The choices we make about our environment

When I was growing up in Portland, Oregon, my friends and I used to joke that if you swam in the nearby Willamette River, you’d lose a finger to the cold but grow two new digits from exposure to the river’s toxic soup of chemicals. A 10-mile stretch of the river was so contaminated that it was considered a federal hazardous waste cleanup Superfund site.

Of course, toxic threats to our environment are no joke. Later I learned that one in five Americans live within three miles of a Superfund site – places that society chose to sacrifice in the name of “progress” by recklessly producing, using and dumping chemicals that people knew, or should have known, were hazardous. 

But our society is also capable of making better choices. 

My childhood neighborhood was also close to Forest Park, a 5,200-acre refuge for towering Douglas firs, warblers and anyone looking for adventure and fresh air along its 80 miles of trails. The rugged terrain was almost developed for housing, but a committed band of citizens (and an untimely landslide) convinced decisionmakers that the area should remain a forest–a wise call for a town nicknamed “Stumptown” after previous generations had cut down most of its trees. Today, even as temperatures rise in Oregon, it’s often five to ten degrees cooler in these woods. When I think about our campaign to save our oldest forests from logging, I think of Forest Park and how wonderful it is that earlier Portlanders let it be.

As the new executive director of Environment America, my job is to help ensure that the choices our society is making today fall the right way for the planet–and our own future–as often as possible. I’m fortunate to inherit a simple, but time-tested strategic approach:

1. Put the environment first, because without a healthy environment, a true and lasting prosperity is neither possible nor desirable.
2. Make progress anywhere we can, work with anyone who agrees with us on even a single part of our agenda, and focus on getting results. In a polarized country, sweeping environmental change is improbable. That’s why it’s so important to keep pushing for positive steps, even if they’re incremental, that can make a difference now and set the stage for bigger leaps forward tomorrow.
3. Work to win more hearts and minds for protecting the environment. Earning broader and deeper support for core environmental values is the only way to achieve progress that’s significant enough to meet our challenges and durable enough to withstand electoral whipsaws. 

Let’s not kid ourselves. The dramatic global measures that are needed to solve climate change, as well as other ecological crises, are not an easy lift. In my view, leadership in this moment requires recognizing there are incremental steps, especially at the local and state level, which are achievable and often just as important as federal action; that compromise is going to be necessary to get short-term results; and that bipartisanship is only impossible if we don’t try. And meanwhile, we’re working to raise awareness and change minds until we have an irresistible force to meet the immovable object that Washington, D.C., can often be. 

Since joining the Environment America network in 2016, I’ve seen our team use this approach to make a real difference over and over again. During the Trump administration, together with our many allies, we helped spare our oceans from a massive expansion of offshore drilling and celebrated the signing of the Great American Outdoors Act by working side by side with Republicans (and Democrats, too) who cherish our coasts and public lands. At the same time, our state organizations made progress on clean energy and plastic pollution, so today, 12 states have committed to power themselves with 100% clean, renewable electricity and more than a dozen states have also enacted bans on harmful single-use plastics. 

More recently, our team contributed to winning the largest-ever investment in clean energy via the Inflation Reduction Act. We organized in key congressional districts to ensure a vote for climate action was good politics in addition to being good policy. We’re continuing to deepen support for these investments via our Clean Energy Homes Campaign and Clean Energy Champions Project. We’ve seen churches going solar (even in Kansas), tens of thousands of Floridians switching to clean electric vehicles, and people as far north as Alaska choosing heat pumps.

Our work takes place in a world very different from the one that my parents and grandparents grew up in. People are more prosperous and more numerous. We’ve solved many age-old problems including how to produce more food than we can ever eat and how to produce enormous amounts of electricity with little environmental impact. That’s why it’s not only  unacceptable, but also absurd that we’re still burning fossil fuels at great cost to our environment or tearing down the Amazon for cheaper beef. As executive director of Environment America, I hope to maximize the opportunities our abundance has created to save and restore the natural world, while countering those aspects of “progress” that cause lasting damage to the environment and our health.

I’d love to hear from you about how we can work together or any advice you have for me as I take on this new role leading Environment America. And if you’re in the D.C. area, I’d be even happier to strategize with you on a walk in Rock Creek Park or a bike ride along the Anacostia.

Thanks for your action and support.