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Meeting Mo

By Kevin Steel ⋅ March 29, 2006 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Photo credit: Kevin Steel

You may see a picture like this in tomorrow morning’s Globe and Mail. It a shot of Maurice Strong making introductory remarks at the opening plenary for the Globe 2006 conference in Vancouver at around 8:30 AM PST. One of the sponsors of the event is The Globe and Mail (Globe 2006? Globe and Mail, get it, eh?) hence my guess about the morning news.

It’s not the best picture of Strong I took as I scampered around in front of the stage semi-hunched over like a pro photog–you know, the semi-hunchback pro-photo who politely acknowledges he is being a pest and getting in people’s way but does it anyway. I thought I would post this pic because it shows the stage and it shows how Strong uses his hands when he speaks. That gesture you can barely see over the stage monitor–hands upward though turned slightly in, like he was holding a basketball or the whole world in his hands–was one that he used frequently. Atlas envy, I call it.

Photo credit: Kevin Steel

I won’t go into his remarks here—mainly because I haven’t listened to my whole recording yet—but from what I recall they were okay. Lots of stuff about technological solutions to problems. He did say he was spending most of his time in China these days, something I had heard third hand, so it was interesting to have that confirmed. There was one line I recall that troubled me. Maurice was speaking about the age of the earth, and how mankind’s time on said earth has been, in relation to that age, well, kinda short. “So the natural state of the earth is one without mankind,” he concluded. I don’t like this kind of thinking—nature over here, humans over there; nature is where humans haven’t changed things, etc. I see humankind and our development as part of nature. Besides, if you get simplistic about the the whole nature/human divide, then you have to accept there there is a heck of a lot of nature out there, in outer space and there’s lots of THAT left, so we’re not running out of nature any time soon so why worry about it. But I’m being silly.

After everything wrapped up, I wandered onto the stage and introduced myself to Mr. Strong, shaking his hand and telling him, as someone began pulling on his elbow to lead him off the stage, I was trying to set up an interview with him through the proper channels, of course. “That’s fine,” was all he had time to say. I darted ahead and snapped this picture. There was a lot of blue light around the stage. (Blue planet, blue light… you get it, eh?)

So that was that, for now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get my interview. If you want to read about the conference, go here. Early this morning, a half an hour or so before the thing got rolling, I was speaking with an organizer who told me Moe, that international man of mystery, has been coming to these Globe conferences–held every two years and always in Vancouver–since they began 18 years ago. And the crowd has been getting bigger every time. “There’s big money in green,” the organizer said with a smile. Greenpeace figured that out a long time ago. If there is one thing we humans know how to do, it’s selling each other salvation. Maybe that’s why we’re still here.