Surfing the Big One
When it comes to climate change, do we ride the big one in, or kick out for another try?
Some Reflections of a Baby Boomer on a Lifetime of Contributions to the Climate Crisis
What does surfing have to do with the climate crisis? I thought it was a pretty cool metaphor. And I was inspired by a surfer dude named Yvon Choinard who just gave away his 100 billion dollar apparel business. Gave it away. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Seattle to Saigon. That’s 7,000 miles x 0.2 pounds per mile per passenger = 1,400 pounds of CO2.
I confess. I’m a Million Miler on United Airlines—and have been for about 15 years. A million miles equals about 250 metric tons of CO2 I added alone, not including the hundreds of thousands of other passengers who flew with me over those years. Add flights on other airlines and miles driven, and my carbon footprint exceeds a million metric tons.
Pardon my French, but that is a shit-ton of carbon dioxide.
According to ChatGPT, my estimated carbon footprint of 1 million metric tons over 50 years is “significantly” higher than that of the average American, and the impact of such a high carbon footprint on global warming is “substantial.” No shit.
Idarado Mine, Telluride, 1974
But wait, there’s more. I spent a gap year in college in the extraction industry, working two miles inside a hard rock mine in Telluride, Colorado, where I single-handedly extracted about 40 tons of ore daily. (Okay, it wasn’t all me; I teamed up with a machine.) It would have taken me 100 years working my ass off to extract a million tons of hard rock, the same amount of CO2 that I injected into the atmosphere in 50 years of travel. Just sitting. On the same ass.
Shanghai, 1979
And more. I also helped kick global warming into high gear by linking American corporations with their Chinese counterparts in the 80’s and 90’s. When I arrived in Shanghai in 1979, there was no such thing as garbage because consumer products simply did not exist, and neither did packaging. By default, everything was biodegradable. Anything made of metal was built to last—or be repurposed. The food was all organic because there was no other option. Pretty nifty, huh?
Today, China manufactures everything that we no longer want to make, from toasters to Teslas (yes, Elon does import from his Shanghai plant, depending on supply chains and demand). So it’s no surprise that here in 2024, China is the biggest polluter in the world. I take some small credit for that.
Tokyo, 1987. Selling “Hunting World” handbags for thousands of dollars in Japan. Our concept store featured an espresso stand before Starbucks opened its first international store.
After leaving China, I worked in Japan’s consumer goods and fashion industries during their boom years, learning the art of selling the same thing to more and more people by making it appear scarce while paradoxically offering ever-increasing choices of essentially the same product. We justified this by saying we were selling happiness and status. The apex of my deceit was at Chanel, where fashion is designed to sell increasingly expensive items to the same people four times a year. After all, nobody would be caught dead in last year’s Chanel suit. And can you imagine the ignominy of showing up at a party and someone else is wearing the same Chanel suit as you? Oh, the shame!
China, 1994. Clockwise from top right with Senior Vice Premier Zhu Rongji, with Mickey, and with Pluto on a 100k trail run/walk.
To extricate myself from the world, I joined a company that sold an interesting commodity: happiness. They called themselves the ‘happiest place on earth’ and had a cute mouse as a mascot. Back to China I trotted because, by this time, Chinese families had been doubling their disposable income every few years and were well on their way to discarding the ‘one child per family’ policy because the tea leaves, and basic economic and demographic theory, told them they would have a declining population within a generation or two. In Shanghai, we found a grand colonial-era dance hall from the roaring 20s that had been converted into an indoor entertainment center for children. It even featured a familiar-looking mouse and an ornery duck. The brigade leader who managed it boasted that they averaged 90,000 visits each weekend day—the same as Disneyland at the time.
During those years, I was clueless about what was happening to our planet—despite being asthmatic, despite the lesions that appeared on my arms during the dry Beijing winters that filled the air with a mixture of coal dust and fine espresso ground sand, and despite the humid summers in Tokyo where the city’s pubic address system regularly blasted this message: “Attention, residents. We are experiencing high levels of photochemical smog. Please avoid outdoor activities.” Even the cicadas stopped their jabbering to listen.
That was forty years ago. Like everyone else around me, I was determinedly complicit in my unawareness.
Wander enough, and you’ll find what you’re looking for. Eventually, my wandering led me to Patagonia. The company. Those surfer dudes who make weird shorts called “Baggies.” I showed up for an interview to lead a production and marketing team and was pleasantly surprised to see my ‘team’ gathered around an outdoor picnic table. They were the interviewers. One asked, “What are your thoughts on the environment?” I hadn’t even thought about it. So I said, “I try not to leave a trace wherever I go.” It was a pathetic response, but I got called back for another interview. It was held in the company cafeteria after lunch. The small room was empty except for a small man in a paint-stained t-shirt sitting at one of the picnic tables, holding a cup of custard, languidly stirring a spoon around and taking thoughtful tastes. He looked up at me with a crooked, aw-shucks grin. “You gotta try this flan. It’s to die for.” It took me a moment to realize this wasn’t an off-duty cook; it was the founder and owner of the company. A man who, just two years earlier, had looked at the destructive process of cotton production and said, “This is horrible. From next season onwards, we are going 100% organic.” Because that is what they did. Private companies can do that.
Ventura, 1999. Copyright Patagonia and Yvon Chouinard
Patagonia never went public. Instead, Yvon Chouinard gave it away to a trust specifically established to donate profits—around $100 million a year—to preserving the planet. “Hopefully, this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” he said.
My education at Patagonia was holistic. Everyone lived and breathed “regenerative economy” before it became a buzzword, and there was no sense of having to drink anyone’s Kool-Aid. We had a department for textile research, grading each fabric’s entire life cycle. We commuted to work in groups, attended training in passive civil disobedience, and practiced yoga on the patio during lunch. If the surf was up, desks were cleared, but people worked extra hours to make up for it. Did I learn anything from the experience? Maybe.
After nearly twenty years in international business, and after those few years at Patagonia, I decided to go to business school. I already understood how things worked: make products, get people to like them, buy them, and get them hooked so they keep coming back. But was that it? Was life that simple?
In business school, I was struck by the constant references to ‘sustainable business.’ There seemed to be an assumption that supply, demand, and population could all increase without end. Thus, the only real challenge for businesses was to remain competitive over the long term. To surf the long wave, as it were. Except that waves always end. That is one thing I learned while at Patagonia. One day at Surfer’s Point, I got greedy and tried to ride a particularly enjoyable wave all the way in, after everyone else had kicked out. I ended up with a separated shoulder and bruises up and down my left side. I was lucky.
So, in what world can the marketplace continue to grow without limits? And to what other realm, beyond the thin veil, can I transport all this junk I’m acquiring? Will Valhalla accept my mileage points? Can I take my million tons of CO2 with me?
A casual observation of the natural world suggests we all take out exactly what we bring in. Plus, a certain 21 grams, if you believe in the weight of our human soul. (Do dogs have a soul? Do dictators? Lots to digress on.)
In the natural world, plants and animals have lived in a delicate, self-correcting balance over millions of years, a timescale that makes human existence appear comically brief by comparison. Nature's balance consists of wave after wave that will continue as long as we have a moon spinning around us and a sun to spin around. Plant and animal populations go up, and they go down again and again. They do this in continuous undulation until they either adapt or drop out.
We humans have yet to complete even one down cycle. That’s how new our experiment is. So, the big question is whether the nascent ‘human experiment’ can survive its first downturn.
Until then, what the heck can we do other than continue to ride the great party wave that we jumped on? Maybe we should learn about degrowth. Maybe the end of consumption wouldn’t be a bad thing. Maybe that will even save us. As surfers, perhaps we should all learn how to “kick out” because there’s always another wave—unless we ride this one to the rocks.