Founder, Moore Capital
Louis Bacon Audubon Medal Acceptance Speech
Louis Bacon Audubon Medal Acceptance Speech
About Louis Bacon
Louis Bacon, founder of Moore Capital and The Moore Charitable Foundation, has been recognized for his environmental philanthropy. In 2016, he was honored by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership for his conservation work, including what was described as the largest conservation easement in the history of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In his remarks, Bacon stated that conservation success also involves addressing environmental justice, arguing that all citizens must have access to clean air and clean water and that underserved communities have often been failed by protections against industrial pollution. In a 2015 speech accepting the Foreign Policy Association Medal, Bacon said it is incumbent upon the private sector to make national policies on climate change "a necessity, not a luxury." He discussed his foundation's support for international marine conservation efforts, including in the Bahamas, where he said a comprehensive U.S. foreign policy on climate change could be influential. In a 2013 Audubon Medal acceptance speech, Bacon described himself as an "accidental activist" and outlined traits for successful environmental campaigns, including being a "pest" and collaborating with local communities. In 2012, he announced his intention to donate a conservation easement on approximately 90,000 acres of his Blanca Ranch in Colorado to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which he described as advancing a family legacy of preservation.
Transcript (11 segments)
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Louis Bacon0:32
Wow, thank you, thank you so much. And is my wife here? I want to make sure she saw that video. I hope she didn't hear Paul. Thank you so much for being here. Hearing Paul say those nice things about me means a lot, but mostly it means he's... I appreciate this. This is an incredible honor. I cannot thank the Audubon Society enough, but I would like to take a minute to thank them for what they do brilliantly every day in fulfilling their mission.
Now Paul's introduction in that video partly answered the question I've been asking myself ever since I was told I was to receive this award, which was: why me? There are so many great environmentalists out there who deserve this award. As you can see, I didn't turn it down. I'm not sure that I fully got the answer, but I will tell you in times like this and times of questioning and self-doubt, I reached for the holy book for answers. Now as a Southerner, you have to realize when I say the holy book, of course I mean Gone with the Wind. There's a passage in Chapter 2. Here's the passage: In Chapter 2, Scarlet's father admonishes her for her disregard of her plantation.
I learned to love the land as a boy growing up in Raleigh. Every day on my way to school, I went down the backyard into a forest, over a stream, through the woods, over a field, backwards and forwards. I took the return trip also. For nine years up into high school, I took this daily nature trail. And to me, being in nature is part of a daily routine. It's only natural. And for my father, who took my brothers on numerous floating hunting trips... in a community that gave it an identity, no matter what the cost.
Now my nature education probably reached its zenith when at the age of 16, with a newly invented driving license, I went on a cross-country trip that took about a month with a pal of mine, Fielder. We went up into the national park system: we had Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Tetons. We went up into Canada, Jasper and Banff. It was my first taste of the Great West, this latter-day Lewis and Clark expedition.
I focused on land stewardship and their Environmental Studies program, the first of its kind in the country. I spent a lot of time outdoors hunting, fishing, skiing, and because I was a Southerner, falling. I majored in American literature, channeling Ernest Hemingway's way. It was great, ideal, until the four years were up and I had to figure out what the heck I was going to do. I'd like to try to combine nature and whatever my next path was going to be. So I thought, maybe I should be a ski guy, or a fishing guy, or maybe a hunting guy, or maybe I should take that literature degree and turn it into a profession as an outdoor writer for a magazine. But a couple of my friends had noted that I had somewhat independent... I went to Manhattan and I met this wild, crazy guy who told a lot of tall tales, but he was kind of fun: Paul Jones. Paul was making a killing in the commodities stage. I dealt with him a lot and I realized he's not so smart if he can do that. So I decided to move down to New York, get a job, and I wanted to make a quick fortune and above all get out quickly before completely surrendering to the dark side.
Before you, it's all obvious that that master plan has been a total fail. As he called his lecture, the F-word: failure. Because I'm still on Wall Street. But on the other hand, I will say that this failure, this F-word, has allowed me some of the greatest satisfactions and successes of my life, other than of course having raised seven wonderful children, which involves another F-word we won't go into. But in that failing to leave Wall Street and go back into the... conservation campaigns, I've been able to direct my own land stewardship on properties I've been fortunate enough to be able to control. And most of all, I've been able to wage my own activist campaign, something that gives me particular passion. And becoming this accidental activist, this inadvertent environmentalist, has really been the best way of honoring my family legacy. And maybe that failed business master plan... being able to participate firsthand in activist campaigns such as Bobby Kennedy's Hudson River Keeper, Happy Birthday, gave me important lessons that I have brought to bear in my own campaigns.
Since many of you will be called upon to be your own environmental activists, I'd like to share with you some of the common traits, some of the common threads I have witnessed in most successful campaigns. And don't worry, there are only four of them. So number one: it's okay to be a NIMBY, not in my backyard. Henry David Thoreau, our first great American philosopher, a very principled man, was our first NIMBY spokesman. His Walden Pond, he wrote an entire treatise about... political correctness today. It is okay for you to defend your backyard. And most NIMBY campaigns are really what I would call NIOBY campaigns: not in our backyard. It's actually very hard to think of any important environmental campaign that hasn't involved a larger community's backyard. So don't be afraid to exercise your inner Thoreau. And as he put it, be not simply good, be good for something. Stand up and be counted for your rights.
Lesson number two: lead from behind. It may sound counterintuitive, but sometimes we are at our most effective when we... Clifton Cay. We came in as white foreign outsiders in a proud native Bahamian culture, and we won because of the powerful alliances we forged with community leaders who actually ended up leading the fight. Personified by a young environmentalist leader who is running for office, Perry Christie, who listened to Bobby Kennedy on the radio as he was driving in his campaign. Bobby was exhorting the Bahamians to make sure that they safeguarded this one last outlet that the public had to the water around the... It's done. Will not stand. Now Prime Minister Christie, true to his word as you heard on the video, has turned Clifton Heritage Park into the nation's only national park. The developers are long gone. Thank you, Bobby. He gave me a lot of credit, but quite frankly, he sealed the deal.
The third lesson any activist hero must learn is: be a pest. You know, you heard about those bothersome ancestors in mind, but you know, I asked King George II, they were effective. And your opponents, polluters and developers mostly, are going to try to ignore you, to wait you out, to hope you back down. You have a lot at your disposal, even more now. You've got the internet, you've got Facebook, you've got the web. Use the bully pulpit of town hall meetings, use the press, use the editors, use the congregations. Throw it all at them. And you may have to get in the gutter with them. That's where some of them live. And although you may want to smell like a rose on a stem, nothing gets a reaction like a thorn in the backside.
Finally, lesson four: collaboration is more important than money. It doesn't necessarily take big budgets to be successful. Most of the... environmental groups to push for enforcement, it takes a village. Take the Audubon Society. They have a national footprint and an incredible laurel, but most importantly, if you're an environmental campaign, they are also embedded in the local community through this kind of branch network that David was referring to. It gives them the authenticity that makes them so powerful. I want to thank them for our partnership in various campaigns. I look forward to campaigns in the future with Audubon, and I want to thank them as well for this great medal. And I wish to thank all of you for coming and sharing this moment with me. In return, I shared some of the ideas of... environmental hero. And if you win enough of them, well, maybe there's... old. So be a hero, lead from behind, be a pest, and collaborate.
Protecting open space in perpetuity is a great privilege. I have been lucky to be a part of a privilege like no other philanthropic endeavor I can think of, because in common with other worthy causes, the joy one receives in making a difference for others, the purpose one feels of being on a mission, land preservation can be done... I'd like to close by paraphrasing my Southern cousin Rhett Butler about getting involved in environmental causes: frankly, my dear, you should give a damn.