Stewardship of the Earth:
A Matter of Fairness and Responsibility

Theo Spencer ’84

“People tend to think of global warming as a huge, overwhelming problem. The truth is that there are common-sense solutions that we can adopt to solve the problem—solutions that are both good for the economy and good for the health of our environment. We need to think and act optimistically. We need to look toward new technologies rather than relying on the old ones.”

The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) defines its work as maintaining the integrity of nature’s resources. It “seeks to establish sustainability and good stewardship of the earth as central ethical imperatives of human society.”

This sense of responsibility for the earth drew Theo Spencer ’84 to work with NRDC’s Climate Center, one of the organization’s several program areas. The Climate Center works to establish policies within the United States that help diminish the major causes of global warming. Headquartered in New York, with other main offices in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Beijing, the NRDC and its Climate Center advocates passing legislation that would reduce emission of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2). One part of an emissions policy promoting global warming solutions is a cap-and-trade system. It creates a financial incentive for cleaning up dirty power plants and manufacturing emission-reducing vehicles by appointing a cost to polluting.

“One of my focuses has been on New York State vehicle laws,” Theo explains. “To reduce emissions, I’ve worked to enact the California tailpipe CO2 standards and make them apply in New York. Recently, my focus has been mainly on the interior West—states like New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, Arizona, Nevada—and I am working on clean energy policies in those areas as well.”

Before Theo joined the NRDC, he studied journalism and wrote for various newspapers and magazines, including Fortune. During that time, he served on the board of the New York State Environmental Group. “As I became more interested in this, I became less interested in my other work,” Theo says. He left his job at Fortune the same time that the NRDC was given a large gift allowing them to start a new program area focused exclusively on global warming. Theo began by handling communications for the organization, but made his way to the campaign and policy work full-time, where his passion is.

“I got into this work not because I am out camping all the time, but out of a sense of justice and injustice,” Theo explains. “People are doing things to the environment that are just outrageous. It’s an issue of fairness and responsibility. I’m not looking for everyone to be conscious of this out of altruism necessarily, but I want to make sure that people are doing what is right in a larger sense—that there are laws in place and that these laws are being followed.

“Right now I am working on fighting a proposal in Texas; TXU is looking to build 11 or so coal-fired power plants using old and highly polluting technology. Coal-fired power plants are the single largest cause of global warming pollution in the United States. I am spending time speaking with local officials and other environmental groups to fight the building of these plants. For my work in the interior West, I work with governors’ offices, state agencies, and other interest groups.”

While tackling the larger issues that contribute to global warming, Theo points out that each of us can do our part to diminish our carbon footprints. “My advice is to buy efficient appliances, use compact fluorescent lightbulbs, pay attention to the type of car that you buy. Most importantly, pay attention to local and state politics. Be vocal about the candidates who approach the idea of energy and the environment in a responsible way.”

www.nrdc.org


Lafcadio Cortesi ’79

Using the marketplace to protect boreal forests, key regulators of climate change

Lafcadio Cortesi ’79 remembers spending summers during high school doing volunteer work on the behavior of temple monkeys in Nepal—an adventure that “turned [his] world on its head.” These experiences precipitated his professional life’s trajectory and purpose. For the past 20 years, Lafcadio has worked in North America and the Asia Pacific—from Indonesia to Papua, New Guinea, to Micronesia—facilitating environmental sustainability and justice.

Fascinated by the intersection of culture, ecology and economics, Lafcadio is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works with Forest Ethics as the director of Boreal Markets and Solutions. Most recently he has focused on market-based approaches to transforming business models. “It’s fertile ground for growing the seeds of a new way of being for humans on our planet,” he explains. “I have been fortunate in planting some seeds that have blossomed over the years working with Volun-teers in Asia, Greenpeace and the U.S. Agency for International Development–funded Biodiversity Support Program.”

Founded in 1994, Forest Ethics is a non-profit environmental organization with staff in Canada, the United States and Chile. Its mission is to “protect endangered forests by transforming the paper and wood industries in North America and by supporting forest communities in the development of conservation-based economies.”

A boreal forest ecosystem, as described on Borealnet.org, is “the contiguous green belt of conifer and deciduous trees that encircles a large portion of the Northern Hemisphere. In North America, the boreal forest stretches across most of northern Canada and into Alaska. It has long been identified as one of the world’s three great forest ecosystems.” According to Lafcadio, boreal forest accounts for about 25 percent of the world’s remaining intact or roadless forest ecosystems and is one of the planet’s key regulators of global climate change.

To protect boreal forest ecosystems and others like them, Forest Ethics determines which companies purchase the products that hasten the destruction of these forests. “We run market campaigns that identify large branded customers of forest products and work collaboratively with them to change what they’re buying,” Lafcadio explains. The organization also teaches these corporations “how to leverage their purchases and influence into new protected areas, better forest management policies, and conservation economies in key endangered forest regions.”

Large companies such as Staples, Home Depot and Dell use these trees for paper, lumber or furniture. Victoria’s Secret, for instance, mails nearly one million catalogues each day, catalogues that are printed on paper created from the trees of this endangered area. From Forest Ethics’ perspective, this practice was a ripe opportunity for intervention. “We used public campaigning to expose the effects of [the company’s] consumption and negotiated solutions,” Lafcadio says. “We then convinced them to adopt a leadership policy with regard to procurement. They agreed to take action and reduce consumption, to begin using 10 percent recycled fiber in their paper, and to ensure that the remaining virgin fiber does not come from ecologically significant areas that require protection.” An article in the December 7, 2006, issue of the Wall Street Journal highlighted Forest Ethics’ work on this campaign and the agreement of Limited Brands Incorporated (Victoria’s Secret’s parent company)—as well as similar agreements Forest Ethics has secured with Dell and Williams-Sonoma—to shift the catalogue industry and help it “go green.”

“If a corporation refuses to change its practices, we hold it publicly accountable—with media stories, street demonstrations, online strategies and paid media or advertisements,” Lafcadio explains. “When companies recognize their impact and take responsibility, we help them find alternatives, invent new ways of doing business and implement sound policies through our Corporate Action Program. Either way, we work to turn potential corporate adversaries into allies. Logging companies listen to their largest customers. Many of these customers, in turn, recognize that their company values, and those of their own customer base, call for demonstrating environmental and social leadership.”

To date, Forest Ethics has led initiatives that have resulted in the protection of over seven million acres of endangered forest in British Columbia and Chile.

www.forestethics.org

Erin Hoodlet

 

Back to Magazine