1970s • Launched fight against commercial development in the area of Utah’s redrock wilderness that would ultimately be protected as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Late 1970s • Fought for passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which designated 43 million acres of new national parklands and was signed into law by President Carter in 1980.
1980s • Helped sound the alarm about global warming, raising public awareness and paving the way for the first major international climate summits.
1986 • Sponsored talks that produced the Bering Sea oil pact, which protected key ecosystems off the coast of Alaska from drilling.
1995 • Led the fight to turn back Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America,” a far-reaching assault on our environmental protections and treasured public lands.
2001 • Rallied opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, resulting in more than 800,000 messages and phone calls to Congress.
2010 • Helped launch the Stop Pebble Mine campaign, which would go on to drive four multinational mining giants from the project.
2014 • Marshalled public support that led President Obama to permanently ban offshore drilling in Alaska’s Polar Bear Seas.
2017 • Fought the Trump Administration’s plan to approve the 2,100–acre Alton Coal Mine near Bryce Canyon National Park.
2018 • Sparked a tidal wave of activist messages aimed at driving President Trump’s pro-polluter EPA chief Scott Pruitt from office.
2022 • Spurred public support for legislation that would become the Inflation Reduction Act, the most sweeping U.S. climate action ever.
NRDC CELEBRATES ROBERT REDFORD
At first it hardly seemed like the most auspicious match. In 1974, Robert Redford was in the middle of an almostunprecedented string of box-office hits including Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, and The Sting, making him arguably the biggest movie star of his generation. And then there was NRDC, a scrappy, little-known nonprofit barely four years old. Yet if Redford was no ordinary Hollywood celebrity, neither was NRDC like any other environmental organization. The actor had been building opposition to the construction of a massive 3,000megawatt coal-fired power plant on southern Utah’s Kaiparowits Plateau on land that would one day be protected as part of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. For its part, NRDC had begun making a name for itself by advocating for visionary environmental laws in Congress and then enforcing them in the courtroom. The rest, as they say, is history.
“He wanted to work with NRDC because we were litigators, and he felt the best way to solve environmental problems was to go to court,” says NRDC Founding President John Adams. “And he wanted to be part of the NRDC team because he knew we were in it for the long haul.”
Within a couple of years after Redford joined the Board of Trustees, he made the premiere of what would become one of the decade’s most acclaimed films, All the President’s Men, a benefit for NRDC, the first of many.
“It was incredibly exciting,” says former NRDC President Frances Beinecke.
“We were a bunch of lawyers, scientists, policy advocates. Pretty nerdy, pretty technical. And suddenly, this splash of Hollywood arrived
at NRDC. From that day on—right up until today—Redford has been part of NRDC every step of the way.”
Indeed, Redford would become instrumental in helping to transform the fledgling organization into the powerhouse it is today. He recognized early on that to achieve its potential, NRDC needed to pair its unmatched legal firepower with a robust membership program and communications operation. Remarkable to say for an organization that today boasts more than 3 million Members and online activists, but NRDC wasn’t conceived as a membership-based organization, and whether to devote precious resources to cultivating membership was a topic hotly debated among the young staff. Any qualms quickly disappeared, however, as membership grew, driven in large part by the active role played by Redford, who lent to NRDC’s membership-building campaigns not only his enormously popular name and image but also his reputation for integrity and deep commitment to environmental protection.
“From the first time I met him, his passion for the environment—without a doubt, that was fundamental to him, to who he is,” says Adams. “He was going to work on this and care about it for his entire life. And he has.”
(continued on next page)
Redford’s advocacy has helped protect treasures such as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Robert Redford, Sibylle Szaggars, and Patricia and John Adams
ROBERT REDFORD HAILED FOR 50-YEAR ENVIRONMENTAL
(continued from previous page)
It’s a point echoed by Beinecke: “I think the thing about Redford that I admire, perhaps more than anything, is that he really took the time to understand the issues, and he really cares about the issues. When he’s been a voice for us on wilderness and wildlife, he absolutely, to his core, cares deeply about those issues. When he works on energy development, he knows a lot about energy development. He gets into the details. It’s never just been, ‘Give me a script, and I’ll read it.’”
Whereas in the early days Members were considered necessary to confer legal standing, as the ranks swelled, it became clear how potent the combination of hardhitting litigation and a vocal grassroots constituency could be. From the CEOs of multinational corporations confronted with tens of thousands of petitions at shareholder meetings to high-ranking administration officials in Washington, D.C., fielding a deluge of angry emails to lighting up the switchboards of Congress, time and again NRDC’s legions of Members rallied in support of the issues and the organization that they had come to care so deeply about—an organization that, for many, was
“From the first time I met him, his passion for the environment— without a doubt, that was fundamental to who he is.”
synonymous with Robert Redford. By 2008, in the wake of the radically pro-polluter administration of President George W. Bush, two-thirds of our Members had joined NRDC via a Redford-led campaign, helping to fend off many of the administration’s worst attacks on nature and public health. Their generosity enabled NRDC to expand its program staff by more than a hundred professionals to fight back against the Bush-era anti-environment assault. Redford’s early commitment to digital advocacy was almost singlehandedly responsible for building one of the largest online activist networks in the environmental community.
Key to that success, as Redford understood, was communication. At one early board retreat he hosted at Sundance, he memorably exclaimed, “What people want is a good story!”
“He really educated us on the power of communication—not only in the policy area, but how to reach the American public at large,” Beinecke says. That foundation has been vital to NRDC as the organization tackles the enormous challenges faced by people and our planet today.
“NRDC is about impact at scale. We are facing existential crises on climate, on biodiversity, and on pollution. And if we really want to confront these crises head on, we need public support,” says current NRDC President Manish Bapna. “In that context,
storytelling has been a hallmark of what has made NRDC so impactful over the decades. And it is because of Robert Redford’s vision 50 years ago, to help us understand the importance of membership and of storytelling, that enables us to capture the public imagination and to push for the ambitious change we need to see. Abraham Lincoln once said: ‘Without public sentiment, nothing can succeed. With public sentiment, nothing can fail.’ That is the power of NRDC today.”
Among the many victories that stemmed in large part from Redford’s vision and advocacy, one that immediately stands out is the dramatic come-from-behind win to save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska from oil drilling in 2001. The oil industry had long had the refuge in its sights, and it seemed few Americans in the Lower 48 would care much about what the industry and its political allies liked to characterize as nothing but a vast frozen wasteland. Within weeks of George W. Bush’s inauguration, Senator Frank
Murkowski of Alaska held up a blank sheet of white paper on the Senate floor as a visual representation of the Arctic Refuge in winter: empty.
Redford knew better. He had long been a champion for protecting Alaskan wilderness and understood the refuge to be among our last truly wild places, home to a stunning array of wildlife, from polar bears and caribou to wolves, musk oxen, and billions of migratory birds. Yet if drilling in the refuge seemed inevitable under a fossil-fuel-happy Bush Administration, the terrorist attacks of September 11 and subsequent fearmongering by the oil industry under the deceptive guise of “energy independence” seemed to all but seal the deal.
Mobilizing the grassroots network he had helped to build, Redford struck back with a powerful counternarrative. “In this climate of national trauma and war, it is up to us— the people—to ensure that reason prevails and our natural heritage survives intact. The preservation of irreplaceable wildlands like the Arctic Refuge and Greater Yellowstone is a core American value,” he wrote. “When we are filled with grief and
Top: For decades Robert Redford has campaigned to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other Alaska wildlands speaks out on Capitol Hill against the post-9/11 push to drill in the Arctic Refuge as Sen. Susan Collins looks on. Bottom,
ENVIRONMENTAL LEGACY
unanswerable questions, it is often nature that we turn to for refuge and comfort. In the sanctuary of a forest or the vastness of the desert or the silence of a grassland, we can touch a timeless force larger than ourselves and our all-too-human problems. This is where the healing begins. Those who would sell out this natural heritage—this spiritual heritage—would destroy a wellspring of American strength.” Redford’s direct appeals to NRDC Members and online activists generated more than 800,000 messages and thousands of phone calls to Congress. In the end, the refuge was spared.
It is for this landmark victory, and countless other moments like it over the past 50 years, that NRDC celebrates the immeasurable impact of Robert Redford, not only for his contributions to our organization but for his singular contribution to building the modern environmental movement in America. “It’s hard to say anything because everything is not enough,” says Adams. “‘Thank you’ doesn’t do it. ‘We treasure your legacy’ doesn’t do it. There are no words.”
Championing Clean Energy and Climate Action
To say that Robert Redford was ahead of the curve when it comes to advocating for a clean energy revolution and for bold climate action would be an understatement. Way back in 1975, he produced The Solar Film, a short film championing its titular energy source that he convinced studio heads to attach to the release schedule of All the President’s Men never mind that the oil industry, as Redford later put it, “attacked solar advocates for being, you know, in new-age la-la land.” In 1989, his Institute for Resource Management sponsored a meeting of U.S. and Soviet officials, scientists, and other experts to bring attention to the emerging threat of global warming. From the halls of Congress to the United Nations, from his convening of a historic gathering of U.S. mayors at Sundance in 2005 to spur local
Standing Up to Defend Alaska’s Bristol Bay
In 2010, within months of NRDC joining the Native Tribes of Alaska’s Bristol Bay in their fight to stop the destructive Pebble Mine, Robert Redford agreed to lend his reputation and unmistakable image to full-page newspaper ads nationwide. “Don’t let the mining industry do to Bristol Bay what they did in my backyard,” one headline read. Redford’s subsequent involvement in the campaign in videos, blogs, and signed letters generated a tidal wave of petitions to each of the global mining companies involved.
At the 2012 annual meeting of the Pebble Mine’s lead mining partner, Anglo American, CEO Cynthia Carroll described to shareholders how her own mother had received a letter from Redford. Alarmed, her mother phoned: “Cynthia, why is Robert Redford angry at
Fighting to Save Utah’s Redrock Wilderness
“People don’t come to Utah for wilderness.” That jaw-dropping assertion made to The New York Times in late 1995 came not just from anyone but from U.S. Rep. James V. Hansen, chair of the House subcommittee on public lands himself a native Utahan. To which Robert Redford shot back: “They sure don’t come here to look at coal mines and clearcut logging.” Redford was once again at the forefront of the fight to protect his adopted state’s iconic redrock wilderness yes, wilderness from being handed over to extractive industries, in this case as part of the extremist assault on public lands and environmental protection unleashed by a Newt Gingrich–led Congress.
climate action to his advocacy at the 2015 international climate summit that produced the landmark Paris Agreement, Redford has been a tireless voice in sounding the alarm about climate change, all the while rallying public opposition to the fossil fuel industry’s cynical attempts to lay claim to more of our public lands and oceans.
you?” The room erupted in laughter, and Carroll proceeded to dismiss NRDC’s opposition as unjustified fearmongering. But there was neither inaccuracy nor hyperbole in Redford’s letter, as NRDC Senior Attorney Joel Reynolds rose to inform the crowd, and “while Cynthia Carroll’s mother has many reasons to be proud of her accomplished daughter, the Pebble Mine is not one of them.” In 2013, Anglo American walked away, leaving its $600 million investment behind.
Thanks in no small part to Redford’s decades-long advocacy, today, instead of oil fields or an enormous 2.5-million-ton-a-year coal mine within a stone’s throw of Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, we have Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments. Among Redford’s seminal contributions to the fight to save these spectacular places was building trust and partnership between conservationists and Native Americans.
As fellow NRDC Trustee John Echohawk recalls, Redford convened a pivotal meeting on the Navajo Nation in the mid-1980s between Tribal and environmental leaders, which would lead to years of collaboration.
“He’s really helped to put environmental justice for Native American people on the map.”
Native American communities have been key in the creation and defense of Bears Ears National Monument.
wildlands from industrial exploitation. Bottom, left: Redford Bottom, right: Polar bears on the refuge’s Coastal Plain
The Robert Redford Building: A Trailblazer for Sustainable Design
What better tribute to an environmental visionary than an environmentally visionary building? In November 2003, Robert Redford joined then NRDC President John Adams in Santa Monica for the dedication of our new Southern California office in Redford’s honor. The building is a landmark, both literally and historically. It was the first structure in the United States to receive a Platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program, the highest certification available for green building design.
“Using advanced but off-the-shelf technology, this building shows it’s possible to protect our natural environment, achieve greater energy independence, and also save money,” Redford said in his remarks. Indeed, the building uses 60 percent less water than a conventional building of its size by capturing and filtering sink, shower, and rainwater to irrigate landscaping and flush toilets. It reduces
electricity consumption between 60 and 75 percent by maximizing natural light and using efficient fixtures and appliances, task lighting, dimmable electronic ballasts, occupancy sensors, and extra insulation. The building also meets 20 percent of its electricity needs through rooftop photovoltaic cells. The structure uses only recycled or recyclable materials, and 98 percent of the materials left over from dismantling the original building and constructing the new one were reused or recycled.
Reflecting recently on Redford and the proximity of his namesake building to Hollywood, NRDC Chair Emeritus Alan Horn, himself the former chairman of Walt Disney Studios,
Honoring Robert Redford’s 50-Year Environmental Legacy Fighting to Save Wilderness and Wildlife Standing Up for Environmental Justice Championing Clean Energy and Climate Action
For NRDC Member:
said: “In the movie business as I’m sure you know the quality of narcissism is not unheard of. Not this guy. He’s self-effacing, modest. He’s a giver, not a taker.” With a laugh, Horn, who was at the 2003 dedication ceremony, recalls one of his favorite moments from Redford’s speech, when the honoree joked that it “humbled him to think that, from now on, his name would be associated with low-flow toilets.”
TOP RATED BY CHARITYNAVIGATOR.ORG
NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL
40 WEST 20 TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10011
WWW.NRDC.ORG/NATURESVOICE
MEMBERSHIP@NRDC.ORG | 212.727.2700
Robert Redford in His Own Words: A Voice for People and the Planet
Whether speaking on Capitol Hill or at the United Nations, in the pages of The New York Times and other national publications or in NRDC videos online, for decades Robert Redford has been a powerful voice for nature and for environmental justice, speaking truth to power. Some excerpts:
“Let’s face it, [the Keystone XL pipeline] would serve one interest, and one interest only: Big Oil. For the rest of us, it would mean more carbon pollution, when what we need is less; more risk for our heartland ranchers and farmers, when what they need is safe water, clean air, and unpolluted lands; more reliance on the dirty fossil fuels of the past, when what we need are the clean energy solutions of the future.
Set aside all the false claims, heated rhetoric, and partisan hyperbole, and the simple question stands alone: Is the dirty tar sands pipeline in our national interest? It’s not.
Mr. President, it’s time to say exactly that.” “Time to Kill Keystone for Good,” MSNBC, March 4, 2015
“The mission is as simple as it is daunting: save the world before it’s too late. Only by acting now and standing together behind a universal climate agreement can we live up to the U.N.’s founding promise. Only by acting now and standing together can we tip the scales and change the course of history. When 193 countries take center stage in Paris this December, the citizens of the world will be watching.”
Address to climate ministers at the United Nations, June 29, 2015
“I’ve spoken out about the environment for decades. It’s comforting to have more voices in the mainstream pushing for
change, especially now that the situation is increasingly dire. How many more voices are needed for our elected leaders to listen, move beyond their own interests, and act in the interest of the greater good and generations to come? What needs to happen next has never been clearer: Congress must come together and pass the Build Back Better Act and the bipartisan infrastructure package immediately. There can be no more compromises. Not a single provision or investment towards a safer, healthier, more just future can be downplayed or disregarded. There are no second chances in moments like this. It’s time.” “What I See When I Think about the Future,” CNN, November 1, 2021
Gray wolf and pup
Alan Horn, Robert Redford, and Frances Beinecke at the dedication ceremony
