I have often thought that my work with wildlife taught me the meaning of patience, and my work with the big trees taught me the meaning of humility, and my work with the ice has taught me the meaning of mortality.
James BalogI was raised a Catholic as a boy and went to a Catholic boys' high school, a private school, and kind of drifted away, candidly, in my latter teen years. I consider myself deeply spiritual but not in an institutional, religious kind of a way. In Catholicism, we're surrounded by these images of martyrdom and doing penance and doing some suffering to achieve what you're trying to achieve. And I certainly embedded that in my psyche and I have lived that very effectively.
James BalogI personally spend the majority of my time by far on outreach and education and fundraising and administration.
James BalogEach of us can and must shift our behavior according to our ability. For some, that means changing diet, shopping locally, or putting solar panels on their house. For others, it means using their voice to inspire transformative change.
James BalogGlacial pace is actually an incorrect concept. The glaciers move a lot faster and they react a lot faster than people imagine.
James BalogEarly in my career I discovered that there was something really special about photographing at night that places your mind on the surface of the planet. Youโre no longer just a human being walking around in the regular world. Youโre a human animal striding around on the surface of the planet thatโs out in the middle of the galaxy. We as a culture, weโre forgetting that we are actually natural organisms and that we have this very deep connection and contact with nature. You canโt divorce civilization from nature. We totally depend on it.
James Balog