At 34, New FOE President Speaks Truth to Power in the Language of Economics

“Dating back to our founding, FOE has spoken to the needs of the planet and its people, not to the needs of politicians for compromise. I am absolutely committed to that mission.” —Erich Pica

What comes to mind when you hear the word economist?

Conservative? Business booster? Probably not "hard-core environmentalist", but one economics and fuel subsidies expert is just that — and, at 34, he's the new president of the outspoken environmental leader Friends of the Earth.

Fifteen years ago, as Erich Pica was studying economics at Western Michigan University, he looked at how the United States measures its economic growth, how environmental destruction – mountaintop mining and the Exxon Valdez cleanup, for example – counted toward GDP, and he saw that it wasn’t sustainable.

“We have economic incentives established throughout our system that reward environmental bad behavior,” Pica says. “Our entire system is built on this once-through, virgin material to landfill that degrades the environment and uses it as an economic bedrock without replenishing it.”

The nation and its policies need to recognize that “the U.S. economy is not above and beyond the natural ecosystem.“

Friends of the Earth has been pounding that message home for 40 years. Pica now has the hammer in hand, and he intends to use it.

“FOE is going to challenge bad economic policy, whether it’s fighting banks, fighting free trade agreements that are extracting resources from other parts of the earth, challenge bad carbon markets, challenging these injustices done to the environment and society based on bad economy,” he told SolveClimate on his first day at the helm.

Pica, who grew up in a farm family in a conservative corner of southwest Michigan, a few miles from Lake Michigan, has already been spearheading FOE's advocacy work on climate legislation during his more than 10 years with the group.

As director of domestic programs, he led its fight against fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies, called out the 2007 energy bill for its approach to biofuels, and launched campaigns to bring uncontrolled technologies such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology under greater regulatory control. He speaks the language of economics, and in the media spotlight, he comes across as measured, deliberate and determined to speak truth to power.

As FOE’s new president, Pica joins a growing number of young leaders in the environmental movement. The most prominent, Phil Radford, became executive director of Greenpeace in April at age 33.

For their generation, the climate fight is very personal.

“The decisions that we are making today are going to impact my life. It is up to my generation – we need to be at the table in fighting for what really has to be done,” Pica says.

He points out that the environmental movement in the 1970s was a youth movement. What Pica, Radford and other young climate issue leaders bring to the table now is new energy, new ideas, a personal sense of urgency and one more key element: social networking skill – they can mobilize grassroots movements around the world and are already tapped into today's youth environmental movement, which has been showing its strength online and at protests and the annual Power Shift conferences in Washington, D.C. This year’s Power Shift was more than 11,000 strong.

“There is no one I’d trust more at the helm of Friends of the Earth than Erich,” said Brent Blackwelder, who is retiring after 15 years as FOE’s president.

“He’s smart and energetic, and he brings fresh vision and leadership to the environmental movement.”

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