Steven
Guilbeault
b.
9 JUNE 1970
Founding Member,
Équiterre
MONTREAL, PROVINCE
OF QUÉBEC, CANADA
THE
GREEN
ACTIVIST
Steven Guilbeault
has increasingly
found himself inside
the corporate board
room instead of protesting outside the
building, Montreal,
September 2008.
E ARE the first truly global generation. Not only
are we linked together by the
transformation of communica-
tions technology and the global-
ization of the economy, today
we’re also bound by a growing
consciousness about the threat
to our environment posed by
climate change. We now realize
that we are approaching the lim-
its of the biosphere. The devel-
opment of sustainable policies is
the issue of my generation.
Fifteen years ago, environmentalists like me were considered alarmists, and we needed
to use creative yet risky tactics
to make our voices heard. As an
activist for Greenpeace between
1997 and 2007, I was arrested four
times—one of which was after
I climbed Toronto’s CN Tower
(one of the world’s tallest buildings) to make Canadians aware
of our country’s lack of commit-
PHOTOGRAPH B Y FANN Y LASSELIN
WINTER 2010 Americas Quarterly 109
