Chris Turner

In this presentation, based on his most recent bestselling book, Chris Turner distills 20 years on the climate solutions beat worldwide into a powerful case for optimism in the face of the challenge of climate change. Turner has been reporting on clean energy, sustainable business, and smart green design the world over since long before any of these were mainstream interests, and he draws on the full breadth of his extensive reporting to paint a vivid portrait of a global energy transition already tackling the climate crisis and pointing the way to a much brighter future.

How to be a Climate Optimist has garnered multiple awards including the Writers’ Trust’s Shaugnessy Cohen Prize, the National Business Book Award, and was named a finalist for the GG (Governor General’s) Award. 

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 survive and thrive in the new energy economy.

Chris Turner is one of the world’s leading voices on climate change solutions and the global energy transition, who draws on recent breakthroughs in state-of-the-art renewable energy and urban design to paint a vivid portrait of a new, sustainable world order that will allow individuals and businesses alike not only to survive but to thrive in the twenty-first century economy. Come and hear Mr. Turner as he speaks about ways that we can embrace the challenge of climate change and develop a more sustainable local economy.

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.

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.