{"id":5685,"date":"2026-05-06T17:16:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/?p=5685"},"modified":"2026-05-06T17:16:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:16:19","slug":"at-75-ted-turner-gave-himself-5-more-years-he-got-12-and-spent-them-warning-the-world-was-ending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/?p=5685","title":{"rendered":"At 75, Ted Turner gave himself 5 more years. He got 12\u2014and spent them warning the world was ending"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Ted Turner was never one to soften a forecast, even when the subject was himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 75, how much longer will I live? Till 80 maybe?\u201d the CNN founder told Fortune\u2018s Pattie Sellers in a wide-ranging 2013 interview marking his 75th birthday. When Sellers pushed back\u2014why not 90?\u2014Turner allowed it was \u201ca possibility,\u201d but said he was \u201ctalking about practically.\u201d It was, he explained, why he wouldn\u2019t start anything new: \u201c75 is too late to be starting new ventures. Particularly ones that take many years to reach fruition. I wouldn\u2019t want to start anything without having a reasonable chance of seeing it be successful before I die or am incapacitated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turner died Wednesday at 87, according to a statement from Turner Enterprises\u2014nearly a decade past the deadline he\u2019d given himself, and just shy of the milestone he\u2019d half-dismissed.<\/p>\n

He spent those bonus years much as he\u2019d spent the decade before: warning anyone who would listen that humanity was running out of time. The man who built the first 24-hour news network, who put $1 billion into the United Nations Foundation, who created an eco-focused Saturday morning cartoon called Captain Planet, and who co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative with former Senator Sam Nunn, used his late-life platform to sound an unrelenting alarm about nuclear weapons, climate change, and overpopulation.<\/p>\n

In 2003, Turner told Fortune he believed the chances were \u201c50-50 that humanity will be extinct in 50 years.\u201d A decade later, sitting in his Atlanta office with a freshly installed pacemaker, he wasn\u2019t backing off. \u201cFifty years aren\u2019t up yet,\u201d he told Sellers. \u201cI\u2019d say that\u2019s generally the case. The nuclear threat is the most imminent threat. But global climate change and environmental destruction of the earth and our resource base, that\u2019s the other great threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

His prescription for the population problem was characteristically Turner: blunt and slightly impolitic, but impossible to ignore. He wanted the world to drop from [then] roughly 7 billion people to 2.5 billion, achieved voluntarily through family planning. He told Sellers he had encouraged his own five children\u2014and 13 grandchildren\u2014to have fewer kids of their own.<\/p>\n

On faith, he was equally direct. Turner had drifted from the Christianity of his youth after watching his sister Mary Jean suffer and die at 17. By 75, he called himself agnostic, though he still offered up what he called \u201cmini-prayers\u201d for sick friends. \u201cIf God\u2019s going to save us, it\u2019s time for him to show up,\u201d he told Fortune. \u201cWe\u2019re not showing evidence that we\u2019re ready to save ourselves. That\u2019s what bothers me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turner\u2019s media legacy<\/p>\n

The 2013 interview also captured Turner taking stock of his media legacy with the candor of a man who figured he didn\u2019t have time to be diplomatic. He called the AOL-Time Warner merger an outright \u201cdisaster\u201d (he lost $8 billion when the stock plummeted), lamented the planned spin-off of Time Inc., and predicted that Time Warner, without him, had been shortsighted compared to Rupert Murdoch, who had held on to his sports and news properties. \u201cThey might as well rename it Turner Broadcasting,\u201d he said of what was left.<\/p>\n

His verdict on Murdoch himself? The same one he\u2019d delivered to Fortune a decade earlier: \u201cthe most dangerous man in the world.\u201d Then, almost as an afterthought: \u201cBut he\u2019s getting too old.\u201d Murdoch, now 95, outlived him.<\/p>\n

Asked in 2013 what he was proudest of, Turner named his children first and CNN second\u2014though he noted, with a flicker of the old showman, that the Cartoon Network actually beat CNN in the ratings most days. \u201cWe like to laugh,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you get people laughing, there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll win them over. Very seldom do people kill somebody when they\u2019re laughing. And there\u2019s plenty of killing going on now.\u201d<\/p>\n

He never did start that next big venture. He stuck with what he had: 2 million acres, 55,000 bison, a restaurant chain called Ted\u2019s Montana Grill, and philanthropy. By the time of the 2013 interview, he had paid $973 million of the $1 billion he\u2019d pledged to the U.N. He kept funding the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and kept buying solar.<\/p>\n

The five-year horizon he\u2019d given himself in 2013 came and went. So did 80. So did 85. The warnings kept coming.<\/p>\n

Read Fortune\u2018s full 2013 interview with Ted Turner here: Ted Turner at 75<\/p>\n

For this story,\u00a0Fortune\u00a0journalists\u00a0used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.<\/p>\n

#Ted #Turner #gave #years #12and #spent #warning #world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ted Turner was never one to soften a forecast, even when the subject was himself….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[11178,2255,11175,1917,397,4736,5735,10207,11176,2858,9754,11177,856,51,84],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}