Conclusion

In our dissatisfaction with politicians, generally, we give a pretty bum rap to public servants, don't we -- the people who are professional public servants often appointed by the politicians?

Well, and, too, to the bread-and-butter civil servants. Quite frankly, they're treated with extreme disrespect not only by the public but, if I might say so, by the government itself. I mean, this business of assuming that there's tremendous fat and waste. Well, there is some. There's some in every organization. But they blithely go along and not have a budget, and state employees are not paid for months, and nobody even seems to care about that. You have to go all the way back to the Kennedy administration to find real respect for public servants. I think it started eroding when Democrats and Republicans would campaign against the government. It's gone down, and we pay the price for it, because the "best and the brightest" are not looking for government jobs these days as they did back in the sixties.

What advice would you give students who are thinking about how to prepare for the future and who have their eye on public service? How should they prepare? What makes that service worthwhile?

If you haven't tasted really good wine, you don't know what you're missing. I feel sorry for the kids who are bright and who go directly into a corporation or a big law firm and never taste the finer fruit of public service. I would say, "Try it. You will learn that there are pleasures of trying to help other people that are greater than just helping yourself." You don't have to spend your whole life in public service, but you're missing a big chunk of life if you don't spend some of your formative years in public service. The fact that it's not popular now makes it easier to find a job, although I must say all the cutbacks make it very, very difficult. But public service does not have to be a government service. There are a lot of NGOs now, nongovernmental organizations, environmental organizations, and all sorts of organizations, whatever your persuasion is. But if you don't spend a few years of your life working for the community as a whole, you're just missing a very, very tasty fruit.

Should they go and become engineers and lawyers in one package?

No, I just got poor vocational guidance. I have no aptitude for engineering, and it's just the fact that I'm a Capricorn and stuck with it, and graduated. I probably should have been flunked out of Georgia Tech. But, no, I would think that a liberal arts degree would be far more valuable for life than engineering, although engineering did teach me the importance of details. One of the advantages I've had over others that are on, say, the do-good side of things is that I felt like I needed to know what the hell I'm talking about in some detail, rather than just be emotionally for something.

In reading through some of your writings, your speeches, and so forth, I ran into two themes, and I want to ask you about them. Two lessons that emerge from your thinking about the work you've done: The first is, "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

Oh, yes, I truly believe that. There are too many people nowadays that are looking for the perfect answer. We've got a lot of IQs that are turned loose on every issue, and rather than getting something done -- this hydrogen thing is a perfect example. The perfect solution would be a fuel cell that doesn't burn the hydrogen; that converts it to electricity and very high efficiency. But to wait until you perfect that and not pursue a good solution, which is to get off of imported oil immediately with hydrogen made at home, from renewables, and maybe just to begin with, with fossil fuels -- just homegrown, but to get started....

We have a lot of environmental organizations turning down a perfectly good solution and saying, "We need to wait for the perfect." I think that the word "now" has to creep into the vocabulary of people in public policy. We have problems now that require solutions now. We don't have any contract with the heavens. We don't know how long we have before global warming really does severe damage. It may already be doing it. We don't have any idea whether we're going to wake up in the morning and find that the Wahhabi sect of the Muslim religion has taken over the Saudi Arabian government and we've got World War III on our hands to protect our oil lifeline.

Public anger about a particular issue doesn't last very long, and part of our problem is as things get really bad, we just walk away from them. I'm a confrontationist, and I'm a believer that we need to deal with problems with the best solution that we have and not put it off until we can achieve perfection.

A lot of times we don't put the things together that we should put together when we're talking about an agenda. You say somewhere that "every dollar of oil we buy puts another dollar in the pocket of terrorists." That's an extreme statement, but there's a lot of truth there.

Well, there is truth there. I don't consider it extreme; I think it's factual. Anytime we think we're all that damned smart, just remember this: We have known about the wheel for 2,000 years. We've been carrying luggage around for 2,000 years. And we've only recently connected the two. So there are a lot of dots that we have not connected. There are a lot of solutions out there to serious problems that if we put our heads into now, we could deal with now.

Which brings me to the second theme that I found in your writings and your work, and I will quote from you now and ask you to comment: "Anyone who hasn't taken on a 'mission impossible' and made a difference with his or her life, doesn't understand how satisfying it is to jump into a tough situation and try to correct it."

Oh, that's an absolutely true statement, at least, based on my experience. Life is a struggle. A friend of mine has an awful lot of money and he lamented to me the other day, "You know, your kids are a whole lot better off than mine." He says, "Your kids have had to struggle and they're making a good living on their own. My kids have had a lot of money from the very beginning and they're not enjoying life as much." I truly believe that if you're not struggling, if you don't believe in something and are risking failure, you're not doing your utmost. If you just lead a safe life, you may not feel the real pangs of defeat, but that's nothing compared to the joy of achieving something. And you're not even up at bat, is the way I put it. There are so many people that just drift through life. Well, to my mind, that's not living. Life is a struggle and you learn when you don't overcome and you feel really good about making a difference. If you don't make a difference, you're just dust, aren't you?

Mr. Freeman, I want to thank you very much for joining us today for this fascinating account of your intellectual journey. And, also, helping us to understand what a practical environmentalist is. Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History.

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