525: Katie Redford, part 1: She beat a multinational oil company in court just getting started

This Sustainable Life

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.

• https://earthrights.org
• https://earthrights.org/case/doe-v-unocal
• https://youtu.be/FUzG8xfjsWo on Bill Moyers
• Pipeline through the heart: A Black neighborhood’s uphill battle against oil developers shows map
• Activists Have Shut Down a Memphis-Area Pipeline — But Their Fight Isn’t Over
• Katie and Ka Hsaw Wa’s Speech at Bioneers
• Katie’s TedX Talk: What Makes Us Human
• Total Denial

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