Al Gore won’t be coming to Queen’s any time soon, but something of a stunt double is already here.
Queen’s alumnus Mike Gerbis was one of 18 canadians chosen by the former U.S. vice-president to present a canadian version of the slideshow from Gore’s academy award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
He presented the slideshow last night but will also speak today at Biosciences 1101.
Gerbis, Sci ’90, is president and CEO of the delphi Group, an environmental consulting firm. “I guess what drew me to the cause is a lifelong passion about environment issues, the realization that I was running fast and hard, like we tend to do in business and in life, without doing too much about the passion,” he told the Journal.
“I have to get the word out and increase awareness around these issues.” Gerbis said training with
Gore, which was a “tremendous experience,” gave him the opportunity to do something about these convictions. Students can do several day-to-day things to reduce energy consumption, such as taking 15 instead of 20-minute showers, and turning the water temperature down.
These may seem like small measures, he said, but the impact of changing even one regular light bulb to fluorescent light in a single household could shut an entire coal plant’s worth of energy down.
Gerbis loves speaking to student populations, and is amazed by the environmental efforts taken by Queen’s in initiatives such as the Tea room. “You guys are so enthusiastic,” he said.
“You believe you can make a change and you can, but when you get out into the world it tends to knock you down and it gets you down and out of breath. You are at the starting line; keep that energy.”
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Gerbis will speak at 2 p.m. today in Biosciences Complex, room 1101.
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