Name: Joseph Gawler's Sons, LLC
Address: Washington, DC

I will be forever thankful to John and Lucinda. They opened up their home to me even before we met in person. I needed a place to stay and found more than lodging, but great conversation and insightful debate. John and Lucinda challenged my beliefs by asking great questions and using powerful logic. Whenever one of the topics of our discussions comes up, I have/will think of him and smile.

I first met John Hoffman in September 1970, at an induction meeting for new students at MIT graduate school.    Even in that meeting, John stood out as someone with exceptional ideas and personality – he was particularly taken to find out that I came from Nottingham, England, and wanted to know if Nottingham had a real forest and a real castle like in the Robin Hood program on TV.  My answer disappointed him, but it did not stop us becoming friends, and working together on a lot of neat system ideas.  So, John and I worked on the follow up team to the Club of Rome ‘Limits to Growth' report.  Malthusian though the Club of Rome's ethos was, I think that work did inform John's appreciation of the CFC and CO2 problems. 
 Anyway, we stayed friends and shared ideas over many years.  So I have numerous memories of John.  One that in retrospect, I will always remember as typical John, was when Kate and I were staying on the Italian island of Ponza for a couple of weeks.  1983 maybe?  John and Lucinda came over to stay with us for a few days prior to undertaking a major trip around Italy.  Kate and I had booked into an Italian pensione, kept, it turned out, by a rather formidable Italian mama, who spoke only Italian, and dialect Italian at that.  Kate and I had done a proper Italian course, and we tried but somehow we couldn't get on with mama.  John arrives, and speaking zero Italian, proceeds to charm her to pieces.  Second helpings?  A little lunch for the beach?  The special wine from the family vineyard?  No problem.   To me, that was John: someone whose charm could get the best out of anybody.
Kate and I will miss him.

I first met John Hoffman in September 1970, at an induction meeting for new students at MIT graduate school.    Even in that meeting, John stood out as someone with exceptional ideas and personality.  Sohe was particularly taken to find out that I came from Nottingham, England, and wanted to know if Nottingham had a real forest and a real castle like in the Robin Hood program on TV.  My answer disappointed him, but it did not stop us becoming friends, and working together on a lot of neat system ideas.  So, John and I worked on the follow up team to the Club of Rome 'Limits to Growth' report.  Malthusian though the Club of Rome's ethos was, I think that work did inform John's appreciation of the CFC and CO2 problems. 
 Anyway, we stayed friends and shared ideas over many years.  So I have numerous memories of John.  One that in retrospect, I will always remember as typical John, was when Kate and I were staying on the Italian island of Ponza for a couple of weeks.  1983 maybe?  John and Lucinda came over to stay with us for a few days prior to undertaking a major trip around Italy.  Kate and I had booked into an Italian pensione, kept, it turned out, by a rather formidable Italian mama, who spoke only Italian, and dialect Italian at that.  Kate and I had done a proper Italian course, and we tried but somehow we couldn't get on with mama.  John arrives, and speaking zero Italian, proceeds to charm her to pieces.  Second helpings?  A little lunch for the beach?  The special wine from the family vineyard?  No problem.   To me, that was John: someone who could charm the best out of anybody.
Kate and I will miss him.

John was a pioneer on many environmental issues and had an unrivaled entrepreneurial spirit. Martin always claimed to have "protected" John's brilliant and assertive ways from the less creative bureaucrats. He truly admired his intellectual creativity. John made a difference.  May he find relief from physical pain in heaven, along with an outlet for his intellectual energy. Martin Wagner and Elizabeth Cotsworth

Lucinda and Alla, Thank you for finding me so I can share stories of John's life and support you as you did me all those years in DC. One of the first things that came to mind this morning, as I read your sad news, was the sound of John's snorts of laughter, yes corny laughter, when i conducted another kitchen experiment in the downstairs studio, which usually resulted in an invitation up to dinner. Little did i know he was just saving the household climate from further scorched quesadillas emanating through the air vents.
Your family's style of inclusion and community with meals upstairs, and travel stories on the porch, were the best cultural awareness a girl could have had renting in a big city far from Georgia. I've never stopped being curious about new cuisines and tenderly exploring the planet after living with you guys for almost 7 years. Although I never realized the magnitude's of John's legacy as climate protector, I certainly knew he was genius, energetic, and devoted to his family and that between you and him, Alla was going to have a great life. You guys are model citizens I'm pretty sure my DC friends were jealous of my second family too. I know I loved that chapter living with you guys and will treasure it always. Much love.

As John's patent attorney for the last 15 years, I know first hand that he was always focused on using technology for the betterment of the world we live in. It was my great privilege to have worked with him.  I will miss him.

Vincent DeLuca

Peter and I are very sorry to hear this news. We had another view of John. He helped shepherd our move from the UK to US! Thinking of all of you.

I am so sad and sorry to hear of John's passing.  I had the good fortune of meeting this indefatigable and intrepid spirit fighting for a better planet in 1988, while I was working for Rep Claudine Schneider (R-RI) promoting the Global Warming Prevention Act.  His entrepreneurial vision and persuasiveness in creating high-value government-led, market-based initiatives like GreenLighs and EneryStar was unparalleled. John was the rare professional who brought a keen mind to his big visions that quickly absorbed and articulated detailed scientific, technical, engineering, economic and financial facts and figures so essential in prevailing over the bastions of cynical, skeptical, risk-averse bureaucrats.  I, like many, many others, have lost a dear friend, and the world has lost a great humanitarian.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ddoniger/remembering_john_hoffman_ozone.html
 
Remembering John Hoffman, Ozone Defender and Climate Protector
Posted October 1, 2012

 
John Hoffman, brilliant leader of the EPA team that saved the ozone layer, founder of the hugely successful Energy Star programs, and climate protection pioneer, passed away last week.  He was only 62 years old.  

While the battle to curb the ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons had many heroes, in my mind John stood head and shoulders above all.  The best book about saving the ozone layer is Between Earth and Sky, by Seth Cagin and Philip Dray.  They introduce him this way:

Hoffman possessed an ideal background for an EPA official:  a master's degree in systems modeling from MIT, which combined course work in engineering, business, and urban planning with sophisticated computer programming. 

As a young EPA staffer in the early 1980s, John headed a small team focused on “strategic studies.”  This was early in the Reagan administration, before Anne Gorsuch and James Watt had been disgraced and dismissed.   It was not a hospitable time for thinking honestly about big environmental challenges.  But John had the courage to stay focused on things that would matter, and he undertook crucial studies of ozone depletion and global warming. 

I met John in 1984.  I had just brought an NRDC lawsuit to compel EPA to take action on CFCs under the Clean Air Act.  Our suit was to force EPA to follow up on its 1980 finding that CFCs endanger the stratospheric ozone layer and, as a result, public health.  One day my phone rang and John introduced himself.  He rather brashly explained that if we pressed our legal rights for a court order forcing EPA to make an immediate decision on CFC limits, “you'll get the wrong answer.” 

I didn't know it at the time, but John had already helped quash an internal EPA effort to revoke the 1980 science finding, which would have knocked the legs from under our lawsuit.  John confidently told me he needed two years to conduct a comprehensive new scientific assessment and to hold a series of domestic and international meetings designed to build a consensus for action among EPA's senior appointees, other Reagan administration officials, and the governments of other nations.

His pitch struck me as both extraordinarily audacious and surprisingly dilatory.  Who was this guy with such a grandiose plan?  We had already waited years for action, and we had every reason to expect a forceful court-ordered deadline.  Now we were supposed to sit on our heels for another two years? 

But on reflection, John's proposition made sense.  We had a better chance of getting the right answer if we gave them the time. 

So, we settled the case with EPA's commitment to a “Stratospheric Protection Plan,” designed with his friend and colleague Stephen Seidel.  The plan, adopted into a court order, had three elements:  a timetable for the scientific assessment, a timetable for domestic and international conferences, and firm deadlines in 1987 for EPA to propose and promulgate regulations based on the information gathered.

That science assessment and those conferences proved crucial.  With full peer-review by the nation's best atmospheric scientists, cancer specialists, and other experts, John and his team demonstrated that letting CFC production and use keep growing would lead to hundreds of millions of skin cancers, millions of them fatal, as well as millions of cataracts and immunological diseases, and untold damage to crops and natural systems.  John had an amazing ability to work across a wide range of disciplines, shifting seamlessly from debating discount rates with economists, dose-response functions with epidemiologists, and ozone depletion models with atmospheric scientists.  When push came to shove in the skeptical Reagan cabinet, John's risk assessment carried the day over scoffers like Interior Secretary Don Hodel, who favored hats and sunglasses over a treaty to protect the ozone layer.

The domestic and international conferences, small and large, brought participants from governments, industry, and environmental organizations into productive dialogue.  These meetings narrowed disagreements on the science, revealed the existence of alternative chemicals, and moved towards consensus on effective policies. 

As I've written here, positions slowly changed.  NRDC and, later, the U.S. government proposed phasing out the CFCs and related chemicals.  The industry offered limits on growth and, eventually, conceded the need for a scheduled transition to new chemicals.  

Fast forward to September 1987, when 24 industrialized nations signed the Montreal Protocol and agreed to a 50 percent reduction in CFC production over 10 years.  Shortly after, I recall walking with John through the corridors of one of the Congressional office buildings, lamenting that a huge opportunity had been lost, and that we'd be stuck with this half-way measure for a decade or more before the world came together on a full phase-out.  “You're wrong,” John said, with characteristic certainty.  “We'll be back at this and have that phase-out agreement within three years.”

Sure enough, driven by proof that CFCs were responsible for the Antarctic ozone hole – proof that came right after the Montreal agreement – the parties came together on a full global phase-out in the 1990 London Amendments, which brought in major developing nations as well as the industrialized countries.

John's astonishing creativity did not stop there.  As far back as the early 1980s, John realized that climate change was the pre-eminent environment threat, and he began EPA's work on strategies to slow global warming. During the Reagan years he also designed Green Lights, a voluntary program working with industry to deploy millions of energy-saving light bulbs.  This rapidly expanded into the suite of Energy Star programs – now run in the U.S. by EPA and the Department of Energy and by many other governments abroad – that have transformed dozens of consumer products and appliances, helping American consumers and businesses save huge amounts of energy and billions of dollars. 

The brilliant premise of Green Lights lay in helping companies see that something as mundane as cutting their lighting energy expenses could be a profit center.  The companies saved money at a high rate of return and earned EPA's “green recognition” as well.  And with Energy Star, John took it to another level – building an EPA (and now also DOE) trademark that consumers can trust for products that save energy, save money, and protect the environment. 

John was the first to see the opportunity in the Energy Star programs for a new relationship between EPA and the private sector – a partnership based on sharing information on existing energy-savings technology, helping companies see the profit potential, and helping them re-organize themselves to seize the opportunity.  To be sure, EPA is business's pollution regulator.  Through Energy Star, EPA demonstrated that it could also be a business-friendly partner. 

I've heard many testimonials to John's influence on those who worked for him.  His vision, commitment and innovative approach to problem solving were inspiring and motivational. He was both a very demanding boss and a very compassionate colleague. He cared about the people who worked for him and helped many EPA employees advance in their careers and grow professionally.  John spent time getting to know those who worked for him and challenged people to set goals, work hard, deliver their best.  

And he became my friend.  Our families gathered for dinners or parties several times a year.  He'd call me at home and spend a half hour quizzing my then high-school daughter (now seeking her PhD in economics) on U.S. history, math, or whatever – and only when they were done would I find out he was on the phone.

The Talmud says that he who saves one life has saved the whole world.  John's wife Lucinda and his daughter Alla can be immensely proud that their husband and father saved millions of lives.   

 
 
David D. Doniger
Policy Director, Climate and Clean Air Program
Natural Resources Defense Council
1152 15th Street, NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20005
 
Phone:  (202) 289-2403
Cell: (202) 321-3435
Fax:  (202) 289-1060
ddoniger@nrdc.org
on the web atwww.nrdc.org
read my blog: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ddoniger/

I'm so sorry, Jim, to hear about your brother. Condolences to his wife and family.

May you go from strength to strength.

Kate Connelly (MS 51)

OBITUARY

John Steven Hoffman

February 16, 1950 – September 24, 2012

Joseph Gawler’s Sons, LLC

Show your support

Add a Memory

Share Obituary

Get Reminders

Services