Most people know him for his films, most notably the ones he produced for Quentin Tarantino. Not enough people know him for the incredible work he has been doing for environmental and other causes. Lawrence Bender, producer and political activist, is a fervent fighter for climate change action and is on the board of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. He is also a founding member of Global Zero, an organization of leaders around the world aimed at the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. And a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council, and the Israeli Policy Forum. He received the Torch of Liberty Award from the ACLU. This passionate activist has held numerous fundraisers for political and social causes in Los Angeles where he resides. He got his degree in civil engineering at the University of Maine and often jokes that on the first day there he knew he would be successful in Hollywood.

In his long career as a film producer, his causes have intersected with his day job. His documentary, Countdown to Zero, which featured politicians Tony Blair, Pervez Musharraf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Frederik De Klerk and Jimmy Carter among others, details the urgent risk posed by proliferation, terrorism, and the accidental use of nuclear weapons. In 2006, he made An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore, a documentary that he won the Oscar for, and he hoped then that with it ”we would start a conversation on climate change, and I believe we were largely successful with that.” But eight years later, as he and other environmentalists and all the experts still warned of rising temperatures (“Los Angeles is expected to have 4.5 degrees more by 2050”), and higher sea levels that are now impacting the Louisiana Wetlands and destroying a once-thriving fishing industry, he knew that talk was and is cheap and that action was desperately needed.

In 2014, at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, activist and philanthropist Lyn Lear presented Bender with the Emerald Award for Environmental Leadership, calling him “a true friend of this planet.” Bender praised the work the Institute is doing in educating hundreds and thousands of students who go out and work for non-profits and in government. “They don’t just get a degree, they go out and make a difference in this world,” he said. He urged people in power that “we need to stop talking and start acting. Conversation is not enough.” He pointed to the sequel which is proof that “not enough concrete action has been taken. I know there are a few well-worn excuses for that lack of action… but it’s time to discard them forever. Myth number 1 is that we can afford to make these changes gradually. Extreme weather is going to be the norm, not the abnormality,” he said and his predictions that many didn’t believe or want to believe have long since proven to be true. He addressed another false belief: “Myth number 2 is that climate change deniers are so powerful that we simply cannot win. We cannot win the political battles required for meaningful change… When people of conscience come together, they can win.” He pointed to California which has passed some of the most progressive environmental laws in the world including curbing greenhouse gas emissions and a bindable commitment to renewable energy. “If we can do it here, we can do it across the country and the world, including China and India, and bring the same passion to it.”

So many of these issues are still a huge fight, and there is more talk than actionable change on the part of world leaders. In January 2022, Bender told the HFPA, “Of course, the fossil fuel industry came back and confused everybody again and so it kind of went up, and then it went down, and now maybe there’s a bill towards figuring this out. Hopefully, there’s a bill.” The hope for that seems to be dwindling as President Biden had to water it down and it still has not passed the Senate.

The war in Ukraine has further complicated the issue. With rising gas prices, one would think the world would finally wake up to renewable energy and independence from Russia. When we reached out to Bender again to comment on the subject, this is what he had to say about the current situation: “This tragic event in Ukraine is definitely having an effect on the climate. On one hand, the US is now looking to add more carbon fuel to its portfolio to become more “energy independent,” while on the other hand saying we need ween ourselves off of carbon fuel. And as prices go up, of course profits for things like fracking and shale oil go up.” He continued, “This is of course short-sighted. Our addiction to oil is just that, an addiction, and the more you feed it the worse it gets. The latest IPCC report that just came out is dire. We have less time than we thought to cut our consumption/emissions of carbon-based fuel or the destruction from fires, droughts, floods, storms etc. will become more and more disastrous. There will be political pressure to drill, drill, drill, and we need to do everything we can to make sure this doesn’t happen and instead double down on renewable energy technologies.”

It is obvious Bender will never give up working and standing up for his beliefs. He credits his parents for his social activism. “Somehow, leaving this world a better place than how we entered it became a big part of my life. I think it comes from my parents. In the late 60s all those marches in Washington DC against the Vietnam War … My parents were schoolteachers [and] we would get on these buses. Thousands of people on hundreds and hundreds of buses would descend on Washington DC. And we would get off this bus, spend a day and get back on the bus and get home to New Jersey. And this kind of activism just became part of my blood.”