DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. Much of the country this week has experienced heavy snow, sleet and ice, and some regions will contend with subfreezing temperatures for many days to come. Scientists say extreme weather events have become more frequent and punishing with global climate change, so we thought this would be a good time to take stock of how U.S. policy on climate issues has changed under the second Donald Trump administration. Trump is a longtime climate change skeptic, known to refer to global warming at times as a hoax or a con job. His administration has moved aggressively to reverse the Biden administration's climate policies on many fronts.
Our guest today is David Gelles, a reporter on The New York Times climate team who leads the paper's Climate Forward newsletter. Before joining the climate team, Gelles spent eight years as a business reporter at the Times, covering chief executives, tech, media, Wall Street and other issues. Gelles has written three books, including "The Man Who Broke Capitalism," about influential corporate executive Jack Welch, and most recently, "Dirtbag Billionaire," published last fall about Yvon Chouinard, founder of the firm Patagonia. David Gelles has just returned from the World Economic Forum at Davos, where he spoke to leaders of business and government about climate policy and other issues. We recorded our conversation yesterday.
David Gelles, welcome back to FRESH AIR.
DAVID GELLES: Thanks for having me.
DAVIES: I wonder what, if anything, you heard when you were in Davos from corporate leaders or government officials regarding the events in Minnesota, where, you know, a second person was fatally shot by federal agents last week.
GELLES: What's happening in Minnesota and more broadly in our country right now was impossible to ignore, even though I was in Davos and I was speaking with leaders and executives from around the world. It's weighing heavily on people's minds, and the latest shooting was one data point. But I would say more broadly, global leaders are looking at the United States with a real sense of concern. What I heard is that they believe that beyond a more erratic foreign policy, they are seeing the erosion of social norms and, frankly, the erosion of a rule of law that they had come to count on from the United States. And so whether it's what's happening in Minneapolis or events in Washington or, frankly, whatever the headlines are that I know we're all so overwhelmed by, this is front-page news around the world, as well.
DAVIES: Yeah. And I'm wondering how they respond to this. You know, Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, made that pretty remarkable speech in which he - and it's hard to summarize, but, you know, he said essentially that, you know, the rules-based international order has given way to great power rivalry in which, you know, they use all of these tools, trade and supply chain weaknesses, to maneuver. And he said essentially that middle powers, like Canada and others, end up competing with each other to be the most accommodating, which is accepting subordination. What are you hearing about how they want to respond to Trump? Are they - do they want to challenge? Are they afraid?
GELLES: Well, first, I'd say, that was a remarkable speech, and it really was the talk of the town in Davos until President Trump made his own speech on Wednesday. And I think it speaks to the fact that, indeed, leaders like Carney are having to respond in a number of ways. On the one hand, it is true that - call it middle powers, as he did, are finding themselves in a position where they need to be more assertive against a long-time, extraordinarily powerful ally.
And it's not just on issues like trade. Over the past several weeks, we saw that this is true on an issue that concerns national security - Greenland. Until President Trump, while I was in the room on Wednesday, said he was not going to use force to seize Greenland, all of the talk among the security professionals I had been with that week was about whether European troops were going to have to defend European territory against American aggression.
So there is a new question among middle powers and even our allies about whether and how adversarial they are going to have to be with the United States. And in the very same moment, I want to emphasize how much of a sense, frankly, of loss there is. There's a deep sense of worry, of concern that you might have for an old friend who's going through a hard time about what is happening in the United States. And so what I found is leaders having to hold both of these motions at once. On one hand, a deep sense of concern for an old friend and, at the very same moment, a recognition that they may have to take a tougher posture against that very same good friend.
DAVIES: I mean, you know, Trump taking power after the 2024 election is a reminder that these policies can radically change with an election. And there's a congressional election coming up and then a presidential election beyond. Do leaders think, maybe we wait this out? Maybe this isn't a permanent posture of the United States?
GELLES: I ask many leaders this very question. And I'm talking former heads of state. I'm talking executives of major international companies. And two - a man and a woman - they all said that they believed that this time was different. And it wasn't just because of the speed at which President Trump and his administration are undoing decades of norms. There's also a sense, as Carney alluded to, of a broader global reset. And yes, perhaps the United States and the Trump administration is precipitating some of that or hastening some of that. But the other factors that many alluded to that were a part of this sort of rupture are the rise of China, the changes in the Middle East, the reset in global trade and thus global alliances that we're seeing, the rise of other authoritarian leaders around the globe. There really is a sense that even if it were not for the extraordinary actions coming out of the White House every day, we would be in a moment that was going to move away from the past 70-plus years of international order since the last world war and towards something quite different that no one can entirely predict.
DAVIES: On climate change, you know, you've written about corporate leaders and their policies towards global warming. And some years ago, there was a lot of commitment, or at least verbal commitment, to policies that would make this a priority. How have things changed?
GELLES: Well, this was very much on my mind as I headed to Davos last week. It was there at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January of 2020, that many financial leaders started to really say climate change was going to be a defining issue for finance going forward. Larry Fink, who is the chief executive of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, arrived in Davos that year wearing a scarf that depicted a hundred years of global warming. And just a week before, he had issued a letter to chief executives calling climate change a fundamental reshaping of finance. In the year that followed, so many other banks, asset managers, asset owners started making voluntary pledges, saying that they were going to be a part of this broad set of solution. And, in fact, Mark Carney, who's now the prime minister of Canada, who we just alluded to, he was a major figure in this, as well. He founded a new group called GFANZ in 2021, which aimed to use $100 trillion or more of assets at the disposal of the financial community to try to bend the curve on emissions to try to promote clean energy and, over time, reduce the use of fossil fuels. And as I went to Davos this year, it struck me that so much of that work has simply dissipated. Many of the alliances that had been formed had fallen apart. Many of the commitments that had been made had simply not been upheld. And what I tried to do over the past couple weeks was really understand what had happened. And this was very much the conversation - and it wasn't always an easy one to have - that I was engaging with with leaders at Davos.
DAVIES: So what accounts for the dramatic change?
GELLES: Several things. The first, and it's unavoidable, is President Trump. As we've already noted, he came back to office a year ago and unleashed a raft of radical policy changes that changed the energy trajectory in the United States, changed the incentive structure for corporations here and abroad who wanted to embrace clean energy, and that has had ripple effects. But as I did the reporting, it became clear that that was just one of a much broader set of realities that have changed on the ground and in the markets over the last six years.
A couple others that have been really important in essentially silencing climate action over the past few years were, No. 1, a really strong Republican grassroots pushback against climate action in the business community. This is things like ESG and CSR. In 2020 and 2021, many corporations really took it upon themselves to say that it was their job not just to run profitable businesses, but to engage in the social issues of the day.
DAVIES: Right. ESG stands for what?
GELLES: ESG stands for environmental, social and governance factors. This is Wall Street jargon that - you know, depends on who you're talking to - can mean a whole lot of different things. But ESG became shorthand for companies caring about trying to tackle climate change. And what you found was that a lot of local Republicans - and I'm talking specifically about local Republican state treasurers - many of them were very uncomfortable with this. And they started pulling their money from companies like BlackRock, banning state governments from doing business with companies that were pursuing climate action and ultimately opening investigations into some of these companies and even suing them. So that was another big piece of why corporate America sort of backed off its engagement with climate change.
And then the last thing I would note is that the energy politics and the energy markets have shifted dramatically since 2020. And of course, one of the major precipitating events was Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That was a moment that scrambled the energy markets, that made it much more difficult for some European countries to transition away from natural gas, that increased prices in some markets. And between all three of those - the Russian invasion of Ukraine, local American politics and the return of President Trump - all of that has made it much more difficult for companies to act on climate change.
DAVIES: Before we talk about the Trump administration's climate policies, I wanted to ask one more question about the events in Minnesota and the business community. You know, recently, a bunch of major Minnesota companies - Target, Best Buy, General Mills among them - issued a statement along with three of the city's sports teams calling for a de-escalation of tensions in Minneapolis - a pretty neutral statement generally, but not a subject they typically wade into. What's happening here? What does this tell us?
GELLES: Well, first, Dave, I wonder if we could go back in time nine years ago and think about something that happened in the first years of the first Trump administration, which was the Unite the Right rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. This was another spasm of violence. It wasn't the government attacking American citizens, but it was a very heated moment. And what you saw then was the corporate community rise up in unison. And I'm talking the major CEOs of just about every American company come out and say, this is unacceptable. The president's rhetoric about this event was unacceptable. And many CEOs actually distance themselves from the White House at that point.
I think that's instructive to consider at this moment because what we have seen not only in the past couple weeks around what's happening in Minneapolis, but more broadly, is that corporate America is not speaking out about the actions that are coming out of the White House. And more broadly, they're not speaking out about social and political issues in the same way they did just a few years ago. And the reason for that, and I know this because I've spoken with many CEOs about these very issues, is that they are concerned that if they speak out, President Trump and the White House might penalize them. They might attack them on social media. They might even launch a lawsuit against them.
There is a climate of fear that exists in the C-suite, in the boardrooms, of corporate America that simply wasn't there several years ago. And this is why you see so many CEOs that, during the First Trump administration, were willing to come out and take very explicit stands against this administration, very explicit stands on social issues - they are simply keeping their heads down right now. And so what you've seen just in the last couple days, with some Minnesota business leaders coming out and saying, we need to de-escalate tensions - I mean, that's a first step. But it is shocking to see, frankly, the silence from so many other business leaders when just a few years ago, speaking out on an issue like this would have been not only expected by employees, by customers, but something that they would have been encouraging one another to do.
DAVIES: We'll talk more in a moment. Let's take a break here, but let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with David Gelles. He's a reporter on The New York Times climate team who leads the paper's Climate Forward newsletter. We'll talk more after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and our guest is David Gelles, a reporter on The New York Times climate team. We're speaking about the Trump administration and business executives' approach to climate change policies. We recorded our conversation yesterday.
Now, under the Biden administration, there were a whole series of government incentives, you know, many of them through tax breaks, to promote, you know, the development of renewables. There were incentives for people to install solar panels, tax breaks for buying electrical vehicles. What's happened to those incentives?
GELLES: (Laughter) They're just about all gone. I don't know how else to say it. My colleagues and I at The New York Times spent most of last year covering this extraordinary unwinding of federal policy that was designed to gradually over time, shift the United States economy away from a fossil fuel economy and toward one that is powered by clean energy. In the first year of this second Trump administration, the White House has moved with extraordinary speed to undo so many of the incentives and regulations that were making that transition happen.
And if I may, I'll just rattle off a few. I mean, when it comes to wind energy, you've seen in the headlines President Trump and the administration canceling, shuttering, these big wind farms that are essentially constructed off the East Coast and saying that even though that power is ready to plug into the grid, they're not allowed. More broadly, for land-based wind farms, you've seen a real ratcheting down of approvals and, in some case - I covered last year the cancellation of a loan that was meant to facilitate the construction of a large transmission line. And this is boring, but the country really needs more transmission lines. They canceled it because it was going to carry electrons that would have been powered in part by wind energy. And so there is this congenital aversion to all things wind from President Trump and his administration that is just decimating the industry here in the United States.
DAVIES: And if I can just ask for a little clarification here. This may be too much down...
GELLES: It's OK.
DAVIES: ...In the weeds. But...
GELLES: Let's go.
DAVIES: How does the president have the authority to cancel a wind project that's practically finished? I mean, a lot of these are done by - they're, you know, business-government partnerships. State governments are actors in these. How does he have the authority to do this? Or is it clear that he does?
GELLES: Well, no. Some of these are being litigated in the courts, and in some cases, the Trump administration has used sort of extraordinary measures, alleging that there are things like national security issues at play that give them the power to intervene in the private markets in a way that, previously, most executives would just have not expected the administration - any administration - to do so. And I think, just, if I may go on a little tangent here, this speaks to a broader issue that corporate America is wrangling with, which is that for a party, the Republican Party, that has for so long been associated with free markets and free enterprise, they are now confronting an exceptionally interventionist White House.
You have a White House that is not only taking positions on individual projects and really trying to put their fingers on the scales of individual industries. But you have it playing out in extraordinarily personal ways. And so just to tie it back to our conversation earlier about whether corporations and CEOs were going to speak out about an issue or not, one thing that has shocked me is that if you think back to the first Trump administration, the issues - the political issues that CEOs were speaking up on really had very little bearing on their day-to-day business. These were issues in the headlines. They were issues about politics and race, in the case of George Floyd, and COVID. These were the issues that CEOs found themselves in dialogue with.
Today you have a White House that is really intervening with their businesses in the case of tariffs, in the case of taking a stake in certain companies, in the case of putting their fingers on the scale of certain industries. And despite the fact that this administration is really meddling with business operations, much more than the first Trump administration did, you have CEOs unable to say almost anything in their own defense. That dichotomy has been really extraordinary for me to just meditate on.
DAVIES: Yeah, yeah. We're going to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with David Gelles. He's a reporter on The New York Times climate team who leads the paper's Climate Forward newsletter. We'll talk more about the impact of the Trump administration's climate policies after this short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. Today, we're talking about the Trump administration's aggressive push to reverse the climate policies of the Biden administration with David Gelles, a reporter on The New York Times climate team who leads the paper's Climate Forward newsletter. Gelles spent many years as a business reporter. And he attended the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, where he spoke to business and government leaders about climate policy and other issues. Gelles' latest book is "Dirtbag Billionaire" about Yvon Chouinard, founder of the innovative clothing firm Patagonia. We recorded our conversation yesterday.
So a lot of tax incentives for solar panels and electric vehicles were actually overturned in a bill passed by Congress, right? The Republicans control both Houses. And it was signed by President Trump, correct?
GELLES: Yes. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as I believe it was originally known.
DAVIES: Right. And then in August, the administration proposed to roll back fuel efficiency standards for cars and to prevent states from setting their own requirements, as California has done, which kind of gave automakers a strong incentive to make cars which met the California standards, which would reduce emissions. Now, what's happened here?
GELLES: Well, you point out something really important, Dave, which is that this hasn't just been a congressional act, turning the dials on incentives here. What we're seeing, in fact, is a much more coordinated effort across Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency to all work in concert to essentially promote the fossil fuel industry and tamp down the clean energy business. So it's important, I think, to see this as a whole rather than try to understand any one of these actions in isolation.
DAVIES: I just wanted to talk a bit about for - what this means for automakers, because if California has enacted, you know, higher fuel efficiency standards and automakers - you know, it takes years to design cars and build plants to meet these standards. How are they reacting to this? I mean, this has got to be confusing to them.
GELLES: They're not only confused, but I know, because I've spoken with them, they're incredibly frustrated. It's not just time. It's money. These designs and these plants and these supply chains require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment. And what you've seen is that many American automakers, including Ford, just a couple years ago came out with a vehicle like the F-150 Lightning, right? This was their classic pickup truck upgraded to be an all-electric vehicle. It was a marvel, and now you see them walking back and essentially discontinuing it. And while that may, in the short term, be a boon for the internal combustion engine in the United States, there is no question that the rest of the world is moving in the opposite direction.
I mean, I can't tell you how many times, when I was in Davos just last week in Switzerland or last year when I was in Belem, Brazil, at the United Nations climate conference, I would call an Uber and what would arrive was a BYD Chinese electric vehicle that costs less than most American cars comparably and that performed exceptionally well, felt like a luxury vehicle and was a fraction of the price for something that you might pay that was equivalent out of the United States. So this is what is on automakers' minds as they look forward. It's not just about fuel efficiency standards in the next five years. It's about - how are they going to be able to compete for market share in the decades ahead?
DAVIES: So where does this battle over fuel efficiency standards lie? I mean, is that settled?
GELLES: Well, late last year, the Trump administration began the process of really drastically rolling back fuel economy requirements for new cars, new trucks, which is part of this broader pivot that we've mentioned away from cleaner technology more broadly. But the actual implementation of this is going to take years. And as with anything with these kind of standards, there could be additional lawsuits. So I don't think it's fully settled, but the Trump administration is certainly trying to move it in that direction.
DAVIES: We've talked a bit about solar panels and wind power. The Environmental Protection Agency under the president - Trump - has really taken some bold policy steps to essentially change the way regulations are calculated, the very basis upon which climate change is considered and kind of economic factors are taken into consideration. Can you just give us a sense of how that world has changed?
GELLES: I think when you step back and try to understand which government agency has undergone the most drastic change over the past year, I would argue that the EPA, which was founded by President Nixon, has to be at the top of the list. From the moment that current Administrator Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman, took it over, we've seen the EPA really fundamentally reshape its mission. And this began very early in this most recent administration, when the president and the EPA did just that.
They actually came out very early and said that the role of the EPA was no longer reducing pollution that was harmful to humans, but instead that its role was to support economic activity. And I think it's just worth dwelling on what a fundamental reversal that is, and that set the table for so many actions that have followed. They have repealed or tried to weaken regulatory standards for a raft of pollutants coming out of power plants, industrial facilities and vehicles. They have tried to challenge the very legal framework that allows the EPA to regulate harmful pollutants and greenhouse gases. And just a couple weeks ago, they actually recalculated the math by which they attribute value to a human life, and they determined that the value of a human life was zero.
And so in all these ways, both abstract and very specific, you see the Environmental Protection Agency walking away from its historical role as the defender of public health and public air and clean air and clean water and, instead, embracing a posture that is almost entirely designed to support industry in being free to do whatever it wants.
DAVIES: I have to ask you a little more about the value of human life. What was it before?
GELLES: I mean, for the past 30 years, the EPA has assessed the value of a statistical life at around $11.7 million. Today it is now going to be zero.
DAVIES: We are speaking with David Gelles. He's a reporter on The New York Times climate team. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with David Gelles. He's a reporter on The New York Times climate team who leads the paper's Climate Forward newsletter.
A lot of us are freezing right now. I certainly am. I'm recovering from heavy snow or ice. And some would say whatever this is, it is not global warming. Remind us why this kind of weather - you can't pin any particular weather phenomenon to climate change, but why this kind of weather might be more common with the climate change.
GELLES: Dave, I'm in New York right now, and it is freezing cold right here. There's no doubt about it. It's also the truth that 2025 was the warmest year overall in global recorded history and that all 10 of the hottest years in recorded history have happened over the past decade. And so as you said, no one weather event can be directly linked to climate change or not. But what the science has been overwhelmingly clear about is that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, from human activity, from agriculture are turning up the temperature on Earth overall. And as that happens, weather gets more extreme, and it gets less predictable.
And so one of the things that we have been seeing over the past several years especially is that the Arctic has been getting warmer. And what has happened right now is that a lot of the Arctic air that typically sits up there on the North Pole - it has escaped. It has essentially come down into the United States, other parts of Europe as well. And what you're seeing if you look at a global temperature map is that it's actually warmer above us, to the north, than it is right here. So these are the scrambling of global weather patterns that science has told us for decades now are going to become more common as man-made global warming overall makes weather more extreme, more volatile, less predictable. So, yeah, we're going to see some very cold snaps, even on a hotter planet.
DAVIES: You know, in May, I read in The Times that the White House ordered federal agencies to stop considering the economic damage caused by climate change when writing regulations, except in cases where it's plainly required by law. The assumption is that climate change has no economic impact in these regulations. That seems kind of wild.
GELLES: And we just know that's not true. But here again, you see the reshaping of regulation to accommodate a new set of business priorities. And so even if businesses will tell you - and every CEO that I talk to can tell you how climate change is affecting their supply chains, how it's changing the way they have to air-condition large factories that I've been to in the Midwest, how it's changing how they have to protect or even move facilities on the coast. That's all happening. But what the Trump administration is now saying is that they don't have to consider those impacts when passing laws. In fact, it would be better if they didn't at all.
DAVIES: You know, one of the other things that I read in your reporting on this was that the administration had eliminated monitoring of atmospheric changes at some of these stations around the world, one in particular in Hawaii that's many, many thousands of feet above sea level. They don't even want to gather this data?
GELLES: And it's not just Hawaii. I had conversations while I was in Davos with international scientists about this very issue. And they were really concerned because one of the functions that the United States government has fulfilled for decades now is being, really, a leading compiler of research about our changing planet. Much of that work is simply being discontinued. It's being defunded. The scientists are losing access to their facilities. And what you're seeing is the emergence of sort of a dark ages when it comes to the United States' role in collaborative international science, at least when it comes to the government's role. Organizations like NASA, the space agency, have historically played a huge role in providing the international community with data about global temperatures, sea level rise, any number of things. And what you're seeing is that work is simply being discontinued.
And all of this, I think, again goes back to this broader effort across the government to shift the federal government's posture away from climate action and toward a re-embrace of fossil fuels. And this is one more small way in which it's happening, which is that if you don't have the data that shows that climate change is happening and that it is dangerous and that it is indeed affecting our lives and the planet as a whole, well, then it's that much harder to make decisions and make the argument that climate change is something that needs to be addressed.
DAVIES: Besides domestic policy, the - Trump has withdrawn the United States from certain international commitments, like the Paris Agreement to fight climate change. We're only one of four countries now not in the agreement. Iran, Libya and Yemen are the others. We've all heard of the Paris Agreement. I think most of us don't know much about it. I mean, the reporting makes me think it's a place where a company - countries all set goals that they ultimately will not meet. How meaningful is this withdrawal?
GELLES: I think it's very meaningful for a number of reasons. And in fact, that was one of his first actions that he took when he was inaugurated just over a year ago, was withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. And it's true, Dave, that the Paris Agreement itself is not particularly binding. It didn't automatically mean that the United States or any other country was going to rapidly embrace clean energy. But what it did was send a signal to industry, to policymakers, to local leaders that a country was on a path and that that path ultimately led toward a world in which we were not polluting so much and gave ourselves, as a collective, the opportunity to try to limit global temperature rise.
By pulling out of that agreement, the United States sent a signal to the rest of the world that it simply wasn't even going to try. And in sending that signal, it made it much harder for other countries to galvanize their own coalition of policymakers and business leaders to do the same thing. So while on one hand, maybe this only affects the United States, it has sent shock waves around the world. And as you note, we are now - the United States - part of a pretty unusual club of countries who have said that they are not going to participate in this global agreement.
DAVIES: And then, of course, early in the administration, the U.S. Agency for International Development was dismantled. I mean, I think Elon Musk's phrase was, I just put it in the wood chipper. Did that have environmental impacts?
GELLES: Yeah. I mean, we could spend a whole nother hour and a half talking just about foreign policy here. But there is no doubt that while the United States Agency for International Development was mostly focused on traditional development work, things like hunger and health for developing nations, it was also doing a really meaningful amount of climate work - helping developing nations become more resilient, helping them prepare for storms, floods, fires and droughts. And all of that work has been shuttered as well.
DAVIES: We are speaking with David Gelles. He's a reporter on The New York Times climate team. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALABAMA SHAKES SONG, "GIMME ALL YOUR LOVE")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with David Gelles. He's a reporter on The New York Times climate team who leads the paper's Climate Forward newsletter.
I wanted to talk about your latest book. It's called "Dirtbag Billionaire." And it's about Yvon Chouinard, who established Patagonia, this very successful manufacturer of outdoor gear, jackets, hats, vests. And it's known for being a company that made environmental responsibility a core tenet of its business. Let's just talk a little bit about him. He's quite an interesting character. And this term - dirtbag - had a very specific meaning, right?
GELLES: Well, let's start there. Yvon Chouinard refers to himself as a dirtbag. He's a rock climber. He's someone who comes from this hardcore outdoor community. And in that context, the word dirtbag refers to someone who is so unenamored with materialism, so unconcerned with money, that they are literally content to sleep in the dirt if it means they are that much closer to their next adventure. And so when Yvon Chouinard heard the title of this book, "Dirtbag Billionaire," about him, he was upset not because of the word dirtbag. He was upset because of the word billionaire because he never wanted to be a billionaire.
DAVIES: He has a fascinating childhood story, doesn't he?
GELLES: He was born in the woods of northern Maine in a French Canadian community. And in fact, he didn't even speak English until he was 10 years old, when his parents drove across the country to find warmer weather and he started going to school in Los Angeles.
Now, at that point, he had a hard time fitting in because he didn't speak English. And as a teenager, he started training falcons. He started training birds of prey and pursuing this ancient art of falconing. And in the process of climbing down cliffs to search for and ultimately capture falcons and their eggs, he started rock climbing. And when that happened, everything changed. He became enamored and then became, in the 1950s, one of the great rock climbers of his age. And in doing that, he became a blacksmith. He did these big climbs, but he needed better equipment, so he hammered them out himself on an anvil he bought at a junkyard. And thus begins his journey as a businessman.
DAVIES: Wow. And was he taking his profits and putting them into environmental causes?
GELLES: Indeed. 1973, the same year he founds Patagonia, he writes his first check to an environmental activist. It's just a little money, but he also gives him some office space. And what this man, who I tracked down and spent time with, Mark Capelli, was doing was trying to protect the Ventura River, which ran behind the office of Patagonia in Ventura, California, and restore the native fish that were once there but that had been crowded out because of pollution and overdevelopment. Yvon loved this. And that began a tradition of donating small amounts of money initially to grassroots environmental activists, to conservation projects. And it was something that grew as the company grew.
DAVIES: In your research, did you ever find a case where he betrayed his principles or pursue a course that kind of exemplified the contradictions in what he was doing?
GELLES: Dave, it is not a neat and tidy story. He is not a perfect man. Patagonia is not a perfect company. And over and over, what I found was that whether it was in business decisions, whether it was in personnel decisions, whether it was in their relationships with other companies that they partnered with, they had to constantly and continuously balance these many competing priorities.
DAVIES: Was he good to his employees? Did he share profits?
GELLES: He didn't, Dave. And this is another contradiction. And while it's true that Patagonia embraced some very progressive human resources practices and really tried to give its employees time to enjoy nature, he not once ever shared profits and not once ever gave away stock in the company. He was always incredibly protective of Patagonia's equity. And that, I think, also works both ways. On the one hand, I spoke with employees who were really resentful of the fact that they gave decades of their lives to this company and did not walk away with a meaningful amount of money. On the flip side, it was only by controlling that equity so carefully that Chouinard was able to do this extraordinary thing that I broke the news about in The New York Times a few years ago which was that he essentially gave away the entire company into a new structure that now facilitates the donation of all Patagonia profits to environmental charities.
DAVIES: Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure he could have, you know, sold the company for a fortune.
GELLES: Well, he at one point had an offer for $6 billion. And yet, he didn't want it. His wife didn't want it. Dave, I spent time with them at their home in Wyoming, and they live in the same log cabin they built for themselves in the 1970s. The furniture is all from Goodwill or it's second hand. He cooks for himself every night. They don't have a chef. They don't have a cleaning lady. These people live incredibly modest, humble lives. And it was only because that was sort of who they were that they were able to do this extraordinary transaction a few years ago. And here's what they did just very briefly.
The Chouinard family owned 100% of the equity in Patagonia. What they did, without getting too technical, was transfer the equity to a new series of trusts and nonprofit organizations that essentially transferred the equity out of their possession into the holding of a trust and some nonprofits. And then they instructed the trust to have the company itself donate all of its profits that are not reinvested in the company, which is somewhere $60 and $100 million a year, to the nonprofit organizations which now give away all that money to large-scale land conservation and environmental activism on an ongoing basis. One way I like to think about this story is that it's the compound interest of values. What you see is that the values Chouinard cared about in the 1970s are still the ones informing the company today, and as a result, the company and its profits are having these big, outsized impacts. And it's not just in the charity. Patagonia has had a hand in shaping the rest of the apparel industry with coalitions, with partnerships, with things like the rise of organic cotton, and all of that was made possible because these few individuals understood what they cared about more than a half century ago and stuck with it.
DAVIES: A hopeful story in a world in which there aren't so many. Yeah. David Gelles, thank you so much for speaking with us.
GELLES: It's always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
DAVIES: David Gelles is a reporter on The New York Times climate team who leads the paper's Climate Forward newsletter. His latest book is "Dirtbag Billionaire." On tomorrow's show, we speak with Brooke Nevils. She was a producer at "Today," working with Matt Lauer when she says he sexually assaulted her. In her new memoir, "Unspeakable Things," she writes about that, the consequences of going public and how sexual assault has been covered by the media. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram @nprfreshair.
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DAVIES: FRESH AIR's executive producers are Danny Miller and Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with additional engineering support from Diana Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.
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