By Lynn Scarlett, Co-Chief External Affairs Officer, The Nature Conservancy Before the term “reality TV” emerged in the 1990’s, there were “game shows.” The premise was simple—the promise of FABULOUS PRIZES would drive ordinary human beings to do unusual things. They would reveal the most intimate secrets of their marital life (“The Newlywed Game”), guess…
By Lynn Scarlett, Co-Chief External Affairs Officer, The Nature Conservancy At the end of the nineteenth century, great minds in America were in furious debate—should we power the future using direct current or alternating current? Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse favored AC current because it permitted the transmission of electricity over greater distances using thinner…
By Lynn Scarlett, co-Chief External Affairs Officer at The Nature Conservancy and former Deputy Secretary of the Interior in the George W. Bush Administration If you’re a homeowner (and even if you aren’t), you’ve probably tuned into a home improvement show. There’s something irresistible in the way the hosts, who are always so personable and…
By Lynn Scarlett, co-Chief External Affairs Officer at The Nature Conservancy and former Deputy Secretary of the Interior in the George W. Bush Administration Investment in the country’s infrastructure backlog is among the rare issues that has bipartisan support. How we advance legislative and administrative action to increase and accelerate investment in infrastructure, however, is…
By Lynn Scarlett, Global Managing Director for Public Policy, The Nature Conservancy For the average U.S. consumer, electricity is an unremarkable fact of their existence—when they flip the switch, the light comes on. But behind that simple act is a feat of forecasting, engineering, logistics and timing that is mind-bogglingly complex. At the heart of this process is the mix of generation sources—the different electric power plants…
By Lynn Scarlett, Global Managing Director for Public Policy, The Nature Conservancy Dr. Robert Ballard, the celebrated explorer most famous for discovering the wreckage of the Titanic, lives for the moments when something critical he thinks he knows about the world is shown to be wrong—like the day he and his team went in the…