Robert Redford couldn’t influence enough Oscar voters to snare a Best Actor nomination for his performance in All is Lost. Now, the liberal actor/activist hopes he can convince the country–and the Obama administration–that the Keystone XL oil pipeline is a raw one for the country.
To do so, Redford penned an op-ed for The Huffington Post in which he said the project, if approved, would make climate change worse. For that reason alone, Redford wants President Barack Obama to abandon the plans and focus attention away from “dirty” power sources. And the actor uses Obama’s own rhetoric against him to make it so:
You’ll remember that the president said he won’t greenlight a project that raises the dangers of climate change. The State Department report makes it clear that this is exactly what Keystone XL would do. Bottom line: the tar sands pipeline fails the president’s climate test. It’s a bad idea. It needs to be denied.
When it comes to climate change, we know we have to do things differently. As the president said in his State of the Union address, we have to “act with more urgency — because a changing climate is already harming western communities struggling with drought, and coastal cities dealing with floods.” Climate change hits us at home: hurting our health and our children. How does this translate into everyday decisions? We need to stop approving dirty energy projects that will only drive us further into the climate danger zone.