Tom Steyer spent years as a wildly successful hedge fund manager, a vigorous philanthropist, and a sought-after funder of Democratic politicians, but most of that activity took place beneath the public radar.

A few years ago, however, Steyer stepped into the spotlight. In January 2009, he and his wife Kat Taylor donated $40 million to found the Tomkat Center for Sustainable Energy within the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford, and another $7 million to found the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, run by ex-Google energy guy Dan Reicher.

In August 2010, he and Taylor signed the Giving Pledge, vowing -- as with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett -- to give away at least half their fortune, which in their case runs to $1.2 billion. Later that year, Steyer poured $5 million into a winning campaign against California's Prop 23, which would have rolled back the state's seminal global warming legislation. In November 2011, he co-founded the Advanced Energy Economy, a trade association of clean energy businesses. In October 2012, he resigned from his hedge fund to pursue social change full-time. Also in 2012, Steyer crafted, and spent $32 million to back, California's Prop 39 -- which voters approved in November, closing a tax loophole benefiting out-of-state corporations and directing half of the resulting revenue to clean-energy initiatives.

Most controversially, in March of this year, he dove headlong into electoral politics, pouring scorn and threatening to pour money into a Mass. Democratic senate primary campaign against Stephen Lynch, a supporter of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Lynch's opponent Ed Markey won, but Steyer's involvement drew fire. Markey himself disavowed the hardball tactics and political operatives everywhere clutched their pearls.

We met with Steyer when he came through Seattle, for a chat about climate, politics, and money. (This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)

Q. What first engaged you on climate and energy in such a significant way? Was there a turning point or moment of clarity?

A. I don't think there was a big epiphany. But getting involved in the No on 23 campaign in 2010 was an incredible education for me in how human beings think about this, how they relate to it, and what moves them on it. It definitely corrected a bunch of my preconceptions as to who cared and why they cared. People's image of environmentalism is very different from the actual Americans who care about it. That Latinos care the most about environmental issues is not a popularly held view in the U.S., but it consistently polls that way.

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EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. (Photo by Linh Do.)

It's been a bumpy road for Lisa Jackson through three and a half years as chief administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But the 50-year-old chemical engineer doesn't look fazed or fed up. A scientist-turned-insider who has learned that the levers of power don't always budge without a fight, she shows a little steel in her eyes as she ticks off achievements and notes setbacks. But she also lets mischief color her laugh as she acknowledges what she calls the "toxic attitude of absolute certainty" that paralyzes progress on climate and other issues.

In 2009, President Obama appointed Jackson to lead the EPA, the agency she'd worked at for 16 years before serving in New Jersey's environmental agency, where she became commissioner in 2006. Jackson took the EPA helm at a moment of high hopes for green advocates in the U.S. They'd spent eight years in George Bush's wilderness; now they felt they were on the verge of passing climate legislation at home and a global carbon accord at the Copenhagen talks.

What could go wrong? Only everything.

Today progress on climate at the federal level seems less likely than ever. Certainly, Jackson can point to a passel of signal achievements: she has reinvigorated the agency, presided over a plan to double automobile fuel-efficiency standards over the next decade, established EPA's right to regulate greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide as pollutants, and placed new controls on mercury and other toxic power-plant emissions.

But Jackson has also watched as the faltering economy and a partisan civil war in Congress have placed environmental issues on a low-simmering back burner -- and placed EPA itself in the crosshairs of an increasingly radical conservative movement that aims to defang, defund, and ultimately destroy it. Even if it dodges that bullet, her EPA must use the narrow statutory authority of a handful of increasingly outdated laws to tackle an endlessly multiplying set of problems. Meanwhile, new laws are out of reach, and old-fashioned regulations get held hostage to competing agendas: Her agency's proposal to tighten ozone standards met sudden death at the hands of the White House that had appointed her.

Jackson has stuck to her post, despite rumors that she might resign in the wake of that ozone reversal. At the end of last week, she visited Seattle to drop in on Boeing, speak at the annual Climate Solutions breakfast, and deliver a commencement address at the University of Washington. She also took time to talk informally at an event with Grist supporters, and sat down with us for an interview.

We knew there was little chance that Jackson would go off message or make unscripted news, and we weren't going to play gotcha with her. But we did get some intriguing glimpses of the mind of the woman who's still trying to push the Obama administration's hope wagon over all those bumps.

Q. Right now U.S. fossil fuel production is ramping up, and a lot of people are enthusiastic about energy independence and jobs in that industry. So national security and employment are set up to be at odds with the environment. Can we get beyond that?

A. First of all there's two sides of the energy discussion: there's production, and there's also use. America as a consumer-oriented country is seeing real choices for the first time in using less energy. That's very good for the American pocketbook. There's simply no reason why American cars can't be efficient and still be cool and be a part of what drives our economy. And if you want proof of that, look at what's happening right now in Detroit. I have conversations all the time with young people, and they're not feeling like they're losing anything by the fact that they'll be able to have choices and much more fuel-efficient cars should they choose to buy them.

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Please give to Grist today. It's our last shot at $25K!

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But a timely donation
Will offer salvation --
Give now, or this curse will get worse!

Grist readers, at the risk of incurring the wrath of the raven that put this curse upon us, I'm going to break from speaking in verse for just a moment so I can ask you, in all earnestness, to support Grist today with as little as $5.

We gotta get just a few more gifts by midnight to earn an additional $25,000 from a generous donor. We are so close to our goal of 3,000 gifts, and we don't want to leave that money on the table. Please help us meet our goal and capture the gold. We don’t want to be doomed to meetings like this:

Donate now to end this curse
that forces us to speak in verse.

Once upon a workday dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a serious tale of gloom 'n' doom 'n' eco-gore,
While I nodded nearly groaning, came a thought that seemed worth honing:
If we make this funny, we will surely get folks in the door.
And lo, green news won't be a bore.

Grist was born and, 12 years later, has 1 million fans or greater!
We’ve helped you and your friends explore climate news and views galore.
Carpools, bike lanes, urban gardens -- our punny fun we hope you’ll pardon.
At Grist.org you get the score, on what to praise and to abhor.
So now what am I rhyming for?

You see, there is this awful curse, that forces us to speak in verse.
But you can spring us from this chore!
Please give a buck, or three, or four!
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P.S. Giving online give you the heebie-jeebies? You may also send an old-fashioned (but most welcome) check to: Grist, 710 Second Avenue, Suite 860, Seattle, WA 98104.

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If you notice our commas standing up a little straighter today, our links looking a little orangier, our photos a tad crisper, it must be because they've heard the news: Grist has a new top gun. It's a banner day, and even the banners want to look good. Scott Rosenberg joins our team as executive editor after many years as a journalist and online innovator. He was a co-founder of Salon.com, where he served as technology editor and managing editor and got people thinking -- and talking to each other -- in whole new ways. He's written two books, one …

This is Chip's fifth and final entry in the series "Grist dared me to make a change." Read the first, second, third, and fourth here. And support his dare with a gift to Grist. Well, that was a nice trip down memory lane, even if it got a little smelly toward the end -- especially when my Trashtivist garbage bag was merged with the other household garbage, the stuff that was just too gross to carry around with me for a week. And by that I mean the diapers. Just five (full, ahem) diapers weighed more than the rest of …

This is Chip's fourth entry in the series "Grist dared me to make a change." Read the first, second, third, and fifth here. And support his dare with a gift to Grist. Take-out lentil soup smells really good ... at first. Courtest of LA OC Foodventures via FlickrThe bag is about half-full and now it's starting to smell. Yesterday, keeping the family peace took priority over reducing our waste, and today you can really tell. Jenny had an errand to run, and we were too busy to make dinner at home, so we got take-out and ate outside at a …

This is Chip's third entry in the series "Grist dared me to make a change." Read the first, second, fourth, and fifth here. And support his dare with a gift to Grist. What on earth happened to Percy? He's shot. GristPerversely, I'm now taking some pleasure in creating garbage. I'm not sure that was the point of this dare, but there you have it. My trash bag has more stuff in it now, but not much more. The best thing in there is Percy. Percy, you may recall, is Thomas the Tank Engine's chum, the friendly green train. I'm not …

This is Chip's second entry in the series "Grist dared me to make a change." Read the first, third, fourth, and fifth here. And support his dare with a gift to Grist. This isn't my garbage. Not yet, anyway.Courtesy of pinguino via FlickrSo far, we haven't produced much garbage. I'm not bragging. Honestly, it's a little disappointing. I'm carrying around this white plastic Seventh Generation trash bag, and the bag itself is more garbage than what's in it. We started yesterday. It was chaos. My wife, Jenny, was supposed to get home at 5, and instead she got home around …