Bob Keefe

For as long as I can remember, my work life has revolved around business, environment, policy and the pleasure of stringing words together to tell important stories. In Climatenomics, those things all come together.

As a boy, you could usually find me hunting in the woods surrounding my family’s home near Raleigh, N.C. or fishing off of the Carolina coast. I earned my first paychecks covering sports for the local newspaper and working at my dad’s land surveying company.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina, my college love-turned-wife Tammie and I left to discover and learn about our country. In South Carolina, I learned about banking while covering the S&L crisis as a business writer for the Greenville News. In Florida, I covered real estate, the legislature and did business investigations for the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times). That’s where I discovered the power of local businesspeople and the weight their voices carry with lawmakers, for better or worse. We also discovered the wonders of Florida’s wetlands and the beauty of a Gulf Coast sunset.

As the technology editor for the Austin American-Statesman newspaper in Texas, I learned about the power of innovation and the speed of change - both in business and life. Our first daughter was born in Austin. The first time her tiny toes ever touched an ocean was on Padre Island. It was also the first time any of us had to wipe oil off our feet after a walk on the beach.

After that came California, home base for roaming the West as a national correspondent for the Cox Newspapers chain. I covered my first wildfires not far from my own home north of San Diego. In Alaska, I interviewed loggers about environmental policies while deep in the Tongass National Forest, sitting on a stump so big it held several of us. I reported on shrinking glaciers and devastating droughts; covered international climate conferences in Hawaii and once walked alongside a rancher in Utah who showed me ancient petroglyphs on canyon walls so high they blocked out the sun. In another valley - Silicon Valley - I covered the rise of Google and Apple; the dot-com bust and rolling blackouts that taught us energy wasn’t as limitless as we might have thought. Tammie and I added two more beautiful daughters to our family and our home in a little beach town near the Pacific.

I went to Washington, D.C. after the 2008 election. There, for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I covered a new president and a new Congress, including their new focus on climate change. I wrote about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the catalyst for clean energy in our country today. I also covered the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, better known as the Waxman-Markey bill, which back then was our best hope for slowing climate change and transitioning to a clean economy. We can only wonder how much better off we’d be today if only lawmakers and businesses would’ve acted more responsibly in the past.

Not long after the death of the Waxman-Markey bill, I joined the Natural Resources Defense Council. When NRDC realized I knew how to talk to businesspeople, it asked me to run its E2 (Environmental Entrepreneurs) affiliate.

I couldn’t have asked for a better job.

Today, I spend my days with passionate business leaders who truly want to make the world a better place. With E2’s amazing team, we amplify their voices to advance smart policies to address climate change, expand clean energy and protect our air, water and lands.

Climatenomics pulls from all my life’s experiences: business, environment, policy, writing.

What I’ve learned from it is that it will take all of us – lawmakers, businesspeople, investors and individuals – to save the places, the people and the planet we love, and to help them prosper.

I know we can do it.