Next-Generation Environmental Activist Dies at 39 - New York Times (blog)

Accolades for the Canadian-born executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, who died last week in rough surf on a Mexican beach, focused not just on her accomplishments but on her relative youth.

Rebecca Tarbotton was a female 30-something in a universe of environmental leaders dominated by male 50-somethings (a major exception being her mentor, Michael Brune, 41, now the executive director of the Sierra Club.)

Whether it was her youth or her blend of merriment and determination, Ms. Tarbotton made a significant splash in her two years at the head of an environmental group that blends research, negotiation and direct action to prod corporations and financial institutions to examine how their purchasing, manufacturing and financing decisions affect the environment.

She was instrumental in the Rainforest Action Network's work persuading many food companies — General Mills most prominent among them — to renounce the use of palm oil, which is grown on plantations whose proliferation abets the destruction of rain forests in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

But the campaign that drew the most attention culminated in Disney's agreement last fall to stop producing paper products made from "irresponsibly harvested fiber," including tropical hardwood from areas that are highly valued for environmental conservation purposes. The announcement came a few months after two Rainforest Action Network protesters dressed as Mickey and Minnie Mouse chained themselves to the gates of Burbank Studios while a banner was hoisted reading "Disney: Destroying Indonesia's Rainforests."

"It was enough to make Disney understand that their brand wasn't safe in her hands," said Bill McKibben, the author and founder of the climate advocacy group 350.org. "One doesn't take on lightly a company of that power and wealth." He added: "It wasn't just the photo stuff. It was all the hard negotiation that went afterwards."

"She had that gleam in her eye – not afraid, not afraid, not afraid," Mr. McKibben said.

Ms. Tarbotton was born in British Columbia and worked over the years with indigenous populations and poor women in places ranging from India to Baffin Island in the Arctic.

She was highly visible in the fight against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring oil from Alberta's tar sands to the Gulf Coast, and was arrested with many others at a protest against the project at the White House in September 2011.

Ms. Tarbotton combined that zest for protest with an ability to bring pressure politely and firmly to bear on corporations, helping banks create a policy statement known as the Carbon Principles, which put limits on financial underwriting of new coal-fired power plants, according to her organization.

""What we're really talking about, if we're honest with ourselves, is transforming everything about the way we live on this planet," she said in a recent speech. "We're talking about re-embedding the economy within the limits of nature."

Those who knew Ms. Tarbotton said she understood both how to make the companies that are part of that economy both comfortable and uncomfortable, and then harness those reactions to make the future a little safer for the rain forests and their threatened populations of tigers and orangutans.