California is burning. “The ugly truth is what we are seeing there is not the new normal, it’s a rapidly degrading situation. We will see worse than what we are faced with now,” says Tim Guinee, actor and climate advocate. Tim serves as the Legislative Director of the Climate Reality New York State Chapters Coalition. He is also a volunteer firefighter of 22 years, currently in New York’s Hudson Valley. His many acting roles, including the series Stargate SG 1 and The Punisher and films like Iron Man 1 and 2, among others, mean he’s an instantly familiar face. But he doesn’t know if he’d describe himself as an actor or an advocate first.
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Tim’s many climate bona fides include being presented the Alfredo Sirkis Memorial Green Ring Award for his work by former Vice President Al Gore, serving on many boards (Broadway Green Alliance, the Climate Action Fund, the Ashokan Center), and advisory boards (Center for Earth Ethics and Riverkeeper). He’s also the founder of the Climate Actors and president of Climate Action Now, and he is currently filming a new show for Netflix, The Beast in Me, with Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys.
Still, a recent wide-ranging conversation with Tim, excerpted below, was mostly focused on his firefighting work. Given the current devastation in and around Los Angeles, how could it not be?
You have a lot of jobs. How did they all come about, and how do they relate to each other?
God knows. I don’t know. I just know life is big and I feel a lot of responsibility and I jump in a lot of directions.
Why did you become a firefighter?
I had two things happen. One was I lost everything in a fire when I was working on a job in Pennsylvania. It’s a very strange thing, losing everything. Then on September 10, 2001, I was on a ride-along with a friend of mine named Patrick Brown, the most decorated firefighter in the New York City Fire Department. I left his company at 7 AM on September 11 and went home. Then the World Trade Center happened, and all those guys I had been with a couple of hours earlier perished. I think many people felt the desperate urge to be able to do more. One of the ways I eventually responded to that was by becoming a firefighter.
How can anyone near or far truly help people in California or wherever there are wildfires?
I think we compassionately have to donate support to the people who have lost their homes, but the other thing that happens over and over with these events—you see it with big wildfires, hurricanes, whatever—is that when you bring up drought as an exacerbating factor and the fact that we are seeing the face of climate change, there’s a knee-jerk reaction. People say, “You are using a tragedy to promote politics.” Refusing to acknowledge the part climate change plays is pushing a political viewpoint. You have to tread a careful line here, but if we aren’t talking about climate change looking at this fiery apocalypse in California, which is causing so much human misery, when are we going to talk about it? The notion of not talking about it is actually being political. We can’t be afraid to draw this conclusion publicly.
How did you decide you wanted to do climate work?
In 1976, I wrote a letter to Jacques Cousteau. I loved nature as a child. I was 13. He wrote me back! I don’t know why; he must have had thousands of letters from children all around the world. He described the climate crisis as scientists were seeing it at the time. It was the first time I ever heard of global warming. Much of what was in the letter—the dissolution of the glaciers, the melting of the polar caps, etcetera—has come true in my lifetime. The letter scared me and made it hard for me to sleep and also it gave me a life, a direction. It turned me into an environmentalist. I professionally decided to be an actor, but I have never not worked on environmental causes. Those are inseparable in my heart.
My other wakeup call was that some years ago, I got cancer. I was supposed to go speak with Al Gore in Minneapolis. I was sitting on the steps of my old farmhouse, looking out at the barns and the woods thinking, Do I go? I don’t know how this is going to turn out. Should I be spending my time with my wife and dogs and the garden? What my friend cancer did was it reaffirmed for me the truth we know but made it really real: We have a limited period of time to be of service to the planet, human beings, and future generations. So, get on it! Those were my big clarion calls. I now feel it’s a great privilege to work in service of a mighty cause that’s bigger than you are. I think service is the reason I’m here.
What keeps you motivated and inspired when your work is challenging?
I talk to a lot of people, and they’re very discouraged about what they think will be coming federally. If it were Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, I was still going to be doing environmental work. Now I am changing strategies a little. This may sound Pollyanna, but I believe that no policy is going to fix this thing without the backing of the people. Sometimes there’s a gap between policy and the public understanding and necessity. We are going to be forced now to some degree to really move strategy to state, county, and local levels. That means we will be talking to the people. I think actually in some weird way this could make Donald Trump a big savior of the environmental movement. [Laughter.] OK, that’s far afield. Another thing that motivates me is the courage of everybody around me. I’m like one teeny tiny cog in this thing. And we’re not stopping working.
What are three things everyone should know about preparing for and living through wildfires?
In the fire department, we have a ranking of what’s important to deal with in a fire. First, our own life. Second, the life of our fellow firefighters. The third is the life of the people, and fourth is the life of the animals. Beneath all of that is the preservation of material objects. Your life is more important than your stuff. If you’re in a fire zone, you need to be prepared to get out, have what you need so you can leave quickly, and pay attention to evacuation orders. Donald Trump is saying there’s bad governance, but right now at this moment when we’re speaking, only five people are confirmed dead. I presume that number will grow. Five people is extraordinary governance and an extraordinary group working at levels of great efficiency. We think my sister lost her house, and a bunch of other people I know did too. I want to talk about this carefully, but the first time I ever saw a fatality fire, I saw what fire does to a human being. What really matters most is people getting out alive. It’s not the things, it’s not the houses, it’s not any of that. That is cold comfort to people if they have lost everything. It will take a long time to assimilate.
Learn more about how wildfire smoke can impact your health and how to stay safe in our fact sheet.
Editor’s note: Since this interview, the official deaths from the fires has doubled to 10, and it will continue to mount.
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