Bill Clintons keynote speech lasted about 40 minutes, in which time he covered many key action items he and his team (Clinton Climate Initiative) have been working on. A quick glance around the audience showed a medium age of I would guess about 45, and many political guests were present such as the Green Party’s leader Elizabeth May, Ontario’s Premier, Minister, and many others. I was fortunate to finagle a last minute ticket which I later learned was worth $200, nice!

Clinton jumped right in to the current state of the Kyoto protocol, lamenting the USA’s failure to ratify and by saying that it is because of  the current governments insistance on “supporting yesterdays interest groups instead of investing in tomorrows energy future.� He shared the fact that the countries that are leading the Kyoto Accord are subsequently the ones that have shown the most economical growth, such as Denmark who showed a 50% (whew did I hear that correctly?) growth in their economy; or Great Britain who have taken swift action (creating plenty of new jobs) on energy efficiency and are well on their way to meeting Kyoto targets. This while the USA economy has been stagnent over the last 7 years, and any signs of job growth have been primarily linked with post 911 militarization.

He talked about the importance of citizens to take action starting with the ‘low hanging fruit’, and I’ll refer you to David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge for that.

One of his intitiatives is the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Toronto is one of them. Essentially what they are doing is targetting large infrastructures and upgrading energy efficiency. His example was with an old low income housing community in NY City where they did a full energy audit on the buildings, the energy bill was tallied at 5 million/year. They figured they could garuntee to reduce this bill by 30%, at which point they front the money, install the new technology (whether it be efficient heating or replacing light bulbs, etc) after which the new yearly energy bill was 3.5 million, and the up front money is paid off from the energy savings, viola. He asserts that this process needs to happen on a much larger scale, and it is through the people with the ability to put this approach in to action that need to step up to the challenge, hence the C40.

He acknowledged that no matter how much we do along these lines, that if the developed nations don’t also help the 3rd world countries skip the mistakes we made, that these steps will be made in vain. Both need to happen. China for instance can’t build new coal plants fast enough, this is not good. An example of something he’d like to see in a country such as Liberia, is to have the financial support of the World Bank, and with the technology available build an energy infrastructure that is totally self sufficient, clean, and independent from other nations. If other countries could only see that this is possible, then faster action may spread. 

Another item that he admitted he was no expert on was deforestation, which contributes 18% of the worlds green house gas emissions, whew!! A big part of that is from methane which is actually worse than CO2. He asked the audience that he needed ideas on how to help combat deforestation and claimed to be able to provide the capitol to make some positive changes.

After his speech came a 20 minute Q&A style dialogue with the CEO of Green Living Enterprises, Laurie Simmond’s. Clintons last comment was that action needed to be taken immediately, not just from political leaders, but from all people, and that his generation will never forgive themselves later in life if they delay any longer. I have to agree, I have two beautiful nephews, and 30 years down the road I want to be able to look squarely in their eyes and say that I did everything I could toward creating a clean, happy planet Earth.

April 13th,It’s been hovering around freezing all day with a mix of snow and rain, heavy at times. Recovering from the deep down chill that I got while setting up my demo obstacles was next to impossible, until my first show that was. I’m in Whistler village, my first day of 10 days of demos for the World Ski and Snowboard Festival. It would have been so easy to say, “Oooh, it’s just too wet and cold to ride, it’d be dangerous, no one is going to watch, they’re all rushing toward the next warm cafe!!”. But I buckled down and kicked a show off anyway, just one person watching. One move in to the show, babbling to myself on the microphone, I see that at least 20 people are now watching; where’d they come from!!! Kept riding, and before I new it, I had a crowd standing there in the freezing cold sleet, watching me slip and slide around on my demo stuff, cool!! Second show went even better, and now that I’m part way done a cup of tea, and warming up in my hotel room, the third show should be just as good…and wet. So I had two Trials of Life presentations this week, one in Squamish, and one in Deep Cove, North Vancouver. Two incredibly beautiful places, I truly am fortunate to be a BC resident, and I am striving to do my best to learn about what I can do to help reduce my impact on it, not in terms of tires landing on roots, but in the amount I pollute ;-).I had an awesome meeting with the David Suzuki Foundation, and am proud to announce that I’ll be an ambassador for the Foundation, and will do my best to spread the word at all my school shows and regular demos. Please do take the time to visit The David Suzuki Foundation and also, sign up for the Nature Challenge.Well, I’m looking out the window at the snow, and looking at my watch, putting the two together, equals Snow Demo. Yeehaa, here we go!!!Peace,Ryan