Ted Nace

Ted Nace was born in California and grew up in Dickinson, North Dakota. In 1974, he graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He received his B.A. from Stanford University, and attended graduate school at University of California Berkeley.

In the 1970s, Nace worked for the Environmental Defense Fund and analyzed how to replace coal–fired power plants with alternative energy programs through computer simulations. He spent several years working in North Dakota at the Dakota Resource Council, a citizens' group concerned about the impacts of energy development on agriculture and rural communities.

Computer publishing

In the 1980s, Nace began working as an editor for the computer magazine PC World and as a columnist for Publish! and Computer Currents magazine.

In 1985, he founded Peachpit Press with Michael Gardner, initially working out of his apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area. He wrote numerous how–to books on computer–related subjects. At the time, Elaine Weinmann, the computer writer, described his publishing approach as user-friendly and innovative.

As the company grew in size and sales, it published books about Mac computers and became a leader in books about digital graphics, with a MacBible series, Real World series, and Visual QuickStart (VQS) series. Peachpit published most of the popular manuals of style by writer Robin Williams, such as The Mac is Not a Typewriter and the Little Mac Book.

In 1994, Nace sold Peachpit to Pearson plc and he left the company in 1996.

In the mid-2000s, Nace turned his focus to anti-coal activism. He became active in efforts to block the development and use of coal power plants in the United States through sit–ins at coal mines and banks. At the time, he argued that coal usage was creating a "clear planetary crisis" but that implementing a solution is being blocked by "well-financed lobbying and PR sponsored by the coal and utility companies."

From a climate perspective, coal is far and away our worst problem because the remaining reserves are so much larger than those of other fossil sources like conventional oil and gas. NASA climate chief James Hansen says that phasing out coal emissions is "80% of the solution to the global warming crisis." In other words, phasing out coal is really the "silver bullet" for stopping global warming. – Ted Nace

He was described in the Huffington Post as "one of the amazing brains and strategists behind the anti-coal movement."