What Working On An Oil Field Taught Robert Redford About Climate Change

Photo: Secretary Kerry Speaks With Former Vice President Al Gore, Ambassador Jane Hartley, French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron, and Actor/Director Robert Redford in Paris Amid the COP21 Climate Summit – December 7, 2015. Photo credit: U.S. Department of State / Flickr / Wikimedia / US government work. Article by Simmone Shah. Time – September 16, 2025. 

Before he was a Hollywood icon Robert Redford, who died on Tuesday at the age of 89, was a teenager working on an oil field in California hoping to save up enough money to travel to Europe and study art. It was an experience that would shape his lifelong commitment to climate action. “Even at the age of 16, it bothered me because I could see what was happening up there [was] that the propaganda of oil companies, and the lobbyists they hire, were selling the idea that it was going to be great for the economy, great for everybody. And I saw it differently,” he said in a 2010 video for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). […]

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Video: Robert Redford, Actor and longtime conservationist at the High-level event on Climate Change (June 29, 2015) – United Nations

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