Dave Mowat is now one of Al Gore's climate warriors.
Mr. Mowat, chief executive officer of Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, spent two days in a Nashville hotel last week being trained to present his own version of Mr. Gore's An Inconvenient Truth to Canadian audiences.
Mr. Mowat rubbed shoulders with 200 other business leaders, environmentalists, scientists and luminaries -- including A-list actress Cameron Diaz -- as they got tips from the former U.S. vice-president on how to make the case for action against global warming.
Mr. Gore's slideshow and lecture, and the movie based on it, has been such a success that a non-profit foundation called the Climate Project was set up to help train others to spread the word around the world.
Since last fall, the group has run about 1,000 people through its training programs, mostly in Nashville. But it's also held a session in Sydney, Australia, and has one planned in Britain in March.
Each participant -- selected after filling out an application on the group's website -- paid their own way to Nashville and for their own accommodation. The training sessions, course materials and food were free. The only stipulation: each person gives at least 10 presentations to groups back home over the next 12 months.
While the event sounds like a cross between religious retreat and Tupperware sales convention, Mr. Mowat says it was anything but.
"It didn't have that kind of evangelical tone to it," he said. "It wasn't a pound the table, 'we've got to get to the people and change the world' kind of [emphasis]"
Rather, Mr. Gore is merely trying to facilitate those who want to get an important message to a wider public, he said.
Last week's session started with Mr. Gore giving the complete An Inconvenient Truth lecture, Mr. Mowat said. It was followed by explanations of the science behind each of the 266 slides in the show, and how they should be used in a presentation.
Attendees got tips on how to condense the show for kids, for church groups or for other specific audiences. And there was advice on responding to questions, and help with improving presentation skills.
There was also lots of time for networking with other participants, who included scientists, business people and assorted luminaries such as well-known venture capitalist John Doerr and Ms. Diaz, who Mr. Mowat described as "very intelligent."
Mr. Mowat is still lining up his lecture schedule. He'll likely start by giving the presentation to Vancity employees. The company, one of the biggest financial institutions on the West Coast, takes its environmental activism seriously and plans to be carbon-neutral by 2010.
Next, Mr. Mowat will likely move on to groups of interested credit union members. "And I'm a director at the board of trade of Vancouver, so I'm going to work on them to put their shoulder behind this."
After that, he may look outside British Columbia to the entire credit union system, and will likely request a spot at the movement's annual meeting in May.
Not everyone is thrilled that Mr. Gore's crusade is being carried to such a wide audience.
Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington and a persistent critic of Mr. Gore's environmental views, said he's concerned that "misleading" information in the movie and lectures will be spread further by those taking the training program.
Mr. Gore's ideas include "an enormous number of distortions," Mr. Lewis said. The presentation is a "one-sided lawyers' brief for a leftwing, very partisan agenda." He said he thinks Mr. Gore's real agenda is to soften up the U.S. public for another run at the presidency.
But scientists who attended Mr. Gore's sessions are on side with the global warming argument. Tim Smith, president of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C., was in Mr. Mowat's group and he said he is "very comfortable" with the science.
"Obviously, when someone's really passionate about a subject, some of the emotion will come into it, and maybe some of the statements will have a bit of poetic licence in them," Mr. Smith said. "But I believe what they are saying, and I'm not someone from the [political]left."
Mr. Smith, who said he has seen the effects of global warming in his professional career as a geoscientist, intends to pass on the Gore message when he makes presentations to members of his association in the coming year. Even those who aren't convinced of the absolute scientific truth of global warming arguments should realize that energy conservation makes enormous economic sense, he said.
That's a view he shares with Mr. Mowat, who feels he has a key role, as the CEO of a large financial services firm, in getting the environmental message out to other business executives.
That audience is increasingly receptive, he says. More and more Canada's managers are individuals who recognize the value of sustainability, and understand that being environmentally active can save a company money. "We've got so many baby boomers who are in important executive positions in business right now. . . . I think there's a tipping point here," he said.