Inconvenience hits home

>> Montrealer Désirée McGraw presents Al Gore’s documentary tailored for a local audience

NORTHERN FOCUS: McGraw

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s documentary about the looming threat of severe climate change, viewers are treated to composite images of what cities like New York, San Francisco and others would look like if the polar ice caps melted and sea levels rose. It’s one of the centre-pieces to the film, and makes a powerful message, so much so that environmental awareness is now one of the more important subjects of discussion on the American political scene.

While convincing flyover state Americans that their SUVs are going to eventually destroy the planet, even the United States, took some time, Canadians were smugly aware of their superior sensitivity to the challenge (despite electing Stephen Harper). Nevertheless, Désirée McGraw, a 37-year-old Montreal environmentalist, policy wonk and former advisor to the Paul Martin government, still thinks there is room for improvement here. That’s why, last month, she flew down to Nashville for a weekend training seminar hosted by Gore himself and learned how to adapt his AIT slideshow for a local audience. Her inaugural presentation is next Tuesday, May 22 at the Atwater Library (1200 Atwater), at 6:30 p.m., for free.

“The [movie’s] slideshow is directed at an American audience,” she says. “There was a lot about Hurricane Katrina, and looking at inundations of U.S. cities and coastlines.” She felt that she needed to tweak the presentation slightly to reflect Canadian, and particularly Quebec, challenges and concerns. She’ll also be focusing more on potential solutions to climate change and especially at the macro-level, getting back to her wonkish roots. Unfortunately, her presentation won’t show what Vancouver or Halifax would look like under eight feet of water, but that shortcoming was the result, she says, of a high demand on her time. She hopes to have more slides ready by the fall.

“We’ll be looking at things like the effects of climate change on the north, on the Arctic, on polar bears, Canadian coastlines and Montreal,” she says. “I’m trying to make it as local as possible, to make it as real, immediate and relevant as possible.”

Becoming a presenter isn’t easy as having a green conscience. At the training seminar last month, McGraw was one of 120 participants, and one of three Canadians, who spent a weekend with Gore (whom she describes as “funny, intense, highly articulate and intelligent,” and someone who has “found their true calling”) teaching them how to become effective presenters. Participants were carefully screened for backgrounds in public speaking, a high community profile and (preferable but not necessary) some background in environmental issues.

While McGraw believes that spreading the climate change word at next week’s engagement is important, and looks forward to making future presentations at schools, community centres, YMCAs and churches and synagogues, she plans to delve into potentially hostile territory by the end of the summer. “I plan to target non-traditional audiences,” she says. “The professional class, the lawyers, bankers, people in the polluting industries.”

She hopes to eventually get through to the federal government, dismissive of the Harper Conservatives’ latest “quote-unquote Green Plan. [Federal Environment Minister John] Baird said that environmentalists will say it doesn’t go far enough, and that business will say it goes too far. But you shouldn’t be listening to either of them. What matters is what the scientists say.”