You’re likely a hypocrite when it comes to climate change. Yes, you. Doesn’t really matter who you are—if you’re demonizing the ecological destruction in Canada’s tar sands from the comfort of your air-conditioned home, you’re not helping the discussion. And the people doing that work don’t want to hear anything from you. On this issue like so many others, the left and right have become so divided that real dialogue is all but impossible. But what if we actually talked to one another over a beer?
That’s what Matt Hern and Am Johal (along with award-winning cartoonist Joe Sacco) set out to do when they left Vancouver and headed for the heart of the tar sands around Fort MacMurray. They didn’t go there to shame the people collecting paycheques from companies who are destroying the land, or to preach to them about carbon footprints fresh from hopping a plane and renting a giant truck. They went to talk, without judgement, and it turns out that opening a real dialogue still matters, and that when people from different ends of the environmental spectrum respect one another, all sorts of ideas can bubble to the surface.
GUEST: Matt Hern, co-author, Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale