* David is a committed supporter of the Democratic Party. Over the years, she has made several hundred thousand dollars in campaign contributions to such candidates and organizations as Tammy Baldwin, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, Howard Dean, Rosa DeLauro, Chris Dodd, Richard Durbin, John Edwards, Rahm Emanuel, Dianne Feinstein, Al Franken, Richard Gephardt, Al Gore, John Kerry, Claire McCaskill, Patty Murray, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Bernie Sanders, Hilda Solis, Mark Udall, Tom Udall, Henry Waxman, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, EMILY’s List, and MoveOn.org.
* David has praised the environmentalist Wangari Maathai as “a woman who, with limited resources and living in Africa, spent thirty years inspiring the planting of 30 million trees across Kenya and spreading the message that protecting the environment protects democracy.”
* In 2005, David produced a cable comedy special called Earth To America, which aired on TBS. Hosted by Tom Hanks, the show featured numerous Hollywood luminaries discussing environmental concerns via live performances and videotaped sketches. Participants included Jason Alexander, Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Ferrell, Al Franken, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Maher, Steve Martin, Ben Stiller, Wanda Sykes, and Robin Williams, among others. The show was filmed before a live audience at the Celine Dion Theater in Las Vegas. “Perfect place,” David explained. “Go to the most extravagant place, where lights are left on—the waste, the consumption, that’s the poster child of global warming.”
* In 2005, the Chilmark Conservation Commission cited David’s property in Martha’s Vineyard for a series of violations when she initiated the construction of a stone fire pit, a barbecue grill area, and a children’s theatre in a wetland without a permit. In 2009, David was again fined for wetlands violations on her property. Her former neighbor at Martha’s Vineyard, Jacqueline Mendez-Diez, describes David as “a narcissist and a hypocrite to the nth degree,” and “the prime example of a spoiled, selfish, rich girl who says, ‘do what I say, not what I do.’” “I normally wouldn’t care,” Mendez-Diez told Fox News, “but this woman was going around the country telling everyone to reduce their carbon footprint…. She built this reputation on confronting people about their lifestyle—about what kind of car they drive, about everything they do—and in her personal life she took 75 acres of undeveloped wetlands and developed swimming pools during a six-year construction project. It’s ridiculous!” (Source: Jason Mattera, Hollywood Hypocrites, Simon & Schuster, 2012, Kindle Edition, Loc. 678-701.)
* In 2005 David convened a meeting with her “three guides and mentors”—Robert F. Kennedy Jr., NRDC founder John Adams, and NRDC president Frances Bienecke—and proposed that they collaborate to launch an Internet-based “Stop Global Warming Virtual March” in order “to get Americans to admit that the globe is warming; to acknowledge that we are causing it; and to demand from our government and business community meaningful solutions.” Over the next ten years, more than 1.47 million “supporters” had signed on to this campaign.
* David despised President George W. Bush for what she viewed as his indifference to, and ignorance regarding, environmental matters. “[T]he president’s first act in office in 2001 was to renege on his promise to regulate CO2 as a pollutant,” David lamented in a 2007 interview. “Two months later, he shocked the world by removing the United States from the Kyoto Protocol.”
* Over the years, David has received such honors as the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Eleanor Roosevelt Award, the Audubon Society’s Rachel CarsonAward, the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Special Achievement Award, and the Natural Resources Defense Council‘s Forces for Nature Award. She has also received special recognition from Glamour magazine (as one of its “Women of the Year”), Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Riverkeeper organization, and the Los Angeles Children’s Nature Institute.
* In 2014, David said that a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth would serve as an important contribution to the environmental debate in America. “God, do we need one [a sequel],” she stated. “Everything in that movie has come to pass. At the time we did the movie, there was Hurricane Katrina; now we have extreme weather events every other week. The update has to be incredible and shocking.”
* David is a friend of Arianna Huffington and is a contributing blogger for the Huffington Post.