As for giving itself, it seems to me than many of my peers fob that problem off on their surviving spouse or children. They do that because giving money away is much more boring than making it. A lot of rich Wall Streeters really can’t be bothered with thinking about giving it away when there are so many opportunities to make it. But I’m 80 years old, and I haven’t been active in the market for 20 years. I don’t have that distraction of making money anymore. I have other people who are making money for me, but I myself am not making it. So I can concentrate on this.

There are exceptions. George Soros is a renowned exception, someone who has seriously given money away—big money—while he has been making money. Julian Robertson is too, although on a smaller scale. He hasn’t given as flamboyantly as George, because he doesn’t have as much money, although he is a rich man. So a few Wall Streeters take a serious interest in giving sizable bucks away.

How could wealthy Wall Street donors do a better job in their philanthropy?
What a lot of rich people do is dump it on their colleges. They give Harvard another desperately needed $100 million for its endowment. They do it because it’s easy, and it’s uncontroversial. I don’t think a lot of intellectual energy goes into giving by most Wall Street moneymakers. Warren Buffett is the perfect example of that. He never gave any of it away, and then he shoveled half of it into Bill Gates’ lap to let Gates worry about it. He is typical in that respect—but only in that respect.

What do you make of the concept of venture philanthropy—that is, of holding gift recipients to the same standards as, say, a venture-financed company?
I don’t buy into any of that. I try to develop confidence in the organizations I give money to in advance. I’m on the board of many of them, so it’s easy in those cases. Otherwise, I can make my opinion based on public reports. I don’t pretend to understand them in depth. Other people—and especially foundations—require a lot of paperwork from the organizations they donate money to. You can learn more about what a charity is doing by talking to a few people it works with than by going in and wasting the time of management.

So what else are you focused on other than conservation?
Education. But I don’t give any money to colleges. I think the whole college and university system is bloated beyond recognition and is a great drain on the resources of this country at this point. I give to the New York Public Library. That’s an organization used by people who want to learn and who aren’t going there to get a degree or something like that. They are not there to get credentials.

I have also started to give money aggressively for scholarships to Roman Catholic schools. And I’m not even Roman Catholic—I’m an atheist. But I think Roman Catholic schools give a better education to their students than public schools do. The whole Roman Catholic structure around the country has been shrinking—at one time they educated 5 million kids, and now it’s down to 2.5 million. That’s appalling. I am, in a small way, trying to reverse that in the city of New York.