Brian Czech

President, Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

Today’s Date: July 18, 2006

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

Riding my horses Red and Jake from Benson, Arizona to Kuna Idaho, Sonoran Desert and Great Basin, floods of '83.

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

Woods and fields behind the house near the Green Bay of Lake Michigan, rivers and lakes of northern Wisconsin.

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

Elk. When you've camped with them at their post-Pleistocene finest on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, they're unlikely to be other than your favorite.

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

Greatest challenge now: Economic growth, i.e., increasing human population times per capita consumption as gauged by GDP. Greatest challenge in the management-relevant future: Economic growth. Greatest challenge in the managerially irrelevant future: Sun running out of hydrogen.

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

Contrary to the fallacious rhetoric of corporations, financed politicians and hired economists that "there is no conflict between economic growth and environmental protection," there is a fundamental conflict between economic growth and environmental protection, economic sustainability, national security, and international stability. This fundamental conflict is founded upon principles of ecology and physics. For ecologists and environmentalists, the time has come to develop solidarity in advocating the steady state economy (stabilized population and per capita consumption) as the responsible 21st century macroeconomic policy goal for developed countries.