Last Stand: Ted Turner's Quest To Save A Troubled Planet

Last Stand: Ted Turner's Quest To Save A Troubled Planet

Todd Wilkinson

Language: English

Pages: 392

ISBN: 0762784431

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Entrepreneur and media mogul Ted Turner has commanded global attention for his dramatic personality, his founding of CNN, his marriage to Jane Fonda, and his company’s merger with Time Warner. But his green resume has gone largely ignored, even while his role as a pioneering eco-capitalist means more to Turner than any other aspect of his legacy. He currently owns more than two million acres of private land (more than any other individual in America), and his bison herd exceeds 50,000 head, the largest in history. He donated $1 billion to help save the UN, and has recorded dozens of other firsts with regard to wildlife conservation, fighting nukes, and assisting the poor. He calls global warming the most dire threat facing humanity, and says that the tycoons of the future will be minted in the development of green, alternative renewable energy.
      Last Stand goes behind the scenes into Turner’s private life, exploring the man’s accomplishments and his motivations, showing the world a fascinating and flawed, fully three-dimensional character. From barnstorming the country with T. Boone Pickens on behalf of green energy to a pivotal night when he considered suicide, Turner is not the man the public believes him to be. Through Turner’s eyes, the reader is asked to consider another way of thinking about the environment, our obligations to help others in need, and the grave challenges threatening the survival of civilization.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

value. The ongoing fear was that if bison had commercial value they’d be turned into cattle equivalents. Another premise is that bison on ranches aren’t truly ‘wild,’” Deborah Popper says. “But it all depends upon what role the rancher envisions for bison in the ecosystem. The relationship between bison and people has always been complex. What’s nearly unique with bison, and made vivid by how Turner approaches them, is that they can be commercial and mythic and wildlife symbols all at the same

of you. I made the mistake of setting my goals too low and now I’m having a hard time coming up with new ones.” “My dad had achieved those things and he wasn’t happy,” Turner says. “He didn’t know why. Basing his contentment on material possessions, he could not find a reason to live.” The surviving son had indeed accumulated a notable collection of high honors. “I realized those are the kinds of things that start people’s obituaries, but they are backward looking, not forward,” he says. “But

and windows glint in the sun. A maze of roadways covers former wheat fields. “Not much of this was here thirty years ago,” he yells over the sound of the engine, making the point that Turner’s arrival in the late 1980s coincided with Bozeman being inundated by a migration of “lifestyle pilgrims.” To Indians, the Gallatin was known as “the valley of flowers.” Now, thousands of homes have sprouted across what used to be the richest agricultural soil in Montana. Kossler banks left, leaving

area and calving grounds for elk in the center of the Gallatin Range. Someone described it as a bald metaphor. “Metaphoric or not,” he told reporters. “The best way to get a deal done is to keep everybody’s attention on the deal. Everybody paid attention.” Gutkoski watched all of this play out with horror. “Almost everything Blixseth did,” he says, “was about leveraging a minimum investment of a few million dollars into getting more valuable assets, but he did it by 151

scatterbrained. But Turner shrugs off the criticism. He has a game he sometimes enjoys playing. Like a television quiz show host, he administers a test to some of the brighter minds 169 LastStand_Final_CS55.indd 169 1/2/13 4:43 PM Last Stand he meets on the lecture circuit. Occasionally, he directs the same questions toward unsuspecting dinner guests who dare to rail against the UN. Politely, he will say, “Your opinions about the UN are fascinating. Could you please elaborate a little, maybe

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