Steven Guilbeault has had to embrace compromise.
 | By Stephanie Joyce Editor, Opinion Audio |
He speaks from a position of experience: Guilbeault was arrested four times for climate protests in the 1990s and early 2000s while working for Greenpeace. In his most famous protest, he illegally scaled the CN Tower in Toronto, one of the tallest buildings in the world, to unfurl a massive banner accusing Canada of being a "climate killer." Now he's the man in charge of the country's climate and energy policy. |
On that singular path from radical activist to politician, Guilbeault has shifted his tactics for motivating people to act on what he calls "the greatest threat to humanity." But he has been remarkably unwavering in his message. And refreshingly for a politician, Guilbeault is open to questioning whether his tactics — past and present — are the right ones. |
It was his uncertainty and willingness to wrestle with his own contradictions that drew me to having him as a guest on "First Person." I grew up in a family of ardent environmentalists — my mother is a proud member of Canada's Green Party — but I also spent years as an energy reporter in Wyoming, the nation's largest coal-producing state. The people and communities who sit on the other side of the climate equation are not an abstraction for me, and neither are the entrenched interests that make change difficult. So while I share Guilbeault's clarity that we must act quickly on climate change, I've always been drawn to stories that embrace the complexities of the issue, rather than ones that approach the crisis from a place of moral certainty. |
For me, Guilbeault's story brings up essential questions that everyone who continues to add to and be affected by the climate crisis — which is to say, everyone on earth — might do well to consider: Is policy change most effectively brought about by external forces, or from inside institutions? Is compromise betrayal? And where can a society go without it? |
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