—Systemic change begins with personal change—
Katie Redford is the Executive Director of the Equation Campaign. From the Equation Campaign's About page:
The Equation Campaign is a new ten-year funding initiative working to bring about a safe and just future by enhancing the power of movements to keep oil and gas in the ground.
The science is irrefutable: to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis, carbon emissions must be cut in half by 2030. While supporting the rapid growth of renewables and energy efficiency is essential, this support cannot solve the climate problem alone. There is a missing piece of the equation: stopping oil and gas at the source.
We will keep it in the ground by funding movements on the ground. We center and amplify voices of people on the frontlines, for whom the expansion of the oil and gas industry is a matter of life and death. This includes young people fighting for their future, indigenous people defending their land and water, farmers protecting their crop, black and brown communities living in the shadow of the industry's operations, and poor people who are not responsible for global warming but who bear the brunt of its effects. Yet the truth is that in the climate crisis, we are all on the frontline; none of us can escape the impacts of climate change. Together, we can avert the worst of it.
The Equation Campaign supports the climate movement by funding resistance on the ground and diminishing the industry's sources of financial support. We also make grants for strategic litigation and the legal defense of activists. And we work to revoke the industry's social license by countering its deception and unmasking its deceit.
She is a Co-Founder of EarthRights International. She is a graduate of Colgate University and the University of Virginia School of Law, where she received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Human Rights and Public Service. She is a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Massachusetts State Bar. She has served as counsel to plaintiffs in our various lawsuits, including the landmark case Doe v. Unocal. Katie received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1995 to establish EarthRights.
Katie is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Virginia and the Washington College of Law at American University, and also serves on the boards of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), and the Slingshot Development Fund. She also serves on the Advisory Board of True Costs Initiative and the Legal Advisory Board of Free Speech for People.
She has published on various issues associated with human rights and corporate accountability. In 2006, she was selected as an Ashoka Global Fellow. Katie was a 2007 Rockwood Leadership Fellow and received the Riesenfeld Award at Berkeley College's School of Law in 2018. Most recently, Katie was named a 2018 Bellagio Fellow. Katie has been profiled in a variety of media including the books Be Bold and Your America: Democracy's Local Heroes, and the award-winning documentary film Total Denial.
I see exactly two highest priorities for material goals to restore Earth's ability to sustain life. One is keeping fossil fuels in the ground. Down there it's safe. Above ground, it's poison and deadly. However clear and straightforward, almost no one focuses on this simple, effective, attainable goal. Katie does. Our first conversation was just starting when we had to stop. We mostly talked that time about her past, groundbreaking work. In this episode we talk about her present work with pipelines in the U.S., their disproportionate effects on communities based on class, race, and more, and her work on them. You can hear her passion in every sentence. I felt connected with someone so devoted and passionate, not waiting for others to act. This episode will rouse even the complacent among you. (The second priotity is outside the scope of Katie and my conversation: returning global population to a level Earth can sustain through voluntary, noncoercive means such as practiced at national levels by several nations all others could emulate.)
Katie is the sort of role model I do this podcast to bring to the world. Her challenges are huge, but her passion and determination greater. I can find a million people who say they care about the environment. They probably do. I can find some who act on this caring. I can find a few who do things that sound great like starting companies to do well by doing good. Of them, many are helping restore Earth's ability to sustain life. Then there's Katie. She's devoting everything she's got beyond just cleaning some area. She's going to what I consider as near the root of our problems, and the most effective solution: keeping fossil fuels in the ground. Most "solutions" like renewables, recycling, offsets, and what makes the news, in my view mostly just shuffle pollution around after we already brought fossil fuels out from underground where they were benign. When we recorded, she was in the middle of helping stop a pipeline, working with the local community. We talked about her current work and her past groundbreaking work with Doe v. Unocal and cases that followed its precedent. But I want most to comment on our conversation's tone. I loved talking with her as someone else who saw our problems and dove in to solve them, not dip around the edges, and she's succeeding. I love talking with someone not justifying or making excuses, but enthusiastic. How we feel depends on what we give relative to our potential. I've learned not to judge myself for things outside my control. I loved talking with her because I felt a bond over devoting ourselves to a great cause and giving all we have.