Hill is the founder of TreeHugger, an online hub for news and information related to environmental sustainability. Hailed as a “green CNN,” TreeHugger hosts a constantly updated blog, newsletters, video and radio segments and a user-generated Graham site, Hugg. In the three years since its inception, TreeHugger has become one of the most high-profile and highly-trafficked sites on the internet.
Recently, Hill his been hard at work developing Planet Green with Discovery Communications. Hill has also worked in a variety of industries prior to starting TreeHugger, including fashion, web-development, and plant-based air filters. He is also a designer, and his New York souvenir coffee mug is sold in over 150 stores. Hill was educated at Carleton University in Ottawa and Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver.
Description: An interview with Gandhi.
Whom would you like to interview and what would you ask?
Hill: Well he’s dead, but I’d wanna . . . I’d certainly wanna interview Gandhi. And I . . . I’m really interested about growth, so I might ask him about growth. I . . . It sort of seems like our entire society is built on growth. And yet the globe is a finite thing with finite . . . there’s only so many people we can put on it. There’s only so many resources. There are only . . . And so it’s like there’s this . . . Our whole society is built on this trajectory that is infinite, but it’s not infinite. So I’m not sure if Gandhi would be able to answer that question, but . . .
Hill: Well I think people talk about on your deathbed, you never say, “I wish I spent more time at work,” or it would be so . . . Like I think it’s a . . . I’d apply a similar concept. I think . . . I think that people . . . For the people that are watching this show, they have very little at risk. So I think a lot of people like leave . . . don’t do that . . . don’t align their work with their values because they’re worried about finances, or their worried about this sort of stuff. And it’s just like the reality for the people that are . . . that can watch a television, for the vast majority of the them there is a network – whether it’s friends, or family, or government – around them that they’re just not gonna end up on the street. So I would counsel people to really make that jump. Don’t worry. You’re gonna be fine. And align your work with your values. You spend a lot of time working, and you might as well do a good thing because that’s . . . that’s what you’ll be thinking about later on on your deathbed, you know? Did you . . . Were you good with your family and good with your friends? And did you do something that had some meaning? And I think there’s little . . . there’s really little risk. So I just would encourage people to jump into it.
Recorded on: Oct 16 2007