Todd Lucier was one of over 200 Canadians trained by Al Gore to make presentations on climate change. Here, he addresses a group in South River.
SOUTH RIVER – Canadians need to wake up and see what is happening to the climate around the world.
That is the message Todd Lucier brought with him to the South River-Machar community centre on May 1.
“Our vision is clouded,” he told the Almaguin News. “We don’t pick up a paper every day and see it the way other people do.”
Lucier was one of about 250 Canadians who travelled to Montreal recently to receive training in Al Gore’s climate change presentation, allowing them to join Gore in spreading the word.
“There were people there from every province, and they were all there to gain a better understanding of the issues of climate change,” said Lucier.
This included watching Gore give a live presentation to 3,000 people at La Place des Arts, and spending a full day with the man, going over every nuance of the presentation.
For Lucier, the learning process really began when he watched Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. It frightened him so badly that he was determined to personally do something about climate change, but he did not know what.
“I just went back to my office and paced,” he said.
Lucier learned about the course from a website listed on the DVD, but it was not available in Canada for another year.
Lucier said that the presentation, accompanied by a slideshow, is consistent with the movie, putting this complex issue into simple terms anyone can understand.
“There are a lot of crystal-clear bullets of information,” he said.
It also includes some startling imagery from around the world, in order to drive the message home in ways that news reports cannot do. Droughts, food riots, mass extinction and an ice-free arctic are among the frightening ideas Lucier uses to convey the seriousness of the situation.
He said that the debate about whether climate change is happening and whether it is caused by human activity is over. Scientists have since moved on to determining how bad things will get and what can be done about it.
“It is beyond doubt,” he said. “But in the popular view, and in the media, we try to give two sides of the story.”
Lucier said that there are no scientific studies showing that climate change isn’t happening or that human’s aren’t responsible for it.
“Still, in the media there is doubt,” he said. “Why is that?”
Lucier said that there are three ways people can react to climate change: ignore it and hope it goes away, worry that it will mean changing your lifestyle, or do something about it. Another function of the Gore presentation is motivate and inspire people toward action on both a personal and on a political level.
Lucier is hopeful that those who attended his presentation in South River will take that part to heart.
“It’s not going to be one person who is going to solve climate change,” he said. “It’s going to be millions of people on a small scale.”
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