Presentations

Tracking the Global Energy Transition
The global economy is undergoing the greatest transformation since the dawn of the industrial age as it shifts from an energy regime built on fossil fuels to one run by clean, renewable power. Award-winning author and sustainability strategist Chris Turner has been documenting this energy transition for more than a decade, and his presentation combines insights from his bestselling books on the cleantech revolution, The Leap and The Geography of Hope, as well as analysis of the transition’s impact on the conventional energy economy drawn from his most recent book, The Patch. Turner explains where the energy transition leads, what our energy future looks like, and what it means for the strategic decisions businesses and organizations need to make to surive and thrive in the new energy economy.

Unmuzzled: Talking Canada’s War on Science
Connecting the dots between the recent budget cuts to research, the muzzling of government scientists, and the Conservative government’s actual agenda – a concerted dismantling of Canada’s longstanding traditions of leadership in natural science and environmental stewardship.

The Great Leap: How to Survive and Thrive in the Sustainable Economy
Chris Turner believes the most vital project of the twenty-first century is a shift from our unsustainable way of life to a sustainable one–a great lateral leap from a track headed for economic and ecological disaster to one bound for renewed prosperity. He presents a field guide to making that jump, drawing on recent breakthroughs in state-of-the-art renewable energy, cleantech and urban design.

The Leap In The City
We are living in the first truly urban century, and the way we build cities today will determine whether we survive and thrive in the sustainable economy. “The Urban Leap” shows how the Copenhagen and other cutting edge urban models of livable urban design can help us build our brightest possible future and how “tactical urbanism” provides the quick and inexpensive toolkit of to get started. The Urban Leap surveys the state of the art in urban sustainability from Melbourne to Montreal and Dallas to Dawson City.

Canada 150

Why Canadian History Isn’t as Boring as You Think
We are the stories we tell each other about who we are, and for too long Canadians have believed their collective story to be a nice but boring one. Why? In large part because the myth of the polite, helpful, law-abiding Canadian became the default Canadian story through images of the North-West Mounted Police in the Klondike gold rush, disseminated through American popular culture. As American storytellers revisit the Klondike saga to film a Wire-style miniseries, it’s time for Canadians to reclaim the true, exciting stories of their past.