When Tompkins was only 23 years old, he founded The North Face, a company dedicated to providing affordable mountaineering equipment; It was a success that grew – and that lasts until today – although its creator decided to sell it to create Esprit together with his first wife: a clothing store that once again made them millionaires. However, there came a time when Tompkins, after all his travels and experiences, discovered that the fashion industry frequently generated things that people did not really need, and that his life would be more productive if he tried to save nature and not your heritage. He sold his share of Esprit to his wife – from whom he had already separated – and bought thousands of hectares in South America to keep them safe from deforestation.
Isn’t it incredible how a single person can change the course of things? Tompkins had adventurous but conventional social habits, had succeeded on a business level, and still decided that things should be different.
I guess something like Sebastião Salgado when in 1998, the same year in which he received the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, he decided to create the Terra Institute together with his wife Lélia Wanick.
Salgado’s case differs somewhat from Tompkins’, because Salgado came to the conclusion that he should change things not only from an environmental point of view, but also from a human point of view; He was a photographer of international prestige, and after taking pictures of the horrors of the world, he went to take refuge in the old Aimorés family farm, located in Brazil. When it arrived, the harshest devastation was found: everything was dry, as if life had melted and seeped through the cracks in the earth. But Salgado managed to create a Private Reserve of Natural Heritage, planted thousands of trees and made flora, fauna and water return to Aimorés, inspiring thousands of people with his action.
In Spain, (R) Forest Project, a recently created association led by Fernando Ojeda placeholder image, assures that it intends to fight against desertification and rising temperatures, and not only on land but also on the seabed. In Ojeda’s case, it seems that the turning point for the change came when he learned that he was going to be a father. It is not a bad reason to try to improve the world.
What about us other comfortable mortals? We are convinced that everything will work out, that inertia will solve everything. We do not give space to critical thinking, to self-evaluation. Today, when we feel winters in springs, we don’t take climate change seriously either. Will a dramatic turning point always be necessary to encourage dissent? I wish it would be enough to sit for a while, look at the sky and think about the meaning of things.
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