Hailing from the chilly upper reaches of America's midwest is stalwart steady stater Doug Doug La Follette, Wisconsin's current Secretary of State. In addition to holding high office, La Follette has a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, co-founded the Clean Wisconsin initiative, and served as a Wisconsin organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970. In this episode, Brian speaks with La Follette about his ascent into environmentalism, the Wisconsin conservation movement, and his efforts to bring steady statesmanship to the state.
Hailing from the chilly upper reaches of America's midwest is stalwart steady stater Doug Doug La Follette, Wisconsin's current Secretary of State. In addition to holding high office, La Follette has a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, co-founded the Clean Wisconsin initiative, and served as a Wisconsin organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970. In this episode, Brian speaks with La Follette about his ascent into environmentalism, the Wisconsin conservation movement, and his efforts to bring steady statesmanship to the state.
Richard Tibbetts 00:01
From the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, this is The Steady Stater, a podcast dedicated to discussing limits to growth and the steady state economy.
Brian Czech 00:10
Welcome to the show. I am your host, Brian Czech, and our guest today is Doug LaFollette. The longtime Wisconsin Secretary of State. Doug was well known as a highly effective environmentalist before getting involved in politics. That was back in the day when Wisconsin provided a lot of leadership in conservation affairs and environmental politics. Doug was one of the state organizers of the first Earth Day, the biggest environmental event ever. At CASSE, we have a special appreciation for Doug because he really gets it about the limits to growth and the need for a steady state economy. He's on the short list — short so far, at least — of elected politicians who've signed the CASSE position on economic growth. Doug LaFollette, welcome to The Steady Stater.
Doug LaFollette 01:11
Hey, it's great to talk to you and it's great to be able to discuss this very critical issue for our future and for the planet Earth.
Brian Czech 01:20
Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. You know, Doug, it seems like you were an environmentalist at a pretty young age. What was it that got you interested in the environment? Are there any specific incidents that stand out as punctuating that interest or was it more of a gradual concern?
Doug LaFollette 01:41
Well, as a young person, I always like the outdoors, and I spend all my free time out in the woods, collecting frogs, or whatever, you know. And so I love that part of nature. And of course, Wisconsin is famous for being a beautiful place. And then when I started teaching, I taught a course on environmental science that I helped design that, but all of that sort of came primarily because of that Earth Day in 1970, where, for the first time, I think, in my life, really, and for the country, thanks to Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, people began to focus on the fact that things were getting pretty bad. And because of that, something needed to be done. The air was bad, the water was polluted, the fish were dying, and it was necessary for us to do something. And that came to focus. And that got me very interested in the politics of the whole issue.
Brian Czech 02:45
Right. Yeah well, you know, I was growing up myself in Wisconsin at the time, up on the edge of Green Bay, and I remember some of those god-awful alewife die-offs in the Green Bay of Lake Michigan and over on the actual shore of Lake Michigan proper as well. What were some of the other environmental problems that were popping up at the time in Wisconsin, because, you know, we hear about some of the other parts of the country, the Cuyahoga River and so on, but what was going on in Wisconsin?
Doug LaFollette 03:23
Well, it's a long story and the issues have gotten more and more complex. But the primary issue, I think, at that time, was what was typical across the country, because it was what people could smell and what they could see, and that was air pollution and water pollution. Those were the two big issues we talked about, and because, as I said, there was black smoke coming out of the smokestacks of the power plant because they didn't have electrostatic precipitators yet, and the fish were dying because the sewage plants were dumping raw sewage into the water, and that was causing an oxygen depletion, and the fish couldn't live without the oxygen. So those were the major issues at that time. After the first Earth Day, and I started teaching about environmental science and people started paying attention, more and more complicated issues begin to show up like toxic pollution and chemicals, and issues of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide causing acid rain, for example, and the ozone layer was being affected and the ozone hole was opening up. And I could go on and on, but those issues begin to come after the Earth Day, when we begin to analyze the problems more carefully.
Brian Czech 04:51
You know, it's obvious that you have a pretty good background in environmental science and biology, and I didn't even mention your educational background at the beginning, but maybe you can tell us. I think you have a, was it a PhD from Columbia?
Doug LaFollette 05:07
Yeah, because I had a great high school chemistry teacher, I sort of oriented towards chemistry, rather than biology, even though I loved the outdoors and the biological interest, but I ended up getting my PhD at Columbia in organic chemistry. And I started out teaching organic chemistry until the Earth Day. And then after Earth Day, I decided to start teaching the first environmental class and I wrote a little book called The Survival Handbook, which talked about all the different environmental issues. And in writing that book and working with other people around the country who had become alerted and active after the Earth Day, we begin to talk about these other more complicated issues, much more systemic issues. If I can go on for a minute, for example, after Earth Day, we cleaned up the black smoke, we passed laws, thanks to Gaylord Nelson in Washington, they passed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act. A lot of good laws got passed. And we cleaned up the black smoke, and we cleaned up the sewage plants. So the fish came back and the black smoke went away, but then we discovered that you couldn't eat the fish. We had to have advisories to tell people don't eat fish, because they had mercury and they had chemicals in them that were not healthy. And even though the smoke wasn't black anymore, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide were coming out, causing acid rain, as I mentioned. And that's when we begin to see it was much more complicated than just cleaning up the black smoke. There were systemic problems in the way we operate in our world, in terms of economic growth, in terms of approving and not approving the use of chemicals and chemical fertilizer, and all the different complicated issues. And that, of course, led to the big issue of population. And I remember Gaylord Nelson talking about population back then. There were 3.8 billion people on the earth in 1970. Now it's more than twice that. And Gaylord Nelson and myself and many other people said at that time, we have to do something to stop this growth of population, because we already have probably as many people as the earth can support at 3.8, and we have to avoid going up to four, five, six, seven. But that didn't happen. And the combination, the population growth, and the, quote, "economic growth," more and more industry, more and more stuff being produced, has led to the current situation where we're now destroying the climate, which was an issue that no one thought about in 1970.
Brian Czech 08:09
All right, well, that is quite a systemic summary and yeah, got rid of some of the most obvious problems only only to find more nefarious ones coming down the pipe. Well, now you've mentioned Gaylord Nelson a few times and it sounds like you work directly with him in organizing those first Earth Day events. Actually, maybe you should remind our listeners a little bit about the life and legacy of Gaylord Nelson.
Doug LaFollette 08:40
Well Gaylord Nelson grew up in northern Wisconsin, a little town called Clear Lake, and he loved the environment, and he loved that part of Wisconsin. And he got involved in politics, sort of like I did, I guess, thinking he could do some good, and he got elected the governor of Wisconsin, and he was a leader in conservation. We didn't use the word environment then, it was conservation. And he was very well known as the conservation governor, trying to work to protect Wisconsin. And then he was elected a US senator and he went to Washington. And he became frustrated because people in Washington, other senators, weren't paying much attention to the environment. So, because of that, he had the idea of the Earth Day so that all across the country, people would stop for one day and take stock of the environment and decide that something needed to be done. And it was very successful. Millions of people stopped in schools and universities and celebrated that first Earth Day. And after that, he was able, with the help of other senators...Back in those days, there were quite a few good senators. Today, the Senate has totally collapsed in my opinion, but let's not bother with that. There were a number of good senators at the time, and he, with other people, and his leadership, they passed, as I said, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Environmental Policy Act, all of those things happened in the 70s. He remained a senator for a number of years and then he stopped and retired and he's no longer with us now.
Brian Czech 10:39
Yeah, I remember I had just one opportunity to meet him in Washington DC. That was at the offices of the Wilderness Society, I think. And I'll never forget talking with him because I felt like I was talking to a real conservation legend. And I used to run across his daughter Tia when she worked for The Nature Conservancy, right across the river in Arlington. You may know Doug, that TNC's headquarters were two blocks from the Fish and Wildlife Service headquarters where I was. And I might add that, like you, Tia is a CASSE signatory, so I do know that she gets it about the need for a steady state economy too. As I understand it, she's been back in Madison for some time now, and also involved in environmental politics at some level. You know what she's up to there?
Doug LaFollette 11:38
Yeah, after her father died, she kind of wanted to come home to Wisconsin, so she left The Nature Conservancy. And I actually hired her as the executive secretary of the Wisconsin Land Board. There's a Land Board in Wisconsin that manages a lot of land in northern Wisconsin that still remains from the original federal land grant. And I'm one of the three commissioners, and we don't need to talk all about that unless you want to. But there was an opening as the executive secretary of that land board at the time, and I recommend her, and my fellow Commissioners interviewed her, and we hired her. And she had that position for some time until, I have to say this, a number of Republican legislators who were absolute jerks went after her because of her environmental interests. And they harassed her to the point that she finally quit. And now she is the head of a new foundation, which was started, the name of which escapes me, I apologize, that works on climate disruption. Its primary focus is on climate issues. And she's quite happy with that now.
Brian Czech 13:01
Oh, that's good. But yeah, that sounds like a rough experience with those legislators. Well, Doug, this is a great conversation and I want to get right back to it. But right now we need to take a short non-commercial break with Rick Tibbetts.
Richard Tibbetts 13:21
Hi there, we hope you're enjoying the show. I just wanted to take this brief intermission to announce some good news here at CASSE. We just published a new book called "Uncommon Sense: Shortcomings of the Human Mind for Handling Big-Picture, Long-Term Challenges" by author Peter Seidel. We promise you this book is a true page-turner. It's already received high praise from fellow renowned author Alan Weisman who said, "The premise behind Uncommon Sense is the biggest question in human history. Ingenious as our species may be, is it also wise enough to do what it will take to keep our civilization viable before it's too late? Peter Seidel lays out all that ails the earth in this make-or-break century and leaves it to us to decide whether our saga continues, or ends all too soon." You can get your own copy today by going to steadystate.org, panning over to the Discover button, and clicking "Steady State Press" in the drop-down menu. Now, back to the show.
Brian Czech 14:19
You know, I want to go back to something you mentioned a few minutes ago, which was that before talk of the environment and environmentalism, it was about conservation. And I know that, of course, to be certainly the case in Wisconsin because I went to the university there at Madison and under that Aldo Leopold lineage there in wildlife ecology. And I was wondering if, did Aldo Leopold kind of play into the early stages with Gaylord Nelson or yourself in terms of helping to understand the systemic nature of the problems coming down the pike?
Doug LaFollette 15:03
I guess I'd have to say, probably not. I don't remember much involvement with Leopold at that time. I mean, that was sort of after Leopold. People referred back to Leopold, and John Muir, and some of the famous Wisconsin conservation leaders of their time. But I think after the Earth Day and time forward to now, they were more of historic legends rather than active people who influenced the stuff that was going on.
Brian Czech 15:42
Yeah, I see. Yeah, as I recall, he died in 1948. He died of a heart attack fighting a fire, I think, in the central part of Wisconsin. But the thing that I remember about the book, The Sand County Almanac, you know, his most famous book, was actually, in the preface where the second from last sentence, I think, it was something like, "Nothing could be more salutary at this point, than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings." So, it's a mouthful, but it led me to think that Aldo Leopold, shortly before his death, his premature death there, he was starting to move toward ecological economics, and in particular, the recognition of conspicuous consumption as just bad citizenship.
Doug LaFollette 16:47
Yeah, I agree. And I think those early leaders understood that a lot better than people did some time later, when sort of, you know, after the Second World War, and then everything started gearing up. We started making cars and making televisions and making, making, making, and people kind of forgot about the need for conservation. And it became sort of a wild consumerism. And that went on throughout the 50's and 60's. And that's what led to the problems that then resulted in Earth Day because all that consumption and production led to the pollution problems that we've talked about in the air and the water. And I think another historical point that you reminded me of would be a quote from Gaylord Nelson. And I heard him say this many times. And he said, "People are confused when they think that environment is a subset of the economy." He said, "That's backwards. The economy is a subset of the environment. And if we don't have an environment, we're not going to have an economy." And that I think sort of is like the quote you just read, was the realization that the environment was more important than the, quote, "economy," and the growth, growth, growth, that we've been consumed with ever since the 1970's, probably. And I think that he realized the importance of trying to limit the population growth and trying to limit the wild growth of economic systems, which would impair the environment.
Brian Czech 18:41
Yeah, that's right. That was certainly his most famous quote, in terms of ecological economics. He was like a predecessor, especially when you think of political predecessing, you know, and in raising awareness of limits to growth, calling the economy a subset of the ecosystem instead of vice versa. And that makes me wonder because you hear the quote, sometimes you see it attributed to Gaylord Nelson, sometimes you see it attributed to Herman Daly. You think that they knew each other?
Doug LaFollette 19:18
You know, I don't know, but I can't believe they did not because they were both [unintelligible] much in the leadership of beginning to question the limits to growth. And Herman Daly wrote his very famous first book, "The Limits to Growth," and I'm sure Gaylord Nelson knew that. He probably read that book. They probably met. I didn't know Herman Daly in the early days, but I got to know him, and I invited him to Wisconsin. He came to Wisconsin on my invitation and gave a lecture, which was very well received. And, of course, he talked about the insanity of unlimited growth on a limited planet, as he is so well articulated. And then when I started teaching some classes, I used one of his books for the students, one of his later books, it was called "For the Common Good." And I still recommend that book to people because it was co-written by Herman Daly an economist, and a theologian, I believe. The first chapter of that book, "For the Common Good," is the best analysis of the economic system and its flaws that I've ever read.
Brian Czech 20:44
Yeah, it's it's absolutely a classic and we're fortunate enough that we're going to have Herman on the podcast in a few weeks. He'll be the Thanksgiving week guest, and so I'll ask him about that, too, if he knew Gaylord Nelson, and what that relationship was like. But, you know, so back to you now, as a deep operative in the environmental movement over the decades, how would you describe the relationship between environmentalism and limits to growth? Was that a central message at the beginning or was it always sort of a satellite issue? What was that like?
Doug LaFollette 21:29
Well, in the beginning, as I mentioned, Gaylord Nelson, and many other people realized the population growth was a concern. And we had to be concerned about that. The economic growth issue wasn't discussed as much in the beginning of the environmental movement, which started, let's say, in 1970 with Earth Day. There were people who talked about it, but it was pretty much ignored, I think, and partly because the powerful interests in this country, the powerful business interests who were making money hand over fist, producing everything. And as long as they could keep on doing that and providing jobs for people and providing stuff for people, whether it be televisions or microwaves or whatever, that sort of took the role of the United States future for a number of years. And people like Herman Daly, I think, were sort of a voice in the wilderness in terms of being ignored. Because people didn't want to hear that. People didn't want to hear that they had to slow down a little bit and maybe not have quite so much, and maybe only have two children instead of four. Those things were not well received by people.
Brian Czech 23:11
Yeah, it almost makes you wonder if it wasn't such a coincidence that the first and only major amendments to the Employment Act, which originally was passed in 1946, happened in 1978, when it became, let's see, the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act. You have to wonder if the political, the system of the time wasn't starting to detect a groundswell of awareness building about limits to growth and, you know, took action to head it off at the pass.
Doug LaFollette 23:53
Yeah, I agree. And I think that is something you can see through history, in terms of... In the in the 70's and early 80's, when we passed, as I said, the Clean Air Act and Clean Water, and a lot of progress had been made, but then when people like Gaylord Nelson and myself and many, many others started talking about the more complicated problems. It was easy to get rid of the black smoke. The power companies complained about it 'oh we can't do it, we can't do it.' We passed a law. They did it. It wasn't a big deal. But then the more complicated problems of toxic chemicals and acid rain, that meant curtailing some economic growth, maybe. And when they saw that, they began to organize and by the middle of the 80's and on into the 1990's, the anti-environmental movement began to organize, and they began to work very hard politically to elect Senators and members of Congress who would be against the environmental regulations. And that's when we had what I call the backlash. I've written articles about the history of this whole thing. And around then, we moved into what I call the backlash, where there was a serious backlash against environmental issues. And that was orchestrated by some of these foundations like the Heritage Foundation and some of these right-wing organizations that were campaigning against environmental regulations. And that has continued up to today. Let's jump ahead a minute. What is our current President Trump's, one of [unintelligible] his accomplishments? Getting rid of environmental regulation. He's proud of the fact that he has gotten rid of environmental regulations. And this is 2020. And I'm talking about 1980 and 1985 when this anti-environmental movement first began, and we've been fighting it ever since, trying to counteract them, but they have the money and the power. And so its a little discouraging, Brian, I have to admit.
Richard Tibbetts 26:28
You've been listening to a conversation between Brian Czech and Doug LaFollette, the current Secretary of State of Wisconsin. There was so much great material in this episode, we decided to break it into two parts. So, be sure to tune in next week for part two of this riveting discussion. This is The Steady Stater. I'm Rick Tibbetts. See you next time.