In a post earlier this year, we looked at the impressive environmental legacy of the Sundance Film Festival, and of its founder Robert Redford. Apart from being a film legend, half of the coolest screen duo of all-time and a powerful advocate of creative (indie) freedom, Redford has been a leading voice on environmental issues for decades. He has promoted the development of renewable energies since the early 1970s, and he’s using that experience and his celebrity to focus attention once again on the need for green innovation.
For a recent piece on the Huffington Post, he writes, “I remember when America was leading the pack on clean energy in the 1970s. We abdicated that leadership,” but, he argues, “we are a nation of innovators, and we can harness that resourcefulness again to build a better future.”
Producing a film in 1975 called ‘The Solar Film,’ Redford saw economic, environmental and political reasons for believing solar technology would gain momentum. “I was too early in my efforts to promote solar power,” he acknowledges, “but now is the time. We are getting a second chance–another American trait. If we don’t seize this moment, we will be too late to get the competitive advantage in a global marketplace, too late for the economic dividends, and too late to stave off the worst of global warming.”
For the Salt Lake Tribune, Redford writes about the possibilities in renewable energy in his adopted state of Utah. “Anyone who knows Utah knows the power of wind, water and sun. You can see that power in Utah’s sculpted arches of stone, in our majestic mountains capped with snow, and in the cracked earth of our deserts.”
