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.

Q. What do you talk about to reach that audience?

A. You talk about environmental justice. You talk about health. The reason Latinos are so aware of environmentalism is that companies have traditionally put their dirtiest plants in poorer neighborhoods, because poorer communities have no political clout. Then their kids have breathing problems.

Q. Presumably the GOP has seen the same polls. Do you think, with their newfound love of the Hispanic vote, they will move to the left a little bit on environmental stuff?

A. No. I mean, I probably over-count the California experience in projecting the American experience. We went through a process very much like the one the U.S. is going through — a legislature which is totally stalled, very low legislative approval ratings, inability to get a budget, inability to change the tax code … just consistent failure. So we’ve had a chance to see whether Republicans would pivot away from stuff that was deeply unpopular with the majority of Californians.

I am the son of two Republicans — so, you know, I am hoping. I’m rooting for a healthy two-party system in the U.S. But what we actually saw in California was a dysfunctional two-party system that ended with one of the two parties having no statewide elected officials and the other party having super majorities in both houses of legislature. It took 10 years, but [California Republicans] never pivoted to the center … I mean, they ran a prop against immigration!

Q. But there’s no prospect of those kind of supermajorities at the federal level, right?

A. I would put money on the fact that if you go against 92 percent of Americans’ wishes consistently [as the GOP did on the background-check vote], you will end up with less than 40 Senate seats.

Q. You got involved in the Markey primary this year. He won, but you came in for criticism about the way you were involved with that race. Looking back on it, would you do anything differently? Do you plan to continue in the general election?

A. Any time you’re involved in an election, it’s going to be a little chaotic. You could say, “I shouldn’t have thrown the left hand, I should’ve thrown the right hand.” But by and large, it is what it is. It was important not just to win, but to win for the right reason. It was going to be one more conspiracy of silence about energy and climate — no one wanted to talk about it. We had to create intensity; it had to get put on the ballot. From what we can tell from the polling and focus groups, it worked really well.

Should we not have done that because people didn’t like it? If people aren’t pissed off, it ain’t working. That’s the truth. We have a system where elected officials are extremely happy. It’s just the other 317 million Americans who are getting screwed. If elected officials are upset, I think that’s a good sign.

Q. Do you have plans for other races?

A. We certainly want to do more races. We just have to be strategic and have some idea as to where we’re going.

Q. At what point does it make sense to go the initiative route?

A. It kind of implies that representative democracy is failing, right? You can’t have less than a 10 percent approval rating for your legislature and think it’s working. It was failing; and so we did everything by proposition [in California].

There are good sides and bad sides to that. The bad side is that it’s really expensive. People seem to think that’s wicked, but if you think about spending money on a proposition as educating people about something complicated, then spending money’s not bad. The bad part is, is it coming from a good source? Are we spending money to obfuscate, to pursue our own monetary or business interests, or are we actually using it to educate Californians? It takes a lot of education for people to think about some of these topics.

[The proposition process] was put in to protect from failed legislatures, and it has been used in California to replace a failed legislature. I don’t know what will happen now that we have [Democratic] supermajorities in both houses. Maybe now we’ll have a functioning legislature again, and there will be no more need for props.

Q. The Keystone pipeline has become a flash point. Is there a plan for what to do if Obama approves it? What will the backlash be among the donor class, and what should it be? What’s the strategic way to respond?

A. One, getting an approval from the president is obviously a huge step forward for the pipeline, but there will still be lots of challenges, particularly in light of the EPA opinion on the State Department [draft environmental impact statement]. I think this thing will get litigated for a long time. So approval does not mean that construction will begin the next month.

Also, this is about [fossil fuel] supply. We already have multiples of the supply we need to destroy ourselves. [Keystone] will be one more multiple of supply. If we have six times more than we need, we’ll have seven times more than we need. Obviously, if he doesn’t allow Keystone, we’re not going to stop fighting, and if he does allow Keystone, we’re not going to stop fighting. So the question is, politically, what do you do? How do we relate to him? Here’s somebody who’s going to be saying, in effect, “I’m your only choice.” Right? “You have no choice but to support me.” I don’t think that works in politics.

I don’t know if [Obama] thinks the oil companies are now going to support him, or if he thinks that the Tea Party is now going to support him, or if he thinks that he’s gaining any political advantage by trying to appease them. When you appease people like that, they don’t think we should meet in the middle, they think, “He’s weak, we should get more.” So I think, politically, it would be a very poor decision.

Obama’s job is to lead in the United States overtly so he can lead in the world overtly. It is very hard to go to China or India or Europe and say, “I want you guys to suffer in order to get this right, and by the way, I’m not willing to do the right stuff myself.” So I think it would be a terrible decision for him.

If he thinks it won’t affect how people think about him, that’s extremely naïve. And he’s not naïve, he’s a really smart politician, right?

Q. But then again, he’s not running again, so it’s hard to concretely punish him.

A. That’s not true. If you look at the people who support Obama, and then you look at the people who support him actively and give money, the number of people who care about climate in this second group is actually a majority — not out of the people who support him, but the people who are really active and give money. It’s an enormously high percentage.

And if those people decided that he was no longer somebody who’s worth supporting, even though he doesn’t have to run again, it would be terrible for him. His whole thing is, he’s trying to retain popularity to push his agenda. It’s absolutely about polls. There is no doubt in my mind, the reason that he’s considering approving Keystone is because Keystone polls well.

Q. The next big item on the environmental agenda for Obama is EPA carbon standards on power plants. How does resolution of the Keystone question affect that battle? And are you going to get involved in that?

A. There’s two ways to think about it. One is, I’ll trade Keystone for stationary source [regulations]. There are people who are talking about that: I give you this, so I get this.

That will never work. You really think you’re going to go to climate deniers and say to them, “I’ve already given you this, now why don’t you give me this”? Do you really think that’s going to happen? If you think about this as a kind of fight — which is what it is — who takes a punch in the face in order to get the next punch? That doesn’t make any sense. You want to punch him in the face.

So I’m hoping this administration will realize that appeasing these guys is going to get them nothing. It’s gonna get them nothing. It’s only going to convince everybody that they’re weak. I mean, these guys didn’t get background checks on felons for guns! Their counter-parties aren’t compromising.

Q. The problem is a group of “centrist” Democrats — that’s why they didn’t get background checks, right? Because four or five Democrats bailed on them. If there’s a vote on whether to overturn EPA authority and that same group of Democrats …

A. I think that’s so unlikely, that they could overturn EPA authority and overturn a veto. That is so absurd. If you’re scared about that, you’re scared about everything.

These are two things he has the absolute right to do. He has the right to turn down Keystone and he has the right to regulate existing coal plants. There is no legislative check on this. Doing this Kabuki dance of worrying about every single possibility, it just means it’s not your issue. It’s not the top issue; it may not even be the second issue.

Q. So will you pull more donors into the climate fold?

A. We’ll find out. We’ll talk to a whole bunch of those people and see how they feel about it. People are changing.

Q. You think there’s going to be more donor muscle in electoral politics around clean energy?

A. Well, if you have a dysfunctional legislature where nothing can pass, then democracy can find other ways to work. It happened in California. It’s going to happen in the United States of America. There’s going to be democracy. It’s going to happen in ways we’re not ready for. People love to laugh at California for the props. But it was really democracy being channeled to a new place. Well, democracy is going to be channeled to a new place.

Q. So where is that? State elections?

A. I think it will be. If D.C. doesn’t work, the American people work through the states.

Q. What about 2016? It doesn’t look to me like it’s a top priority for Hillary Clinton either, or any of her possible contenders in the primaries. Who would be a climate champion at the presidential level?

A. I bet you the world will change by 2016, in a big way, politically. That’d be my bet. It will depend to some extent on events. We have three and a half years to go. There will be a lot of events between now and the first Tuesday of November 2016. People always extrapolate forward from where we are now, but that is not going to happen.

Q. How far away is clean energy from being a real force in politics?

A. Far. The oil and gas industry makes $155 billion a year. They spend $200 million a year on disinformation campaigns. I mean, we’re trying. The truth is, incumbent industries always have the political advantage against disruptive industries. Disruptive industries have to disrupt. Incumbent industries will use all their political muscle to support something that doesn’t make sense anymore. Happens every time.

The three things that people care about politically are jobs, health, and when companies are dishonest. Everything else on this issue is noise. Every time you get off those points and you think you’re being smart, you’re being dumb. And every time you come back to those points and you think you’re being dumb, you’re being smart.

Q. The jobs thing is a double-edged sword for the climate community. Green jobs were touted in the first term, and the reality is, it’s not an immediate thing.

A. Well, I think the stimulus over-promised and under-delivered. But the fact of the matter is, this will be an enormous jobs creator. Enormous. Just redoing all the buildings — that’s a ton of construction. That’s a couple million construction jobs. You know, we’re not going to jump to getting rid of fossil fuels in a day and if we had to rebuild the pipes for natural gas, that’s a ton of jobs. There are a lot of American jobs here.

Q. Let me ask you a California question. The fracking folks have their eye on heavy oil in Monterey County. You have supported an excise tax which would raise a bunch of revenue off fracking. Would you support a moratorium? What’s your take on California fracking?

A. First of all, as you pointed out, it’s heavy oil, not natural gas. Second of all, Monterey County has a lot of people in it. [Fracking] is being used in a different situation than in the places most people are familiar with. Since it’s heavily populated, it’s especially important not to blow it. The way I understand fracking, it’s very specific. Different geological formations and different regulations will produce a safe or an unsafe outcome. Since I live in California, I think it’s incredibly important that we have a safe outcome — particularly in a part of the country where there are a lot people who live and drink the water.

Q. So why not support a moratorium?

A. I haven’t supported it or not supported it. I just haven’t read the bill. I don’t know the answer and I don’t think we should do anything until we do know the answer.

I want to separate putting an excise or lifting tax [also known as a "severance tax"] on existing oil in California from whether there should be oil fracking in California. The reason I want to put an excise tax is, we’re the only major oil-producing state — and we’re, I think, the third biggest [Ed. note: fourth; North Dakota has come on strong] — that doesn’t have a lifting tax. The difference is around $3 or $4 billion dollars a year. They’re going to lift the oil; why shouldn’t we tax them like Texas does? Texas has a huge amount of money from oil-lifting taxes. They’re the right-wingers! Why are we not doing this?

Q. How should average citizens and also political donors who care about climate be spending their time right now?

A. This is going to have to happen on a variety of levels. And I think for all of us, including me, in order to have some credibility, you’ve got to try and clean up your own life. It’s actually a pretty interesting, fun thing to do, and it gives you some real-life experience. That’s an exercise that people should do, and will enjoy, and will be valuable to them in a variety of ways, honestly.

And this is a political fight. Democracy is not a spectator sport. If people think this is the big issue, then they should stand up on the big issue. In 2010, the climate bill in the Senate, the American people were not engaged. They were going to pass a hugely impactful bill that 1 in 100 Americans understood. I honestly did not think that was right. This is a huge deal, this is the No. 1 issue. We aren’t going to World War II without telling the American people. And we shouldn’t.

Q. We thought about staging a reading of that bill with our readers. It might have taken three weeks. But the bill did have its defenders.

A. [Laughs.] It’s not about the bill. It’s a question of whether there was any grassroots awareness, support, or understanding. No. That’s why I keep saying: We have to talk about it. You can’t ask people to fix a problem that you’re scared to talk about in public.

Either the science will be wrong or we will win politically. Those are the only two possibilities. It’s only a matter of how much damage we’ll do to ourselves until then. And this is still a global problem. We can’t just win in the United States, we have to have a solution here that we can then provide a coalition of other countries. Winning here is a first step. It’s not the last step.

Q. The U.S. is reducing carbon emissions from energy in the short term in part via natural gas, which is shaping up to be a huge and divisive fight inside the green community. Is natural gas a “bridge” or a distraction that’s suppressing investment in renewables?

A. Of course both are true, right? Obviously. The question is what should we be doing. We’re not in a position right now where we have a [low-carbon] replacement for coal, which is a baseload fuel, other than natural gas or nuclear. We really don’t have the storage capability to make wind or solar serve as baseload. So if we’re going to get our carbon down in the short run, we pretty much have to [use natural gas]. Natural gas is fine. But if that’s the end of the line, then we’re just dead.

The real issue — and the argument on Keystone — is, we have to make a change. We have to make a political change so we can make a policy change and do all these other things. I don’t know if it’s going to be solar or wind. I don’t know what American business is going to come up with to make this happen. None of us knows. But the fact of the matter is, we have to make the change and put in place incentives and a framework so people can work from dawn ’til dusk figuring out those questions and trying to make a lot of money doing it. This is a huge industry. They’re going to make a lot of money. And God bless them. That’s fine with me.

The biggest question here, and the reason Keystone does matter, is about priorities. And that’s huge! That’s why it has to be a conversation. There is no one policy that’s the answer here; we have to change the framework. And if we change the framework, all these individual things will fit into that framework.

Q. Do you have aspirations for political office yourself? (We’re required by law to ask you that.)

A. You know what I say — this is actually the truth, I’m actually not being clever or disingenuous: The only jobs that I’ve done politically are jobs that no one else wanted. So if there was something that no one else wanted, but I thought was important, that was just a completely bad idea, I would probably do it.

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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.

The president talks about “all of the above” energy, and I think we don’t realize enough how important that is. There are those who would like us to drop everything and say, time for another, a second fossil fuel boom, and the president is saying, but the future for our country is around clean energy, renewables, and getting that technology perfected and ready at a commercial scale here so we can sell it abroad. That will make our country stronger and create jobs as well. We should not put all our eggs in any one basket. And we should not, just because we have it, assume that means we should use fuels as though we have it — because energy independence requires a certain reduced demand. We saw reduction in demand for gasoline, refined oil, this year, and part of the reason is that Americans have a choice to buy cars and trucks that use less of it. And that’s good for our economy. So the money can go somewhere else.

Q. So when people who are passionate about the environment hear “all of the above,” they’ll think of the list of things in “all of the above,” and one of them’s going to be coal. Is that part of the definition of “all of the above?”

A. What we’ve done at EPA, because we’ve had to from court order, and it’s long overdue in my opinion, is deal with pollution from coal-fired power plants. Pollution from coal-fired power plants comes from the extraction of the coal in some cases, the burning of the coal, which gives soot and smog-forming pollution, and mercury and lead and arsenic and cadmium and acid gases and then you’ve got to get rid of the ash! … One form of energy has to at least be subject to the same laws as the other forms are. That’s what we’ve been working on as far as coal. I always tell people, it’s not about coal, it’s about the pollution that for too long has been associated with coal.

And then coal has another pollution problem, and that’s carbon pollution: it’s the most carbon-intense fossil fuel. And the president invested in carbon capture and sequestration technology as part of the Recovery Act. He said all along, I’m from a coal state, so I believe that if there’s going to be a future for coal it has to be one that deals with carbon pollution, with climate change. So in my opinion the problem for coal right now is entirely economic. The natural gas that this country has and is continuing to develop is cheaper right now on average. And so people who are making investment decisions are not unmindful of that — how could you expect them to be? It just happens that at the same time, these rules are coming in place that make it clear that you cannot continue to operate a 30-, 40-, or 50-year old plant and not control the pollution that comes with it.

Listen to Lisa Jackson discuss moving beyond the economy-vs.-the-environment argument.

Q. You’re a career scientist, and public dialogue in this debate today sometimes seems to have moved completely away from science and facts. People are talking about how we live in a post-fact society. What can we do about that? Do you think that’s accurate? What do we do about it, and what can scientists do to speak more effectively and get facts back into the mix?

A. All scientists should in my opinion take heed of the importance of the peer review process. Inside the Washington Beltway is very different than outside. Inside the Washington Beltway, I’m not sure whether facts always matter, and that’s a sad thing for our country. But oftentimes EPA’s work is peer-reviewed and then peer-reviewed again — and yet it will be challenged by some report that hasn’t been peer-reviewed at all. There needs to be equivalence there — inside, for policy-makers. That would be one thing I’d ask. More and more when people pull up some, um, interesting report, my first question is, who reviewed it? Where is the peer review? Because you would never allow me to submit something that wasn’t peer-reviewed. And I think that’s fair, and I think on both sides it should be that way — on the EPA side, or the government side, the public sector side, and on those who might challenge it.

The second thing I’d say is that the American people, when given an opportunity to sit down and understand what’s going on, are very, very reasonable. The battle today is about who can get the screaming headline out first. Because, unfortunately, the way the media works, the screaming headline lives forever, and then you spend forever trying to get a headline even half as big that says, oh, that wasn’t true. So whether it’s climate change and the myriad reports about that, whether it’s people in rural America who’ve been told all manner of untruths about the work we’re doing — whether it’s that we’re going to regulate farm dust further, or that we’re going to regulate spilled milk, no matter how many times we say it, because their main sources of information are not really being truthful in how they’re giving them information, we spend an awful lot of time trying to explain to people what we’re really doing. And it’s not just on the environmental front, but that’s emblematic of how folks have learned to use this new media world.

“The screaming headline lives forever”: Listen to Lisa Jackson discuss the EPA’s battle against misinformation.

Q. This [at the Climate Solutions Breakfast] was a primarily white audience. You’ve brought a more inclusive air to the EPA. How do we get these issues out there so that all of America is on board and acting, and environmentalism is not just a province of the privileged?

A. It’s a very good point. We cannot have clean energy or health issues be the province of the privileged, right? because what happens is that those who are lower on the economic rungs feel as though this is something else that is being done to them. Everywhere I go we try to meet with communities of color, we meet with young advocates, and they totally believe that this is an important moment for their health, and for the future of our planet, when it comes to climate change. We need more partnerships that bridge that gap. There are wonderful groups at the community grassroots level; we don’t need to invent any more. We need to find them and link them up with partnerships.

I heard a wonderful story — it’s told by a guy from the Turkey Creek Watershed group in Mississippi. They are a small African American/Native American group of residents who live in this community, and they were concerned about a new highway that was going to come through yet again — wasn’t the first one — to another part of their community. And they have been dealing with the state of Mississippi on it. And he tells a funny story about how here they are working, and working, and trying to get traction about the injustice of them having to have all of this runoff. Basically, they love to fish, it’s a watershed where they do a lot of fishing. And they really didn’t start to get traction until they worked with one of the traditional groups who helped them see that not only is this a watershed, but it’s a really important flyway for migratory birds. It brought a lens to their issues at the national level, but it also brought national issues to them. It was a two-way street. So those partnerships are really important. We shouldn’t be afraid of them. We should be finding them ….

There are groups out there who care. They may speak literally a different language, or they may see their issues in a different way. But there’s a willingness to sit down at the table and say, okay, how can we make this all work? And it’s happening in communities out here, around the country. California’s doing it; New York; Chicago. We’re finding ways.

In Chicago, here’s Mayor [Rahm] Emanuel saying, how about we put some boathouses on the Chicago River? And all of a sudden communities that have lived on that river their whole life and turned their back to it, go, wait a second, we can have the kind of amenity that people on the Magnificent Mile have downtown. It changes the conversation. It’s all about finding a way to combine the issues. Nothing wrong with that. You’re not cheating if the issues, just like climate, happen to have many problems with one really cool solution.

Q. If you were writing a headline for your work on the climate issue at EPA, up to now, or for whenever your work is done at EPA, what would you want it to be?

A. “In accordance with the law, we moved forward with sensible, cost effective steps at the federal level on climate, using the Clean Air Act.” And I would have a second sentence — see, I can’t write headlines! But it would be something like, “The progress at state and local levels, combined with the federal level, does not obviate the need” — you can’t use obviate, it’s above fifth-grade level! — “does not obviate the need for federal legislation to address this incredibly important challenge for this and future generations.”

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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:

If you value our clever reporting,
And the changes that we are exhorting,
If we’ve made your life better,
And you have some spare cheddar,
Then isn’t this Grist worth supporting?

Doggerel-ly,

Chip Giller
Founder and CEO

P.S. Giving online make you a wreck? You’re also welcome to send a check: Grist, 710 Second Avenue, Suite 860, Seattle, WA 98104.

P.P.S. If we reach our goal by May 15, Grist will receive $25,000 from a generous donor.

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!
Our fine nonprofit needs an offer, from your wallet or your coffer.
We need 3,000 gifts or more by May 15 or just before.
Please give now, we do implore.

Edgar Allen Poetically,

Chip Giller
President and Founder

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.

P.P.S. If we reach our goal by May 15, Grist will receive $25,000 from a generous donor.

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 on creating open-source software and one on blogging, and founded a site called MediaBugs.org that tracks inaccuracies in the press. In short, he’s kind of a dreamboat.

I’m particularly excited to collaborate with Scott for two reasons: First, I’ve long admired his work (and considered stealing some of his ideas when I founded Grist). Second, and more important, this is a crucial time for Grist to have someone like Scott helping steer the ship. We’re reaching more people than ever before, in an era when the stakes for our planet and all of us who live on it are impossibly high — and we’re committed to arming you and millions of others with the knowledge you need to take action. With Scott at the helm, we’ll bring you juicier stories, give you new ways to communicate with us and with each other, and keep spotlighting the way to a cleaner, greener, more sustainable future.

Thanks for being part of Grist Nation, on this auspicious day and every day. We couldn’t do what we do without you. Well, you and those eerily self-aware commas.

Please give Scott a warm welcome, and stay tuned for great stuff. And check out his first post.

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 the entire week’s worth of garbage for four people.

When I did this same type of carry-my-trash-around protest in college, I was experimenting with what it would mean to shrink my personal ecological footprint in an extreme way. Looking through that lens again made me kinda nostalgic: Oh yeah, I remember that guy, the one who was frustrated at his sophomore-year roommate for owning a digital alarm clock (which had to be plugged in — duh — and thereby would be a needless waste of energy).

But let’s face it: When you consider the big picture of what really makes a difference, it’s not actions like carrying around your trash — rather, it’s getting policies in place that require manufacturers to reduce waste. Bigger picture still: Landfills just aren’t such a significant problem compared to, say, coal plants. Given a limited amount of time, you need to put your effort where you can get the most leverage.

In my life, I try to walk the talk, but doing so can sometimes lead one down a path of granularity, getting caught up in details that aren’t worth the time. So don’t sweat the small stuff, such as paper versus plastic. In your personal life, it’s the larger purchases — a new appliance, a car, a house — that especially merit attention. (Sure, bring your own mug when you go for a latte, but don’t pat yourself on the back if you drove to the coffee shop in an SUV.)

So what would be better than me hauling around my own garbage for a week? Extended producer responsibility laws, like those in Germany and other countries, which require manufacturers to take certain electronic products back at the end of their life, and ultimately design the products more intelligently in the first place. Now that’s what I’m talking about.

The garbage truck comes today to take away Percy, my seven Clif Bar wrappers, and all the other trash. But you still have time to donate to Grist. Come on: I dare you.

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 picnic table. Again with the take-out! I’m a disgrace.

Normally, we are fairly prepared for such trying moments. We keep plastic utensils in the glove compartment of the car, and we bring containers and cups with us when we get prepared food. This time, we forgot. I don’t want to blame anyone or point any fingers, so I’ll just say we forgot and leave it at that. (And maybe I’ll let Jenny carry around this stinky bag for a couple of hours this weekend.)

Back in college, when it was just me, I probably would have punished myself by not eating in a case like this. You can’t do that with kids. You have to feed them.

I got pad thai, and it came in this waxy container that can’t be recycled or composted. The kids got lentil soup. There’s still a little muck left in their soup containers, and it really stinks.

Come to think of it, the soup containers might be compostable here in Seattle. They aren’t on Vashon Island, where I live. Well! How about that? An unexpected advantage to commuting with your garbage.

But, man, it really smells. It’s embarrassing. Help me save face by making a donation 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 sure how he entered our house — maybe via a friend of my daughter’s — but this particular Percy is completely corroded. He looks like he’s been splashed with battery acid. We have a lot of old toys in our house — we usually get our toys secondhand from a local consignment place, and therefore have a high tolerance for imperfection. However, this Percy is just beyond repair; aside from the corrosion, his wheels no longer spin.

He’s heavy, too. Percy is weighing me down. Still, I don’t think my trash bag totals more than a couple of pounds. I’ll put the bag on a scale tonight and report back.

Other stuff in there: a plastic pasta bag, a plastic carrot bag that couldn’t be recycled or reused, some pipe-cleaner creatures that my kids made but are now garbage because the colorful fuzz has worn off, and some garbage from my lunch yesterday.

Let me explain: I usually bring lunch from home but occasionally indulge in a form of take-out, bringing along my own container (for salad, say) or cup. Yesterday, I somehow forgot to take along my cup. So my take-out burrito netted me not only some excess tinfoil and the thin wax paper on which it was served, but also a waxy cup (I was too parched to pass up a glass of water). Horrors!

In a way, the bag of garbage I’m carrying around is acting like a hairshirt punishing me for my sins — neglecting to pack a lunch, forgetting my cup. In a sick way, I like the reminder: See how much I suck? Look at my garbage! Must be my New England Puritan roots showing through.

In any case, people, you only have a couple more days to support this act of loserdom. In other words, please give a gift in honor of a dude touting around his trash for a week!

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 8. To keep everybody happy, we had chocolate. My daughter and I had these bite-sized Green & Black’s chocolate squares we got with a restaurant receipt a while back, and my son had a Hershey’s Kiss. So those wrappers are in the bag. I had a Clif bar. That wrapper is in the bag. Our garbage makes us look like sugarholics.

 Jenny came home. We had wrapped half a cherry pie in plastic wrap (many of the cherries from our own yard), then finished the pie, so the plastic wrap is in there. Usually, we wash plastic and reuse it, but this stuff was just nasty and unsalvageable.

When I did this back in college, I had less control over the waste I produced. For example, I went to the dining hall in the evening for an omelet and it was served on a paper plate. So I carried around this gross, sodden plate for a week, reusing it every night. Now, I wouldn’t use a paper plate. And even if I did, it could go in the compost.

That’s the other thing — I can compost now, so I don’t have food waste. And there’s more recycling than we had in college. It’s not that my family and I haven’t created waste; it’s just that most of it isn’t garbage. We made Indian food the other night, but the chickpea can and the tomato can were recyclable. We finished a bottle of lemonade, but it was glass, so it’s recyclable. We order stuff from Amazon, but those cardboard boxes get recycled.

I hope to have trashier stories for you as the week goes on. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, how about a non-wasteful gift to Grist?