As one of Canada’s pre-eminent ass-kickers for a cleaner planet, former Sierra Legal Defence Fund (now Eco-justice) head David Boyd is offering up a powerful antidote to environmental despair in his new book, The Optimistic Environmentalist, Progressing Towards A Greener Future.
You weren’t always an optimistic environmentalist.
I started off as an optimistic environmentalist. Back in 1992 when I decided to become an environmental lawyer, it was a time of great excitement in Canada and globally. But after suing governments and businesses for the better part of a decade and realizing that these laws we have in Canada are really not up to snuff, I took a break from practising. We were fighting so hard, but it seemed that for every step forward there were two steps back.
For a lot of environmentalists, it’s easy to dip into depression.
That was one of the motivations for writing this book. So many of my family members, friends and colleagues experienced sadness because of the seemingly endless onslaught of bad news about the environment. Then my daughter Meredith came home from school one day looking upset. She said, “Today we learned about global warming and [that] pollution is melting the ice and humans are destroying animals’ habitat and some are even going extinct, papa.” It was a shot to my heart. I thought, “I have to write this book.”
What are some of the most inspiring stories you found?
One is the amazing recovery of endangered species when humans stop killing and poisoning them and destroying their habitat. Even more inspiring is the total energy revolution taking place around the world. This is happening so fast that it actually boggles the mind. The amount of solar energy we have is doubling every two and a half years. The graphs just look crazy. The curves are going straight up at this point.
Yet when we talk about achieving targets like 100 per cent renewable, a lot of people will just roll their eyes.
I would say to them they really need to get educated, because Canada has the potential to be a world leader in renewable energy. Most people don’t realize that Canada’s electrical system is already 70 per cent renewable. We also have a tremendous amount of geothermal potential, but we don’t have a single geothermal plant in the whole country. We need the federal government to get off its ass and bring in some of the policies that have been so successful in Germany, the U.S. and Japan.
We seem to be drowning in climate inaction at the political level. Is that just media doom and gloom?
In Canada we see climate inaction because that’s what’s happening here, but there are inspiring examples of leadership elsewhere. The fact that India has just set a goal of adding 100 gigawatts of solar energy by 2020, and China is aiming to add 200 gigawatts – these are mind-blowing amounts. You have countries like Costa Rica that have already reached 99 per cent renewable energy.
You’ve been pushing to entrench the right to a healthy environment in our Charter.
I feel hugely excited about it. More than 80 municipalities from coast to coast have passed declarations recognizing their citizens’ right to a healthy environment. It’s in the environmental laws of more than 100 countries around the world. It’s no longer a radical idea. The fact that [NDP leader] Thomas Mulcair changed the Quebec Charter to include the right to a healthy environment and he may be the next prime minister means we could be on the brink of something really big.
How do we go from optimism to action?
Optimism isn’t just a pleasant state of mind psychologically it’s a catalyst for action. Working on stuff in your local community is a great way to take action. You can volunteer, give money to organizations, do things in your personal life as a consumer. And make sure you exercise your environmental values every time you go to the ballot box.
David Boyd is speaking at 12:30 pm, September 30 at Osgoode Hall and at 4pm, September 30 at U of T’s Centre of the Environment. Get more info here.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | @ecoholicnation
