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Preface
I
went into these woods to nd myself and retrace some of
the life Ive lived, accounting for it along the way. I wanted
to explore what became of the youngster born in the Deep
South in 1942 and what became of the causes he pursued. And
I sought to recapture a time and place now drifing away and
to recall the people who have been the angels along the river
of my life.
Ofen as I was writing this book, I stopped, stymied by
the question: Who in the world would want to read a book
about me? I have been sustained by the answer that while
the pages ahead are about me, they mainly relate my personal
participation in and perspective on several larger and very
important developments occurring over the period since 1950.
For example, I tell the story of how a group of us came together
in 1970 to launch the Natural Resources Defense Council, now
one of Americas premier environmental organizations. And
then I look beyond our founding of NRDC and address what
has happened since the rst Earth Day to the American envi-
ronmentalism of which NRDC has been a leading part.
In this way I hope the book will be informative and help-
ful. America now nds itself in a sea of troubles. If we are to
chart a course to a better place, we should understand how that
happened. I think the stories I tell here provide insight in that
exploration. I have spent a large portion of my time in recent
Angels by the River
x
yearstalks, interviews, writingstrying to encourage others,
especially young people, to join me politically at or near the
place to which I have arrived, wherever they may have started.
Perhaps telling the story of my journey at a more personal level
will help with this encouragement.
This book is neither a comprehensive autobiography nor a
memoir like many these days. Rather, it is my reection on some
past events in my life and the way those events resonate into
the presentin our race relations, in the quality of our environ-
ment, in our politics, and elsewhere. Painting pictures of how
these issues emerged in my life and through timethat is what
I hope I have accomplished. Also, I have sought to contribute a
bit to the historical record, not big history but the ne-grained
perspective of one observer of events worth remembering.
Passing all of the above considerations, I have been pow-
erfully motivated to remember and honor the amazing people
in my life. Starting with family, then hometown friends, more
than two decades of fellow students, a lifetime of colleagues,
coconspirators, and adult friends, I have been helped and car-
ried forward by a richness of good, loving people I did little to
deserve. I cannot begin to remember them all here, but I have
tried to call forth many of them.
In Part I, I describe my childhood growing up in a lovely
but thoroughly segregated Southern town, Orangeburg, South
Carolina. My lifelong friend Charles Tisdale says Part I is the
prelude, and I think he is right. The past is indeed prologue,
and these were the formative years, powerfully inuencing
what came later.
Then, in Part II, I tell three difcult stories. The race issue
and the poison of racism are important in each. I relate what
happened when I went North to school at Yale, then how one
Preface
xi
South Carolina community failed to face a new civil rights reality
leading in 1968 to the tragedy known as the Orangeburg Mas-
sacre, and nally how the South has proved far more successful
at exporting its vices than its virtues to the rest of the country.
In order to bridge from my youth into later life and my envi-
ronmental career, Part III provides a reection on my rsum
and the various jobs Ive held, including how they came about.
Looking back, I focus in each case on those accomplishments
that seem now to be most important, and in a lighthearted way
I look also at the way lifes many contingencies kept me on
my toes. A lot of the most interesting and telling things that
happen to us dont make it into our rsums, mine included. So
this chapter also looks beyond the rsum.
The trajectory of Part IV moves from the founding of NRDC
and later the World Resources Institute through an analysis
of what happened to American environmentalism and the
specter of failure now haunting the environmental community
to a discussion of my current views on what we must do as a
country if we are to address our many problems, views that
have earned me the label radical though I dont see my ideas
as truly radical.
Finally, in Part V, I endeavor to relate some of the most
important things I think life has taught me to date. Its short, I
trust not because I have learned little.
So we beat on, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, boats
against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. It is a
blessing, though, to know the past, to be borne back into it. The
past is passage to understanding the present and the opening
to future possibility. In the chapters that follow I explore the
past as one way of helping us to a better place, and I ofer my
thoughts on how we might now move forward to nd it.