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1% Better Will Steger – Quick Links

Watch trailer for the latest documentary, After Antarctica
Learn about the expeditions and accolades of Will Steger
Learn more about the Steger Center
Learn more about Climate Generation
Will Steger’s five books: North to the Pole, Saving the Earth, Crossing Antarctica, Over the Top of the World, The Steger Homestead Kitchen
Connect with Craig Thielen on LinkedIn

Key Takeaways

• Purpose-Driven Exploration: Will Steger’s expeditions, particularly the Antarctic traverse, were not just feats of endurance but platforms for environmental education and crucial policy changes. His adventures were intricately linked to global efforts for preserving sensitive ecosystems, showcasing how daring explorations can double as powerful campaigns for conservation. This highlights the significance of having a purpose greater than the adventure itself.
• Innovative Problem Solving Under Extreme Conditions: Steger’s expeditions faced enormous physical and logistical challenges, from severe weather to navigating without GPS across vast unknown terrains. The solutions—like creating snow cairns for aerial navigation—emphasize creativity in problem-solving under pressure. Steger’s approach to dealing with unknowns and managing supplies strategically under extreme conditions provides profound lessons in crisis management and operational strategy.
• Leadership and Team Dynamics: Effective leadership, according to Steger, is predominantly democratic, harnessing the collective skills and strengths of the team rather than adhering to a command-and-control model. His leadership style during critical moments—emphasizing group consensus and individual empowerment—offers valuable insights into managing high-stakes projects and fostering teamwork in diverse settings.
• Environmental Advocacy Through Direct Action: Steger’s narrative reinforces the impact of direct, action-based advocacy in environmental issues. His firsthand experiences with climate change and his efforts to influence policy through expeditions underline the importance of active participation in ecological conservation and policy-making, demonstrating the power of dedicated individuals or groups to effect significant environmental policies.
• The Power of Education and Public Engagement: Throughout his career, Steger has used his expeditions to educate the public and world leaders about environmental issues. His strategic use of media to amplify the message and engage global audiences showcases the critical role of education and public awareness in environmental advocacy. His efforts exemplify how targeted educational initiatives can mobilize public opinion and lead to policy changes.

1% Better Will Steger – Transcript

[00:00:06.260] – Craig
Hello, I’m Craig Thielen, and this is the 1% Better Podcast. Today, we’re speaking with Will Steger. And in the exploration circles, Will needs no introduction as he is legendary and a Hall of Famer, from my perspective, anyways. I don’t know if there is such a thing. But for the rest of us, I think it is really important to understand Will’s background. I’m going to give you a bit of an introduction here, Will… I know I won’t do it justice because it could probably take 20 minutes to get through all the accolades, but I’m going to try.

I think Will is best known for his legendary polar explorations. He’s traveled tens of thousands of miles by kayak and dogsled over a period of 50 years. He’s led teams in some of the most significant polar explorations in history, including the first confirmed dogsled journey to the North Pole without resupply, this was in 1986. 1,600-mile south-north traverse of Greenland, which is the longest unsupported dogsled expedition in history. And then in 1988, perhaps his greatest expedition led the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica. And this is something, to put it in perspective, this took seven months; 3,741 miles of dogsled traverse across the continent of Antarctica. Incredible conditions, including what I believe is temperatures that dip to 113 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. That’s incredibly hard to get my head around from a Minnesota person who grew up in consistent minus 20, minus 30, even sometimes minus 40 in Northern Minnesota. It’s hard for me to get my head around those kinds of temperatures… including a storm that lasted 50 days. So we’ll dig into that. But that just gives you a little sense of some of the expeditions that Will has led.

He’s been recognized all over the globe… too many of the achievements to name here, but a couple of joining the likes of Amelia Earhart and Jacques Cousteau in the National Geographic’s John Oliver La Gorce Medal, authored five books, accomplished speaker, has presented hundreds of times, I think over a million attendees to his presentation. He’s been a prominent global spokesperson for Arctic Preservation, speaking with many heads of state, including, I believe, the President of the United States; Founder of the Climate Generation Foundation, and the Steger Wilderness Center, just to name a few things here. And finally, Will has resided most of his life in a beautiful off-the-grid house near Ely, Minnesota, that is also a very unique, beautiful place, and not too far from where I grew up. So Will, welcome to 1% Better.

[00:03:08.990] – Will
Great. Great to be here, Craig. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:03:12.210] – Craig
Hopefully, I did a little justice here on your background and everything that you’ve accomplished.

[00:03:19.410] – Will
No, it’s fine.

[00:03:21.530] – Craig
Well, Will, I know you’re a very modest man, but some of the feats that you’ve accomplished are really incredible. In fact, I still have a hard time getting my head around. Do you ever look back on your life and some of the things that you accomplish and go, Did I really do that? Did I really go across Antarctica? Do you ever look back like that?

[00:03:42.530] – Will
I never really reflected back until… I’m 79 now. Maybe five years ago, I started thinking a little bit about my life, but I’m mainly in the present moment going forward on projects, so I don’t live a life of reflection and looking back that I’ve done this. I’m always moving forward on things.

[00:04:01.530] – Craig
Well, that’s incredible in itself. I think we’ll dig into that a little bit more. But the first question I want to ask you really is, and I’m assuming you’ve been asked this many, many times, but it’s the first question I think it comes to mind when people understand some of the extreme conditions and rift that you encountered, is why did you take on some of the expeditions that you did? Why do what you did when you know that your life’s at your team, and some of the things you have never been done before? What’s the why?

[00:04:34.790] – Will
Yeah, that’s a good question. All my life, at least the last 40 years, my expeditions have been platforms for education in the environment. There was always this goal of protecting the environment and life on the planet. So, it’s a little bit more than doing personal bests. I did a lot of personal bests when I was in my teens and 20s and early 30s. But these expeditions really had a purpose that was much greater than the adventure. But adventure, especially dogsled expeditions, captures the imaginations, younger people, especially. But I think people in general were very fascinated with the adventure. And that, of course, drew then attention to the environment that we were traveling across. And my real career is in education.

My philosophy in education is really simple. It’s, first of all, drawing out the curiosity of a student. And once you have the curiosity, you just simply add the content. The curiosity is everything. So my expeditions provided that a curiosity of interest of adventure dogs that captured the fascination. It was on the media, so it was very quite a popular expeditions. And also, it enabled us a political platform because when you have a constituency that is following you and is educated and is very concerned, like in Antarctica, about the protection of Antarctica, that does give you a political clout when you’re meeting with leaders because most of the expeditions were around certain policies where we really needed the politicians to come on board, bottom line.

Then once you have a policy in place, like in Antarctica, it was really about protecting Antarctica. The expedition itself was, I don’t think anyone had ever imagined crossing Antarctica the longest possible route, let alone crossing it. It had never been crossed. Shackleton’s ship was crushed before it even got on the land. So it was a remarkable expedition in itself. But the reality in 1990, the Antarctic Treaty was being reviewed, and the Treaty Nations, which were 27 of them, had drawn up a document to open up Antarctica for exploration for minerals, which is basically the end of that environment.

In order to change that, we had to have all 27 treaty nations to change their vote. To do that, we crossed the Antarctica Our goal was at that time to make Antarctica famous and draw attention to this treaty. And then after the expedition, we had over half the world followed us. We had pre-Internet, millions of millions of kids that followed it. But at the end, we worked with world leaders, and we were able, like a poker game, the first Prime Minister of Australia, then Mitran of France, and we got all the world leaders to sign.

And in the end, we were able to reverse that. So the expedition does that, and that’s a policy. Now, in order to change the policy, it’s up for review in another 25 years. But to change that policy, they have to have 100% vote to reverse that. So policies are really powerful because once you get them place, they don’t change with the political whim of the new leader that comes on board.

[00:07:49.980] – Craig
Wow. I mean, that was really the… I mean, there’s probably many reasons, but if you had to put a finger on it, it was the team that you had built, which was a completely global international team, you were all fully aligned and committed to getting this policy agreed to and written down, and that was a huge milestone to preserve the Antarctica. Is that a way to summarize that?

[00:08:17.300] – Will
Yeah, I would say over the years, my success has been a very diverse team of people, and diverse in terms of culture. When we cross Antarctica, we have the Soviet Union team members from the Soviet Union, China, France, Great Britain, Japan, United States. And these six nations had the most clout in Antarctica. So that’s why we chose that. And that really helps when it comes to swing public opinion.

[00:08:44.020] – Craig
Absolutely. Yeah. And I wanted to talk more about that in a second because I was able to read your book and watch your documentary, and it’s just fascinating. But one of the things that wanted to just get a sense of here is, you push the boundaries on that particular expedition with what people thought were possible. And so what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced on that expedition and others? And how did you overcome those? I mean, obviously, there’s the just pure nature and the temperature. Describe that experience. What was the toughest part from your perspective? And how did you guys overcome those?

[00:09:24.640] – Will
Yeah, the first challenge, again, is organizing an expedition in Antarctica, raising money. But we also had to have… We needed the Soviet Union to come on board as a partner, and they did. So it was a political issue from the start. But then the…

[00:09:39.070] – Craig
That was in the middle of the Cold War, wasn’t it, Will?

[00:09:42.470] – Will
Yeah, during the Cold War. It was right when we crossed Antarctica right when the Berlin Wall went down.

[00:09:48.910] – Craig
That’s right. That’s right.

[00:09:51.160] – Will
I actually didn’t hear about that until months later. But the actual crossing was really… it was really difficult. We had 60 days of storms on the Antarctic Peninsula when we were in higher elevation. And first we tried to wait these storms out, and it was obviously it wasn’t going to lift. But the problem was that in the summertime, in real fickled weather, with planes, we laid out food caches every 300 miles. And the challenge in these storms was finding these food caches as pre-GPS, so we didn’t have transmitters on it. So the issue was that we lost three of these caches, fortunately, every other one. So we lost the cash. We would have to make a decision. Do we look here and try to find it or run the risk of running out of food, or do we go on? So we always elected to keep going. So we were always on these severe rations, but we traveled in conditions that, to me, were imaginable. I had no idea that anyone could ever travel, but we had to. That’s where we had the windchills of 100 below. It was the power of the team because we were all age of… our average age was 40. As I mentioned, our power was our diversity. We had trained, we crossed Greenland as a training expedition, 1,700 miles that you mentioned.

[00:11:18.460] – Craig
That was a training expedition to prepare for Antarctica?

[00:11:22.600] – Will
Yeah. I had an agreement. It’s 1,600 miles across. It’s high elevation. It’s the second largest ice cap in the world. No one had ever traveled that distance because we needed to do that to see how the dogs would run at this high elevation. We were at 10,000 feet for six months, 180 days. Just to see, first of all, can the dogs and people travel at this high elevation? That was the training. We were in a totally unknown situation. We started in the…

[00:11:52.830] – Craig
What was the elevation, the highest elevation that you were at in Antarctica or Greenland?

[00:11:58.950] – Will
Yeah, the highest elevation in Antarctica was 11,000, a little over 11,000 feet.

[00:12:03.700] – Craig
That’s getting up there.

[00:12:05.490] – Will
Yeah, the Eastern Plateau is 3,000 miles across, and that average is 10,000 feet. It’s high elevation. Since it’s cold, the density of the cold air makes it feel like 10,000 feels like 18,000 feet. We had that handicap. Then we made the Pole, the South Pole, 2,000 miles into the trip. Then we had an area called the area of inaccessibility that 700 miles across, no one had ever crossed or seen. That was an unknown.

Radio communication didn’t work then because of the 24 hours sun and the northern lights. We had a plane, but how do you find us? We ended up doing something really simple. Every 2 kilometers, we built these snowcarens, like little snow people that were 5, 6 feet high. And then at a given time in a day, the plane took off and they would follow the shadows of these little snowcarens. And the last cache was similar to the distance from Minneapolis to Denver. So they crossed… they just simply followed the shadows, and if they got a cloud bank, came on, they would take a bearing on the shadows, and then hopefully, when they came out of it. But we could have been lost forever. We could have been just disappeared off the globe, but…

[00:13:30.510] – Craig
Unreal.

[00:13:32.290] – Will
And then we got to the other side, and then we still had another 1,200 miles to get out.

[00:13:37.980] – Craig
It’s just unreal, Will. I did have a chance to read your book. By the way, it’s called Crossing Antarctica. And for those that want a real-life action thriller, this is a great book. And also, I had a chance to watch your documentary, which I don’t believe it’s been published yet. And that’s called After Antarctica, and again, that gave me a real sense for what this was like on a day-to-day basis. I have so many questions about it, but I’ll just ask you a few here. One is, when you were preparing for this thing, and this is in 1988 and before, did you have satellite imagery or did you know what this terrain that no one’s ever been across for? And it looked largely flat, but I’m not sure. Did you know what you were getting into or had no idea, like you said, the 700-mile spot, you had no idea what it was going to be.

[00:14:34.090] – Will
Yeah, it’s quite unknown. No one had ever traveled in the winter. That was yet… at the beginning of the trip on the Antarctic Peninsula, there have been people there in the summer, but no one had ever been there in the wintertime. That’s why we get these 60 days of storms, and this was an unknown. So you do have… It was pretty much totally unknown. It’s not like really a map, but you can do… We use Sextant for navigation, so it’s almost like being in the ocean in a way.

[00:15:04.080] – Craig
It’s a frozen ocean, right?

[00:15:05.480] – Will
Frozen ocean, yeah. I should add, probably 80% of the world’s fresh water is in Antarctica, and that ice is over two miles thick. at an average. It was a really ideal exploration that way, and that was totally unknown what we were doing. There were some sections that were known, like I mentioned, on the Russian side in the summer. We, the six of us, we had a lot of tricks up our sleeves. We had a lot of knowledge between us. We had three or two polar scientists said, that spent decades in these environments. So that helped.

But you did as much research as you can, but you really have to play your hunches and you lay out what you think is the right strategy. These expeditions are all really about strategy, because, and a lot of it’s intuitive. You lay the strategy out. If your strategy wrong, especially on this expedition, there could be serious consequences. You might not even survive, let alone complete the journey. But the strategy has to be sound. But again, all of us were experienced, and it was a group effort, and our strategy was really correct. Although in the storms, we were way behind. We were like…

[00:16:24.470] – Craig
Oh, yeah, that’s right. I saw that.

[00:16:26.570] – Will
And we were studying to get pressure from sponsors countries to quit, and we were dealing with that, but we were able to catch up and get on schedule.

[00:16:37.800] – Speaker 1
How did you deal with just the pure cold? You said there was 50, 60 days of a storm, and I think for largely, you just hunkered down, and it was, again, over 100 degrees, windchill below zero. It appeared to me like you were in regular tents. What was your heat source, and how do you even keep a tent warm? What heat source did you use, and did that work? Did you anticipate that? How did that go?

[00:17:09.320] – Will
Yeah. On the storms, we waited off for maybe 11 days out of 60 because we had to travel in these things. We waited it out when it was 100 below windchills. There’s no way it would be being. But we traveled what was just really marginal survival weather. But our tents were our homes. They were Northface, a dome-type tent, really perfect for this type of weather. You can anchor them down in 100-mile-an-hour wind. We were confident that they weren’t going to blow apart because if the tent blew apart, you just simply wouldn’t survive that. We were confident in our shelters. But we heated with mountain stoves, Coleman fuel, white gas, it’s called. But our fuel was always rationed because you don’t have endless fuel. So a lot of times, we have just enough fuel to cook our food, and the rest of the time, we were stuck inside these tents that were really cold and not above freezing at all.

But it’s endurance. It’s enduring, and it’s really I wouldn’t say the tent life is endurance, but you’re always in this situation where you’re enduring. It’s a meditative state, almost. It’s not a stress that we face in our everyday life with politics, relationships, making a living, never having enough. I think Americans were so stressed right now. You’re not dealing with that type of, I would say, psychological stress, environmental stress. It’s more dealing with simple freezing, cold, food, exhaustion.

[00:18:50.140] – Craig
Survival. I mean, it’s survival. It’s mental. I mean, it’s a seven-month in one of the most, if not the single most difficult environment on Earth. In fact, I think you were quoted once, Will, as saying, I don’t think Antarctica wants us here. And it took you a long time to get your head around. It’s such a almost like a PTSD type of situation, to think about it and to say, I would ever want to go back. And you almost talked about Antarctica like a person. I mean, can you describe that? And then the mental toughness of seven months and you’re three months in, and you’re thousands of miles… And some people on the team, I think at times question, should we even be here? Should we turn back? Should we stop this thing? Describe that environment and that mental attitude that you guys had to stick together.

[00:19:45.530] – Will
Yeah. First of all, our images of Antarctica all come from the coastline where you have wildlife and beauty. If you take an apple and you slice it in half, you’ll see the red skin is very thin. That’s the image as we have. All of Antarctica, 99% plus, is that interior. Prior to this expedition, there were doing the Scott and Amundsen expedition at the turn of the last century, 13 men went into the interior and only six came back. So it’s extremely hostile. It’s like being on another planet. And we’re used to the Arctic, to me, is like, North, that’s my home. And it’s cold in that. But the Arctic has wildlife, it has heart. It has something you can relate to as a human being. Whereas at Antarctica, especially the long period of seven months in this environment, it was just simply brutal. And it always seemed like it was trying to kill us. I read about this, I didn’t really believe it, but it would suddenly just change on you within seconds. I didn’t think that was possible. I thought people were exaggerating. We were in this extremely harsh environment, and I was no friend of Antarctica when I left. I never turned back. I remember leaving on the Russian ship. I never looked back. I was still concerned that we might sink on the ice. I know on the water. Icebergs. The last couple of days when we were in the Russian ship leaving through an iceberg alley, I was really nervous that this would probably, it could be the time that we were all going to perish or the ship could go down. I never went back to Antarctica. I didn’t have my thoughts to it. And 10 years later, I did go back on ships. I’m in good terms right now with Antarctica, but it was that hostility. Something different that I’ve never since have experienced.

But on the day-to-day, it’s just… It’s endurance. And endurance is really… We have a thought of endurance that you’re fighting it and fighting it. Endurance is really all about giving. You really have to give into that. I’ve seen strong men that fought, and they really suffered dearly for that. So the day-to-day is something that you give into. When You’re 100 below a wind chill, you’re out traveling it, that’s a survival situation. There you have to be on every second you’re in the moment. But that’s a small percentage of the time. The rest of it, it’s just tough, but it’s easy to accept because being hungry, being exhausted with the cold, it’s not a big deal. I mean, as long as you’re not life and limb-threatening, if you’re giving into it. It is a really, for myself, at least, very meditative state to be in. The challenge was really unusual because we had two challenges. One was the early times we crossed about 12 mountain ranges in crevasses and all this danger that we were in. Okay, that was danger or situation where it was obvious. True adventure, I would call that. Although, and then 95% of it, of the challenge, the other part was, how do you handle your mind? Because you’re in this absolutely nothingness for six periods. And that’s where for me, it was a meditative type of a situation. And that’s how I glided through it.

[00:23:24.320] – Craig
Many times, it looked like you’re very busy. You have lots, so much to do with packing up and unpacking and setting up camp and feeding… There’s so many activities to do, but there were lots of moments where you just were hunkered down and you had time to reflect. I’m curious, did you ever think to yourself, This could be it. We’re not going to make it. Or do you not let that into your mind? Do you think about your happy place? Do you think about the finish line? Or how did you handle those times when you did have time to think?

[00:23:58.430] – Will
Well, we were all experienced in these storms. The food caches would be, we thought, 30 miles out, and we were down to half a candle when it’s dark all the time, and our food is less than a day. Scott and his expedition all perished 12 miles from a ton of food. So we did think a lot about Scott at that time, but we were in this situation, and the storms were getting more violent and super cold because the storms turned out, they started coming from the high plateau, it was still 100 below. But it was that stage that was very difficult, where it looked like there was that we could really easily perish now. We didn’t talk about it at the time, but it was a situation for me where I was just living on hope. My faith in everything got disappeared at that time, but I had a hope. It was almost like I saw this little bit of light in the blackness, the positive, and that’s what I zeroed in on that, that little bit of hope. And I would pray that I would never be in that situation ever again, because we talk about being in a situation like that.

But when you’re in the moment of a place where you look like you’re going to perish, you’re holding on to hope against all hopes. I had faith in the expedition. We were reaching so many children around the world. That’s what I held on to the goodness of children, and I felt that what we were doing was really right and good. I thought we would survive because of that, because of the children of the world, because of that goodness that we all represented. Preserving the continent was… Our goal was absolutely united. We had all the countries behind us. I never had an expedition where the goal was obvious. It was the protection of Antarctica. And everyone, without any question, joined us, all these countries and all the diplomats. It was a major, for sure, the last of the golden-type expeditions because we had the nationalities in the world behind this expedition. And it wasn’t a personal best where, Oh, look at these people are doing this amazing physical feat. People were behind what we represented for the world was changing and preserving this important environment.

[00:26:32.910] – Craig
It’s incredible. I mean, it really does come back to the why. And you guys had an important enough reason and why and alignment that kept you glued together and kept you hopeful. Probably wouldn’t have made it if it was just about, Hey, we’re going to accomplish this. No one’s ever done it before. So that’s very telling in itself about the motivation that even started it.

Will, you’re one of the few people on Earth, really, that’s experienced the polar regions on both ends of the planet for as long and as many times, for decades. So I’m just curious, can you share, what have you observed with changes to our polar regions on the Earth over your lifetime?

[00:27:18.010] – Will
Yeah, it’s a good question. I have an eyewitness to climate change, first of all, from the very beginning. I mean, ever since a child, I was interested in polar regions and science. I was interested in weather meteorology, climatology, glaciology. My degree was in glaciology. I was always in that situation of where my mind was at in my study, and that was part of what drew me north. So the first 25 years of my lifelong career of traveling in the Arctic was when the Arctic and the polar regions were, normally, as they have been, super cold without these changes that we’re seeing now. And then I became the eyewitness, actually on the ice when it was melted, seeing the changes firsthand, because it was predicted early on that the first changes would be in the polar regions, and I was the eyewitness, and I was able to take that story of adventure and on the ground and also satellite photos at the same time of showing how this changed. All the first I’ve done in polar regions in my life are all the last because all these routes are no longer possible because they just simply don’t exist.

On the Arctic Ocean, I did it unsupported to the Pole in ’86 and then traversed it in ’95. ’86, we were still in the cold season, a cold cycle. ’95, when we crossed it, it was just remarkably changed just in nine years. We did manage to cross it, but shortly after that, it’s no longer possible, even to get from land to the pole anymore on foot. So I’ve seen all that, and all the ice shelves have been on, the Larson A, B, and C, which have disintegrated. We traveled one month on these ice shelves, and they don’t exist anymore. And it’s a sense that, intellectually, you can read books and maybe comprehend stuff. But when the Larson B ice shelf broke up, March of 2002, that had a real impact on me. It was at that time when I was up in Ely, read the newspaper and the headlines on the 14th page of the paper was Larson A Shelf Disintegrates. That was my call to action, to dedicate my rest of my life to climate It’s all done. But now, that’s not changed, because as of the last five, six years, we’ve all become eyewitness, and now it’s really obvious. You can deny it all you want, but denial is just a belief system that denial is not reality. We’re seeing it. I mean, I’m in Minnesota. We had record high for February of all time, and the next day was five degrees, and now we’re going to another record high of 70 in two days. I mean, that’s an El Niño, of course. But we’re all seeing it.

[00:30:22.070] – Craig
Yeah, there’s no doubt, right? I guess there’s probably still some debate and controversy on what exactly is causing it, whether it’s natural cycles or whether it’s human. There’s lots of discussion, but there’s no doubt that Earth is in a warming cycle. I guess my question for you, because you’ve been one of the leading climate advocates, especially Arctic, in the world, and you’ve had, like you said, a first-hand… You get your hands on it. You can see it. You’ve been there and seeing these changes. What advice would you give to the average person or business leaders? A lot of business leaders are listening to this show. What can we do to contribute in a positive way to not just climate change, but just taking care of this Earth that we live on?

[00:31:07.820] – Will
Yeah. I want to, first of all, be really clear here. 99. probably 98, 100% of the science is in. This is not something that we don’t know about. We know exactly what’s causing it. It’s carbon dioxide, methane. Human beings are causing that, and we’re all responsible for it. I mean, we don’t have to guilt ourselves else, but let’s get the record straight. It’s not a natural phenomenon. We thought so maybe 20 years ago. People ask me, What do you say to deniers? Well, I agree to disagree. I don’t even argue. I would argue with someone that is in politics or somebody in a leadership role. If they’re denying, I would take them on because it’s absolutely irresponsible to have that posture for the children in this world. So let’s get it straight here that we’re causing it. And that’s the great thing. We know the source of it.
We’ve come a long ways in the last 20 years with our policies, and that 20 years ago, people had no idea there’s so much confusion. And now I can speak for Minnesota, we have a multibillion dollar clean energy economy, which is growing and growing, and we’re using less and less CO₂.

The economy is refavoring this. Our habits on that, again, I can use my own environment in Minnesota. The bike trails, the hiking, the organic foods, industries that we are now supporting, but we have a long ways yet to go. But it’s very hopeful that we’re going to have… There’s hope, but we also on the other side, we’re going to have to adapt. Most of us are adults, and we can look at hard things. The world is going to change. It’s not the end of the world. For myself, I can use my self-example, in Minnesota, I don’t know what the virgin forest looked like 100 years ago, but I still have a really great environment. But things are going to change, but first of all, it’s not the end of the world. We’re overpopulated, which to me is the real issue because there’s going to be a lot of problems in mass migrations. But I didn’t know, even myself, if I would be alive when the world and society got the word, This is not reversible… the way… and it’s there. We’re all dealing with many stresses, but climate stress is a big one, especially for our younger people, because they’re inheriting at that.

But there’s a lot of hope. It comes down to an expedition. We live a life of choices. Choices determines our life. Right now, we have choices. And it’s important sometimes to mourn and put our heads in the sand and thinking temporarily, maybe giving up, but that’s your choice. But I’ve seen over and over on expeditions, the power of the human spirit… When we’re working around a unified goal, a unified message, that’s when the human race is at its very best. We can by 2040, 2050, we can’t kick the ball, the can down the road any further. We can’t say, We got 10 years. We don’t have any more time. We ran out. 20 years ago, we said we had 10 years. And then 10 years ago, we said we had another 10. I mean, it was just too many Band-Aids here. Let’s be mature about this and look at, Okay, ran out of time now. What are we going to do? We all have to be involved politically. I mean, first of all, as much as we don’t like politics, and politically, it’s much more than casting your vote for your candidate for president.

We all have, as an individual, we have a tremendous amount of influence. Of all of our friends and places that we join. We have our vote, but we have like-mindedness. We said in Antarctica, when we were surviving these storms, if we were one straw, we would be blown over, but we’re six, so we’re strong, and we’ll stand strong. So the power of community and getting connected with neighbors and friends, first of all, around that, and build your constituency around that. So the politics are extremely important, but it’s not the only thing. Absolutely.

And then I saw when the Larson A broke up 22 years ago, I moved to the city, Minneapolis, where I now spend half my time down here working on climate and so forth. But I saw the solutions real clearly. First of all, in education, we have to know what’s going on. We have to build our constituencies. But I realized that I saw clearly 20 years ago about the clean energy economy, that this booming economy would help because we’re going to innovate ourselves out of this and around our adapting. It’s all going to be innovation and creating new technologies, which means jobs for younger people. But for me, 20 years ago, what was most important, I saw a booming economy because everything was going to change around climate.

I saw This is an opportunity to bring people that are in poverty out of poverty, because I was always, like I think many people on our north side of Minneapolis, the inner city has been, What do you do about it? Like 20 years ago. But I knew the way out of poverty is really, really good jobs. We have this opportunity also. It’s equity jobs for people of color, for women, for all people around this economy. You’re seeing it now. Good luck finding a plumber or a construction worker or electrician. That’s great. Anyone going into these, and they’re skill-based. I really feel we’ve overemphasized the college degree. I think we’re finding that out. It was important when I was younger, you could get a good job. But I thought we debased skill-based learning. That’s where so many jobs are at. Anyone with skills can now get or are guaranteed of a job. It’s one thing training people, and then the job disappears. But these jobs are around forever.

I’m always optimistic. I’m not over-optimistic because I’m 79, I’m still alive, and I’ve survived all these storms. It’s not just pure willpower, but it’s using your head and being smart in your moves and smart in your choices, surrounding yourself always with good people, positive people. Detach yourself as much as you possibly can from negativity. That might mean turning off, or maybe even at least if you can’t turn off the news, if you’re addicted that much, reducing your input of negativity. But it’s really those are the formulas of being a productive human being that in turn becomes a productive country and a race and so forth.

[00:38:24.250] – Craig
Yeah. We’ve got- Working together globally, like you said, is the key there. We’re all on this one planet, this home that we call Earth together. It can’t just be one country or a few people. It’s got to be the whole globe working together because we’re all here together and we impact each other. It’s one ecosystem.
Well, hey, I want to shift gears. Another one of your passions, other than climate advocacy and Earth and that great work is leadership, I know. I want to talk to you a little bit about that because on one hand, Will, I spent enough time around you to make an observation. You don’t seem like the prototypical quote, unquote leader. You’re a pretty humble person. You’re somewhat understated, somewhat quiet. I think you’re quite introspective, and you spend a lot of time alone, out in the wilderness, up north. Yet you’ve led some of the most daring, difficult, dangerous expeditions where Teamwork is absolutely essential, not just to meet a goal, but to survive. And so you really required highest levels of teamwork and trust and performance. So I’m just curious, a little bit about just what is your philosophy on this whole notion of leadership, and how do you think about that?

[00:39:52.390] – Will
Yeah, I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of experience on leadership, especially when the chips are down and real-type leadership. First of all, I don’t have many beliefs. You know, beliefs of something. Sometimes I believe in this. It’s a concept, maybe. But the one thing I really believe in is the power of the human spirit. I’ve seen that over. I’ve seen it myself. I’ve seen it in a group. Again, groups. When the human spirit is there and alive, you can overcome almost anything. Thought, challenges of all sorts. I’ve had this experience. And my goal in my life has been, as I mentioned, education and my life in movement building and climate building and all this I did. I did most of this with my life up until recently, but my goal was really to build a center in Ely in the wilderness. I have the utmost faith in small groups in a wilderness, or in a wilderness setting, where you don’t have the complications and the distractions of everyday life, as opposed to, let’s say, a conference room or a retreat center where you’re going out and playing golf and having good time. That’s fine. But I see the wilderness setting with small groups to be really powerful. So I felt I could make the biggest impact in my life, and I felt this way over 40 years ago. If I could build the center in Ealy, Minnesota, and I could draw, eventually world leaders, world-class leaders there. Because if I could get small groups or eight or twelve together, I could really make the biggest impact of my life.

But also, I look at my life in terms of legacy of carrying on. If I’m going to leave anything behind, I thought this would be the most powerful thing if I could accomplish this, this particular goal of having leaders around a concentrated goal of changing the world. Sometimes when you bring leaders together, Everybody’s not on the same line. Sometimes you have different points of view, which I think is really powerful. I think it’s really good, the challenge. There has to be a diplomatic approach. It can’t be like the rhetoric nowadays. It’s too much. It’s flying off the handle. We’re lacking that, I think, in our diplomatic approach. But as long as you have that unified cooperation, you can discuss and you can argue, which is really strong, and you can get things, policies or whatever it would be out. So in Antarctica, that I designed the Steger Center because I had seven months in my head with absolutely nothing.

[00:42:40.680] – Craig
That’s fascinating. Will, I saw in the documentary, you were literally sketching out in a tent, probably 80 below outside, and you were sketching out literally the floor plans of this place. By the way, an absolute beautiful architecture. And it’s built now, not maybe final final, but it’s just a beautiful place. And you sketched all that out in a tent in the Antarctica.

[00:43:08.200] – Will
Well, in my mind, I started with a 6-inch ruler, and I was developing what this would it was like. I didn’t have a plan in my head. Then that plan evolved. And then what it gave me, though, during the time, because we travel 10 hours every day, it would give me something to do in my mind. So I basically could, once I got it developed, I could spend time in each one of these rooms in different seasons in the moonlight. It was a rare moment. So at the end of the expedition, I had the drawing strong. Also, Antarctica gave me the food for my vision that I could actually do this, because in reality, we did work with world leaders, and I understood how the power of that, that was my model.

Antarctica was really… I had a vision beforehand, but then Antarctica, what we accomplished there was a model because there was two challenges: one, how are you going to get the money to build it? And then who would come? And I decided the first 30 years, I started building it on my own, and I afforded it by… I was a clothing designer for some of the major companies and writing and lecturing. I raised my own money by working, and I put in an average $200,000 a year for 30 years, and I put everything into it. And three years ago, I have a nonprofit, the Steger Center. Three years ago, I donated all the property, all my assets. I basically gave everything that I owned. I put it into the nonprofit. Now we’re public, and the Steger Center now is starting to grow. You can check me out at stegercenter.org.

[00:44:43.900] – Craig
We’ll put a link in to the Steger Wilderness Center. Just like I said, it’s a beautiful environment, a beautiful facility near Ely. But describe a little bit your vision for why did you build it? What do you envision in terms of bringing world leaders together and running them through what to accomplish what? And is it open, accessible to the general public or other leaders locally, regionally? What’s your vision for it?

[00:45:10.570] – Will
We’re going to be doing our first pilot program in summer of ’25. So we’re working as a pilot then. We’re working more locally in our region. And as a pilot, first, I have to test my concept. So the first two, three years, which is a really fun thing because you’re testing what works, what doesn’t work. So I’ll be working corporate leadership for sure, but also I’m bringing together, possibly the mayors, a group of mayors together, different towns, and trying out different groups like this. Then within three, four years, it’ll be more national.

My goal is six, seven years from now, having the facility totally completed because we’re building the facility. There’s a lot of it that’s completed, but there’s still construction yet. But six, seven years from now, I would be open now at that point for international, be able to house international, that higher quality because you really got to do four or five-star. You really have to have your act together on all fronts to do the international. In terms of getting programming, it’s small groups. The Steger Center is not huge. It’s wilderness, so we can’t… I have a maximum number of people that the center can actually accommodate each year. So there’s a limitation there. I’m not open to the public because it’s not possible. But we do offer courses to the public. We do a lot of skill-based… My summer programs are mostly skill-based learning. We teach carpentry, skill masonry, that type of thing. It’s a skill-based for careers. I work also a lot in the inner city of Minneapolis. Trainings that we’re doing in construction, people are then placed in good paying jobs in the construction field that they can move up from there.

[00:46:50.340] – Craig
Back to just your philosophy on leadership, Will. One of the things I noticed in the movie, or the documentary, was your style of leadership. Again, I’m growing up in the corporate world and very accustomed to this command and control style of leadership. I noticed yours was very, very different. It was more servant leadership, more subtle, more supporting, empowering of the other team members, very calm, very thoughtful. I very rarely saw you directing and telling people or making decisions, and it was more prodding and getting group consensus. Where did you learn that? Am I describing it accurately? It seems quite opposite from the corporate world of more almost military command and control style. Is that accurate? Then how did you develop that? How do we bring that more into the mainstream business world and corporate world?

[00:47:47.140] – Will
Good way. First of all, the command and control, the one leader leading, I think that’s the old days. It works in the military and maybe in certain situations, but not really in the real world. For myself, I’m a democratic leader because if I have a team of six, I’m choosing my team because there’s various skills within that group. I also want to get the best out of everybody. A real team works, real real tight like that. I don’t take on that I have to be the leader that always is empowering and the cheerleader type… follow the flag leader. It never appeals to me. I don’t like people by that to begin with. Maybe they did 40 years ago, but they don’t know.

But in my former leadership, like in Antarctica, whatever it might be, there is times where I have to take control, where I have to make the decisions. Those are a lot of times really tough times because there was a time in Antarctica where I knew if we kept going at this pace, we were not going to survive. But the other people did not because our dogs weren’t going to hold up. I had knowledge. I knew about the dogs. They had no idea about the dogs. I was making trying within the group, the importance of dropping our excess weight, all the extra stuff. Every extra thing we have, we have to drop it. And they didn’t agree with me. And then I had to go against the whole group. And this is the way it is. We’re going to do this. It was tough because you can have the group turn on you forever. But it turned out, the first time we lost the cache, we realized that they weren’t seeing the situation we’re in. This is really serious. If the dogs burn out, we’re dead. The dogs are going to go, but we’re right next to the dogs. The dogs aren’t a car where you can throw whatever you want on. You’re going to have to throw your extra pair of underwear, whatever your extra pair of boots or whatever it extra, what you’re carrying it. We’re down to bear bones. Once they caught on, there was no problem. We were really a cohesive group. But you always have in leadership the time where the leader has to take control. Leadership is always lonely on the top. You might have your feelings and all that, but that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter within the group. I have to say, too, leadership, you’re always last in line. If it’s a food line, you’re in the end. You’re not there serving yourself.

[00:50:10.760] – Craig
Captain is the last one on the ship, right?

[00:50:12.800] – Will
Yeah. It’s really true, though. You have to sacrifice. The food line is interesting because you’re at the end of the food line, you might have just potatoes left and the meat’s gone. Or nothing left. Or nothing left. But there’s always a morsel or something. But what I’m saying is… there is sacrifice, but there is real sacrifice in that you’re not making a big deal or you’re not thinking that you’re being whatever. That’s just the way leadership takes a lot of sacrifice. People aren’t going to… When you’re having a hard time and you’re losing sleep. What’s the difference of true leadership is like, is it really difficult times in Antarctica. Everyone was sleeping really well because they’re exhausted. I wasn’t. I was up at night trying to figure it out. And that’s the difference of leadership is we all go through the same same thing every day. But at night, you have to figure things out when things are there. So you have to, over and beyond the physical, you have to go the mental of maybe not getting to sleep and also not taking being negative. And you do have to confront. But the key to my leadership is really getting the best out of everybody.

I don’t have to draw attention to myself. I don’t see any other form of leadership myself. I see in certain contexts, any emergency situation, someone takes control and does the shots. That’s on command, and that’s a given.

[00:51:34.250] – Craig
I think that’s why, Will, it’s so fascinating to talk with you because we have leaders, leadership, and I separate leadership from management. They’re not one and the same. All over in every company and every environment, whether it’s personal or social or in corporate world. But the form of leadership that you took on was one of the most critical. I mean, it’s no different than Apollo 13 and going to the moon. It’s no different that. It was that exploratory. It was that unknown. It was that dangerous. And so to me, that’s very pure form of leadership. Literally, if you made poor decisions as a leader, you were accountable for the dog’s lives, but also the human lives. You were accountable to that. That’s the most pure form of leadership I can think of.

There’s real lessons from that pure form of leadership back when the margins aren’t that tight. It’s not life or death, but it’s people’s career and happiness and do the likes. I just think it’s fascinating. I would ask you a question, what can the average person learn from that? Or what would you share in terms of how can people improve being a better leader just in whatever they’re doing? I don’t mean management. I just mean a leadership in any form. What can people do? Any practical advice for folks?

[00:52:48.300] – Will
Yeah, a very good question. I think the core to leadership is responsibility of having the guts to take the responsibility. I mean, like you say, you’re accountable, but let’s take leadership to an individual person. We need to be responsible for our lives, for our choices, for our thoughts, and for the impact of our actions. One person isn’t going to change the world, but it starts with changing your person. That’s the very beginning. That is, or every everyday life, for the most part, we don’t realize the actions that we take and the implications of that on their environment. I take a look. I mentioned I spent at least six months in the city. And what overwhelms me sometimes, but I’m I’m very aware of it, is the amount of garbage. I mean, garbage can be recyclable.

[00:53:35.410] – Craig
Plastic, in particular, plastic. It’s crazy.

[00:53:37.730] – Will
But it’s the recycled bend of this eternal privilege and consuming mindless, and then being the environmentalist that we’re speaking of. But we have no idea as long as… I’m using the recycling as an example. Your recycling should be really a small little can. Your real garbage is a real little garbage. I’m not guilting, but it’s being aware of these actions, taking responsibility of your everyday actions. And that’s really where it starts as a real leader. And then that grows to more responsibility within connecting with more people and organizing and getting like-minded people together.

There’s always this opportunity for growth and responsibility and taking the right action and learning because we’re learners. I mean, you got the web, we read books, we got other people. People are your resources are really individuals that are knowledgeable. Have a cup of coffee, and it’s always a learning experience, which is powerful.

[00:54:41.910] – Craig
Yeah, good stuff. I mean, that’s what the podcast is all about… we call it 1% Better, but it’s just a continuous learning. How do we get better every day? That’s when we see the best results. The saying is, you don’t learn from success. Learning happens and growth happens from failure, and that’s where growth happens. Well, we’ve gone through an hour, and it’s flown by well over many of our podcasts here, but I could go several hours more with you, Will. But we’re going to wrap this thing up with the last question that I ask every guest on 1% Better, and that is, a step back from all of what we’ve talked about and everything you’ve done in your life and you’ve learned, what life lessons or what would you want to pass on to the 18-year-old version of Will or maybe grandchild or the children growing up… What would you want to pass on in terms of wisdom or what you’ve learned in your lifetime?

[00:55:33.810] – Will
Yeah, I think it’s simple. I think it’s… Purity of life is about having insights, of having this awareness, of slowing your mind down as much as we can. The clatter of everyday life and all this, and we’re stressed. So we’re not… Because we all have this power within ourselves, this incredible knowledge that we have. It’s universal. There’s no exception. We all have this, but we have to tap into this inspiration within ourselves. That has been really, if I look at the goal of my life when I was younger, I wanted to live a life of inspiration. And how do I do this? Because I noticed that there’s times when I’m really inspired, then I might go low. When I was younger, I thought, how do I level this off and get on this road? In my life, I’ve never plateaued. I’ve always grown. But for myself, the purest form of inspiration is bringing together small groups where you’re trying to solve almost unsolvable problems that are critical problems. But when the group gets in this mutual inspiration, where you’re inspired mutually, you reach this level that you cannot reach any other way when you have this mutual inspiration.

And for myself, that’s the Steger Center. That concept, that’s a model. And that’s what I really want to do because I’ve seen that demonstrated over and over and over, both in survival and in policy, and working in climate, and working in movement. It all comes together in our mutual personal inspiration, but getting together with ourselves. We have to realize we’re all leaders. What I don’t accept as a leader or as a whatever… is people giving me their power that they’re not a leader. We’re all leaders. We have to realize that. We all have that capacity to inspire ourself and then also connect and inspire as a group. That’s where we’re going to find our route forward to on the climate problem.

[00:57:32.590] – Craig
Well, thank you for that. That’s inspiring me. I know you shared so much, and there’s so much to learn from your life. Thank you for everything you’ve done for every cause you’ve been involved with on the planet and policy in the Steger Center… I can’t wait to see that. Realize your vision, which I know it will, and it’s going to live on for a long time. So thank you for being on the show. It was great talking with you, Will.

[00:57:55.400] – Will
Thank you so much for this opportunity, and I’ll talk to you later. We’ll have a walk around the lake.

[00:58:00.040] – Craig
Sounds good.

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