"We need a hero.” This is what an acquaintance at a dinner party told me last year, by way of explaining why she was so desperate for Michael Bloomberg to enter the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Needless to say, her prayers were not answered—although perhaps a version of them was. Because while the former mayor of New York City abstained from what turned out to be the most shocking race in recent history, his commitment to serving the public is as intense as ever.

In the last few months Bloomberg has doubled down in particular on his initiatives to fight climate change, with a new book (Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet), a new role at the UN, and a global “covenant” among mayors that he’s leading. Here, he discusses what his parents taught him about giving back, the crucial interplay between government and philanthropy, and why the private sector is often too quick to sing its own praises.

Katie Couric: How was the seed of philanthropy planted in you as a child?

Michael Bloomberg: I remember my father giving 50 bucks, which was a lot of money to him in those days, to the NAACP. And I remember I asked, "Why are we giving money to the NAACP?" And he said because discrimination against anybody is discrimination against everybody.

KC: What was one of the first causes you remember getting involved in?

MB: Johns Hopkins. I had gotten interested in Hopkins and public health. And then when I became chairman of the board I really became interested in it. My love of Hopkins is that, number one, they gave me an education, obviously. Number two, I’ve always respected what they do for the community and what they do for the world. Hopkins has a defense laboratory, one of the biggest in the country. We have an obligation as Americans to help defend this country, and a lot of universities would walk away from that kind of stuff, but Hopkins never did.

KC: They must be pretty jazzed that they accepted a young Mike Bloomberg. Best decision they ever made!

MB: They’re going to set up three statues: one to Johns Hopkins, one to me, but the biggest to the admissions officer who took me.

KC: How have you been able to instill the values you grew up with—concern for others, giving back—in your kids?

MB: Both of my daughters are very philanthropic. The younger one has two charities, basically built around horses, for therapeutic riding for kids with special needs or disabled kids. And the older one spent seven years working for Paul Tudor Jones at Robin Hood and then a couple of years ago started her own nonprofit, trying to help people get the political establishment to focus on school systems. I’m very proud of both of them.

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Bloomberg with daughters Georgina (left) and Emma

KC: How were you able to transmit these values while still giving them an affluent upbringing?

MB: I think you do that in general conversation, over dinner. I’ll never forget, I had Emma, my older daughter, with me one day at my offices on Park Avenue between 58th and 59th, and she looked out the window, and there was somebody living in a cardboard box on the island in the middle of Park Avenue. She asked me why somebody was living there when we have a place to live. I had to explain to her, which is not an easy thing to do, why we didn’t do something for that guy at that very moment. When I became mayor I made sure that when there was a situation like that, government responded, and we sent out teams and nobody had to sleep on the streets anymore. We didn’t get everybody, but we made a very big difference in the homeless population.

Philanthropy is one of the most selfish things you can do, because it’s so satisfying to think, You know, I’m making a difference in somebody else’s life.

KC: What is your definition of philanthropy?

MB: Helping others. It could be by giving money, it could be by giving time and wisdom, it could be by spending money or time to get the legislators to do what’s right for other people. There are a lot of definitions. If you want to help others, the opportunities are legion. You can go and work at a soup kitchen, you can mentor a child, you can go to a jail system and teach. You can raise money for something, or you can speak out and write op-eds and urge the legislators and executives and government to do the right things.

But what’s interesting about philanthropy is that it’s perhaps one of the most selfish things you can do, because it’s so satisfying to think, You know, I’m making a difference in somebody else’s life. The audacity to say, I’m going to change that person’s life—it’s pretty self-centered. But that’s what it takes. You have to like what you see in the mirror before you go to bed. And I look in the mirror—I don’t think about it every night—but we’ve probably saved 400,000 or 500,000 lives because of smoking cessation.

Michael ​Bloomberg on the cover of Town & Country's June/July 2017 Philanthropy issue.pinterest
Max Vadukul
Bloomberg on the cover of Town & Country’s June/July 2017 Philanthropy issue.

KC: What did being mayor teach you about the roles of the public sector versus the private sector in tackling big societal issues? Who ultimately do you think is capable of effecting more change: a politician or a private philanthropist with significant resources?

MB: Private philanthropy can do only so much. You can fund the charter school and show how you can improve education, but it requires the taxing ability of government to affect 250,000 or a million kids. When it comes to, for example, keeping us safe, you need to have an army of 2 million soldiers in America with aircraft carriers and planes and that sort of stuff. Private philanthropy can’t do that. On the other hand, the private sector could develop new ways of tracking a missile or something like that. And then the government is the one that has to come tax everybody, take the money, and implement that.

Then there’s a whole bunch of those kinds of things where the private sector can use money to influence the legislative process; guns would be a very good example. We’ve got 19 states now that put background checks on gun show sales, and in every one of those 19 states the suicide rate with guns, the murder rate, the police murder rate—they are half the national average. It really does work. That was done with private money. The government, in the end, had to implement it, but it was the private sector that funded it.

And this country is going to meet its climate goals, no thanks to the federal government. In fact, the president is going in the wrong direction. But because of the money we contributed and the money we helped raise from others, we put something like $80 million into the Sierra Club, and they’ve gotten people to go to these power plants and picket and try to convince the managements to stop polluting the air. Particularly if you live downstream or downwind from one of these power plants, you’ve got to say to them, Wait a second, my kids are going to go the hospital with asthma! The water I drink is getting polluted! Stop this! And the truth of the matter is, that kind of pressure has gotten the industry to close 250-odd coal power plants, and that’s out of 500, so we’re making an enormous difference. That’s an example of a private sector. But in the end, for the big problems you need government, sometimes with the private sector leading by example.

The fact that you can make a product and sell it and make some money in the private sector doesn’t mean you can do what’s required in the public sector.

KC: Sounds to me like the private sector can kick the public sector in the butt and get it moving.

MB: Sometimes. But Trump came in and rebuilt the Wollman Rink, and they said, Oh, look what the private sector can do that the government can’t. That’s not fair. He has his own money, and the public sector has to answer to the democratic process. There are checks and balances, there’s bidding for contracts—those kinds of things that the private sector doesn’t have to do. Because the public has a right to know what their money is being spent on, and the public has a right to be heard.

KC: Having said that, you can cut through a lot of red tape in the private sector, can you not?

MB: I tried to measure, when I first got into office, the cost of picking up the trash in New York City, because the private sector picks up commercial buildings and the public sector picks up residential buildings. And when we finished doing it, the numbers were virtually the same. You would think that the private sector would be able to do it much better. That’s not true. My experience in 12 years in office, having come from the private business world, is the differences between them are relatively small. I think a lot of people in business think people in government are lazy and not innovative, and that’s not true. We had a whole bunch of people who worked for us in City Hall who I thought could make a fortune for us in the private sector. They were aggressive, they did things, they took risks, they did everything we asked. There were some dummies, too! Go over to the private sector—there are some dummies there. There are also some people who are aggressive and innovative. But the percentages were pretty much the same in both cases. Government fights world wars, educates the vast bulk of the people, does a lot of big things that the private sector does not. So the fact that you can make a product and sell it and make some money in the private sector doesn’t mean you can do what’s required in the public sector.

KC: Do you think your philanthropy is an extension of your political service?

MB: No, I would argue that the politics, it comes out of the philanthropy side. I ran for mayor first because people kept saying there are no solutions, and I thought to myself, Boy, there have to be some solutions. And I had my selfish reasons. I had worked in the company for 20 years; it was time to try something new.

KC: Why did you decide not to run in the last election? Is it possible the work you’re doing now may lead you back to politics?

MB: Well, I’m 75 years old, so if I’m going to run for president, it would probably be of the local block association. I wanted to run for president. I enjoyed the 12 years in City Hall. I thought we could do the same thing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. There are enormous problems facing the world: technology that’s killing jobs, terrorism. Our school systems nationwide are going in the wrong direction. There are a lot of big problems, and I thought it would be great to be able to attack those.

I wanted to run for president. I enjoyed the 12 years in City Hall. I thought we could do the same thing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

KC: So why didn’t you do it?

MB: We came very close, but the truth of the matter is that in the end we found that a very big percentage of this country, roughly a third, will vote Democratic no matter who the candidate is, and a third will vote Republican no matter who it is, and an Independent candidate has to be able to get 50 percent of the electoral votes or it goes to the House, and the Independent doesn’t have anybody in the House. We came very close to running—we made ads, we had lawyers on retainer in all 50 states. But in the end the polling kept saying we could get roughly a third of the electoral votes and no more. So it would have been a fool’s errand.

KC: Any regrets?

MB: I don’t live in the regret world. I always thought people who have regrets, they let the other person beat them twice. There are so many things to do going forward. You know, I’ve had two bad days in my life. The day my father died and the day my mother died. Think about it: We’re here, we’re alive, we live in the greatest country in the world.

KC: You have a good therapist.

MB: The only therapist I have is the one I see in the mirror when I’m shaving.

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Bloomberg’s book is out now

KC: Let’s talk about climate change, something you’re passionate about. Climate of Hope, your new book, just came out. You serve as the UN secretary general special envoy for cities and climate change. You’ve announced the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, and that’s just the tip of the melting iceberg.

MB: Good pun.

KC: Thank you. What made you so passionate about climate change?

MB: Climate change has the potential to do two things. One: hurt your and my life, our children’s lives, and our grandchildren’s lives. And two: In the longer term it could literally turn the planet into a barren sphere like Mars and kill everybody.

The evidence keeps building with every single study. There’s something that’s really going on that’s dangerous, and these crazies on television who say it’s not true, they’re not being responsible. A businessperson, if they say to their board of directors, I don’t believe in climate change and I’m going to leave our building right next to the water, and I’m telling you we’re not going to get flooded, that person would be fired in the middle of that meeting. You have to responsibly take prophylactic action. You build a wall, you buy an insurance policy, you move the building, you get backup. On television you’ll never see a businessperson saying that climate change is a commie plot.

All of the studies show that it’s the warmest year on record. You go up to the Arctic: The ice now melts through the summer. You can just have a boat without an icebreaker go through. And the trouble with that is the less ice there is, the less heat from the sun is reflecting off, so the more heat is absorbed by the oceans. The more heat the oceans absorb, the more ice is going to melt, and you’re in this vicious cycle. You can go to the tundra out in Siberia where there’s all this methane that’s frozen in the ground that’s starting to come out.

Methane is even worse than most of the other things we put in the air. It is irrational not to do something about it right now, because your life, your children’s lives, and your grandchildren’s lives really are being jeopardized as we put stuff in the air. That’s why China has become one of the most pro-environmental countries in the world, while America’s pulling back from it. China, who we used to criticize, is rushing as fast as it can into being pro-environment, because the city air—you can’t see across the street.

KC: Why do you think there’s not more consensus on the subject?

MB: There is! If you poll America, the vast bulk of the people say that this is a real problem. Meanwhile, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency said we’ve got to have a debate about this. But if you don’t believe in the science at this point, you’re whistling as you go to the grave.

KC: I interviewed Bo Copley today, probably the most famous coal miner. He had an incident where he challenged Hillary Clinton during the campaign, and he’s sort of been a voice for coal miners. He’s been out of work for two years. So I talked to him about what the Trump administration was doing vis-à-vis climate change. And he said he believed in climate change, he was worried about it, but he wanted to balance it with economic prosperity. I’m paraphrasing, but basically he felt too many regulations have hindered too many businesses and he was looking for more balance. I’m curious what your reaction is.

MB: There is no evidence that that’s happening. What’s happening is people around the world are using a lot less coal. Even without that, you look at the coal mines: They don’t dig down anymore with coal miners—they rip the top of the mountain off—and it’s a very small number of coal miners who ever go underground because of new technology. So that’s what’s really happening.

KC: Automation.

MB: Yes, automation and all sorts of technology. The second thing is, I’m sympathetic to anybody who loses their job to technology. If you look at Madison Avenue, there are an awful lot of empty stores. People have lost their jobs. One of the problems with saying, Let’s help those who have lost their jobs, is that technology is growing so fast nobody is able to categorize who is out of work because of that, and how do you get money to them and how do you retrain them? Very hard things to do.

But the bottom line is, you really have to ask, What’s the cost? I understand you’re losing your job, and I’m sympathetic and I want to find ways to help you, but you have to make a calculation of how much you want to jeopardize people’s lives versus how much you want to jeopardize their jobs. The coal miners’ health is terrible, the coal companies have never taken care of them, they’ve underfunded the pension funds, they’ve never taken good care of their health whether it’s affected by collapsing mines or the pollutants in the air. They live in places where the air is very polluted. So I’m sympathetic with this guy, but another one of the problems he’s going to have in getting another job is that companies might not want to take him on because they’ll look at his lungs and say, Wait a second, this guy is going to be an enormous health cost. And the jobs have gone away because of technology and alternative fuel sources, and when push comes to shove, we have a decision to make. Your job or people’s lives. And the problem is that I can show you who loses their job. You said your guy’s name was…

KC: Bo Copley.

MB: Bo Copley. We see him, so it’s easier to be sympathetic to him. I don’t know the person who is dying because of the stuff in the air. I can just tell you—we know from statistics—she’s there.

KC: I know that as a businessperson you believe that the economic case is often the most convincing one for the bulk of the population.

MB: Today I saw ExxonMobil is urging the White House not to drop out of COP21 [the Paris Climate Agreement]. It’s a big oil company, but they understand that their future is… Well, first off, they have to be alive. So if it’s jeopardizing everybody’s health, they have to do something. And, secondly, their businesses, their stockholders, their employers, and their customers, want them to be environmentally friendly. So these big companies, maybe not the coal companies, but most other companies, are very pro-environment, much more so than our government.

KC: Speaking of, let’s talk about what’s happening at the White House regarding climate change, the EPA, environmental policy. What was your reaction to the rollback of environmental efforts?

MB: It is not an intelligent thing to do. Hopefully, somebody will come and convince Trump and he’ll change his mind. But, listen, I think he was duly elected president of the United States. And we should not make the mistake that many Republicans made eight years ago when they said they were going to make sure that Obama was a one-term president. In other words, they were going to make sure that he didn’t do a good job. We have an obligation, from a very selfish point of view—I care about my kids, my grandkids, and me—and I want to have a good government. And if I can help him run a good government, I have an obligation as an American patriot to do that.

If I can help Trump run a good government, I have an obligation as an American patriot to do that.

But when he does things I disagree with, I also have an obligation to myself to stand up and say so. I gave a speech at the Democratic Convention, and I didn’t mince words, about qualifications and whether I thought he was the right person for it. But once he got elected, that’s history, and now I have to see if I can influence him. He hasn’t called me. He’s called once since he got elected. But if he called me, I'd be happy to tell him what I think.

KC: Final question. Do you feel hopeful for the future?

MB: I am hopeful for the future, partly because it's pretty ridiculous to not try to make it better. I'm hopeful in the sense that I sort of have a gut feeling that most people are rational. And if you sit there and be depressed, number one, you won't be a happy person. But, number two, you lose the opportunity to make a difference.

This story originally appeared in the June/July 2017 issue of Town & Country.