The Pit in My Stomach

FOR THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, I've had a pit in my stomach over the direction the mainstream conservation movement (MSC) in America is heading. (I'm not talking about the ever-radical NRDC or Sierra Club.) I'm referring to business conservation groups like The Nature Conservancy. In the same way the mainstream media (MSM) is in the process of crashing and burning, I feel like MSC is jumping the shark and going down a road of no return.

A new obsession is sweeping the world of mainstream conservation and it's called carbon mania related to climate change. The bubble has only just begun to inflate but when it grows too large and finally, inevitably pops, it will take the global economy with it to a degree and scale we've never seen before. It will make the housing, gold and oil and gas bubbles look like children playing monopoly. If we let it happen, mainstream conservation organizations like TNC could be one of the chief villains----as well as one of the chief victims.

After serving a good deal of time on boards and fund raising committees from the 80s into the early 2000s, I began to lose interest and distance myself slowly but surely from MSC. Groups that had prided themselves as uniters of business, private and public interests for the sake of saving the best of species and ecosystem habitats, like the Nature Conservancy, began to become more and more politicized and strident.

It seemed to me that these groups, rather than continuing to work with business, private citizens and groups, and state and local governments, were being co-opted by the agenda of the big fat federal government. This became increasing apparent to me, within the last five years, as TNC took the bait, hook-line-and-sinker for the idea of anthropological global warming, better known as man-made climate change. In order to do this, its science went from being rigorous, to being politicized.

Thursday, as a board member emeritus of the national board of TNC, I was invited to the fall meeting in Arlington, VA. Because it coincided with my visit to the East coast, I decided to make a point to be there, though I've long-since gone off the national board (mercifully for them and me). I very much wanted to hear what the organization was up to from the horses' mouths and also meet the new president and CEO, Mark Tercek, who was recently installed from Goldman Sachs with no background, experience, or prior interest in land conservation.

Tercek is a protege of Hank Paulson who served as chairman of the TNC board until two years ago when then-president Bush appointed Paulson as Secretary of Treasury. Paulson had to step off TNC's board. But I met him at this same meeting two years ago here in D.C. and that's when my sure-nuff queasiness began

Because of time constraints, I'm going to spit this out in bits and pieces. Whether anyone reads it, I want to get it down, sooner rather than later.

Three things I will write about: My conversation with Mark Tercek Thursday; why I'm very uncomfortable with Goldman Sachs' increasing involvement in the Nature Conservancy; and why organizations and businesses like TNC and Goldman have MUCH to gain by seeing Cap and Trade legislation pass, even though such legislation will ultimately devastate economic interests and bottom lines of every business in America. It will also be a huge tax on the American consumer.

Also want to write briefly about the new Secretary of Interior (and former U.S. Senator from Colorado) Ken Salazar's speech at the TNC's luncheon.

Folks, if you're not on board for man-made climate change, especially here in D.C. you're considered a heretic, a lunatic, an idiot and a thorn in the midst of a bed of roses.....And that thorn today---that would be me.