Robert Redford Said Teen Oil-Field Work Shaped His Climate Activism

Robert Redford, who died Tuesday at 89, said his teenage work on a California oil field shaped a lifelong commitment to climate action and informed his public opposition to fossil-fuel development.

Redford told the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2010 that working on an oil field at 16 opened his eyes to what he called industry propaganda and the human costs of oil production. “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 video produced months after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 people and is considered the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

He also spoke in that video about the dilemmas facing oil workers whose livelihoods depend on the industry. “I know what it’s like when a person’s job, their own livelihood, depends on having to hold that line and how difficult it is when the ethic of a company goes against some of the dangers attached to it,” he said, describing the conflict between employment and safety that he observed firsthand.

Those early impressions informed a long record of environmental engagement. Redford co-founded the Redford Foundation in 2006 to support environmental-impact filmmaking, served as a trustee of the NRDC for about three decades, and testified before the House Natural Resources Committee in 2009 on America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, a bill aimed at protecting public lands in Utah.

In Utah, where he lived much of his life, Redford campaigned against a proposed six-lane highway that would have cut through a canyon and opposed plans for a coal-fired power plant. He frequently framed his conservation work in practical as well as moral terms, stressing the need to preserve landscapes and public health for future generations.

Redford pressed policymakers on energy policy as well. In a 2018 piece for TIME, he urged reforms to allow solar companies to coexist with utilities so more Americans could affordably transition to solar power. He raised the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels in remarks at a United Nations event in 2015: “Unless we move quickly away from fossil fuels, we’re going to destroy the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the health of our children, grandchildren, and future generations,” he told the assembly.

Colleagues and environmental groups often described Redford as reluctant to adopt the label of activist, even as he used his public platform to lobby for policy changes and conservation. His interventions combined appeals to scientific consensus and policy prescriptions with attention to the economic realities facing workers in extractive industries.

Redford’s trajectory—from oil-field laborer to Hollywood director and public advocate—illustrates how early personal experience informed his approach to environmental issues. Over decades he linked local fights over roads and power plants to broader calls for a transition to renewable energy and the protection of wild lands, arguing that individual communities and national policymakers alike had to act to avert long-term harm to health and ecosystems.

As news of his death circulated, obituaries and statements from environmental organizations highlighted his record on conservation and climate policy alongside his achievements in film, noting that his engagement extended across organizing, philanthropy and public testimony in Washington.

Redford’s public comments and organizational work underscore the positions he took in the last two decades of his life: skepticism of fossil-fuel industry claims, support for renewable energy deployment, and advocacy for protecting public lands and water. Those themes remained central to his public statements until the end of his life.