Still the Sundance Kid

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17185

 

Still the Sundance KidAmanda Griscom, Grist Magazine

November 13, 2003

He played the Sundance Kid, the sharpshooter sidekick to Paul Newman's Butch

Cassidy in the 1969 classic; he built the Sundance Village in the Wasatch

Mountains of Utah; he founded the Sundance Institute for independent film and

theater production and established the Sundance Film Festival. But all the

while, Robert Redford has been doing an altogether more literal kind of sun

dance: preaching the clean-energy gospel at the grassroots, in the op-ed pages

of newspapers, on the big screen, and inside the Beltway.

 

Solar is not a not a new fascination for the actor and director. As far back as

1975, Redford began working on short films and documentaries promoting solar

power. More recently, he has been a major supporter of Vote Solar, the San

Francisco organization responsible for securing $100 million in city bonds for

investment in renewable energy and efficiency measures on municipal buildings --

a model that is now being adopted by cities and states nationwide.

 

Redford recently officiated at the opening ceremony for what the U.S. Green

Building Council has called " the greenest building in the nation " : the Santa

Monica office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which will get 100

percent of its energy from solar and wind power. The building will be named for

Redford, who is not only a trustee and a founding member of NRDC, but also a

funder of the $8.3 million dollar project.

 

Redford's environmental activism has gone beyond renewable-energy advocacy, from

lobbying for the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act in the 1970s to holding

international conferences on global warming in the '80s to campaigning for

pro-environment Democratic politicians in the '90s (which he says he also plans

to do in the 2004 elections).

 

Still, even the great horse whisperer has a few environmental skeletons in his

closet. A onetime racecar driver and former owner of various all-terrain

vehicles (not to mention a major player in notoriously eco-insensitive

Hollywood), Redford freely admits to having been " extremely hypocritical " in the

past. After reading the following Grist interview, though, even the purist of

environmentalists will have to admit that few celebrities -- or politicians and

activists, for that matter -- have shown as much dogged dedication to the

environmental movement as Robert Redford.

 

Robert Redford: Hullo there, it's Bob. Please don't call me Mr. Redford. It's

Bob, or just Redford. I'm not a " mister, " never have been.

 

Okay, Bob. Your involvement with the environmental movement goes way back and

covers an amazing array of issues. What are you focusing on these days? What's

your biggest concern?

 

Redford: The Bush administration has advocated the most destructive policies

I've seen in the more than three decades I've been working on these matters.

From the moment Bush stepped into office, not only has he been leading a vast

and disciplined campaign to cripple environmental protections and enforcement

across the board, he's been manufacturing more immediate crises -- war, for one

-- that have kept the American public distracted and completely in the dark. And

what makes our Republican leadership, both in the White House and Congress, seem

all the more stupendously ignorant is that they're implementing these backward

policies at a time when they could be pushing forward a new era of solutions --

tremendous technological advancements related to things like energy efficiency,

renewables, sustainable building, and agriculture that are so incredibly

exciting. It's as though they can't even see the historic opportunity they're

passing up.

 

Wow, you clearly feel strongly about this! What exactly are you doing about it?

 

Redford: Well, I'm doing some work to help fundraise for the 2004 elections and

level the remarkable imbalance of campaign financing the Democrats are up

against. And I'm working, as I have been for years, with over a half-dozen

organizations, local and national, mostly focused on land protection and energy

issues. Energy is my biggest concern right now, mostly because there are so many

great solutions in efficiency and renewable technology that need to be pushed.

 

So with the NRDC, among other things, I continue to work on advocating for the

kind of energy bill we need and I try to do things with Vote Solar, the

organization that convinced the city of San Francisco to invest $100 million on

solar installations on public buildings -- schools, buildings, jails, even

sewage treatment plants -- using government bonds that pay back over long-term

periods. It's already spread to eight other cities across the nation. They just

did a conference educating mayors nationwide how to adopt solar in their cities

in an economically manageable way. This project touches a personal nerve that

goes way, way back.

 

A personal nerve?

 

Redford: I did a lot of projects advocating solar energy in the early to

mid-'70s that were premature for a lot of reasons. One, because there wasn't the

awareness that there is now about the practical promise of solar. The petroleum

industry had an easy time shooting it down in the '70s because solar energy was

still classified as woo-woo. They attacked solar advocates as being, you know,

in new-age la-la land, in outer space.

 

Well, technically speaking, solar was in outer space at that time, right?

Photovoltaics were being used almost exclusively on satellites in the '70s. But

the woo-woo association didn't deter you from promoting it as an oil

alternative?

 

Redford: No, it was soon after the Arab oil embargo and I was pretty convinced

that we needed to come up with alternatives. I tried to use popular media to get

the word out to the mainstream. I made a film on solar with Saul Bass in 1975,

an eight-minute short called The Solar Film that took me two years to develop.

It was a sort of unprecedented thing at the time because I was about to release

All the President's Men and I convinced the heads of the studio to attach The

Solar Film to the release schedule for the feature as sort of an opening public

service announcement. It probably wouldn't be possible now considering the kinds

of controls over the media industry, but back then it was pretty successful --

won a few awards and things like that.

 

It seems like today would be a good time to re-release it.

 

Redford: I'm thinking about it!

 

In general, given all the current energy concerns, don't you think now is the

ideal time to revive this kind of media- and entertainment-based activism?

 

Redford: Absolutely, but we're in a different time now than the '70s. We have

less innocence. We have less hope. We have less public mechanisms than we had

then. There is more dominance by the powers that be. The technology has changed

things; the medium has changed more toward the youth market, more in your face.

More expressionistic versus impressionistic. It's not a time for subtlety. And

so therefore it has to be kind of in your face and loud and commercial. I'm not

sure a little eight-minute animation would be appropriate in this media climate.

People are dealing with such a flurry of images and racing through 500 channels

and the Internet, so you have to change your approach; you have to exaggerate in

order to get people to see, to get the attention, in order to move through the

incredible paralytic apathy in the American mainstream.

 

Apathy -- can you elaborate?

 

Redford: Yeah, it's like people skim past all news about the ozone hole and the

latest mysterious fish die-off and the wetlands being drained and junked by

developers and Glacier National Park in Montana that will have no glaciers

within 25 years, and they skim past the fact that the levels and flow of the

Colorado River will be 20 percent lower in the next 20 years -- in our

lifetimes! My God! The Colorado River drying up in our lifetimes! -- or the fact

that half the world's species are facing extinction. The problem is definitely

that people aren't paying attention, that apathy is our biggest enemy.

 

So how do we get their attention?

 

Redford: I think the way is to tell the story, using modern-day scenarios and

modern-day devices.

 

Like an Erin Brockovich kind of story?

 

Redford: Yeah, well, movies are a good way to touch a chord. The story has to be

told in a popular culture framework. You have to have a human-interest element.

You have to weave in characters and narrative, you have to touch a nerve, but

the larger goal is activism and making change. That's what I was trying to do

with A River Runs Through It, sort of addressing this family that's held

together by this river and showing fly-fishing as a sort of soul-nourishing art.

Then we got people thinking about the connection between human beings and the

natural environment. We used the fundraising plan to raise money for Trout

Unlimited and the American Rivers association and local Montana-based groups

working to restore the Big Blackfoot River, which has become highly polluted

from mining runoff.

 

Then there was The Milagro Beanfield War. I made that film about taking these

people's water -- their inheritance over 400 years versus the big development

company that wants to build golf courses -- [about] the power of the bottom-up

collective versus the top-down powers that be, and the whole story that

surrounded a limited resource. We used that movie to help NGOs address

development issues.

 

In the '70s, you did different kinds of films, films that created or intensified

distrust of the government among Americans -- All the President's Men, Three

Days of the Condor, and the like. Those films seemed more deliberately activist.

Why have you stopped making that kind of movie?

 

Redford: I think there are several ways to do it. It has a lot to do with

cultural timing. When Watergate broke out, I felt a tremendous responsibility to

the First Amendment and the issue of investigative journalism. I felt extremely

obligated to preserve that ethic. And we're back there again now. We're losing

very valuable constitutional rights.

 

Can you tell a story like that now? Do you think we need to tell those stories

again? I'm imagining a sort of eco- Parallax View about how the Bush

administration opened up all this public land to industrial exploits without the

public knowing, and the $44 million the Bush administration received in campaign

contributions from industry.

 

Redford: Oh, absolutely. It's dizzying how many stories there are like that to

be told right now. I am planning a film right now that I don't want to talk too

much about because I get nervous -- a sequel to The Candidate. But again, the

entertainment industry is very different than it was in the '70s. And the

political environment is moving so fast that one minute something is a big story

and the next minute it's passe. Outlets like FOX News have essentially pulled

the entire media landscape to the right, telling these incredibly skewed stories

so fast and so furiously. There has to be an equal acceleration on the other

side to get the real story told about how the American people are being affected

by the Bush administration's corrupt policies, but it's almost as if we don't

have time to get the stories out.

 

So given the Hollywood timetable -- I mean, if it takes a year and a half at

least to produce a film -- wouldn't it be difficult to turn around a mainstream

film in time to tell the real story?

 

Redford: Unless it's a quickie for television, but television these days is

generally dominated by a conservative slant. There's only one point of view

being presented. It all boils down to that: who the players are and what the

points of view are and what the stories going to be told are. That's the

battleground for the future.

 

Ugh. This all sounds very grim.

 

Redford: Well, no. We're up against incredible odds, but that's where you and I

come in -- to tell those stories as fast and furiously as we can, in magazines,

movies, chat rooms, op-eds, wherever. My general feeling is actually positive.

We have an obligation to focus on the positive. I find that there is hope and

it's the right kind of hope because it's coming from the bottom up. It's

happening in Vote Solar. It's happening in the " What Would Jesus Drive? "

campaign, where all these local reverends are educating their communities about

energy-efficient cars. It's happening in the work of the NRDC, and we have to

tell the stories of hope and solutions and not be daunted by the onslaught of

stories from the right.

 

I'd love to tell the story, for instance, of Paul Wellstone's campaign, when he

worked against the tide of an incredible imbalance of campaign finance and he

went door to door to get people's support. He couldn't rely on big advertising,

so he just hit the road. And he won because he got to the people in such a

direct way. And that was possible even in the theater of modern politics. Those

are the kind of positive stories we have to focus on.

 

The Bush administration has a genius for storytelling. They couch all their

policies in these rosy, patriotic terms like the Healthy Forests initiative and

the Clear Skies initiative and so forth.

 

Redford: It's insidious. I mean, listen to that rhetoric. It's jingling with

jingoism. It's so ugly. So painfully ugly. And the only way they would even try

to do that is that they know that they have apathy on their side. They like to

wrap themselves in the American flag and yet they're totally chipping away at

what it stands for. This administration has learned the power of staying on

message and keeping it simple. They are very, very shrewd in couching it in

patriotism. Nearly every statement that comes from this administration includes

the phrase " the American people, " which in their case is another way of saying

" industrial interests. " Every time I hear that phrase " the American people, " I

just substitute " industrial interests. "

 

If Dick Cheney were a plant, what kind of plant would he be?

 

Redford: A cactus. But one that holds oil, not water.

 

You've held large environmental conferences at Sundance and submitted reports

from these conferences to the Reagan and Bush administrations. Can you tell us a

little about that?

 

Redford: I've held a number of global warming conferences at Sundance. The first

aimed to get environmentalists and developers together in one room to review all

these proposed projects -- who wanted to open up what -- ANWR, Escalante,

whatever -- and who wanted to protect it. We got both sides to agree: If you let

us explore here we'll stay out of that. We sent it to the Reagan administration

and they shelved it.

 

Then we did it again -- a conference called " Greenhouse Glasnost " that came out

of a trip I made to the Soviet Union in 1987, where I was asked to visit the

Soviet Academy of Sciences and they were talking about global warming and I

said, " This is so huge but no one knows about it! Would you please come to the

United States and talk to us about it! " My business affairs guy tried to pull my

shirt off to get me to sit down, said, " Jesus, Redford, are you out of your

fucking mind? You can't afford to bring these guys over! " I was inviting the

entire Soviet academy to come to Sundance, and he's like, " You're out of your

fucking mind! " And I'm like, " Yeah, I'm out of my fucking mind, " because I just

get really -- I mean I just fly off on this stuff.

 

So we did it. We had the head of the Soviet space program and all the top Soviet

scientists. It took 18 months to pull it off and we had it at Sundance in 1988

and it was called Greenhouse Glasnost. And it was the top scientific authorities

of both continents who came together and jointly agreed that this was a serious

issue and came up with specifics about what could be done and should be done and

the joint resolution was signed and sent to Gorbachev and the Bush Sr.

administration, and again it was shelved.

 

Ouch. You must have felt pretty burned.

 

Redford: To put it mildly.

 

How do you compare the different administrations -- Nixon versus Regan versus

Bush I and II -- in terms of their impact on the environment?

 

Redford: Well, Nixon had no clue. Reagan was very effective at pushing his

pro-industry mandate because he relied on personality and charm and people liked

him. Bush I seemed like the president of the Sierra Club compared to his son.

This administration is a whole different beast: They've taken even the

opportunity for public interests to respond out of the equation. Even Reagan and

Bush I engaged in debate and conversation with environmental groups. This

administration has completely sealed itself off.

 

The moment Bush got into office, they started moving like a panzer division,

unraveling all the laws -- logging regulations, pollution regulations for air

and water, critical habitat, national monument protections, everything --

everything is being rolled back, and probably most concerning is the

obliteration of laws that allow for environmental review and public comment.

 

Didn't you and [interior Secretary] Gale Norton have a famous letter exchange

last year in which she asked you to release a condor in public? And you wrote

back to her and declined, saying, " I intend to use what time I have to do what I

can to focus on the devastating environmental repercussions of the ... decisions

you are now making in your current capacity at the Interior Department. " Whoa!

 

Redford: Oh Jesus, do you remember that? Was that a joke or what? I mean, when I

looked at that letter, I said, " You've got to be kidding. " First of all, it was

so obvious they were looking for a photo op. She worked against the very act

that allowed for the preservation of the condor! Second of all, I'd released a

condor in captivity as part of the wildlife movement in California 12 years

earlier. I was like, Hello? I've already released a condor, thanks! Twelve years

ago! And you're just coming around? And meanwhile you shred the rest of the

country with mining and gas drilling and timber stuff and you're going to

release a condor and you think that's going to make up for what you are doing?

 

It's amazing to me that so many people in the Bush administration like Cheney

and Norton were born and raised in the West, like you. Why doesn't coming from

that environment produce the desire to preserve it?

 

Redford: Well, part of it is the old " manifest destiny " still at play in the

West: What we can take, we deserve. Look, there are Westerners and then there

are Westerners. There was Morris Udall -- he was a Westerner. There are many

examples of Westerners who are good guys. I happen to think that John McCain is

a good guy.

 

Tell us a little about your upbringing in the West and your formative years as

an environmentalist.

 

Redford: I grew up in a non-privileged environment in southern California that

was constricted by the war and sacrifice. I had family members who died in the

war. I grew up in an ethnic neighborhood that was mostly Mexican and working

class. I gained a respect for the environment because for me it was a way out.

When I was a kid growing up, going into the desert, the Sierras, going into the

ocean, going to swim and surf were these extraordinary resources -- if I could

just get to them. We were so confined by these parameters of war and the

economics and the lack of privilege, so getting into the natural environment was

this incredible joy. This incredible liftoff.

 

And then after the war, suddenly [there was this] acceleration unknown to man,

[the wilderness] being wiped out in favor of development -- freeways and

concrete -- I watched it all happen. It happened in my lifetime. So I go way

beyond George Bush. I mean, my feeling about the environment goes back to being

a kid and watching it be destroyed. So I took my family to Utah. A state with

some of the most incredible natural assets in the world and the attitude of the

leadership is: Wipe it out! So for me it's this saga; it's more than politics,

it's a way of life.

 

What's your lifestyle like now? Do you have a worm bin?

 

Redford: Say what? Do I have a warm bed? What are you implying?

 

No, a worm bin. It's that bucket of worms you feed to compost to help with

decomposition. I'm asking if your lifestyle is eco-friendly.

 

Redford: Oh! Ha! Boy, I was really off-track with that one. Yeah, we do, in

Utah. Most of the time I'm on a horse in the summertime and skis in the winter.

And yeah, we do have compost. Sundance itself is trying to be a model community

with art and nature coming together. There's 5,000 acres; I've preserved 2,000

of it. We've got vegetable gardens and solar panels and all that. My home is

passive solar and through the years I've adapted more and more energy-saving

systems with it, from recycling to natural energy to glassblowing. Part of our

art-shack program at Sundance Village has glass blowing and we do it from all

the recycled bottles from the two restaurants. And so our plates and glasses are

all made on the premises and recycled.

 

Yeah, but don't you have any vices?

 

Redford: Well, I'm extremely hypocritical. I mean, I used to race cars when I

was a kid, so it's very hard for me to let go of the idea of a racing vehicle in

my life. And I did have SUVs but I gave it up. I came to realize the

disadvantage of them. I said, " Do I need an SUV in Los Angeles to drive around

in traffic? " No; that to me is tremendously wasteful. And you might as well get

with the program. But if you're in a wilderness area -- which I'm on the edge of

in Utah -- I would have a justification for using the SUV.

 

But for me, those days have pretty much ended and now I really do spend pretty

much of my time on horseback. And I'm very happy because of it. I smell and see

and feel things I never would have dreamed to feel if I were swishing through on

a car. So that is not a loss for me; it's actually a wonderful gain.

 

In the grand scheme of things, who are you most concerned about -- the

politicians, the media, the average Joes who can't look past their SUVs? Which

part of the equation are you most worried about?

 

Redford: It's a bit of a domino thing. The overwhelming picture is that we

simply don't have any high-level moral leadership. It's been on the decline for

many, many years. And as the decline has occurred, the American people's

interest has also declined, so now we have voter turnout worse than it's ever

been in history, and each election it gets worse and worse. They're moving into

apathy. They don't give a shit. And it's a negative feedback loop: The less

attention they pay, the more advantage for mediocre leadership to gain a

foothold. The mediocrity in D.C. is a reflection of our own apathy. They are

there because we're not paying attention. The special interests put them there

because the American people weren't voting enough. It's the cost of not paying

attention.

 

Amanda Griscom writes for Grist.

 

 

 

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

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