2007 September 29 -- Victoria, BC: Today, my family and I had tea with Al Gore. Not exactly at his table, but pretty close to it.
People in this neck of the woods love the outdoors, and all the wonders of nature that go with it. It's not unusual to see a bald eagle circle above you; a number of whale pods live year round in the pristine waters that surround Vancouver Island; and we recycle like you've never seen before. The Capital Regional District (CRD) is comprised of 13 municipalities in 3 electoral districts that are Greater Victoria plus a bit at the southern tip of the Island. Every second Tuesday your blue bin and blue bag (paper) are picked up curbside, and anything that is recyclable can be tossed in. So our community is a friendly audience for a man who is impassioned about climate change.
But he wouldn't have been here today save for the utter cheek, earlier this year, of three UVic (University of Victoria) undergraduates. Jeff Jacobson, Stefan Krepiakevich, and Justin Yorke had a conversation about Al Gore and how neat it would be to get him here. They decided they couldn't just not try, so they called themselves DSJ Communications to sound big. They found out that Gore had a visit to Vancouver, BC, planned for today and they harassed his booking agent for weeks for an earlier appearance that day in Victoria. Eventually this guy broke down and DSJ agreed to spring for the US$175,000 cost. (FYI, appearances by George H W Bush only cost US$40,000.) They came up with the deposit and then realized that they had to make it all work -- in 8 weeks!
The University promptly stepped up to the plate as the presenting sponsor and other sponsorships were acquired, including one from Three Point Properties which is building what looks to be the greenest, most sustainable tower of condominiums in the world. The project, known as Dockside Green, with views of the Inner Harbour is well worth a look at for anyone who wants to glimpse the future.
At the Victoria Conference Centre we were seated at the first table behind the corporate sponsors (no wonder, as I snagged our three tickets within the hour of them going up for sale) and the first thing we saw was a Douglas Fir seedling left on every seat…
This is Canada, this is BC, this is Victoria. People happily introduced themselves as we awaited tea from the famed Empress Hotel. The service wasn't quite the serene, opulent event it is in the front of the hotel (the Convention Centre is immediately behind the hotel) but it ran well. After tea we were treated to the fine singing of Rachel Landrecht and her pianist/composer partner Neil Weisensel. Then the talking started.
The whole affair was televised by UVic with paying students in the hall below the one we were in and as a freebie to an auditorium on the college campus.
The three young men that pulled off this coup spoke first, then the President/Vice-Chancellor of the University, and then BC Premier Gordon Campbell. The usual thanks to everyone for coming, thanks to the audacious three, etc. Then, Al Gore, who described himself as "somebody who used to be the next president of The United States," came up to clamorous applause.
It must be nice to address an audience that is so much on the same page as you are…
He stayed at the podium only as long as it was necessary to get the names of the dignitaries he was thanking right. Then he was off, pacing back and forth over a 5 m space. He led with humor, particularly with self-deprecating stories about his, and Tipper's, post-Washington DC life. He wryly observed that even he had to take off his shoes that morning before flying Horizon Air from Seattle.
My daughter really enjoyed that first 10 minutes. The rest of the presentation alarmed her.
Gore doesn't use notes – he doesn't need to. His conversation is passionate, earnest, tuned to the location he is in, and updated for recent events such as the typhoon that hit China. He is smart. He knows his geography. He knows his subject.
His conclusions on climate change are very simple: it is a moral imperative that we take action and that we should use the crisis we ourselves have created as an opportunity rather than as a human failure. He does not shy away from making it clear that we all need to move ahead now.
Living in a city which has targeted 2012 as the goal date to be carbon-neutral and with a university (one of three) that offers 200 courses in multiple disciplines that contain sustainability components (including business), this conclusion offered us, as an audience, hope for our world, and that our next generation is capable of achieving it.
The need for moral imperative does not begin with nations or governments, nor does it rest with them alone. It also will be up to individuals, groups, focused academics, and businesses to find ways to first balance our carbon outputs and then reduce them – and to do so from a point of view that emphasizes the stakes on a planetary scale rather than on the basis of next year’s bottom line or next month’s garbage bill. In the Q&A, Al Gore even gave out some hope that China is at last coming round to the reality of the situation.
There was a quotation in the Program Guide for today's event which I think was meant to show the audacity of the three young men who pulled Al Gore to Victoria. But it is even more applicable to the future of our planet. It comes from, most appropriately, the author of The Good Earth, Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, who won a Pulitzer for the book and later became the first American winner of a Nobel Prize for literature. She had an amazing life, mostly in China, and she wrote, "The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation." The world's future is in their hands.
