Steve Toben ’78 delivered a SEVEN Talk at the 2025 Alumni Forum in Chapel Hill on October 19. Steve is the principal at Toben Consulting, an advisory service for donors and family foundations.
Steve Toben ’78 delivered a SEVEN Talk at the 2025 Alumni Forum in Chapel Hill on October 19. Steve is the principal at Toben Consulting, an advisory service for donors and family foundations.
About SEVEN Talks
Every class of Morehead-Cain Scholars connects with seven others: the three classes ahead, its own, and the three that follow. The idea of SEVEN is to strengthen connections across generations of Morehead-Cains.
The Alumni Forum embodies this spirit through SEVEN Talks—seven alumni and scholars on Saturday, and seven more on Sunday—each sharing seven minutes of wisdom with the Morehead-Cain community.
How to listen
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Well, good morning to my beloved Morehead-Cain family.
This year, I have the privilege of serving as a mentor to Amanda Jesuca, Morehead-Cain Class of 2027.
At the bottom of Amanda’s emails, she includes a quote from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The quote says, “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”
This works as the lead-in for my remarks this morning.
In 1992, I joined the staff of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California. I had two assignments.
The first was to direct the program on environmental giving. The second was to direct the program on conflict resolution.
The Cold War had ended, and there was a sudden flowering of new ideas, new models, and new approaches for intervening in civil wars and conflicts around the globe.
We funded scholar-practitioners who were developing a body of work on multitrack diplomacy—how you can enlist diverse actors in society, business, faith, education, and public health, all working in coordinated fashion within countries and across national boundaries to try to reknit the fabric of society.
We shone a spotlight on small nongovernmental organizations that were playing extraordinary roles in mediating civil wars and civil conflicts.
One prominent example—a tiny Vatican relief organization—was credited with bringing about an end to the Mozambique Civil War, which had lasted for sixteen years and taken one million lives.
How did they do it? What lessons from that story could be applied in other settings?
We were also lifting up the extraordinary story of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, which had been so instrumental in addressing the deep wounds of apartheid in that country. What could the TRC in South Africa teach the rest of the world—including the United States?
All of that work—so promising, so full of possibility—came crashing down on September 11, 2001.
In that moment, the world appeared to revert to a good-versus-evil, us-versus-them, kill-or-be-killed conception of global affairs.
I experienced enormous despair at witnessing all of my colleagues in this arena—who had done so much to advance other possibilities—see their work sidelined. It was a dark time for everyone in the world, but certainly for those who had envisioned a different way forward.
But I didn’t have the opportunity to linger very long in that state of mind, because I had a second assignment—and that was the environment.
From 1992 forward, I became associated with student movements, climate policy think tanks, clean energy trade associations, Indigenous forest protectors, and faith leaders who were advancing the concept that the Bible implores humans to take care of creation.
There were media organizations, litigators, strategic communications experts—an amazing array of innovation and deployment across the entire world. It was remarkable to be part of all of that.
And yet, throughout the time I’ve been involved in this work, the level of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere has continued to rise.
The scientific community has long held that an upper threshold of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere must not be breached without risking the major building blocks of the global climate system.
When I began this work, the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere was 356 parts per million. Today, the level is 430—a level not seen on this planet for three million years.
Once again, I find myself thrown often into states of discouragement—something approaching despair, though not quite.
And I have three means of picking myself up and carrying forward with this work.
The first is my contemplative practice, which cultivates a sense every day that I have some small measure of agency to bring to this challenge—that my tiny bit of energy does matter at the end of the day. It also cultivates a sense of equanimity in the face of inevitable loss.
The second means I have for keeping in the game is to come into rooms like this one, where I never fail to be reenergized, uplifted, and inspired by the fighters, the visionaries, the entrepreneurs, the inventors—all those who see ways forward to a world of abundant, clean energy for all.
And third, I take courage from the wonderful examples of real progress that we are, in fact, seeing.
China’s emissions are set to peak this year and thereafter will fall.
In the first half of 2025, renewable energy overtook coal as the world’s leading source of electricity.
In July, the world’s highest court—the International Court of Justice—issued an opinion finding that the nations of the world have a legal obligation to refrain from climate harm and to take account of the rights of future generations.
More than 140 million acres of Amazonian rainforest have now been placed under the permanent care of Indigenous peoples—who we know absolutely understand best how to care for the forest.
And finally, in this country, there is surging bipartisan support for advanced geothermal technologies to tap the vast stores of heat beneath our feet.
The prospects are still daunting, but I am driven by the knowledge that each fraction of a degree of planetary heating we avoid will avert immense human suffering and preserve precious habitat for the millions of species who share this planet.
And you know something else? The lessons of conflict resolution aren’t lost either. Perhaps someday we will have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in this country that will finally address the enduring legacy of racism.
One last thought.
Do you remember the motto of Outward Bound?To serve, to strive, and not to yield.
It may often seem as if defeat is knocking on the door, but we will continue to serve, we will continue to strive, and we will not yield.
Thank you.