Ever since Charlie Coleman's father gave him the book, Silent Spring by environmentalist/biologist Rachel Carson, he has been concerned about the environment.
"I was 14 at the time and I was really impacted by reading about how pollution was affecting the United States," said the 64-year-old former hardware design engineer for Alcatel.
"Then, when An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore came out, it all made even more sense."
The Richmond math and science teacher is now putting his money where his mouth is.
He has been accepted to take part in a three-day climate change conference in which former U.S. vice-president and Nobel Prize Laureate Al Gore will be the guest speaker and trainer.
Coleman leaves next week as one of 115 Canadians nominated by All Climate Reality Canada - a nonprofit organization, which seeks to raise awareness among Canadians about the urgency of the climate crisis - to attend the free conference.
"I was both pleased and surprised to be nominated," said Coleman, who has been giving informal presentations on climate change issues for five years.
"When I come back, I'm hoping to make presentations about climate change to both elementary and secondary schools in Richmond," he added.
Coleman will be joining 800 others from more than 20 countries, including lawyers, university professors, business leaders, engineers and environmental consultants, all of whom will be trained by Gore in order to go back to their communities to spread the word on the impact of climate change and to discuss solutions to the crisis that leaders in the field have proposed.
Coleman has been researching the issues for decades now and said what scares him the most is "that there is a possibility that earth might be inhabitable to humans someday."
"It is the children who are in elementary school now that I want to direct my talks to the most because it is them who will be most impacted by climate changes," said the married father of two grown sons.
Since its inception in 2007, Climate Reality Project Canada has been instrumental in more than 3,200 presentations being delivered, reaching more than 477,000 Canadians.
It is part of an international movement committed to raising awareness among more Canadians on climate change issues.
The organization has teamed up with the David Suzuki Foundation to further spread the word.
"The economic component of our predicament is that we live on an earth with finite resources but we have an economic system that relies on constant growth to be successful," he said.
"We obviously have to change the way that we do business."
For his part, Coleman said until very recently (he's suffered a back injury), his main mode of transportation has been his bike.
"At home, I changed my windows to double pane and my thermostat automatically goes down when we aren't home," he added.
However, it's not all doom and gloom.
"There is hope, we just need to inform as many people as possible so that we can all work together for positive change," added Coleman.
Coleman leaves next week to attend the two and-a-half day conference being held on Aug. 21 to 23 in San Francisco, California.
When he returns, Coleman has committed to delivering a minimum of 10 free presentations on climate change over the next 12 months.
For more information about All Climate Reality Canada, visit www.climatereality.ca.
mhopkins@richmond-news.com
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