Terry Tamminen
President, Seventh Generation Advisors
From his youth in Australia to career experiences in Europe, Africa, China and across the United States, Terry has developed expertise in business, farming, education, non-profit, the environment, the arts, and government.
A United States Coast Guard-licensed ship captain, Terry has long been drawn to the undersea world, starting in the 1960s with a family-run tropical fish breeding business in Australia and continuing with studies on conch depletion in the Bahamas, manatee populations in Florida coastal waters, and mariculture in the Gulf States with Texas A&M University.
On land, Terry managed the largest sheep ranch east of the Mississippi, assisting the University of Minnesota in developing new methods of livestock disease control. Terry also managed a multi-million dollar real estate company, owned a successful recreational services business, and assisted the West African nation of Nigeria with the creation of their first solid waste recycling program.
In 1993, Terry founded the Santa Monica BayKeeper and co-founded additional Waterkeeper programs in five California watersheds. He later served as the Executive Director of the Environment Now Foundation in Santa Monica, CA and co-founded the Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic at the School of Law, University of California Los Angeles.
In the summer of 2003, Terry helped Arnold Schwarzenegger win the historic recall election and become Governor of California. He was appointed as the Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency in November 2003 and was later appointed Cabinet Secretary, the Chief Policy Advisor to the Governor. During his service in state government, Terry was the architect of many groundbreaking sustainability policies, including the Hydrogen Highway Network, the Million Solar Roofs initiative, and California's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.
In February 2007, Tamminen founded the non-profit organization Seventh Generation Advisors to help other states and world governments adopt clean energy and sustainability polices based on California’s successes. That year he was also named the Cullman Senior Fellow for climate policy at The New America Foundation and was appointed as an Operating Advisor to Pegasus Capital Advisors, a private equity fund that provides capital to middle market companies across a wide variety of industries specializing in resource efficiency and sustainable technologies.
In 2011 Terry was appointed as the R20 Founding Chair’s Strategic Advisor. As the Founding Chair’s Strategic Advisor, Terry is advising the R20 on policy and helping with the design and implementation of climate resilient economic development projects.
An accomplished author, Terry's latest book, Watercolors: How JJ the Whale Saved Us, shares his remarkable true story of the rescue of JJ, a one-day-old gray whale that was found abandoned in Marina del Rey, California. His previous book, Cracking the Carbon Code: The Keys to Sustainable Profits in the New Economy (Palgrave), shows how to find the low carbon products and services that save money, get ahead of regulations, and preserve resources for generations to come. Terry’s former book, Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction (Island Press), is a timely examination of our dependence on oil and a strategy to evolve to more sustainable energy sources. He has also authored a series of best-selling “Ultimate Guides” to pools and spas (McGraw-Hill) and several theatrical works on the life of William Shakespeare. Terry is an avid airplane and helicopter pilot and speaks German, Dutch and Spanish.
Terry Tamminen was named Vanity Fair’s May 2007 Environmental Hero and in TIME Magazine’s 2007 Earthday edition, he was featured in the “51 Things We Can Do” section. In 2008, The Guardian ranked Terry No. 1 in its “Top 50 People Who Can Save the Planet.” In 2009, Tamminen was named an “Eco Baron” in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes’s book, Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet.
Terry's News Feed
The Five Scariest Things On Halloween 2011 Once you're done being scared of the goblins and ghouls, there are some larger issues to be scared about. But unlike the undead, these problems can be defeated with a little ingenuity.
Updated Wed Oct 26, 2011
Is the Next Steve Jobs in Geneva, Beijing, or Abu Dhabi? The next major innovators are going to be in clean tech, and the way it's looking, they're going not going to be from the U.S.
Updated Thu Oct 13, 2011
How Congress Is Turning America Into China Like China has done in the past, the U.S is sacrificing public health for rapid economic development. But we should really be emulating the way China does things today.
Updated Tue Sep 27, 2011
Conversations You Won't Overhear This Fall As the summer ends and real work begins again, no one--from oil barons to politicians--is saying the things they should be saying.
Updated Wed Sep 14, 2011
The City Of The Future Is Already Here The future may seem far away and out of reach, but we're already experiencing many of the benefits of technological advances that will make our cities liveable and sustainable homes. You just have to know where to look.
Updated Thu Aug 18, 2011
A "Pro-Business" Gutting Of The EPA Just Makes Life Harder For Businesses When the federal government doesn't act to curtail pollution, they are putting public health, and the economy, at risk.
Updated Wed Aug 3, 2011
Afghanistan Banned Plastic Bags, Can They Also Go Farther Than The U.S. In Fixing Air Pollution? Living in a world of limited resources, Afghanistan is forced to conserve in ways we would never imagine in America. Maybe our two countries can work together?
Updated Fri Jun 17, 2011
Could EcoAds Keep the Lights on in Japan? We spend billions on advertising. A program that takes ad dollars and invests them into local renewable energy projects would mean major change if it was implemented widely.
Updated Wed Jun 1, 2011
There Are Huge Potential Returns In Cleantech Investments But if we don't invest now, we're going to pay later.
Updated Wed May 11, 2011
What If Apple Managed BP's Claim Center? One positive solution to our environmental challenges is simply applying know-how we already have to our problems. We just have to ask the right people for solutions.
Updated Wed Apr 27, 2011
There Is No Silver Bullet To Kill Carbon, But Maybe We Just Need Silver Buckshot There is no one solution, but a plethora of smaller projects will slowly be the death of our carbon economy.
Updated Wed Apr 20, 2011
The China-Europe-America Smackdown America, it could be worse. We could be Europe. I mean, we're still mostly in the race with China--in the past five years, they improved energy efficiency by nearly 20% and have a new five-year plan for another 20%.
Updated Fri Apr 8, 2011
We CAN Do Something About Tsunami Devastation March 20th marked the beginning of National Tsunami Awareness Week. We will continue to hear more about the tragedy in Japan and about which preparations worked or which ones didn't. Those discussions also need to include the ongoing threat from a rise in ocean levels.
Updated Wed Mar 23, 2011
Don't Mess With Mother Nature In a speech last week in Washington D.C., Arnold Schwarzenegger called on America to adopt three policies that have greened California's environment and its economy simultaneously
Updated Mon Mar 7, 2011
Companies Managing Their Carbon Footprint: Winners and Losers In this excerpt form his new book "Cracking the Carbon Code: The Key to Sustainable Profits in the New Economy," author Terry Tamminen examines the state of carbon management and the companies that are taking advantage of this shift to a green economy or those being burned.
Updated Fri Feb 11, 2011
A White House Gig for Mubarak? Imagine the first meeting between Obama, Mubarak, and House Speaker John Boehner to hammer out a deal.
Updated Mon Feb 7, 2011
A Lapel Pin With a Purpose This week, CBS EcoMedia unveiled a "lapel pin" to go on advertising, a small leaf for what they call "eco-ads"--a typical ad on TV, radio, a billboard, or any other media, which sports the eco-ad logo because a percentage of the ad revenue is used to install a solar panel on a local school or community center.
Updated Fri Jan 14, 2011
To Plug In or Not to Plug In? That Is the Question Shakespeare may not have been thinking about cars when he asked the eternal question "To be or not to be?", but it does come to mind as eco-friendly vehicles come to market in 2011.
Updated Wed Jan 5, 2011
Hitachi and Schwarzenegger: Solutions for a Thirsty Planet No silver bullet will solve the world's water crisis, but these two strategies may help alleviate water problems.
Tue Jul 13, 2010
Good News From the Past and the Dump Some good news and reasons to be hopeful.
Tue Jul 6, 2010
