Hey, it's Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. Now more than ever, we're reminded

how interconnected we are as human beings living on this planet. What if the coronavirus pandemic is just a precursor

to the kind of crises we'll face as climate change accelerates? What should we do now to preserve humanity and the

dignity of life on this planet? Environmental activist Christine Tompkins is a pioneer in this area.

She's performed a kind of capitalism jiu-jitsu, as she calls it, where she used her success in

private business to do public and planetary good.

She'll talk about it, and it's the kind of thinking we could all use more of in this moment.

My siblings and I grew up on our great-grandfather's farm in California.

It was a landscape of our family and our home. When it was clear that nobody in our generation wanted to take on the heavy burden of ranching, the ranch was sold to a neighbor.

The anchor of our lives was cut, and we felt adrift in the absence of that land.

For the first time, I came to understand that something valuable can be best understood

not by its presence, but by its absence.

It was impossible to know then just how powerful the absence of those things we love would have an impact far into my future.

For 23 years, my working life was with Yvonne Chouin.

I started when he was designing and manufacturing technical rock and ice climbing equipment in a tin shed near the railroad tracks in Ventura.

And when Yvonne decided to start making clothes for climbers and call this business Patagonia,

I became one of the first six employees, later becoming CEO, and helping build a company where creating the best products

and doing good by the world was more than just a tagline. Doug Tonkins, who would become my

husband years later, was an old friend and climbing companion of Yvons and also an entrepreneur.

He co-founded the North Face and a spree company.

All three of these businesses were created by people who had grown up through the 60s,

shaped by the civil rights, anti-war, feminist, and peace movements. And those values were picked up

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