Call Me Ted (50 page)

A TED STORY

“Ted Is Unabashed”

—Senator Sam Nunn

One of the great things about Ted is that he’s transparent. He doesn’t have a hidden agenda or hidden policies. I’ve heard him say several times if it weren’t for the First Amendment he’d be in jail or worse! He can be outrageous and he can be absolutely brilliant. Ted is unabashed, unafraid, and certainly persistent and spontaneous, with a lot of wisdom and with the ability to get to the core issues. He’s displayed all of those during the course of our deliberations.

We had a meeting once at Harvard’s Kennedy School with a bunch of experts from Harvard—not just the Kennedy School but from around the campus—to talk with us about the nuclear challenges. I think we started about 10:00 and Ted flew up that morning. I had given him a background paper on the meeting and some of the subjects we were going to talk about.

Ted didn’t say anything for about the first hour and then we got on a particular subject and he interrupted and said something to the effect of, “Damn. I’m supposed to know all about this—Sam gave me a memo on this but I spent the whole weekend with my former wife Jane Fonda and we had a wonderful time—and by the way, I got permission from all of my girlfriends.” He said, “I was leaving her this morning and I was going to read that paper on the airplane but Jane told me, ‘Here’s a book you’ve got to read by this psychiatrist because it will address some of your problems.’”

Ted is saying this to a group of intellectuals sitting around the table who don’t know him at all. “Jane, as you probably know, thinks I’m crazy,” he said, “but reading this book on the way up here when I should have been reading that paper, I came to the conclusion that this psychiatrist is the one who’s crazy!”

And then he stopped and we got back on the subject. By making these comments, Ted relaxed everybody and there were no more stiff necks around the table after that and we got down to the real issues after that in a much more meaningful way. Ted joined in the discussion and grasped the issues very well.

When Senator Nunn speaks about the nuclear threat, he often includes this story, which he describes as a “parable of hope.” In 1993, after the Soviet Union had collapsed, our two countries signed the U.S.-Russian Highly Enriched Uranium (or HEU) Agreement. Through this deal, five hundred tons of enriched uranium taken directly from former Soviet nuclear weapons is being blended down to low enriched uranium, for use in American nuclear power plants. Shipments of this material began in 1995 and are expected to continue to 2013. Now, here’s something remarkable to consider: In the United States, 20 percent of all our electricity comes from nuclear power plants, and 50 percent of the nuclear fuel used in the United States comes here via Russia as a result of this HEU agreement. That means that roughly one in every ten lightbulbs in the United States is powered by material taken from Soviet missiles that not long ago were pointed directly at us. These kinds of innovative, peaceful, and cooperative efforts continue to fill me with hope about the future.

In addition to the nuclear threat, our team at NTI is also concerned about biological outbreaks. Whether these occur naturally or are caused by the intentional use of harmful agents, they pose a significant global health and security risk. In an effort to help governments and nongovernment agencies around the world prevent, detect, and respond to these threats we established the Global Health and Security Initiative (GHSI). We were very pleased in January 2008 when Google.org chose to give one of its earliest grants to GHSI. It’s great to see successful companies like Google being so aggressive and creative in their philanthropic efforts and I was gratified to see them recognize and reward our work at NTI.

I’m also pleased to see people turning their attention to global climate change. I’ve been speaking out on this subject for years and it hasn’t been easy. I’ve known Al Gore since the 1970s when he was a junior congressman and I was in Washington trying to get the SuperStation off the ground. These many years later it’s been gratifying for me to see the success he’s had with
An Inconvenient Truth
and watching folks from across the political spectrum take an interest in what has become one of the most serious challenges that our planet has ever faced. Solving these problems will require the effort and cooperation of individuals, corporations, and governments around the world.

The potential impact of climate change is varied and complex, but some of the solutions are fairly straightforward. First of all, we need to change our own personal habits. Energy consumption and CO
₂
emissions in countries like China and India are increasing at rapid rates but before the United States can lecture others on being more efficient, we need to set a better example ourselves. Americans have become spoiled by luxuries like air-conditioning, SUVs, and big homes, and it’s time we reconsidered the wisdom of driving a four-thousand-pound vehicle to take a two-hundred-pound person to buy a quarter-pound hamburger.

Despite the success that Al Gore and others have had in spreading the message about climate change, plenty of skeptics remain. My hope is that while we might respectfully disagree, we can reach a consensus that there will be many other benefits to lessening our consumption of fossil fuels. For one thing, we could make strides toward cleaning up our air. I still spend a lot of my time in Atlanta and in the past twenty years, asthma cases there have doubled. All you need to do is look at the traffic and smog to understand why. The United States could also lessen its dependence on other nations for so much of its energy, a goal we can all support, regardless of our political affiliation.

One of the reasons I’m optimistic about our chances in fighting climate change and improving the environment is that doing it will create one of the greatest business opportunities in history. The whole world is going to have to overhaul its entire energy system—a massive undertaking. The alternative energy market is like the early days of cable, but on a much bigger scale. If I were a young person starting out in business today, this is where I’d be placing my efforts. Just like thirty-five years ago when I decided to make a career in television, today there are hundreds of hungry, eager entrepreneurs out to make their fortunes by solving the energy issues.

Over the past several years I’ve asked Taylor Glover and his team to analyze various alternative energy businesses looking for investment opportunities. We’ve considered windmill farms on some of my properties but after extensive testing of the wind patterns decided that these would not be economical with today’s tax policies. The more we looked into it, the more we felt that solar power offered the greatest opportunities. In 2006 we created a holding company called Turner Renewable Energy and made our first investment in a company called DT Solar. Run by smart entrepreneurs, DT Solar installs solar units for commercial properties and they have quickly built a solid business with excellent growth prospects, and in 2007 we merged the company with First Solar at a price that gave us a healthy return. There are lots of visionary companies like these around the world and many of them will be big winners as they help the world work its way out of an outdated fossil energy system.

A combination of things will have to happen if we’re going to combat the global climate crisis, but most of all we need good leadership. Political leaders have to make this issue a priority. They need to use their bully pulpits to speak to the problems and set policies designed to address them. Business leaders have to change the way they run their companies, not only in response to financial and marketplace incentives but also in cases where these adjustments might hurt their bottom line but are simply the right thing to do. The political leadership we’re starting to see—particularly in state and local governments—encourages me, as do the steps that major, influential corporations like Wal-Mart and General Electric are taking to run their companies in a more environmentally responsible fashion.

Even my former rival Rupert Murdoch is leading the charge at News Corporation to lessen their carbon footprint, including at their newspaper printing presses, which is no easy task. I was so pleased to hear of Rupert’s initiative that I sent him a note and invited him for lunch at Ted’s Montana Grill in New York. Who would have thought that after all these years an environmental gesture would give us the excuse to get together and bury the hatchet, but that’s exactly what we did. (Rupert and I actually had a good time together. We reminisced a little and since this was shortly after his acquisition of
The Wall Street Journal
and launch of Fox Business Network, I asked him about his plans in that area. After being pushed aside at Time Warner, I was disappointed when they shut down CNNfn, our financial news channel. I always thought we should have kept it going or at least tried to find a buyer. I said to Rupert, “If we’d kept CNNfn on the air, you probably would have paid $100 million for it today, wouldn’t you?” And he said, “At least, Ted. Probably more like two or three times that amount.” He proved my case and killed my appetite at the same time!)

I like to think that most of the world’s problems can be solved, but it won’t happen overnight, and that in itself poses a challenge. We live in a society of instant gratification and short attention spans, and these attitudes carry through to our government and business leaders. The brief terms in office that our elected officials serve accentuate the problem. It’s difficult to take on hundred-year problems when you’re worried about a two-, four-, or even six-year election cycle. Voters want immediate results and politicians want to keep their jobs, so hunkering down to make tough, long-term decisions is not an easy task.

Sometimes these problems can seem overwhelming, and when they do I remind myself of a conversation I had many years ago with Jacques Cousteau. I asked him if he ever got discouraged or worried that the problems he was working on were insurmountable. He looked at me and he said, “Ted, it could be that these problems can’t be solved, but what can men of good conscience do but keep trying until the very end?”

Encouraged by Captain Cousteau’s words, I intend to keep trying and I really think we can turn things around if we all put our minds to it. When people ask me what condition I think the world is in, I answer with a baseball analogy. It’s the seventh inning and we’re down two runs. We’re behind right now but we still have a chance to win. To pull it out, we need to prevent the other team from scoring again, and then we must score three runs ourselves. But just like late in a ballgame, we’ve run out of time to waste. We need to stop doing dumb things and to start doing smart ones, and we have to stay optimistic.

We owe it to the 3 million years that our ancestors have been here to make sure we protect our future for the next 3 million years. We have it within us to eliminate illiteracy, disease, poverty, and pain and suffering. It’s been estimated that worldwide poverty could be alleviated for just $100 billion a year. If we use just 10 percent of the global military budget, we’d be there. Human beings were responsible for the Holocaust and creating nuclear weapons, but we’re also the ones who produced the
Mona Lisa
and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. In short, we’re just as capable of doing great things as we are destructive ones. We’re a step away from catastrophe but we’re also a step away from paradise. I know we can do it, but we have to work together and we need to get going—right now.

As I approach my seventieth birthday, I’m thankful for the incredibly exciting life I’ve been fortunate enough to live. Of all my accomplishments, I’m most proud of my children. Laura lives with her family in Atlanta. In addition to raising her children Laura is an active philanthropist who sits on many nonprofit boards and chairs the Captain Planet Foundation. Teddy is back in Charleston where he’s the founder and manager of a full-service boatyard. Rhett is also in Atlanta where he runs his own documentary film production company. Beau works for Turner Enterprises and in addition to chairing the Turner Endangered Species Fund, he’s responsible for the operation of our ranch outfitting business. My youngest daughter, Jennie, is an accomplished filmmaker and today breeds horses at her family farm in Kentucky. All five of my children sit on the board of the Turner Foundation and I see them and my eleven grandkids more these days than ever. I do wish I had been able to make my marriages work but it gives me tremendous pleasure to see my kids having grown up to become such good, caring, and productive adults.

In terms of my career, I’m particularly proud of creating CNN and I’m hopeful that the spread of global news will continue to be a force for good and that CNN will resist the temptation to be dragged down by the increased tabloidization of today’s popular journalism. I’ve also taken great pleasure from my philanthropy. Announcing my billion-dollar pledge for the U.N. Foundation was a thrill and seeing all the good that’s been done with that money has been incredibly gratifying. Watching other wealthy people like Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett contributing so much of their resources to charity and having the chance to work with them on some of our projects has been a lot of fun, too.

Looking back, like anybody else, if I had to live my life over there are things I would do differently, but it’s been a remarkable ride and I have very few regrets. I’m particularly thankful for my father’s advice to set my goals so high that I can’t possibly achieve them during my lifetime. That inspiration keeps me energized and eager to keep working hard every day, not only on philanthropy but on new business ventures as well. As I complete this, my first book, I intend to accomplish enough in the next several years to warrant a sequel!

I’ve often considered and joked about what I might want written on my tombstone. At one point, when I felt like I couldn’t get out of the way of the press, “You Can’t Interview Me Here” was a leading candidate. In the middle of my career I considered, “Here Lies Ted Turner. He Never Owned a Broadcast Network.” These days, I’m leaning toward “I Have Nothing More to Say.”