completely acceptable, a matter of tribal integrity. What were the religious groups in attendance thinking? And where were they?

My companion for that brief, revelatory moment had disappeared, as if he were a visiting alien or a prophet in modern clothes.

His words stuck with me; in fact, his words came back to me a few days later when I listened to William J. Wade, the former president of ARCO, address the group in a plenary session.

He was talking about the impact of reading Barry Lopez’ Arctic Dreams as he prepared to take ARCO's top job in Alaska in the mid-eighties. Later, he got to meet Lopez and fly over the state's many natural wonders. He was a committed conservationist and was talking to us as one who had converted to the cause, like Saul on the road to Damascus, and was doing what he could to care for nature.

The audience reaction to having such an alien in our midst was tepid and suspicious. How could an industry representative – one of "them" – deign to speak to "us" about appreciation for the natural world? We were the keepers of nature not the despoilers. And yet, Mr. Wade's experience was among the most genuine and authentic of the entire conference.

The session was followed by the next speaker, Peter Matthiessen, who fired rude salvos at Mr. Wade, the oil industry, and all conservatives who wanted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. It was an embarrassing moment, but one cheered by the majority of the crowd.

Peter Matthiessen, Ed Betz/AP

I felt sick. Mr. Wade was a brave fellow who had wandered into "enemy territory" without even realizing it. How could we treat another human being this way? Where was our ethical integrity and respect for other human beings?

Had we welcomed Mr. Wade to the conference only to belittle his worldview, attack his politics, and make him a whipping-boy for our gripes against industry? Where was fairness and liberal morals? Clearly these were checked at the door.

After the conference, I wrote Mr. Wade a letter of apology and sent it to him care of ARCO. I'm not sure he ever received it.*

I was embarrassed by my own, some of whom I considered colleagues and even friends. If an environmentalist were to be invited to speak to a conservative group or association and was attacked like this, we would most assuredly cry "foul" and decry the manners of the group at large. And yet, we were not "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Perhaps we should have started with a prayer circle instead of a pagan rite; perhaps then we would have remembered the manners we learned in childhood.

I write this now because the environmental movement is confronted with a new "alien in our midst" - Evangelical Christians. Many environmentalists are suspicious and wary of this group's motivations and, indeed, some have questioned their sincerity in articles and the electronic print media.

This is wrong. We need to apply the same sort of tolerance and respect for diversity that we espouse in our daily lives and work. We need to adapt our liberal moral tendencies to be accepting of this group as a partner. They may not join our organizations and certainly will not put aside their moral visions or worldviews to fit ours, but they have an important voice and perspective on the work ahead of us.

We could learn a lot from their way of knowing this earth, despite what knee-jerk environmentalists might assume. We have not cornered the market on stewardship and care of the earth, regardless of whether you believe the earth as we know it exists through divine creation or evolutionary adaptation.

The diversity of human experience of the earth can be as diverse as the fabric of life itself. We must take heed of this still, small voice in the wilderness and nurture it, welcome it into the good fight.

___________________________________________
*Seven years after this was originally posted, I heard from Mr. Wade, who had found my post. It was nice to be in touch with him and to apologize again.

Review: NATURE'S FORTUNE by Mark Tercek and Jonathan Adams

I remember when I first learned that some guy from Goldman Sachs was taking the helm at The Nature Conservancy.

I had left TNC already and was meeting a former colleague and friend who has also since moved on from TNC.

"Hank Paulson?" I asked, assuming the former TNC board chair was unhappy at Treasury and that the CEO spot at TNC would have been a nice swap.

"No, Mark Tercek," my friend informed me. "He used to run some environmental unit at Goldman."

"That's a bold move," I answered, thinking it complemented the trajectory that John Sawhill started back in the 1990s. "In some ways it legitimizes what John was saying that companies had to be part of the solution."

My friend was more worried about how it would impact management of the organization, which had long operated more like a Fortune 500 company than a non-profit, but we agreed the new guy would have to adapt as much as the organization.

Then I met Mark in Aspen where we were both speaking at the Aspen Institute's Environment Forum, and heard him speak about his journey and what he saw as the challenges for the environmental movement. I was impressed by his humility, candor, and sense of purpose.

In his short tenure at the Conservancy, Tercek's taken some bold steps to build on Sawhill's legacy of corporate engagement, developed new financing mechanisms for conservation, and brought transparency and authenticity to his role through social media.

While there are still grumblings in the ranks at TNC that things haven't changed all that much or that there is still a disconnect between the field and the "Home Office," from my view, Tercek seems to be making the tough choices, living with the consequences, and course-correcting where need be.

Now, with science writer Jonathan Adams, Tercek has published his thoughts on the new direction TNC and other environmental groups must take to achieve real, lasting results in conservation.

Not everything in Nature's Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature is new -- the writers trot out some old saws like the protection of the NYC watershed, the water funds in Ecuador, and the concept of accounting for "natural capital” that have been around for over a decade -- but Tercek's banking imprimatur, a different kind of green roots, may legitimize to the business community that business can be a beneficial environmental partner.

More activist oriented greenies may not like this approach. There have been a number of attacks on the organization for its work with Dow Chemical, taking money from Monsanto, and some of its management of specific projects over the years.

Tercek and Adams are careful to thank the activist organizations for their role in calling attention to issues and keeping TNC and its corporate partners honest.

It is refreshing to see the Conservancy turning its attention to urban conservation in New York City and elsewhere, which it has traditionally shied away from preferring to view cities as “major markets” for philanthropy and marketing purposes.

More radical perhaps is Tercek's assertion that more basic business thinking familiar to corporate analysts should be part of the environmental organization's toolkit, such as maximizing returns, investing in assets, managing risk, diversifying portfolios, and promoting innovation.

Nature's Fortune is not a perfect book. I'd prefer a little more poetry, which Tercek studied in college and continues to be involved with as a reader, in the mix.

But the book is a good primer for business readers and will sit nicely on a shelf next to Ray Anderson’s Mid-Course Correction and Business Lessons from a Radical Industrialist, Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, and other books about the relationship between ecology, economics, and how the two are increasingly interdependent.

Earth Day 2012: Maya Lin's "What Is Missing?"

Maya Lin and me discussing "What is Missing?" in 2008.

A few years ago, Maya Lin told me about her plans for a "last memorial," an ongoing, multimedia, multi-site project that unfolds every Earth Day. 

She calls it "What is Missing?" 

I wrote about one component, "Unchopping a Tree," back in 2009.

Another component is a global online memorial that Lin hopes will "connect us personally to what we are witnessing diminish or disappear from nature, in the hope that raising awareness about these poignant stories of loss will help spur action."

Last year, she quietly launched phase one: a Map of Memory. But, as Maya says, "to focus only on loss was too depressing, which is why we waited until this Earth Day to go public." 

The second phase is called Conservation in Action and features stories about ecological restoration and conservation around the world. 

On the site viewers can learn what is being done by conservation groups to protect what is missing before it is missing, including partners such as  Cornell Lab of Ornithology and World Wildlife Fund. 

"We are here to give people hope that so much is being done to help," says Lin.

Yesterday, Maya sent around a helpful guide for using the site:

Click on Time Travel  to go between map of past (the Map of Memory) and the present (Conservation in Action).  

Check out View in Time and View in Place  and see what happens.  

Then select Sort   to better understand the content.(On the Map of the Present, Red 's and green 's highlight conservation successes and disasters) we also allow you to see all the Core Videos we have produced. Those Core Video dots have a sound rollover. With over 600 historical entries on the Map of Memory, you can learn about what the world used to be like from an environmental standpoint.

Lin also wants this to be a truly interactive memorial, where you can add your own memory of what is missing for you -- a place that was important to you that is now paved over or a species that meant a lot to you that is no longer found where you remember it being. She also wants to know about the work you and others are doing to help save or restore a place that's important to you.

"What Is Missing?" Screenshot

Throughout her career, Maya Lin has challenged us to look at the world differently. Her art and architecture often use elements of the natural world to shake up our perception of what is around us. Her memorials have changed the way we think about memorials and how we interact with them and with our memories.


With "What is Missing?" Lin challenges us again to think differently about our relationship to the Earth and the species with which we share the planet.


This Earth Day, take stock of what is missing and spend some time on "What is Missing?" contributing your own memories.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Protecting and Saving

This post originally appeared on The Green Skeptic in March 2008, when I was about to speak at the Aspen Environment Forum. It's reprinted here as I am on hiatus from writing the blog. I promise to be back at it soon. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this piece. --Scott

##


Everything we think about saving or protecting ecosystems and habitats is wrong.

This week, I'm at the Aspen Environment Forum, where tomorrow morning I'll be on a Panel called "Nature's Place: Saving Ecosystems and Habitats."

For the better part of 15 years I worked with The Nature Conservancy to save some of the world's "Last Great Places" around the world (I left in August; see my posts reflecting on my career at TNC
and here.

I consider myself a conservationist, not an environmentalist. What I mean by that is a conservative and prudent approach to our use of resources that requires us to manage them for the long-term -- for the benefit of people today and for future generations.

The Green Skeptic grew out of an increasing concern about our relationship to the natural world and how we protect it. I am a skeptic in the sense that I believe we need to constantly challenge the assumptions we have about "saving ecosystems and habitats."

In my view, we operate under four basic assumptions:

1. We can continue to "save" or "protect" ecosystems and habitats from harm in perpetuity;
2. We can ignore basic human needs and treat poverty alleviation as a separate issue from the environment;
3. We can entrust protection to governments and corporate NGOs;
4. We can't trust human ingenuity and community to manage its own resources.

First, I need to step back and look at the words we use. (I am a poet, so words matter to me.) Specifically, "protecting" and "saving."

Both imply we need to keep ecosystems and habitats from something. The American Heritage Dictionary defines protecting as "To keep from being damaged, attacked, stolen, or injured; guard." When we use the word protecting in terms of ecosystems and habitats, we are guarding nature from something or someone, presumably humans.

Saving is a little less problematic, as it implies a conservative approach to the future (as in saving seed corn for next year's sowing). Still, the AHD's first definition is "To rescue from harm, danger, or loss." It's not until definition number three that we get to the conservative impulse: "To avoid spending (e.g. money) so as to keep or accumulate it."

The question is not about what we should save, but how and for what purpose.

Is it hubris to assume we have protected or saved anything? We promote the fact that percentages of ecosystems or habitats are protected, but they continue to be encroached upon -- see the Amazon Rainforest for example.

What have we really saved if massive changes from climate change or the drive for much-needed economic development will have significant impact on the future status and makeup of places, habitats, and ecosystems?

Climate change will disrupt many ecosystems that exist today -- much as the Internet disrupted print media, the travel industry, TV, bookstores, you name it. It will change everything.

So the question is what are we really protecting when we talk about protecting ecosystems and habitat? Will the places we select for protection today be the same 10-20 years from now? Probably not.

Ecosystems are constantly changing, either from "external" (human) or "internal" (natural) forces. Change is inevitable and could, in the face of global warming, be dramatic.

Shouldn't we be preparing for the changes and begin to think about how we adapt to some of the most likely changes, those brought on by climate change or economic development or basic human needs, such as for food and energy?

Demand for energy and food will drive economic development for years to come and we can't continue to ignore these drivers to "save" the natural, non-human world.

This leads me to assumption two, which is about ignoring basic human needs. It's irrational for us to think that people in developing countries, many of whose basic human needs are not being met, will care deeply about the non-human natural world.

Yet, we continue to have blind faith in our cause and ignore the needs of real people.

I recently returned from India where the extreme poverty is evident almost everywhere you look. Also evident is a growing middle class that strives for the kind of lifestyle we have here in the west, specifically the US, with its inherent accelerated pace and impacts.

Who are we to say that people in developing countries have no right to the kind of lifestyle we have exported for decades? We can not convince, persuade or cajole or even pay people -- Americans as much as people in developing nations -- to "come around to our way of thinking," and yet this is what I hear whenever I talk to environmentalists.

And we can't ask poor people around the world to forgo the comforts of the lifestyle we have been living, and which they wish to copy, "for the sake of the planet" or to set aside their habitats and ecosystems for the sake of humanity. No country wants to become an ecological reserve for the world, especially if it means it cannot pursue economic prosperity.

Try floating this idea with people who go hungry every night for lack of food or money to buy food and see what kind of reaction you get.

In the end, poor people matter. And the governments of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and African countries must be concerned first and foremost with the well-being of their people. I'm not saying that human well-being isn't tied to ecosystem health; I'm a strong believer that economic growth is tied to those resources.

I believe we can no longer separate the issue of economic development and poverty alleviation from ecosystem health. We also can't expect that governments whose people aren't meeting basic needs to protect their habitats over the economic well-being of their people.

Which leads me to assumption three: increasingly, we are entrusting protection of habitats and ecosystems with the wrong people. Governments have a mandate to improve the economic health of their country and people.

Yet we continue to have faith that these governments will "do the right thing" and enforce laws protecting their forests or other ecosystems in the face of seemingly insurmountable economic obstacles.

Why do we think that is a good strategy? What indicators do we have that tell us this strategy will succeed where it hasn't in the past? Why do we think that the World Bank program to pay countries to "avoid deforestation" will be any more successful than their previous grand plans?

The same goes for NGOs. NGOs are basically corporations that serve a set of shareholders (donors in this case) who subscribe to a specific idea of Nature and a specific set of outcomes, outcomes that may not necessarily be shared by all stakeholders.

This idea of Nature has for a long time discounted the needs of people both today and in the future. To illustrate this, one only need look at the environmental community's approach to government debt.

Conservation groups (my old employers among them) have promoted using a country's debt as leverage to gain conservation protection. The debt-for-nature swap was an innovation of the past couple of decades and a noble one. But it was also painfully ignorant of the true nature of that debt -- in many cases "dictator debt" incurred by regimes that did not have its people's best interests in mind.

Now that we have a more clear understanding of how that debt was derived, and can no longer ignore its immoral origins, we need to give up or adjust the debt-for-nature swap concept and join the call for debt forgiveness. That will free some countries from having to exploit their natural resources to pay down that debt.

Yet, many in the environmental community continue to push the debt-for-nature strategy, because they can't let go of a good thing that advances their agenda.

How is this different from any corporation -- a sector many environmentalists attack -- that advances its agenda at the expense of people here and abroad? Can we really trust ecosystems and habitats to big government or big international non-governmental corporations?

In the end, wouldn't a better approach be to put our trust in the people and the communities where these ecosystems and habitats are found? They have the most at stake in managing these resources, as their needs and livelihoods are most closely tied to the lands and waters.

I believe human beings are basically good. I also believe that, given the opportunity, communities will manage their common interests and keep each other in check. This is the open-source community approach one finds in social networks and in business models such as eBay.

I also believe that human beings are the most creative and adaptable species on the planet -- just look at the variety of habitats, climates, and conditions we inhabit. Our resilience as a species is astounding. I argue that we need to embrace this resourcefulness and apply it to overcoming ecological shifts, climate change, and loss of ecosystems and habitats.

We need to unleash the power of human creativity to find new ways to "save" those places for future use by both human and non-human species.

Unleashing this human capacity will require suspending our assumptions. We will need to focus more on community-based or "commons-based" management (as Jonathan Rowe of the West Marin Commons in California calls it in a recent essay in The State of the World 2008).

We need a people-centered conservation that addresses the real needs of real people, and to empower individual entrepreneurs and communities to manage their resources cooperatively rather than impose grand plans from Washington.

We need to clearly draw the lines connecting economic prosperity with ecological health and human well-being.

And, finally, we need to unleash human creativity to find new technological solutions as well as new ways of living with nature.

This may, in the end, be our only hope to really save habitat and ecosystems – and, ultimately, to save ourselves.

Whole Foods Highlights Creative Solutions to Earth's Pressing Problems

By 2050, the earth will support roughly 9.3 billion people; but creative visionaries around the world are doing their part to secure future access to water, energy, food and living space.

In 1981, Canadian potter Burt Cohen hand-formed a ceramic water filter with local, low-cost materials. Today, the open source model is being used to purify water in over 13 countries, and is expanding its presence worldwide. And, in an effort to eliminate dilution as a water cleaning method, Oregon engineer Mark Owen combined nanotechnology and sunlight to create a low-impact filter that kills contaminants at the source.

Whole Foods is highlighting this and other sustainable innovations in an online series called "9.3," which profiles the radical ideas of creative conservationists. Check out the video:



First Solar was also featured in a recent episode on solar power innovations:



Great to see someone focusing attention on solutions and innovations.


(Disclosure: I hold a long position in First Solar, FSLR.)

Energy Efficiency Needs to Be the "New Normal" | The Energy Collective

Energy Efficiency has long been touted as the "low hanging fruit," both in terms of energy savings and potential impact on mitigating climate change.  So why aren't energy efficiency measures being more rapidly adopted?

I explore this question and more from the floor of Con Ed's Energy Efficiency Summit on The Energy Collective blog.

Read more

 

Related articles

• A Green Home Is an Energy-Efficient Home (everydayhealth.com)
• Up the Energy Efficiency of Your Fridge (everydayhealth.com)
• How to Make Your Home More Energy Efficient (livoniabuilders.wordpress.com)

Green Skeptic Friday LinkFest - 04/22/11

CREDIT: NASA via Ron Garan/Astro_Ron

Earth Day edition of the Green Skeptic LinkFest.

When I worked for The Nature Conservancy every day was Earth Day.  So this day was just like any other. Now it is Earth Day and it seems a tad precious, a bit outdated.

Not to my daughter, who reminded me this morning that it was Earth Day and that it's a good thing we recycle. (I didn't have the heart to tell her what I learned from the folks at Glass Recycling Technologies: that of the 12 million tons of glass in the US waste stream annually, over 9 million tons end up in landfills.)

Here are my links for this week:

GreenBiz.com asked 13 corporate executives to answer the question: What's your company doing for Earth Day? 

Stephanie Pappas on "Why You Won’t Read This Earth Day Article (And Why That Doesn’t Matter)". 

Cortney Fielding of GigaOm suggests that "As Cleantech Matures, So Does Approach to Funding."

David Chen of Equilibrium Capital posits "Invest in B Corps; Invest in Our Future."

One year after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, The Economist offers a reading list for those interested in the catastrophe. 

Not on The Economist list (but it should be) is my pal Wes Leckrone, who writes The American Partnership blog, on  "Federalism and the Gulf Oil Spill."

A spill of a different sort happened on the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon: Pennsylvania Natural Gas Blowout Spills Thousands of Gallons of Toxic Wastewater into Local Community. 

Meanwhile, the US gives green light to Cape Wind project. 

D.R. Tucker of Notes from D.R. and The Urban Right has a compelling post in FrumForum: Confessions of a Climate Change Convert.

Another conservative voice, Jim DiPeso, (The Green Conservative) writes about The Erosion of Conservation as a Conservative Value.

  

Have a great weekend everyone. (And try not to trash Mother Earth this Earth Day; she may just give you a dope slap.)

Why Does Energy Efficiency’s Promise Remain Unfulfilled?

Jon R. Luoma, a contributing editor at Audubon, tries to explain why the promises of energy efficiency haven't been fulfilled in latest Yale Environment 360:

Among the many measures the world can take to wean itself off fossil fuels, few match the benefits of making homes, business, and cars more energy-efficient. But financial and psychological barriers have kept individuals, businesses, and governments from realizing efficiency’s great potential.

Read the full post here: Energy Efficiency

On Energy Transition, US Military Leads

Photo Credit: US Army

As Tom Friedman points out in his column yesterday, "the U.S. military loses one person, killed or wounded, for every 24 fuel convoys it runs in Afghanistan."

Soldiers and others are put in harm's way as part of convoys, hundreds and hundreds of them, needed to transport fuel to run air conditioners and diesel generators in remote bases all over that country.

But what if the "U.S. Navy and Marines could replace those generators with renewable power and more energy efficient buildings, and run its ships on nuclear energy, biofuels and hybrid engines, and fly its jets with bio-fuels"?  One out-come, Friedman argues, would be to "out-green the Taliban."

The military is making a strategic move to alternative energy and energy efficiency, in part because it recognizes the national security issues associated with dependence on fossil fuel energy and the potential impacts of climate change. 

In its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, the Department of Defense (DoD) found that climate change "may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.”

This threat, coupled with an energy budget of $20 billion, has led the DoD to take steps to reduce is dependence on fossil fuels, strive for energy efficiency, and reduce its carbon emissions by developing and deploying clean tech innovations.

They have also recognized the potential threats from so-called "peak oil," warning last spring "that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact," according to a report from the US Joint Forces Command.

The US military has long been a leader in biodiversity conservation as well, with partnerships with organizations such as the Nature Conservancy, NatureServe, and others around the US.  The DoD even has a special "Conservation Conveyance," which allows closed military bases to be transferred into permanent conservation status.

It should come as no surprise that the US military is becoming a leader in green tech innovation.  Defense led much of the global technological innovation of the last half of the 20th Century after the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958. 

ARPA, or DARPA, as it is known today, developed the weapons that transformed warfeare in the last century, but also led to the electronic computer, robotics, the Global Positioning System (GPS), and the Internet.

The new green economy may in fact be led by a green revolution in the military, giving new meaning to DoD's mission of deterring war and protecting the security of the US.

As Friedman points out, the green innovations being fostered by the military "could save lives, money and the planet, and might even help us win — or avoid — the next war."

The Green Skeptic’s "Rational Approach to Cleantech" on Competitive Futures PodCast

I sat down yesterday with Eric Garland to explain my opinions on cleantech, green, and more. Here's what Eric had to say on Competitive Futures:

"With a philosophy straight from the European Enlightenment and with credentials from the heart of the environmental movement, Scott Edward Anderson is a rare voice amongst the crowd of green economy hypesters and cynics. In a style that strongly recalls our own approach to holistic, data-based, rational analysis of the future, Scott advises companies, governments and investors on how to think about cleantech with all the complexity and cold logic that it deserves.

"In this edition of the Competitive Futures Podcast, Scott shoots a hole in most of the "green" technologies that are supposed to save us, tells us why China is rapidly outpacing the West on cleantech investments, and why fixing 100 year old buildings is just as important as adopting brand new, shiny silver, nanotech-injected technology when it comes to the long-term future of our energy-efficient, green and clean 21st century economy."

Marathon Men (and Women): TNC Running for Nature

TNC protects places like Raja Ampat, Indonesia

I was twice reminded of my old pals at The Nature Conservancy this week.

The first was when the host of a panel I was moderating told me of the passing of a Conservancy legend, Dennis Wolkoff, and the second was when I learned about a group of dedicated Conservancy staff and friends, including CEO Mark Tercek, who were running the New York City Marathon next weekend.

Dennis passed away last Spring, and yet I was only just now hearing about it -- and from a total stranger. How did that happen? I wasn't close to Dennis, but we both shared a passion for the Boston Red Sox and I got to use his Fenway seats on several occasions.

Still, it stung that I'd gotten so far away over the years that I had to hear about his passing seven months after it happened.

My fondest memory of Dennis was beating him in a negotiations workshop a decade ago. Dennis very graciously acknowledged his defeat and, although it was only a game, I could never forget my victory over a master deal maker. His generosity of spirit was in strong evidence that day, as it was every day with his colleagues and with anyone with whom he came in contact.

That's the spirit of the Conservancy; it's a giving spirit.

Which is why it is no surprise that a group of Conservancy staff and friends, including CEO Mark Tercek, are giving of themselves by running to raise funds for the Conservancy's critical work protecting the world's most important lands and waters.

I hope you'll join me in supporting their efforts and cheer them on as they hit the wilds of New York City's streets on November 7th.  My support is in memory of Dennis Wolkoff.

You can donate to the team at nature.org.

World Statistics Day Energy Quiz

Paul Kedrosky pointed me to this energy statistics quiz from the Energy Information Administration.

I scored 18/20, missing on questions 3 & 4 (duoh!).

See how well you do: US Energy Information Administration Energy Quiz

Did you know there was such a thing as World Statistics Day?