(환경) 억만장자에서 환경보호활동가 된 노스페이스 창립자 더글라스 톰킨스

출처: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35048806

Profile: Douglas Tompkins, billionaire-turned-conservationist 억만장자에서 환경보호운동가 된 노스페이스의 창립자 더글라스 톰킨스

• 9 December 2015
 
• From the sectionLatin America & Caribbean

Image copyrightAlamy

Image captionDouglas Tompkins left the corporate world for the wilds of Chile and Argentina

Douglas Tompkins made a fortune selling high-end jackets and adventure gear as the founder of North Face, but he spent his final years railing against the very corporate world that made him a billionaire. 더글라스 톰킨스는 고가 자켓과 탐험장비를 운좋게 판매한 노스페이스의 창립자였으나, 그는 말년에 자신을 억만장자로 만들어준 기업을 욕(비판)하면서 보냈다.

"There's no doubt whatsoever that there's no future in capitalism," he said in a 2012 interview. "It's probably no more than 500 years old, and it's demonstrating over and over again that it is destroying the world." "자본주의에서선 미래가 없다는 것이 확실하다."

He moved to the wilds of Chile and Argentina, espousing an anti-consumerist philosophy, buying huge swaths of land and making enemies along the way.

To some he was an environmental hero, but many in South America viewed him with suspicion, unconvinced his motives were altruistic.

North Face founder dies in kayak accident

After founding The North Face as a small ski and backpacking gear shop in San Francisco in the 1960s, Mr Tompkins helped his then wife start Esprit, a clothing brand.

Both companies would grow into multinational clothing giants.

But in the late 1980s, he left the business world for South America in order to pursue environmentalism, co-founding the Foundation for Deep Ecology in 1990.

He often said that he felt lucky to have escaped the shackles of the corporate class and, in his own words, do something with "meaning".

That, it seems, he unquestionably did, spending millions of dollars buying up swathes of pristine land in Argentina and Chile - areas in which he claimed to feel like a "de facto citizen" - and turning them into conservation areas.

Image copyrightGetty Images

Image captionThe North Face has grown from a small ski shop into an international clothing brand

Image copyrightAP

Image captionMr Tompkins, pictured with the Chilean's president chief of staff in 1997, had often rocky relations with politicians

In a statement after his death in a kayaking accident, Tompkins Conservation, which represents his family's various environmental foundations, called him one of the earth's foremost conservationists".

He and wife Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, it said, had purchased some 2.2 million acres of land, including Pumalin Park in Chile, one of the world's largest private nature reserves, made up of forests, lakes and fjords stretching from the Andes mountains to the Pacific.

But their large-scale South American activities have not been immune from controversy or opposition.

Right-wing Chilean politicians accused the US couple of land grabbing, while local media have sometimes peddled conspiracy theories alleging all sorts of "dark" motives lying behind their activities, according to a 2009 profile.

Image copyrightSam Beebe/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Image captionPumalin Park was one of Mr Tompkins' largest projects

As a fierce activist, Mr Tompkins also faced-off with corporate interests and their political backers, from loggers to salmon exporters and energy companies hoping to dam Patagonia's rivers. 맹렬한 활동가로서, 톰킨스는 기업들의 이익과 그들의 정치적 후원자들과 싸워야 했다. 벌목꾼들로부터, 연어수출업자들, 파타고니아 강에 댐을 건설하기 바라는 에너지 회사들에 이르기 까지 그가 싸운 회사들이다. 

Despite the heat, he took a bold stand - asserting that he was acting in the best interests of his adopted homelands.

"It is really your behaviour that determines whether you're a patriot," he once said."당신이 애국자인가 아닌가를 결정짓는 것은 당신의 행동이다."

"If you're trashing your own country, ruining the soils, contaminating the waters and the air, cutting down trees, overfishing the lakes, rivers and oceans, you're not much of a patriot." "만일 당신이 토양을 망가뜨리고, 물과 공기를 오염시키며, 나무를 함부로 벌목하고, 호수나 강이나 바다에서 물고기를 너무 많이 잡으면서 당신 나라를 엉망징창이 되게 한다면, 당신은 애국자가 아니다."