Trudie Styler: Smart Sensuality Environmental Activist

Trudie Styler is a lipstick liberal who gets involved in life’s dirty messes!

“I don’t think I’m a novice,” she says, sitting in the London offices of her film production company, a four-floor 17th-century townhouse just down the road from St James’s Palace. “Not after 20 years of fighting for the rights of indigenous people.” (Guardian UK)

As the writer points out, Trudie Styler’s six-inch stilettos don’t slow her down, when it comes to using every ounce of her energy, influence and fame — harnessing her own reputation and her husband Sting’s — in long-standing environmental causes.

Styler’s most recent project is “Crude”, presented at Sundance 2009, with director Joe Berlinger. Its focus is one of the most controversial environmental lawsuits in recent history, allegations that Texaco (acquired in a 2001 merger) dumper more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into streams and rivers that are the water supply for Ecuadorians.

The dumping alone was 30 times more oil than was spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster, with one crucial difference: while Exxon Valdez was an accident, the plaintiffs claim that Texaco’s dumping was a deliberate strategy to reduce costs. By handling its toxic waste in Ecuador in ways that were illegal in its home country, Texaco saved an estimated $3 per barrel of oil produced.

The film “Crude” follows her on her first visit to Ecuador, where she used $150,000 provided by her Rainforest Foundation, to install a water filtration system that gives the local population their first access to clean drinking water in 35 years.

Last week, we featured in Dolce Vita Channel, Sting and Trudi’s Tuscan estate and their commitment to local land preservation and food production in Tuscany.

Like most high-profile celebrity do-gooders, including Prince Charles, Trudie Styler is criticized for her ‘high consumption’ lifestyle, flying around in airplanes to save the world.

Does she offset her carbon? “I don’t believe in carbon offsetting. Planting 60 trees so you don’t have to say your Hail Marys that night? It’s a crock. We should be looking at the bigger picture. It’s all very well going around driving our Priuses but we have to look to our governments to make us less reliant on oil.”

Researching the YouTube videos, trying to find one on “Crude”, I discovered this aggressive message about the world’s oil supply and our relationship with China. I’ve done other reading on this subject, but we are sheltered from the subject most days.

The sobering focus of the video is the future battle for oil, and it has begun.

Crude Impact

The European media is more interested than American media in broadcasting unfavorable stories about the connections between first world consumption and third world living. I do believe that, for the mostpart, we Americans are not connected to the chain of life impact on consumption habits. I should mention that CNN did a piece on oil drilling in Nigeria that was an eye-opener, concerning similar environmental impact on the rivers and healthy water supplies.

In the case of places like the Amazon, it’s easy for me to romanticize visions of rare wild life, fabulous flowers and exotic rivers. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think of the Amazon as a dumping oil zone that’s 30 times the size of Exxon Valdez.

Our Relationship to Oil

The business of oil and our relationship to it as consumers, is complex, for Smart Sensuality women and our guy friends. You know that I’m not about banging my readers over the head on these issues. And yet, the reality of oil is an environmentally complex ‘messy’ issue. (I refrain from using harsher words, only because I believe it’s more important to create a forum for learning here at A of C, than to elevate the word decibels. We can’t talk to each other rationally now about these topics, and I refuse to escalate the shouting.)

At some point, we all must face the reality of our actions and interactions with other human beings. Trudie Styler and Sting have incorporated the reality of life-threatening actions against indiginous ecosystems into their everyday life.

Saving rainforests is a life’s passion, making them a premier Smart Sensuality couple. Anne

Guardian UK Trudie Styler: why I had to use my celebrity to try to save the fainforest

A of C Dolce Vita Sting Launches Tuscan Chianti, Vows of Organic Land Preservation.

Update on Sat, March 28, 2009 by Anne

The Daily Mail follows up with an in-depth article on Trudie, praising her environmental efforts, but arguing that’s she’s totally lost touch with her working-class roots and thinks nothing of asking her chef to drive 100 miles to get the perfect pasta. I wouldn’t know fact from fiction, when it comes to Trudie Styler. Anne

Let them eat (organic) cake! The weird world of Trudie Styler Daily Mail UK