Written by California Conversations

Published Issue: Summer 2008

The wide acceptance of corporate and social responsibility being tied to living and investing green did not happen overnight.

The groundwork was done by people assuming little credit for changing the way Californians think and speak to each other.

Carla Din was in the trenches early.

She was willing to take the meetings one at a time to explain, when no one was much interested, why business and labor coalitions needed to be built to oppose, through the creation of adventurous public policy, the loss of natural resources.

Her effective work with the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment included the steady encouragement of CalPERS and STRS to challenge their systems’ investment in the Maxxam Corporation and their stranglehold on 3,000 acres of untouched old-growth Redwoods.

It was not always companionable work.

In 2002, Carla saw that in order to have a successful Renewable Portfolio Standard in California, it would require the skills, training and support found within the state’s prominent labor organizations. This perspective continues with meeting the goals of AB 32-that partnering with labor alongside government, business, environmental and community leaders to reduce emissions and build new clean energy industries is a winning strategy.

That is the approach of the Apollo Alliance, which promotes public and private investments into alternative energy to create high quality jobs, boost industries and revitalize communities. The time could not be more ripe for climate to drive economic development in California.

Carla joined the Apollo Alliance as the Western Regional Director in 2004, and has seen a great shift since then:

“There’s been a sea of change, so to speak, in just the past eight years,” she says. “Now, thanks to An Inconvenient Truth, Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, and runaway fuel prices, the country is waking up.”