Kristine Tompkins —  Rewilding 15 Million Acres: Why True Wealth Means More Than Money




Episode 170
April 2nd, 2025

(Conversation recorded on January 29th, 2025)

Show Summary

While the wealth of the world's richest individuals continues to accumulate year after year, funding billions into AI, technology, and innovation, our true wealth—the planet's natural ecosystems—receives only a fraction of the funding needed for restoration and protection. What can we learn from those rare individuals who have dedicated their lives to conserving and rewilding the Earth, choosing to invest in nature rather than the next market breakthrough?

Today Nate is joined by conservationist Kristine Tompkins, to discuss her decades of work on conservation initiatives in South America, the value of personal responsibility, and how she has cultivated a way of living without fear in taking on unprecedented environmental challenges. Kristine also reflects on the limitations of money as a metric for success and fulfillment, advocating instead for using wealth towards bettering the ecological state of our planet and rediscovering the joy of connecting with humanity’s place in nature. 

How can we, as individuals, ‘earn’ hope for the future of our planet through engaging in conservation work? What can be learned from upending industrial norms to restore a personal relationship with the natural world? Finally, how can embracing individual responsibility lead us away from passive activism to usher in active and meaningful work in service of all life on Earth? 

About Kristine Tompkins

Kristine Tompkins is an American conservationist and the president and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation, as well as the former CEO of Patagonia. For nearly thirty years, alongside her late husband Doug Tompkins, she has committed her career to protecting and restoring wild beauty and biodiversity by creating national parks, restoring wildlife, inspiring activism, and fostering economic vitality as a result of conservation.

As the president of Tompkins Conservation, Kristine Tompkins oversees a multitude of projects rewilding the Americas. Having protected approximately 15 million acres of parklands in Chile and Argentina through Tompkins Conservation and its partners, Kristine and Douglas Tompkins are considered some of the most successful national park-oriented philanthropists in history.

(Photography Credits for Kristine Tompkins’ Headshot: Adam Amengual)

Show Notes & Links to Learn More

PDF Transcript

00:00 - Kristine Tompkins, Tompkins Conservation

00:45 - Douglas Tompkins

03:17 - Patagonia Company

03:48 - Yvon Chouinard

13:25 - 1 billion humans live an ‘industrial lifestyle’

16:50 - Deep Ecology

18:56 - Renewables acting as additive to the fossil industry

19:26 - Biodiversity loss, 6th Mass Extinction, Gill Oxygen Limitation Theory, Increase in wildfires

21:10 - Paris Agreement, Global Climate Agreements: Successes and Failures

22:52 - Wes Carter, Atlantic Packaging

24:45 - Historical influence of the wealthy on politics in the United States

27:42 - Hague Courts

28:15 - Pella Thiel, Rights of Nature, TGS Episode and Reality Roundtable

33:18 - Black Swans

33:40 - Berlin Wall, how it came down

40:24 - People who see altruistic acts are more likely to do altruistic acts themselves

42:15 - Land Trusts

43:45 - Randy Hayes, Rainforest Action Network

44:03 - Rewilding

44:18 - Ibera Wetlands

45:00 - Yellowstone wolves and bison

45:58 - Tompkins Conservation Rewilding Work

47:03 - The importance of predator species in ecosystems

47:42 - Capybaras

49:31 - Pleistocene, Predators

49:41 - Evidence that Clovis people hunted North American megafauna to extinction

50:05 - Arne Naess

54:07 - DJ White, TGS Episode and Roundtable

55:37 - Rewilding Projects

1:00:15 - Jeremy Grantham, TGS Episode 1 & 2

1:04:48 - Andrew Carnegie, How Andrew Carnegie Turned His Fortune Into A Library Legacy 

1:08:51 - The Vietnam War Protests, Culture change impacts of the 60s and 70s

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Audrey Tang —  Digital Democracy: Moving Beyond ‘Big Tech’ to Save Open Societies