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Al Gore, climate change (2), Dalton McGuinty (2), David SuzukiGlobal leaders will soon discuss how to handle the dire state of earth’s climate, but the climate of corporate Canada may have already shifted. Or so it seemed as top environmentalists complemented and appealed to them Tuesday night at Exhibition Place.
David Suzuki looked across a banquet hall in Exhibition Place’s Allstream Centre, where a mostly corporate audience applauded from 150 full tables.
“We’re in an amazing time,” he said.
The celebrity science journalist and environmental firebrand said he didn’t know precisely when the business community stopped slamming its doors on him.
“Now I’m being invited into boardrooms,” he continued.
Indeed. Moments before the breezy start to his speech, Suzuki posed with a jumbo-sized cheque representing $100,000 donated by MTS Allstream, which sponsored the event.
Suzuki kept things short to make way for the night’s main attraction, climate-change rock star Al Gore. Nonetheless, there was enough time for him to display the range of his moods. Suzuki began affably, but spoke with increasing ire about environmental policies of past presidents named Bush.
His tone also failed to soften when referring to Canada’s prime minister who, according to Suzuki, will go to Copenhagen “without an agenda.”
He urged his new corporate friends to have some words with Mr. Harper on his behalf.
“You’re connected people,” he said. “I can’t get in the door with this government. Please tell them to go to Copenhagen and not monkey-wrench the proceedings.”
Gore, meanwhile, turned on the charm he famously found some time between his 2000 presidential campaign and An Inconvenient Truth.
He had less of Suzuki’s invective, playing more the gracious visitor.
Gore presented his own wish for Copenhagen, borrowing many points from his bestselling book about climate solutions, Our Choice, which now contends with the folksy words of another former candidate.
The bulk of Gore’s talk was, in fact, devoted to making a science and business case for alternative energy solutions such as wind energy, solar power and geothermal heat transfer.
Solar panels, for example, stands to enjoy the same benefit as the computer industry from falling silicon prices – a Moore’s law of photovoltaics. Ironically, he said, geothermal heating and power can gain from deeper drilling capacities discovered by the oil industry.
While not completely opposed to the nuclear option, Gore pointed out that the cost of producing nuclear power has only ever gone up. He also invoked the prospect of another arms race.
“When I was vice-president every proliferation issue was connected to a reactor program,” he said.
Gore argued to the business crowd that climate change solutions can be found in the marketplace, if government and industry leaders are honest about what problems they face.
“I am a capitalist,” he said. “But we have to tell each other the truth.”
After facts and figures ran their course in his talk, however, it became clear that Gore, ultimately, was pleading for a leap of faith - an inevitable factor in climate change arguments, which rely on long-term thinking from parties not known for taking the long view.
“We have everything we need to solve this with the exception of political will,” he said toward the end of his speech.
Ontario premiere Dalton McGuinty, who found himself closing the event after Gore’s subtle reminder that politicians can be replaced, kept his remarks to a minimum. He complimented the two “green giants” who spoke before him, speaking broadly about how all life is connected. He made suggestions to the federal conservatives that echo Ontario’s plans to establish a cap-and-trade system, which puts a dollar value on emissions.
McGuinty was then gone, making way for dessert, as Gore’s closing punchline lingered: “Political will is a renewable resource.”
Meaning political leaders can be replaced.