Humes - Eco barons: the dreamers, schemers, and millionaires who are saving our planet

The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet

To Donna

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done wellor ill?

JOHN STEINBECK, EAST OF EDEN

the planbuy low, sell never

The little Cessna darted out from under the clouds and Doug Tompkins got his first glimpse of Reihue Fjord, a misty blue gem in southern Chile, where the longest country in the world is pencil thin and the snow-capped Andes tumble toward the sea like an army finishing a long march. A colony of seals basking on the fjords rocky beach lifted their heads skyward to bellow at the passing plane as Tompkins banked inland, away from the sparse ranch that occupied the brown and narrow coastal flats. Now he was over a majestic river valley, woods seemingly untouched by saw, ax, or torch, and though he was not a religious man, it was impossible not to think of fabled Eden in this damp and glorious setting, the worlds last intact temperate rain forest. Everywhere he looked, a raw, primordial wilderness filled his senses. Wet, sun-dappled, mysterious, it was colored in shades of green and blue not even Rousseau imagined for his most vivid jungle canvasescolors lit from within and pulsing with life so deep they seemed of another world.

Tompkinss world was a very different one, the world of industry and commerce, of image over substancethe fashion business. Between 1970 and 1989, he had built a catalog of knockoff clothes into a distinctive brand, and then had made the brand into a symbol of what people yearned to be, and then he had become an icon himself, a personification of his company, the hottest label of the era: Esprit. That made him a visionary, or so people said, a perception he encouraged by titling himself image director instead of CEO. But now it was 1990 and his company was in turmoil, his marriage had been destroyed, and the pride he had always taken in his craft had long since ebbed. Cruising now above a turquoise river twisting through virgin forest, Tompkins found himself wondering, not for the first time, just what the hell he had been thinking all those years he spent deciding what color socks teenage girls would wear, or how tight or low-cut their jeans would be next fall. Accolades and success in the world of fashion didnt seem to mean much here in the heart of Patagonia, the lush southern third of the South American continent, named by Magellan for the Patagons, mythical giants he swore lived there. Patagonia remains one of the last completely wild big places left on earth, home to sleek, elusive pumas and tiny pudu rare deer scarcely bigger than poodlesand 3,600-year-old alerce trees, towering cousins to Californias sequoias. The tallest alerces still standing are among the oldest organisms on earth. They bore witness to the rise of civilization. And like every other wild thing in Patagonia, they are in danger.

Tompkins had been an outdoorsman all his life: a daring white-water kayaker; a skier with aspirations to compete in the Olympics; a serious mountain climber who once spent four weeks holed up in an ice cave with four buddies, waiting out an epic storm until they could finally blaze a new trail to the summit. That had been in Patagonia, too, twenty-two years and a lifetime ago, and ever since, he had always built into his business model three, four, or five months in the wild somewhere. MBA, he called it: managing by absence. He had done it when Esprit was little more than a young married couple in San Francisco selling flowery hippie dresses out of their station wagon in 1970, and he had done it as CEO of a billion-dollar global fashion empire. More often than not, with the whisper of an ancient forest and the pelting drumbeat of rain so frequent it has to be measured in meters, the wild place that called to him was Patagonia. He understood what Pablo Neruda, Chiles Nobel laureate poet, meant in writing, Anyone who hasnt been in the Chilean forest doesnt know this planet.

For years, Tompkins had tried to nurture his inner environmentalist through his business. He regularly wrote checks to respectable conservation groups. He built an urban park near Esprits headquarters in San Francisco, a splash of green and transplanted redwoods beloved by the neighborhoods kids and dog owners. There were the essays he slipped into the company catalogs, urging people to embrace healthier lifestyles, recycle more, consume less. And when his old mountain-climbing buddy, the founder of the clothing company Patagonia, called him in 1988 and asked him to chip in to buy and preserve some fast-vanishing Chilean forest land, he impulsively agreed. Tompkinss $50,000 helped bankroll a nature preserve filled with endangered araucaria trees, towering evergreens with a whimsical Dr. Seuss look, commonly called the monkey puzzle tree. Just like that, a park was born instead of a field of stumps. No red tape. No bureaucrats weighing commercial interests against the environmentthe sort of lobbyist-driven balancing act that had turned whole swaths of the United States protected national forests into lucrative fiefdoms for timber, mining, and oil concerns. Six thousand miles south, however, it seemed all you had to do was write a check, and it was done. No one would ever cut down those araucaria, living fossils that have survived as a recognizable species since the age of the dinosaurs, impervious to all threats but one: the age of man.

Suddenly it seemed so clear to Tompkins. He had been on the wrong side too long, running a global fashion business with factories in Hong Kong, boutiques and superstores worldwide, and offices in a dozen countries. He shipped clothes all over the earth, using artful images and beautiful models to persuade people to consume things they didnt need, then eagerly replace them each season with new things before the old were even close to worn out. He had tried to compensate with his donations and his essays, but Esprit was never going to be green or sustainable or good for the earth, and neither was Tompkinsso long as he was part of it. And so, amid crises and takeover bids at Esprit, as the vulture investors circled and his empire of image began to collapse, he rounded up a few close friends and, with no explanation beyond his need to get away for an adventure, they flew to Patagonia in a pair of small planes. Tompkinss company and his marriage were besieged and yet, as the Chilean rain forests slid by beneath his plane, his friends could see that he looked happier than theyd seen him in years.

Before leaving San Francisco, he had called the Chile-based activist who brokered the deal to save the araucaria trees, and Tompkins gleaned the piece of information that would change his life: A lot more of Patagonia could still be bought cheap. Old-growth forests could be had for as little as twelve dollars an acre, and one such area was Reihue. When Tompkins completed his flyover and started talking to a real estate agent, he found that a broken-down ranch next to the fjord, along with all its spectacular surroundings, was for sale. The seller would even throw in the cattle. He could have 24,700 acres for $600,000.