NOVEMBER 2024
Special Issue! Honoring Robert Redford’s extraordinary environmental legacy G O O D N E WS
HIGHLIGHTS FROM 50 YEARS OF IMPACT 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.
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.
Redford’s advocacy has helped protect treasures such as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
NRDC CELEBRATES ROBERT REDFORD
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t first it hardly seemed like at NRDC. From that day on—right up the most auspicious match. until today—Redford has been part of In 1974, Robert Redford was NRDC every step of the way.” in the middle of an almostIndeed, Redford would become unprecedented string of box-office hits instrumental in helping to transform the including Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We fledgling organization into the powerhouse Were, and The Sting, making him arguably it is today. He recognized early on that the biggest movie star of his generation. to achieve its potential, NRDC needed to And then there was NRDC, a scrappy, pair its unmatched legal firepower with little-known nonprofit barely four years a robust membership program and old. Yet if Redford was no ordinary communications operation. Remarkable Hollywood celebrity, neither was NRDC to say for an organization that today like any other environmental organization. boasts more than 3 million Members The actor had been building opposition and online activists, but NRDC wasn’t to the construction of a massive 3,000conceived as a membership-based megawatt coal-fired power plant on organization, and whether to devote southern Utah’s Kaiparowits Plateau— precious resources to cultivating on land that would one day be protected membership was a topic hotly debated as part of Grand Staircase-Escalante among the young staff. Any qualms quickly National Monument. For its part, NRDC disappeared, however, as membership had begun making a name for itself by grew, driven in large part by the active role advocating for visionary environmental played by Redford, who lent to NRDC’s laws in Congress and then enforcing them membership-building campaigns not in the courtroom. The rest, as they say, only his enormously popular name and is history. image but also his reputation for “He wanted to work with NRDC integrity and deep commitment to because we were litigators, and he felt the environmental protection. best way to solve environmental problems “From the first time I met him, his was to go to court,” says NRDC Founding passion for the environment—without President John Adams. “And he wanted to a doubt, that was fundamental to him, to be part of the NRDC team because he who he is,” says Adams. “He was going knew we were in it for the long haul.” to work on this and care about it for his Within a couple of years after Redford entire life. And he has.” joined the Board of Trustees, he made the premiere of what would become one of (continued on next page) 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 Robert Redford, Sibylle Szaggars, and Patricia and John Adams of Hollywood arrived
PHOTOS FROM TOP: JT BASKIN/GETTY IMAGES; STEVEN KAZLOWSKI/LEFTEYEPRO; RON GALELLA/ GETTY IMAGES
1980s • Helped sound the alarm about global warming, raising public awareness and paving the way for the first major international climate summits.