On December 8th, 2015
Douglas Tompkins died of hypothermia
It was a devastating loss in his long and fruitful life, he'd been many things.
He'd been a business giant co-founding the North Face in a spree. He'd been a record-setting Mountaineer, the first American to ascend K2.
He'd been a husband and a father
But Doug's death was devastating to more than just those who knew him, it profoundly affected our world
Because he wasn't simply just a rich man living an extreme life. He was saving an entire ecosystem
[Intro Music]
It would be a lie for me to say that I'm not envious of the life of Doug Tompkins
Not because he was wealthy, which he was amassing a fortune in the hundreds of millions, not because he was well-traveled again, though
he was, visiting some of the most incredible and remote places around the globe.
Nor because of his impact which was solidified by having founded two of the most famous clothing companies on the planet today.
I'm envious of Doug Tompkins because no matter what else he seemed to be living his life in the way
we all claim to want to be. He was a clear example of success.
Not just as an individual within the society that he was born but part of our global world.
Because despite what he built his companies, his family, his records in mountaineering,
Doug will mostly be remembered for what he gave away.
In 1993 Doug Tompkins began a process that would culminate in Chile expanding their national park system by nearly 40 percent.
It increased the protected regions of this country by an area the size of Montenegro, nearly Kuwait.
He bought millions of acres of land from absentee owners and donated them back to the people of Chile, and that's not even counting
what he did in Argentina where he's purchased millions more his work created nation sized parks completely cut off from logging,
mining, and hunting. With the help of his equally impressive wife Kris,
he replanted forest reserves that were deeply under threat, reintroduced collapsed animal species, and returned land back to nature
that would have otherwise been on a path towards complete collapse.
But he didn't stop there,
conservation is more than about the land. It's also about the people around it, instead of allowing his conservation to collapse industries
he created them, after all he was a businessman.
Local farms were made sustainable, nurseries selling endemic plants were built, and ecotourism
was expanded to provide jobs to locals who otherwise would have had to turn to terrestrial
destruction just to make a living.
It was the living embodiment of environmentalism done right, made reality by the unrelenting
extremism of an uber wealthy individual, and in doing so he became hated.
Here in the Patagonian south of Chile it's undeniable that many people loathed Doug Tompkins.
As an American, he simply wasn't trusted here.
He began buying land virtually immediately after the collapse of the Nixon installed dictatorship of Pinochet.
The left saw him as a neo-imperialist gobbling up Chilean land and the right saw him as an
anti-prosperity hippie hell-bent on stopping Chilean economic output.
Conspiracies haunted him wherever he went.
The prevailing belief was that he was either CIA or a Zionist looking to set up a new Israel high in the Patagonian Mountains.
Others thought he was there to steal Chile's already sparse water supply or perhaps secretly dumped nuclear waste.
Anything local people feared about Americans, he became.
And back home, it wasn't much better, any time his name was mentioned
he was quick to draw detractors. Because Doug was rich,
he represented a system of foreign ownership of international capital and of wealth inequality
Even though his life had been a counterexample to the stereotype of the uber wealthy,
he was uber wealthy.
To many he was the system, a living representation of both the excesses and extremes of our modern inequality,
and, in effect, he was.
They weren't wrong in that regard. It's just hard to say that it was his fault,
he didn't build the system.
He was just born into it like the rest of us.
But he was an extremist in the way many of us find abhorrent. He didn't walk in lockstep with the rest of us,
he was commonly regarded as a man who rarely followed the rules if anything, his life's work was reshaping the system from within
working within its confines to make it more in line with his personal vision of the future.
And in doing so he's taken us all for a ride
his outstripped wealth has allowed him to make choices that
profoundly affect us all, and in turn naturally have led to an outstripped response.
It makes sense that people would be afraid of him even hate him for his ability to shape our lives with a whim.
But I believe focusing on his wealth and power alone is a somewhat defeatist attitude because for better or worse,
this is the world we live in. His choices may have been larger than life
But it would be hard to argue that he wasn't maximizing himself precisely in the way society deems is successful.
No one person can solve the problems of an inequal world,
we haven't even come to an agreement on whether or not they're problems.
Egalitarianism is a concept more difficult than anyone seems to give it credit for.
While I truly believe in the greatest good for the greatest number, that's not exactly a simple idea to pin down.
There are very complicated and socially upheaving nuances that mean we'll likely be arguing over the best way forward,
right up until our extinction.
So from my perspective if you can up heave society, the best way forward is to pragmatically change things from within
Convince the snake to eat itself
If the only way to truly save anything is to have enough money to fight those who are destroying it.
Maybe selling clothing to save a forest isn't all that bad of an idea.
If we live in extreme times with extreme wealth disparity,
maybe we should be promoting the people who are using their wealth for good.
I'm always surprised to find that Steve Jobs, to this day, gets far more love than Bill Gates.
It's not that I don't understand the basis of it, at one point
he was a counterculture figure, fighting against the monopolistic Microsoft. That makes sense
but, as Apple has become among the most successful and wealthy companies in all human history
they've somehow sustained that brand without giving a penny back.
They don't even really pay taxes.
If you take away the brands that made their wealth,
it's quite clear that Bill Gates is by far the more socially conscious of the two.
Where Jobs gave virtually nothing back to society after accumulating his wealth Gates has spent the last decade putting billions
into eradicating disease, building better infrastructure, and generally trying to improve our world.
He's by no means perfect, but it would be hard to claim that he isn't trying.
Should he not be held up as an example of what can be done within the system rather than simply remembered as the giant monopolist he was?
Because as I see it, he's both.
Well, it can be hard to hold both ideas in your mind at the same time. It's undeniable that the two exist side-by-side.
Despite having some of the highest income inequality and lowest social mobility in the Western world
citizens of the United States tend to be the most charitable.
For every Jobs, there's a Gates.
For every Donald Trump, there's a Doug Tompkins.
and if that's the case,
I'd argue that it's advantageous that we support and promote those who use the system to our mutual benefit.
The more people in our world who spend their wealth like Tompkins and Gates and all the other extreme philanthropists, the better.
Because the alternative isn't universal wealth parity, it's more mega yachts and nest eggs
Extreme philanthropy is something that naturally draws extreme reactions,
especially when the wealth was earned in ways that are tough to defend.
But as I see it, the fight isn't just towards changing government policy,
but also making sure that until those changes come, the society we live in feels obligated to itself.
There will likely never be an agreement on how wealth should be distributed.
To some, the idea of a billionaire giving away all his money is an example of the greatness of individuals, of the promise of capitalism.
To others, it's our wealth inequality in action.
And, really, it's both.
I think if this is the world that we inhabit,
we really need to differentiate between those who use their wealth to save our forests and those who plate their toilets in gold.
Rest in peace, Mr. Tompkins.
Thank you.
This is Rare Earth.
You're rare earth aren't ya? Yeah what a good dogs.
Evan: Uh... Who won the election today?
Francesco: Nobody
Evan: Did Italy win?
Francesco: Nope, we all lost, everytime [unintelligible].