The Jobs I’ve Done

Law Clerk to Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black.  Washington, D.C. 1969–1970.

It was an honor to work for this great person.  Appointed by FDR, Black served 34 years on the Supreme Court, and my time with him came near the end.  I was privileged to work with him on some  significant opinions, including one upholding Consciencious Objector status on non-religious grounds. Unlike some justices, he was unfailingly warm and generous with his lawclerks.

Senior Attorney and Co-founder, Natural Resources Defense Council.  New York, NY, and Washington, D.C.  1970–1977.

Starting with the first Earth Day in 1970, these were the best years for environmental progress in America, and we were blessed to be part of it. The very interesting  founding of NRDC is described in my memoir, Angels by the River. In 1970 Ed Strohbehn, John Bryson and I decamped NRDC’s home in NYC and launched NRDC’s Washington Office.  My responsibilities in the years that followed included the group’s programs in energy and water.  A reflection of those halcyon times, we were able to accomplish some amazing things.

Member and Chair, President’s Council on Environmental Quality, Executive Office of the President. Washington, D.C.  Member 1977–1978; Chair 1979–1980.

Jimmy Carter is the only president we have had who was a deeply committed environmentalist. I describe his pathbreaking efforts on energy and climate in my book, They Knew: The U.S. Federal Government’s Fifty-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis. As chair of CEQ, I was Carter’s White House advisor on environmental affairs with overall responsibility for development and coordination of the Administration’s environmental program. In 1980, we at CEQ described the emerging global environmental calamity in The Global 2000 Report to the President.

Professor, Georgetown University Law Center. Washington, D.C. 1980–1981.

It was good to land at GULC after the voters unceremoniously tossed us Carterites out. I had a wonderful time there teaching  environmental and Constitutional law. I also spent a lot of time those two years working to create what became the World Resources Institute.

President and Founder, World Resources Institute. Washington, D.C. 1982 to 1992.

Launching and leading WRI for its first decade may be the most important thing I have done professionally. A small handful of us came together to make it happen, a story (like NRDC’s) told in Angels by the River, and over the ensuing four decades WRI has grown to have a global staff of over 1500 and an annual budget of about $200 million. Much as NRDC would likely not have happened without a large Ford Foundation grant, WRI was launched with a generous grant from the MacArthur Foundation. These institutions trusted me and my colleagues, and I hope we have not let them down. WRI is now the preeminent international NGO on environmental, climate, and sustainable development issues.  I tell friends that all my groups did better after I left.

Senior staff, President-Elect Bill Clinton’s Transition Team. Washington, D.C. 1992.

For a two-month moment, I headed the transition group responsible for natural resources, energy and the environment. The incoming Clinton Administration wanted an environmentalist for that role, and I am proud of our work helping to prepare them, but after two months some thought I was too Green. Looking back, perhaps they were right. My friend Al Gore helped me find a position I greatly desired, out of Washington.

Administrator, United Nations Development Programme, New York, N.Y.  1993 to 1999.

This role was the most challenging and educational of all. I had so much to learn and little time to do it. I grew to love the UN, but it was sometimes hard to do. When I took the position, the UNDP Administrator was the number two UN official, right under the Secretary-General. UNDP was the principal arm of the United Nations for international development, and we had officies in 135 countries and a multi-billion dollar budget. I worked hard to focus our efforts on what we called Sustainable Human Development with a focus on the poor and the environment. Then, at the Secretary-General’s request, I added the role of chair of the new United Nations Development Group (UNDG), the coordinating body for all United Nations development activities. At the end of my six UN years, I was pleased with our accomplishments but was totally exhausted, and more than a little frustrated with US treatment of the UN. 

Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. Dean and Sara Shallenberger Brown Professor in the Practice of Environmental Policy, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. New Haven, CT. July 1999 to July 2009. 

Now appropriately called the Yale School of the Environment, YSE is a graduate and professional school, believed by many to be the best of its kind.  It was a great joy to be wrapping up my formal employment years around so many wonderful students, faculty, and staff. Honestly, as dean, I had a ball. We spent the decade enhancing scholarships and faculty, introducing an undergraduate environmental major at Yale, internationalizing the school and its program, and, most visibly, building new, green facilities. Yale’s donors were generous. I had time to teach and lecture, and out of that grew two award-winning books with Yale Press. It was at Yale that I started the intellectual journey I relate in Transformation Story on this website.       

Professor of Law, Vermont Law School, South Royalton, VT.  2010 to 2015.

My thinking on American environmentalism’s failure to evolve, and the related need for political and economic transformation in the country (and elsewhere), was strengthened by my teaching and research at at this small but excellent, and bucolic, law school.  At the request of the dean, I offered an evening lecture series that eventually became my deepest book, America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy. It was during this period that I continued my work on system change as a Distinguished Fellow at The Next System Project of The Democracy Collaborative and as a founding board member of the New Economy Coalition.