Transcript:  Products that you should buy are products like Patagonia, Whole Foods, Inveda- Aveda,--I always get it wrong--products that are going out of their way to understand the larger scope, the larger impact. Things can be fashionable, they can taste great, they can do all those things, and they can still try to make the most conscious decisions possible for the long term. Don’t just live for today. Live for tomorrow and the day after with your purchasing decisions and there’s great examples of companies that are leading that charge. I just named some and I don’t want to blacklist any organizations for failing. Those companies will actually out themselves because people will see in the news--  They’ll see Toyota versus General Motors, Toyota expanding all over the world, doing really, really well, hip, celebrities are driving it, blah blah blah. People can’t say enough about Priuses. General Motors, huge labor issues, ugly, big cars, blah blah blah. Culture will vote. Not to bash American auto makers--  I hope that they get around to the fact that we all don’t want to drive massive SUVs. We want to drive things that reflect our tastes and reflect environmental consciousness.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript:  I think businesses understood what they needed to understand and that is that their business models over a ten--  So businesses are responsible to their stake holders. They don’t answer to the CEO or just the board. That’s kind of a mythical, simplistic view, oh, everyone answers to the CEO. No. They actually answer to the stake holders, the stake holders or the stockholders and the stock goes up and down based on their confidence in a business’s understanding of the future and how to capitalize on the future. So all of a sudden people look at Wal-Mart, hey, it’s growing great, oh, it’s doubling, it’s tripling, it’s buying this nation and everything else, and Wal-Mart’s growing, great growth story. Okay, but at what cost?  Oh, there’s this issue of labor here, there’s this issue, the stock goes down. All of a sudden Wal-Mart’s understanding oh, we can actually decrease our costs by having Rice-A-Roni or maybe it’s Hamburger Helper noodles flat-packed like they do in Ikea to have the packaging be smaller, save on shipping costs, save on all these things, so they’re going all the way to the bank. So Wal-Mart, big, huge monolith making great business decisions, saving money, good environmental decisions using less paper, less packing, less fuel, everything, that’s a shift in business thinking. All of a sudden Wal-Mart’s making these kind of decisions. Wal-Mart’s a leader so when Wal-Mart says something to their supply chain in a sense they’ve said it to the entire retail supply chain, clothing, food, everything, huge, huge statement. That’s the last 18-month kind of thing.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript: This age will be remembered as an age where there was great wealth creation, there was great freedoms spread, there was a lot of poverty addressed all over the world, a lot of connections remade and reestablished all over the world, the world became flat, but I don’t necessarily know that that- all those positive things necessarily point to a positive outcome because we have another looming challenge with the environmental crisis in a lot of areas and globally. And so we’re about to be--  we’re not about to be; we have been dealt a very, very large challenge and we haven’t really fully put our arms around it. So the age that I just defined would be more of 2010 previous and the air in front of us- I think potentially the largest issue that we’ll face would be environmental, could be war related, but other than wars environmental. I think it would look like what’s happening in Australia where the environment wasn’t that big of a deal. They had ozone problems with people getting skin cancer. They started wearing Lycra to the beach. It wasn’t that okay, the ozone’s fixed, great, we put our head around that and we fixed it, but now you’ve got the warmest months on record and all of a sudden the entire country of Australia shifted over to a very keen sense of green candidate issues. The last election was one on green issues. That’s going to be happening more and more. It’s just logical. When water dries up water becomes- the commodity becomes really valuable. I live in southern California so I know that. I had a blackout a week and a half ago. I’m sitting at my PC, had- 12 o’clock at night or whatever, all power went out. This happened before in southern California but not in a while. This is the first--  This is California blackout so all of a sudden if that- if rolling blackouts and things that are of that magnitude start happening, yeah, shift- everything shifts over there. I think that’ll happen more.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Question:  Are we past the tipping point?

Transcript: No, I don’t think we’re past a tipping point because you’d have to define “tipping point.” I would define “tipping point” as obliteration of civilization. I don’t think we’re there. We’re still here but I think we’re playing with some loaded guns. There is people that are routinely now talking about will culture survive this millennia, this hundred years, will culture actually exist?  There’s scientists in the last couple days that I’ve interacted with that have talked about the entire polar ice cap, the Arctic ice cap, melting within 35 years, everything, everything. And you’re starting to see all those signs with Russian subs and everything else, and people are starting to say, “Okay. Who owns this water?” and everything else. So it’s going to throw off an entire set of other things. In China a lot of the glaciers that actually contribute to the jet streams and define all the jet streams are all being melted. So it’s a big issue. It will impact everyone. I think outside of wars, which would also be promoted by this kind of instability, our civilization can adapt for a while. We’re going to have to. That’s the cards that we have and it’s the cards that we’re leaving our kids but it’s not going to be easy and hopefully there won’t be any wars that drag things in to other categories.  

Question: How scared should we be?

Transcript:  On the not concerned to screaming standard, I would say that we should be seriously concerned, almost nearing the urgent and crisis mode, and it’s hard to do that because you turn the TV on and you see some insipid drama about some movie star’s stupid habit and you miss the long term, you miss what’s really happening. Honestly, I turned my TV off a decade ago and I haven’t missed anything. You want to see a good film?  Netflix. We are so bogged down by inane, stupid details that we’re missing the big story.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Question:  Is it fair to ask developing countries to go green?

Transcript: Every country in the world has to be environmentally conscious, Africa, who really didn’t create any of this problem and arguably will suffer the most with the gross of the- growth of the Sahara and everything else. There should be a way to have tax credits and buy and trade on carbon and things like that so things are more equitable. Those people that are taking the most should at least be taking something with some kind of tax on it. It can be financial, it can be otherwise, so there’s trading systems so that it’s the same--  If you want to drive a Hummer, good on you. You’re going to spend $120 to fill up the tank. That’s $120. It’s not $10. What if there was no price on gas and you just bought any car you wanted, went down to the gas station and just filled it up?  Why would anyone drive a Prius?  People would just drive Pimp My Ride, anything, getting the worst gas mileage. You’d have Caracas is what you’d have but that’s not the reality. There is a tax on gasoline and it costs over $100 to fill up a Hummer so there is an incentive. Get a Prius, get a Mini, get something else. I drive a Mini.

Question: How can India and China develop cleanly?

Transcript: As I said, there is a coal plant coming online every three days, one coal plant every three days. Those coal plants will last for 60 years. The majority of those are probably going in to China for the next foreseeable future. There is excellent technology that exists today that should be offered to the Chinese without tariffs to clean that- those plants. Their plants should be cleaner than ours because they’re coming online. If we’re putting a new one up, it should absolutely be clean as well. It doesn’t matter who’s putting a coal plant up, anywhere in the world it should be clean as possible with the best technology possible, no tariffs, etc. We need to do that so we need to help developing countries leapfrog us just as they have with cell phones. Most places in Latin America had bad land lines. Carlos Slim sold them all cell phones and now over the majority of all the cultures in Latin America are on cell phones. It’s great. It’s relatively clean. There’s no visual pollution or anything else. We need to do similar things with other consumption-oriented, fuel-oriented infrastructures.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript:  I think development and environmentalism are strange bedfellows. They have to get along but it’s pretty easy for them not to get along and I see so many examples where development happens in what I would subjectively just call in an unthoughtful way. Oh, here’s a sand dune in Florida. It’s only how much?  Oh, sure, I’ll buy that. Yeah, I’ll put a McMansion here. What do you mean there’s a hurricane that comes through here every year?  What?  There’s not just one hurricane?  There’s actually four hurricanes that come through here every year?  I’ll build it anyway. What do you mean the insurance industry has pulled out because they’re not insuring this region?  Build it anyway. So part of that for me almost borders on ignorance or stupidity or just too much wealth, but I believe that development and environmentalism can get along wonderfully if you’re seeing all the things that are happening kind of under the lead certification umbrella and just the big shift that people have in saying, “Hey, I can save money on my energy costs if I do this to my house,” and “Oh, I live in- near Duke Energy and they’re actually going to pay me to do some of these things so I don’t have to shell out $100,000 for solar panels. I can actually do it in a way that’s affordable to me.”  That’s pretty cool.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript:  Technology will play potentially the role just after the culture, the people, so the people have to have that will, they have to have the interest, and technology is probably the next leading indicator or the next leading source that will lead change. The ideas behind biomass, the ideas behind clean coal- a clean coal plant is pretty amazing. There are so many interesting advancements happening in technology that are at the fringe that are now being very funded. Just even in the past 18 months there’s been a massive shift. It’s been happening for a long time.  Vinod Khosla, John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins--  These are major investment VC houses, venture capital houses, that have been funding this so huge Google-esque or Google-size shift’s about to happen in that area.  The one that is most intriguing to me is all the stuff happening kind of in the biomass area. It’s just really interesting, the idea that we don’t necessarily have to build more coal plants, more effective pipes for electricity to be flowing. The idea of an out-of-the-box solution that is regionally based where people buy and consume products and food and everything else and then it all goes back in to the energy to create energy, that’s pretty radical. I like that.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript:  The government has a really difficult task in the long view. Probably the largest goal that they have is to- is just personal safety and then after safety, freedom, and then after freedoms, prosperity, are people earning enough, can they all read, and all those kinds of things, do the sewers work, does the infrastructure work, etc. And somewhere in the midst of that whole thing is the almost environmental framework, is the planet changing, are we degrading the planet over this 365 days of this one single year of someone in office?  So yeah, governments absolutely have a role to preserve the environment but it’s not just their role and it’s obviously not the only role that they fulfill so I don’t- I’m not someone who puts a huge amount of emphasis and--  I absolutely believe that there should be carbon taxes, there should be a price on carbon, there should be very specific things that the government must lead, but in the end I’m putting- I’m betting on business, I’m betting on industry, because they have the cash, they’re going to get it done, and they’re going to make money doing it, which is why they’re going to get it done. If they don’t get it done, they won’t make money. So if the government doesn’t get it done, they still make money

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript: I think we are all responsible for the environment in all of our various roles. So I’m a dad. I’m responsible for the environment with my children, educating them, having them understand this is a dolphin, this is a starfish, these are coastal issues, this is pollution, this is what you should do about it, etc., but I’m also responsible in my professional life, whatever that is, to get engaged, etc., and I’m also responsible for holding my government to task for their environmental regulations and procedures, etc. It’s not enough and it’s unacceptable for us to just say, “Oh, that’s their issue. Oh, the state’ll take care of that. Oh, my county government, that’s their problem.”  That’s lame and this essentially just takes you back and in a way it just takes you out of the picture. If you want to be in the picture, if you want to have a voice, take the voice and act and stop complaining. I believe that individuals can change the world. In fact, I believe that individuals do change the world every single day. I believe that every one of our individual choices collectively moves the network. It shifts value, it shifts culture, and so in that sense individuals, the ones that are buying Pepsi products or Coke products or whatever our consuming habits are, the ones that are spending this much on electricity because they didn’t buy double-pane windows, etc., all of our habits shift society. So absolutely I believe that the individual has that power.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Question: To whom do you look for inspiration?

Transcript: I look to more historical figures on- for inspiration like absolutely Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson in some ways for me, John Muir, people like that. I think Bobby Kennedy’s doing some great work right now. I don’t--  My view for environmental leadership is really way in the- very much in the past. My present-day inspiration is much more from the technology field and on the entrepreneurial side and on the business field, things that are- like Craig Ventnor who is doing some amazing work with biomass fuels. He is someone who is- doesn’t understand think outside the box; he lives outside the box and that’s so inspirational for me. So those are the kind of people that I would look to. For some reason I’ve always lived not in current day. I’ve always lived kind of five to ten years out. I was literally a part of kind of the original skate boarding and action sports era. I still skate board and surf and all that. I was also really early on in software and technology internet and in some ways this is kind of the early days of green, and I think the reason that I’ve made systemically those views is that I don’t care really what’s happening right now. I absolutely care what’s going to be happening in ten years and the best way to understand a long view is to take a larger perspective. You really need to understand Churchill, Jefferson, the founding fathers, Europe, Asia historically and then mesh that with Google’s aspirations and Microsoft and then you can draw a vector and then you can place yourself on that. And so I look backwards mostly because I live forwards.

Question: Where do Jefferson and Roosevelt lead us?

Transcript:  You know, Jefferson and Roosevelt and Lincoln, they all obviously were very, very different people but Lincoln came in to office seven days after the Civil War started and surrounded himself with all his enemies. So the idea of partisanship to me is a really lame thing. We need to get beyond that if we’re really going to be efficient. Almost all the political shows on TV and all the books I find it’s just damaging so the idea of reaching across to people that aren’t aligned with your viewpoint to understand theirs. Maybe you should shift. Maybe it’s me that should shift to their viewpoint. So that’s kind of bringing a Lincoln thing forward. Teddy Roosevelt establishing the parks and doing all the work he did in the West, this great vision, and what that brings me today is okay, we have these parks, they need to be preserved. In southern California Nixon and Reagan--  So Nixon established San Onofre and Reagan waxed on about its importance and here we are in southern California about to kill it, and so again reaching from the past and saying, “Okay. What tools can we use that are kind of coming out in the future or real time right now to preserve it right now?”  And I think Jefferson was just an incredible renaissance man. That guy had his fingers in so many cultures, in painting. He was just amazing.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript: I think what inspires me is the everyday activist. There’s a girl, 6-year-old Mackenzie Steiner. Her mom called me and she said, “Hey, I’d like you to come down and talk with Mackenzie and her friends,” and I’m “Well, I don’t do birthday parties. Who is this?”  And she was “My daughter’s 6 years old and she’s hand writing invitations to her friends for beach cleanups.”  And I went down there and I podcasted with Mackenzie. I’m sitting there. I have kids and- but I was sitting there listening to Mackenzie and I’m “Mackenzie, why-- Are you an environmentalist?”  And she was just “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t even know what that is.”  And I’m “Well, it’s just someone who loves nature,” and she was “Yeah, I am absolutely that.”  So why?  And she’s looking at me strange and she’s like “Birds should just have clean air. Fish should have clean water. Well, these are just simple things,” like I’m the idiot. Those--  We have those stories every single day. A woman last night--  At 1 in the morning I got an e-mail from a woman in the Arizona Correctional Institution waxing on lyrically about the values of Surfrider Foundation. She actually--  She’s not a prisoner. She works in a state-run facility and she was talking about moving some of her money over- in an automatic withdrawal over to groups that she supports and Surfrider was one but hearing her talk about that is just--  That’s absolutely the joy of every single day.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript:  If you look at the American consumer of which that’s--  If you would call me anything, that would probably the- be the label that would be accurate and the most hurtful for me personally but that’s- I am a consumer but the American consumer needs to shift its tastes. We can’t buy with such disregard for the long-term impact of our decisions. We just can’t over time. The reason that we have been able to do it is because we were- in the entire world we consumed about 40% of the natural resources and that was okay because we were just the big consumers of the world. Well guess what. China’s coming online. They have the same aspirations we do. So is India. The math just doesn’t work. Things have to change. There isn’t an option. It’s the question of how fast and how radical they will be because the math--  There is not enough resources on earth to satisfy China, India and the United States at our consuming levels. It just doesn’t work and that leaves out the African continent, Europe and everything else, so there’s obviously- there’s more variables in that equation.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript:  I think the environmental movement’s largest mistake is in selling itself to an exclusive clientele. In my opinion, in the past if you were an environmentalist that meant you were of this political party; it meant you had this- these set of tastes; it meant you had these letters after your name from an education standpoint, etc. Nothing in the world succeeds well when it’s pitched and pigeonholed to a small group. The environmental movement has to be every single person plugged in. It absolutely has to be. It has to be every grandparent. It has to be every 2-year-old. It has to be every lawyer; every college student; every grade school student; every soccer mom; every soccer dad. Everybody needs to find their place to change their lifestyle to be a little bit more sustainable. It has to be all political parties. It doesn’t matter what your interests are. You--  Everyone needs to be aligned to this.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript: The way to influence people all over the globe is changing and the single word I would describe for that is on ramps. We need as many on ramps as possible and those on ramps need to be as diverse as possible so if you’re in the middle of the country and you happen to love beaches and if you would ask a hundred million people in the U.S. who loves the beach most people would put their hand up. How many of you want to actually go out and do a beach cleanup?  Fifteen people would put their hands up. So in order to kind of span that chasm you need lots of different on ramps. We had an event in New York City last week for society art collectors, a very specific on ramp for a very specific niche. We’re going to launch an initiative called Where’s Your Beach, which will- is essentially My Space meets Craig’s List meets Surfrider Foundation so it’s a regionally based social network around coastal areas, another on ramp. So organizations need as many on ramps as possible if they’re going to reach different people, different types of organizations, cultures, etc.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Transcript: A reasonable expectation for people is that they act understanding the larger cost equation. When you buy a $4 bottle of water at Starbucks or anywhere else that plastic was probably blown somewhere else, in another country, maybe in Asia, shipped over here, fuel- jet fueled or shipped across the country for your bottle, filled up in Maine, brought back down here so you could have a cool drink of water on your way to take the trash out and then throw it away in the trash. That plastic will probably never be recycled even though recycling- plastic usage is huge, growing very quickly, recycling is pretty much flat so that plastic is probably not going to be recycled. So that total cost of all those pieces is massive. It’s very, very expensive. It may not be reflected in the $4 cost that you have today but it may be reflected in the plastic that’s in landfills and everything else tomorrow and the year after and for decades and centuries to come. The total cost of you going- walking the same distance and getting a glass out of your cupboard, filling it up with water and then having to actually rinse it out, that doesn’t seem like a very high cost. You save $4 of cash on the actual--  You didn’t have to schlepp down to Starbucks although you don’t have the cool, hip symbol, which I would hope to invert. Plastic bottles for me are just horrible.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Question:  Have businesses been too slow to go green?

Transcript:  Is there any business that’s been slow?  I would say the majority of business has been slow up until the last 12 months and now you’re really starting to see beyond kind of the traditional Vanity Fair green issue with the photo ops and the tree and everything else in the background. That’s candy. What you’re seeing now is real commitments at the governance level within all companies so it would be easy for me to talk about leaders like Patagonia and Yvon Chouinard being so far out and ahead of the curve, dragging everybody along, and now it’s becoming more mainstream. It’s almost that you’re an outlier if you’re not understanding the power of a sustainable business practice. 

Question: What is a sustainable business practice?

Transcript:  Yeah. A sustainable business practice is essentially a practice that we- that you can do repeatedly and you can process it, biomass fuels, compost. Those are things where you don’t necessarily have to go on to some other power grid, use fuel or take a plastic bottle, which is incredibly unsustainable. If I have one message for people, it’s never, ever buy another plastic water bottle in your life. It may never, ever go away so that’s the antithesis of sustainable is a plastic water bottle. Sustainable would be hey, New York City tap water. It’s free. It actually tastes good. Buy a glass. Matter of fact, you probably have a lot of glasses at your house. Pour yourself a cool glass of water and enjoy yourself. You don’t have to buy a $4 bottle of ethos at Starbucks. It’s free.

Recorded on: 9/27/08

Question:  Has the environmental movement’s expansion diluted its mission?

Transcript:  No. I don’t think that the growth of nonprofits and specifically environmental nonprofits has diluted Surfrider Foundation at all and I like- I love having more help anywhere we can get it. The more the merrier. It’s great. I think what is changing as I mentioned a while ago was a- was everything that happened in the ‘90s, all the technology. We can now in about 14 hours send 10,000 e-mails to government, Schwarzenegger, on an issue. We can send 20,000 e-mails to people in Chile. We can tap people. We can talk face to face all over the world using Skype. We do. Those things are radically shifting, the tool set, the capabilities and the power that is at the edge of the network of our culture. So all of a sudden you don’t have to be Rupert Murdoch buying the Wall Street Journal to have your hand on the joystick. You can be 10,000 people in Argentina. You can do this a lot of different ways as long as you understand and implement technology. One of my favorite things that just came out was a $99 video player that records on flash the size of a cell phone. They gave them away as freebies at this conference that I’m at right now, a very, very powerful tool.

Question: If British Petroleum is part of the movement, do you lose control over the message?

Transcript:  No. I think something has shifted in the last 12 months which is radically different than it was before. It used to be that business was bad, government was slow, NGO, dash, enviros were good, they’re where all the smart people were, etc., and anything with a corporate brand was essentially bad. And what has happened in the last 12 months is that governments are still slow. I think they’ll always be slow. Business has flipped from one of their emotions to the other emotion and they only have two emotions, and the one emotion that they were in was fear. They didn’t understand the environment. They didn’t understand the cost of all these things and they do now. So you have Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, amazing guy making amazing statements. Wal-Mart is making amazing strides, Dupont making amazing strides, so now they’ve flipped over to their other convenient emotion which is greed. Business has the capital; they have the reach; they have the infrastructure; they have the distribution channel to consumers. Business will drive the green movement. It’s also what Thomas Friedman is saying in his new kind of- green is the new red, white and blue. People are saying green is the new gold, etc., and it’s not as simple as that businesses are cashing in. That’s not the message at all. Businesses will cash in regardless. The point is that the globe is in a crisis mode, it’s red lining, and businesses cannot sustain their model unless they adapt and they are much quicker to adapt than a government, which we’re seeing all over the world.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

Question:  What is the Surfrider Foundation?

Transcript:  So the Surfrider Foundation is really interesting in a couple of different angles. One is that we focus on a very thin swath of land. We’re really not focused on the ocean and we’re also really not focused on the inland issues. We’re focused on coastal issues. You could almost use a metaphor as kind of beach zones so beach towns, inland issues, waves and near shores issues, things like that. That focus is really important for us because all of us live in coastal regions. Most of us have lived there our entire lives and what’s happening is super important to us, which is why people act hour after hour after hour volunteering for something that they care about. So Surfrider Foundation was started 25 years ago by three guys that basically cared to preserve Malibu, the famed beach where Gidget was filmed, and fast forward to today and that’s what we’re doing. This--  We’re doing that same thing day in and day out all over the world.

Question: Why is the recreational aspect so important?

Transcript:  Because I think environmentalism in a lot of ways has been seen as this protectionist only thing and oh, you can’t cross this velvet line, you actually can’t go in and see these redwoods, you can’t participate in nature, and we’re action sports people. I broke my hand, my- smashed my wrist a couple days ago skate boarding. We’re users so we’re out there paddling and we see dolphins going by. We want to protect and preserve and enjoy the ocean’s waves and beaches so it is both. It’s not just protection. It’s also enjoyment.

Question: Are you protecting it in order to enjoy it?

Transcript:  Yes, but more than that we’re protecting it because it needs to be protected because no one else is protecting it but we’re also a user group so we have a very strong personal, visceral relationship with the environment. I’ve tried to find another group like this that’s actually submerged in the elements. We’re not yachtsmen who are going across the water. We’re actually diving underneath the water and we’re riding the power of the waves. It’s pretty unique.

Question: What do you do?

Transcript:  I sit at the bottom of a pyramid so if you look at a pyramid upside down at the very top is tens of thousands of people all over the world essentially fighting for coastal environmental issues, activists, volunteers, all kinds of people like that, and it’s all over the world, and that’s the Surfrider Foundation is tens of thousands of people all over the world fighting on behalf of beach access, pollution, water quality, all those things, and at the very bottom of that pyramid is me and then the board of directors. And the reason that it’s an inverse pyramid is because the power is truly wielded at the top with all those people and not really me. What I’m more of doing is making sure that our alignment, our procedures, our processes, our tool sets, our communication, infrastructure, all those things are forward looking and five years out and ten years out but the real muscle is on the edge. So I work at Surfrider Foundation.

The environment sparked my interest as a kid. I don’t know how you can grow up in any setting other than maybe a completely urban setting and not be completely transfixed by the environment, playing in the waves, playing in the forest, anything. The environment is the world’s largest playground and it’s pretty much free everywhere so you don’t necessarily need an Xbox although they are pretty fun. The environment is- I think taps kids’ imaginations more than anything so that’s the same with me.

Question: How did you come to work at Surfrider?

Transcript:  I’m a tech guy. I’m a kind of a tech weenie, was in technology for the last 20 years, the last two decades, and I was called by Surfrider by the headhunter who said, “The board of directors would be interested in talking to you about running Surfrider Foundation,” and I said, “Well, I’m totally the wrong guy. I’m not a tech--  I’m not a policy wonk. I’m not all these other things but I adore that brand. I adore that vision of the protection and enjoyment of ocean waves and beaches. It’s--  It is who I am. It’s an extension of my core belief system.”  So I basically went in and talked with the board and told them I wasn’t their guy and that dialog lasted about six months and about four months in to it they convinced me that I might be the person. So they found me. I wasn’t looking for it but I’m glad to be here. The joy in what I do is knowing that it’s much larger than me. I work for an idea and it would be similar to is- if I worked with equal rights and Martin Luther King or for free speech or for non-slavery issues. It’s a big idea and just being a part of it is an honor. It’s an absolute honor so the joy is driving home every day and losing sleep and not knowing- not caring if you’re losing sleep but actually be stoked about that, that you’re involved in something much larger than yourself and that your role is actually pretty insignificant as an individual but as part of a collective it’s huge. The struggle in what I do is understanding that we are late to the party, we’re arrogant as a population, we have hubris which is stunning, and I’m not just talking about Americans. I’m talking about all of us. My biggest struggle is if we will actually understand what’s at stake and act instead of watching another Britney Spears tabloid tragedy. Those things are such chaff, the Britney Spears things, when the media issues are really, really important for the next ten years, the next 50 years and on.

Recorded on:  9/27/07