He got his start on the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, working under WWF founder and chairman emeritus Russell Train, whom he calls “my mentor, and a man who has mattered so much to me.” Reilly would go on to follow in Train’s footsteps as EPA administrator and at WWF. He headed the Conservation Foundation and oversaw its merger with WWF; he led the American delegation to the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro when he was EPA chief. And he has had an indelible impact on WWF for 30 years and counting, serving as president and CEO and Board chair, and continuing his devotion to the organization today as chairman emeritus.
“The progression of the environmental movement I have seen is certainly one of scale,” Reilly says. “The sophistication and sensitivity to economics is vastly improved. The analysis of commodities and their impact on the environment, as well as solutions for the same, have become incredibly important—and that’s really a credit to the modern WWF, more than any other organization I can think of.”
Reilly has also observed an evolution in the philosophy of conservation.
“In the early days of the environmental movement there was somewhat of an assumption of moral correctness vis-à-vis crass self-interest and material concerns,” he says. “And that has largely yielded, I think, to a respect for facts and a sense that you can’t rely strictly on everybody wanting to be green or politically correct if you’re going to achieve your objectives.”
Reilly also points out that using morality as the linchpin of one’s argument implicitly suggests that your adversaries are immoral—which is never a good idea, because it makes compromise impossible. But that doesn’t mean there’s no moral dimension at all to the environmental concerns we must come to grips with.
Take climate change, for example: “It is principally a moral issue, because it is undeniable that those who will suffer its effects most keenly are the poor. That’s already baked in—whether you believe in the science or not.” Which is why he was so encouraged by the encyclical from Pope Francis and its emphasis on “a new and universal solidarity” to “protect our common home.”
The encyclical’s tone mirrored one of many things Reilly learned from Russ Train: the importance of positivity.
“Russ was not someone who cursed the darkness,” Reilly says. “He was always a fundamentally hopeful person. And why not? There’s been so much progress in the time I’ve been involved in conservation. So there’s every reason to think that we can—if we make it a priority—solve our environmental problems and challenges. That’s what we’ve done since the late ’60s, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”