Former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell offered up an inspiring message this week after accepting the 2015 CK Award of Distinction at the magazine’s annual Best 50 Gala in Toronto.
“You know what we need to do,” said Campbell, speaking on the need to decarbonize our economy. “What holds us back are the mindsets we approach the problem with. We hold ourselves back, because we have difficulty disenthralling ourselves (from the past). We have difficulty moving away from the status quo.”
Campbell, who is currently Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was honoured for having led the initiative to introduce a revenue-neutral carbon tax in B.C., a policy action that has since become a gold standard for other jurisdictions around the world.
To illustrate the kind of change that’s achievable, Campbell asked those in the audience to think back to 1990, a quarter century of time that for many doesn’t seem so long ago. Back then, he said, the Internet consumed virtually zero energy. “Today, the digital economy uses 10 per cent of the world’s total electricity – it’s the same that was used to light the entire planet in 1985.”
If that much of a transformation can happen over 25 years, imagine what can happen over the next 25? Already there are positive signs of progress to which we can point, he said. “If we reflect on the positive examples we have, if we celebrate the progress we’re making and the steps we’re taking, it’s amazing the kind of acceleration we can build behind positive change.”
A big part of Campbell’s talk was about the importance of focusing on solutions and not dwelling on problems. On that note, he recommended that the audience read two “short” books: It’s Not About the Shark, by David Nivens, and The Age of Earthquakes, whose authors include Douglas Coupland.
“It’s because people take the time to act on the things they care about that we actually see the kinds of improvement and progress that’s called for, and that we all desire,” Campbell said. "Each of us can imagine the future and then take the steps to reach it together. It doesn't mean it's an easy journey or that it happens overnight."
He ended his speech with a quote from German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose words he said have reverberated throughout his experience in public life. “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic. Be bold, and you will be amazed by the magic we can create.”
Failure to embrace that future could prove to be the ultimate Kodak moment, said Glen Murray, Ontario minister of environment and climate, who spoke just before Campbell and had a similar message to share.
Murray made the point that Rochester, N.Y.-based Eastman Kodak, once a giant of the photography world, actually invented digital cameras and memory cards back in the mid-1970s. But when the company’s head of research and development tried to create excitement about it within Kodak’s upper ranks, he got pushback. What would happen to our chemicals and paper division, they asked? How would our 28,000 retail stores survive if people didn’t have to get their photos developed?
"They realized the digital camera would completely destroy their business,” said Murray. “And it wasn't until the mid-1980s, more than a decade later, that other companies rediscovered the technology Kodak had disposed of."
That proved a very bad move, Murray said. In 2012 the company filed for bankruptcy, unable to catch up with the competition that had proved more nimble and eager to embrace the world of digital photography.
"What is the most visible example of innovation and tech change and how quickly and deceiving the nature of our economy can be?” asked Murray. “It's really the Kodak story, because Kodak is an empty hall across the river right now. It was the company held hostage by old technology, and although it invented the disruptive technology it had no capacity to deploy it."
Murray said there’s a lesson in there for Canada and the western world: “Don’t be held hostage by the infrastructure of the 20th century.”
He referred to the new Tesla Powerwall energy storage product for the home as an example of disruptive potential.
“These technologies are now available for the first time for us as consumers to create our own revolution," said Murray, comparing it to the impact the first iPhones and iPads had on consumers and how foreign and complex these products would feel for someone in the mid-1980s. "Adopting something as simple as solar technology or a battery as a consumer-generated revolution is the kind of disruptive change we're in."
And such change can’t come fast enough, he said, referring to the accelerating pace of climate change. "This is an existential crisis of untold proportion never faced by humanity."
Still, he added, “we are sentient, intelligent beings who are capable of disruptive change, who don't have to be held hostage by Kodak culture; who can actually see over the mountain and beyond the horizon to a future in which we can transform change."
Giving an example of what Canadians are capable of, he pointed to the fact that in 1939 Canada had no navy, but within three years it had built the third-largest navy in the world in preparation to take on Hitler.
"That is the level of technology retooling that we did,” Murray said. “We can harness that pace of acceleration and innovation in a way that allows us to transform and manage transformational change."
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