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Doug Obegi's Blog

About

Bio:

I grew up in Orange County, California, a place bounded on one side by beautiful beaches and an ocean stretching to the horizon (after time, you mostly ignore the offshore oil platforms), yet surrounded by a seemingly endless stretch of asphalt in every other direction. Sure, I loved the beach, but growing up, some of my favorite memories are of the parks, forests, and rivers we visited on family road trips across the West. From Big Bear to Yellowstone, the Colorado to the Rogue River, our family crisscrossed the western half of our great country, instilling in me a love of wild places and water. After graduating from college on the East Coast, I packed my bags and volunteered for three months with the Student Conservation Association in Yosemite National Park. That experience confirmed that I wanted a career working to help conserve the environment. More than eight years later, after working as a policy analyst for a national environmental group for several years, I decided to go to law school and earned by law degree from UC Hastings College of the Law. Now, after a couple years as an attorney, I’ve landed my dream job, working to help NRDC restore the Bay-Delta and protect its imperiled wildlife.

Roots in:
Southern California, but I'm growing new roots in Oakland, CA.
Favorite place:
Yosemite National Park, Middle Fork Eel River, South Lake Tahoe, and a basketball court.
Why "environmentalism" matters:
The environmental choices we make have tremendous implications for our nation’s economic well being. When we unsustainably manage fisheries, forests, or other natural resources, when we pollute our rivers and seas, we create huge economic disruptions that can take generations to recover from. And quite often, the people who pay the greatest price for these environmental and economic disasters are not those who benefited from the boom that preceded it or the lax regulation that led to the crisis. In contrast, when we sustainably manage our natural resources, we build a strong foundation for long term economic growth and community well being. Environmentalism and economic growth are not opposite sides of the spectrum; rather, environmentalism is critically to sustaining economic growth over the long term. Indeed, environmental regulation spurs new investment and economic growth – despite the cries of doom and gloom when new regulations are enacted, the history of the past fifty years shows that human ingenuity rises to the occasion and makes things better than they were before, while better protecting the environment. Ultimately, protecting the environment is an investment in our quality of life. Clean air, clean water, and parks all make our lives better and our communities more liveable. In addition to such utilitarian reasons, I treasure wilderness on an aesthetic and spiritual level. Wilderness defines America and created and nurtured our sense of identity, our “rugged individualism,” and our Manifest Destiny. Like generations of Americans before me, when I step into the woods with only my backpack, I travel back in time, and like our forefathers, survive only on my wits. Wilderness is humbling; I marvel at my insignificance in a vast wilderness, and come face to face with the fact that (like most of human existence), nature is a powerful thing, capable of killing me. When I return to civilization from the wilderness I come back recharged with a reverence for life, and a hunger for a cheeseburger. Environmentalism is about protecting the health and beauty of our nation for future generations. As the world grows, there will be increasing pressure to cut down the last tree, catch the last fish, or take the last drop of water from the river. We, then, must choose: do we save the last salmon, and develop more efficient ways of using water now, or do we let the salmon go extinct, and face the same water supply crisis a few years down the road. We will have to change how we live, now or in the future; the only question is whether we make those changes now, and save the environment for our children’s children in the process.

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