Terrain V01 - Journal - Page 14
12 | Sterling College
An Interview with
Jon Larsen
Retiring Trustee, Former Board Chair, & Major Donor
Interviewed By
Julian Sharp, Outgoing Director
of Community Outreach
You are a well known environmentalist, where did this sense
of responsibility originate?
Both of my parents were environmentalists of sorts. Of course,
back in the day, I’m not even sure we knew the word. My mother
was one of Audubon Society’s most prolific bird banders. My
parents gave a lot of land around where we lived to the Audubon Society, which is now the Roy and Margo Audubon Sanctuary in Fairfield, Connecticut. In 1963 my father was the principal
founder of the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, which to
this day protects hundreds of acres of the island.
My mother was very into natural foods, organic foods. During
the war years we actually raised a lot of our food and we drank
milk straight from our cows. I even have a tubercular spot on my
lung to prove it. When I got to New Times magazine in the mid70s, I assigned stories on organic foods, small farming, and the
early days of solar and wind power. And because of all that, I
was asked to help create the magazine for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). It was originally called The Amicus
Journal, and later OnEarth. Eventually I went on NRDC’s board.
I love how your family was such an important part of shaping your care for the environment. Can you talk about how
you used journalism to reinforce these values?
My staff at New Times were mostly New York City kids. When I
talked about these environmental issues, there was a big pushback. But because I was the editor, I was able to do most of
what I wanted; a third of what we did back in those days was
around the environment. We did the first cover story on the
possibility of a hole in the ozone, years before the hole was actually discovered. A scientist had already figured out that there
would be or probably already was an ozone hole because of
fluorocarbons. We put the story on our cover. Years later, they
found the hole and they awarded a physicist a Nobel Prize for
figuring it out. By then, Congress had banned fluorocarbons.