A Ted Turner Appreciation.

Ted Turner has slipped the veil, and is now on the Other Side.  

Few people were as tough or tenacious as Ted Turner, and I can think of none as visionary.

Turner was a powerful and influential conservationist who understood that human population growth was the driver of destruction.

He was a population radical (as am I) who believed it was essential that the status of women be rapidly improved (through education, law, and economic empowerment), and that women be given affordable access to every tool in the family planning box. 

Ted thought there wasn’t a moment to waste. He was right.

Ted thought Earth might do fine with three billion people or so (the population of the globe in 1960), but not many more. I do not disagree.

Ted Turner cut a check for $1 billion to create the United Nations Foundation (equal to over $2 billion today) created the Captain Planet TV show for kids, and acquired millions of acres in the US to protect while demonstrating that economic utility was not antithetical to conservation.  And did Turner promote conservation hunting, as well as ranching on his vast US western land holdings?  Damn right he did, and no one has done it better.

Oh…. and Ted Turner also created CNN.

There’s lots of other stuff.  He owned the Atlanta Braves, as well as the largest Bison herd in the world (50,000 head).

He famously dated and married Jane Fonda, and though they divorced after 10 years, they were affectionate friends to the end.

And, of course, Ted sailed.  

I saw him only twice, both times in dockside Annapolis bars in the late 1970s. I was building sailboats back then, 20 miles away in the middle of exhausted Maryland tobacco fields, and one of my housemates was an Australian professional sailor. His girlfriend worked at the bar, and so I knew Ted frequented the establishment.  

Back then Ted could *drink*.  

I was no slouch in this department myself, but Ted was in another weight class. I quit drinking in 1981. Ted hung up his spurs in 2011. I was young and dumb, and he was lucky; once a cucumber becomes a pickle, there’s no going back.

Back in 2015, I referenced Ted Turner, in passing, as one of the things the South could lay claim to, and with considerable pride.

That’s still true.

Ted Turner was far from perfect, but he was most definitely one of the very good ones.

And guess what? 

Among Ted’s many accomplishments is that he and Warren Buffett and Bill Gates founded “The Giving Pledge,” in which they and other billionaires and millionaires promise to give their vast fortunes to charity.

As of October 2025, The Giving Pledge had more than 250 signatories from 30 countries, with a total of US $600 billion promised.

Ted may be gone, but I assure you his Legacy will be eternal.

Sail on Ted.

“Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.”