Remembering Maurice Strong

IISD

WNU Editor: From the AP.... UN: Maurice Strong, climate and development pioneer, dies (AP).

It is strange that the man who first started the debate on global cooling .... followed by global warming .... followed by the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 .... and to where we are today (i.e. climate change) .... should pass away a week before today's COP21 summit. I am not going to air all the dirty laundry on the man (Google it to find out), but I do remember him as an intense man who believed that mankind had (and has) an impact on global climate, and that his industrial activities must be limited. I met him a year after the Rio Earth Summit (it was 1993 or 1994 when he was with Ontario Hydro), wanting him to know if he was interested in helping an anti-pollution cause that I was a part of back in Moscow .... but he was not interested. I was disappointed, but I sensed even at that time that his agenda was something bigger .... which we are not seeing it discussed in Paris today.

Update: This commentary from Peter Foster summarizes him perfectly .... The man who shaped the climate agenda in Paris, Maurice Strong, leaves a complicated legacy (Peter Foster, National Post).