Robert Redford Speaks on Climate Change and #OscarsSoWhite From Sundance

Actor and director Robert Redford founded the Sundance Film Festival which has helped independent voices develop their craft—in film, theater and music—and reach new audiences. Redford joins Democracy Now! in Park City, Utah to discuss the calls for boycotting the Oscars over its exclusion of people of color and his activism around climate change.
Here’s the transcript of the interview:
Amy Goodman: We just came from Paris, from the UN climate summit. We covered it for two weeks. George Monbiot, the environmentalist from England, said about the agreement, it is a miracle that an agreement happened, but a catastrophe for what really needs to be done. He said, for what could have happened, it’s a miracle; for what should have happened, it’s a catastrophe.
Robert Redford: He’s right.
Amy Goodman: What are your thoughts?
Robert Redford: I agree with him 100 percent. I’ve obviously been involved, as climate change—being an environmentalist, which I am. And I’ve been more radicalized over time as I’ve seen the consequence of how the environment has been treated. So climate change is a big part of that. So, I got pretty involved with the subject, when I was asked to speak at the UN last—I think it was April.
So, basically, going to Paris was a follow-up, because I was asked by NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] to go to Paris and to kind of follow that up, about focusing on the mayors. And so, for me, the issue for the future was: get to the people that are closest to the ground, meaning the people that are closest to the—the leaders that are closest to the people. And so, I felt mayors, that was the place to go.
The second part was the indigenous cultures. I felt that there’s such an ignorance and an ignoring of indigenous cultures, which are so fundamental to our history. I thought, I’d like to focus on that. Are they being treated fairly? Are they being included in the debate? Are they being included in the conversation? And I didn’t feel they were. So, going to Paris was to try to put focus on the mayors and the value of indigenous cultures, like the people in the Marshall Islands, how they’re being affected. So that was my focus.
Amy Goodman: And what do you think of the whole divestment movement across college campuses, the movement to divest, foundations to divest, corporations to divest from investment in oil, in coal, in fossil fuels overall? Do you endorse this?
Robert Redford: Totally. I think that’s a great—it’s a start. And I think there’s much more that needs to be done, but that’s a great start.
Amy Goodman: Let me ask you about the Oscars and diversity. It’s the big discussion now, extremely significant. I just came from interviewing Dawn Porter who has a film here called Trapped about abortion providers in the South, also spoke to Stanley Nelson, who often features his films here, great civil rights documentarian.
Robert Redford: Right.
Amy Goodman: And both of them endorse a boycott of the Oscars, because, I mean, we see it twice in a row: No actors of color are nominated for an Oscar and yet so many actors of color are acting in the industry.
Robert Redford: Yeah.
Amy Goodman: What do you say about this? Do you endorse a boycott?
Robert Redford: No, I don’t endorse a boycott, because I don’t get involved in that discussion. I probably would, if I hadn’t started Sundance, because starting Sundance was my way of dealing with the issue, where the mainstream has a lot of control and whether it’s too many old white people or not. Because I was a member of the Academy, I’m not going to turn my back on it. I’ve been very fortunate to do a lot of films I’m proud of that are part of the Academy. So I decided I’m not going to get into that argument. That’s for others.
But what—all I can say is, look, in terms of diversity, which I really believe in, that’s why we started something called independent film festival. It’s about independence. And because diversity comes out of independence, I thought all we have to do is just show diversity—all colors, women, you know, promoting undervoiced people. Like in the early '90s, we had people like Townsend and they came through and we promoted, we pushed those films, to say, look, black films, ethnic films, are important, so we're going to put them out there, we’re going to make them part of our showcasing. Then it was—the next question was women. I said, well, it’s being dominated by men. And women are important and they’re beginning to emerge. You’re getting Lisa Cholodenko. You’re getting these women filmmakers that are stepping up—Nicole Holofcener. I thought, let’s put focus on them and say they’re important.
So that’s what Sundance’s history has been. We take areas that don’t get enough attention and we bring them in, and we give them a lot of attention here. But that’s what we do—in other words, in contrast to maybe what the Academy is doing. It’s not against the Academy. I’m not going to boycott. I’m just not going to get involved in it. We just do what we do.
Amy Goodman: Spike Lee says he’s not endorsing a boycott, but he’s just not going to go, because he doesn’t want to be a part of it.
Robert Redford: Well, it’s his choice and that’s fine. I mean, I probably won’t go, because I haven’t been invited. But I just focus on this, you know, but without denigrating that. To me, a lot of people—in the beginning, I received a lot of criticism, but it was—there’s a tendency to label, you know and subjugate things. And in the beginning, I was characterized as somebody that was against the mainstream, that’s starting something here in the mountains like an insurgent ready to come down and attack. I said, "No, no, it’s not that at all." What it is, is taking another category that doesn’t get much voice, doesn’t get any attention and has a whole lot of people that could come into it and have a chance and build that up. And what that does, it extends the category of film. It’s not against the Academy. It’s just that it broadens the category. And I don’t think that’s ever come through to people.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Neil deGrasse Tyson Schools Rapper B.o.B. Who Believes the Earth Is Flat
Matt Damon Slams Michigan Governor Over Flint Water Crisis: ‘At the Very Least He Should Resign!’
Canada’s Trudeau to DiCaprio: Tone Down ‘Inflammatory Rhetoric’ on Climate Change
World’s Top Carbon Reserves That Must Be Kept in the Ground to Prevent Climate Chaos
A tornado tore through a city north of Birmingham, Alabama, Monday night, killing one person and injuring at least 30.
- Tornadoes and Climate Change: What Does the Science Say ... ›
- Tornadoes Hit Unusually Wide Swaths of U.S., Alarming Climate ... ›
- 23 Dead as Tornado Pummels Lee County, AL in Further Sign ... ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By David Konisky
On his first day in office President Joe Biden started signing executive orders to reverse Trump administration policies. One sweeping directive calls for stronger action to protect public health and the environment and hold polluters accountable, including those who "disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities."
Michael S. Regan, President Biden's nominee to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, grew up near a coal-burning power plant in North Carolina and has pledged to "enact an environmental justice framework that empowers people in all communities." NCDEQ
Trending
By Katherine Kornei
Clear-cutting a forest is relatively easy—just pick a tree and start chopping. But there are benefits to more sophisticated forest management. One technique—which involves repeatedly harvesting smaller trees every 30 or so years but leaving an upper story of larger trees for longer periods (60, 90, or 120 years)—ensures a steady supply of both firewood and construction timber.
A Pattern in the Rings
<p>The <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/coppice-standards-0" target="_blank">coppice-with-standards</a> management practice produces a two-story forest, said <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernhard_Muigg" target="_blank">Bernhard Muigg</a>, a dendrochronologist at the University of Freiburg in Germany. "You have an upper story of single trees that are allowed to grow for several understory generations."</p><p>That arrangement imprints a characteristic tree ring pattern in a forest's upper story trees (the "standards"): thick rings indicative of heavy growth, which show up at regular intervals as the surrounding smaller trees are cut down. "The trees are growing faster," said Muigg. "You can really see it with your naked eye."</p><p>Muigg and his collaborators characterized that <a href="https://ltrr.arizona.edu/about/treerings" target="_blank">dendrochronological pattern</a> in 161 oak trees growing in central Germany, one of the few remaining sites in Europe with actively managed coppice-with-standards forests. They found up to nine cycles of heavy growth in the trees, the oldest of which was planted in 1761. The researchers then turned to a historical data set — more than 2,000 oak <a href="https://eos.org/articles/podcast-discovering-europes-history-through-its-timbers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">timbers from buildings and archaeological sites</a> in Germany and France dating from between 300 and 2015 — to look for a similar pattern.</p>A Gap of 500 Years
<p>The team found wood with the characteristic coppice-with-standards tree ring pattern dating to as early as the 6th century. That was a surprise, Muigg and his colleagues concluded, because the first mention of this forest management practice in historical documents occurred only roughly 500 years later, in the 13th century.</p><p>It's probable that forest management practices were not well documented prior to the High Middle Ages (1000–1250), the researchers suggested. "Forests are mainly mentioned in the context of royal hunting interests or donations," said Muigg. Dendrochronological studies are particularly important because they can reveal information not captured by a sparse historical record, he added.</p><p>These results were <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-78933-8" target="_blank">published in December in <em>Scientific Reports</em></a>.</p><p>"It's nice to see the longevity and the history of coppice-with-standards," said <a href="https://www.teagasc.ie/contact/staff-directory/s/ian-short/" target="_blank">Ian Short</a>, a forestry researcher at Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Authority in Ireland, not involved in the research. This technique is valuable because it promotes conservation and habitat biodiversity, Short said. "In the next 10 or 20 years, I think we'll see more coppice-with-standards coming back into production."</p><p>In the future, Muigg and his collaborators hope to analyze a larger sample of historic timbers to trace how the coppice-with-standards practice spread throughout Europe. It will be interesting to understand where this technique originated and how it propagated, said Muigg, and there are plenty of old pieces of wood waiting to be analyzed. "There [are] tons of dendrochronological data."</p><p><em><a href="mailto:katherine.kornei@gmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Katherine Kornei</a> is a freelance science journalist covering Earth and space science. Her bylines frequently appear in Eos, Science, and The New York Times. Katherine holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles.</em></p><p><em>This story originally appeared in <a href="https://eos.org/articles/tree-rings-reveal-how-ancient-forests-were-managed" target="_blank">Eos</a></em> <em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>Earth's ice is melting 57 percent faster than in the 1990s and the world has lost more than 28 trillion tons of ice since 1994, research published Monday in The Cryosphere shows.
By Jewel Fraser
Noreen Nunez lives in a middle-class neighborhood that rises up a hillside in Trinidad's Tunapuna-Piarco region.