Leadership in a Polarized Era

• Date: 01 September 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12129
• Published date: 01 September 2013
• Author: William K. Reilly

Perspective

William K. Reilly is senior advisor to

TPG Capital, LP, an international investment

partnership. He is chairman emeritus of the

board of World Wildlife Fund, chairman of

the board of the ClimateWorks Foundation,

chairman of the Advisory Board for the

Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy

Solutions at Duke University, co-chairman

of the Bipartisan Policy Center Energy

Project, co-chairman of the Board of the

Global Water Challenge, and director of the

Packard Foundation.

E-mail: gordon.binder@wwfus.org

Leadership in a Polarized Era 673

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 73, Iss. 5, pp. 673–674. © 2013 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12129.

William K. Reilly

TPG Capital, LP

 is article is excerpted from a lecture,

“Leadership in a Polarized Era,” delivered on

April 23, 2013, by William K. Reilly at the

launch of the William K. Reilly Fund for

Environmental Governance and Leadership,

organized by the Center for Environmental

Policy at American University.

President Bush sent me to meet with

Germany’s Chancellor Kohl after the G7

meeting in 1989, which was the f‌i rst time that

any head of government had taken an environment

minister to the meeting. Kohl had asked him, “How

do I follow up on the meetings here on the environ-

ment?” and the president said, “See Reilly.” I’ll never

forget the close of our meeting. He concluded in

such an eloquent and memorable way, “On your

country and mine rest whatever hopes this planet has

to address this very important problem of climate

change.”

It’s a more dif‌f‌i cult time now to address that issue

than it was then. We look at the stalemate and the

polarization and wonder how to overcome it.

Five or so years ago, at the inauguration of Duke

University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental

Policy Solutions, we commissioned a poll about

the environment and discovered the public was not

engaged consciously in environmental concerns essen-

tially for two reasons. One, they thought new environ-

mental initiatives probably did cost jobs. Second, they

considered that most of our environmental problems

had been solved, suggesting something of a positive

reason for our problems. When the problem is climate

and it’s not a visible problem, it’s all the more dif‌f‌i cult

to make it a priority.

 ere followed in the last few years disappointments

at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, where

there had been high expectations, and at the failure

of Waxman-Markey, the cap-and-trade proposal on

climate.

What is the current stalemate about? For one, it’s

about distrust of government. It’s not just the environ-

ment but the fact that many environmental initia-

tives involve more government activity.  ere is also

an antipathy to new regulations and to international

institutions. And then, of course, there’s the econom-

ics of coal and the dozen or more states that have

signif‌i cant coal interests.

 e focus inevitably and appropriately can be placed

on members of Congress from the Republican Party,

especially members of the House of Representatives,

and particularly the Tea Party and evangelicals.

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with a

congressman from a Southwestern, largely rural

district—a very sophisticated congressman—who

told me that were he to take the wrong position on

cap and trade, he would be best advised to retire and

not even run in his next primary. His district, he

explained, had a large population of evangelicals.

Bob Inglis is a former congressman from North

Carolina who essentially lost his primary as a conse-

quence of his support for climate legislation. He is an

evangelical, and he has explained that the evangelical

concern is not to arrogate to humankind the powers

over the planet—its weather, its environment, its tem-

perature—that belong to God. He has campaigned

around the country to try to promote an understand-

ing among his coreligionists that one should see the

climate issue more from the perspective of an adjacent

property owner who does damage to his neighbor and

the wrongness of that.

Richard Cizik—he was the head of the evangelical

association’s government af‌f airs of‌f‌i ce—once cau-

tioned me against referring to science as the template

on which we should base our environmental policies.

He said, “ at’s not the language to use.” He said,

“ at conf‌l ates with all of these Darwinians and

stem cell proponents and the like.” He emphasized

concepts such as stewardship, care of creation, the

language of the sort that appears in homilies and

Leadership in a Polarized Era