Your Obama/Pope Francis/Duchess Kate, Justin Trudeau, continued his progressive progress through New York on Friday. The Prime Minister was among 16 world leaders, along with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, invited to speak at the Paris Agreement’s signing opening ceremony.
Arguably, in the Earth Day audience full of environmentalists, Trudeau scored the easiest crowd-pleaser spot in the podium line up—the one right after the special envoy from China. But Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli busted a deft diplomat move. He surprised the crowd by announcing China’s intention to ratify the Paris Agreement before the next G-20 meeting.
“That is great news!” General Secretary Ban Ki-moon exclaimed from the dais.
Your Mr. Trudeau kept his cool. After the Chinese envoy left the stage, he strode to the lectern, where he got the first shriek of girlish delight at the conference. He suavely ignored it. He thanked the Secretary General, François Hollande, et al., for their eco-leadership and assured eco-crowd that Canada is investing billions in clean energy. Trudeau did pause when he became the day’s first speechmaker to score spontaneous laughter.
His line— “We’re not making these investments to be nice, though Canada does have a reputation to uphold in that department.”
Ha, ha, ha…. It was the second time in two days that the Prime Minister had reminded the world how gosh-darn nice Canadians are.
As not only an American, but a New Yorker, I am familiar with having high cultural self-esteem. So I’m sharing the following out of neighborliness, as well as the personal experience of coming off as obnoxious.
An apparent source of your belief in your own niceness is the Reputation Institute. Every year, the company releases a popularity ranking for the 55 countries with the world’s largest economies based on surveys of G8 nation residents.
Your belief in your niceness is based on a popularity contest among less than 30 percent of world’s nations conducted via a survey conducted among less than 15 percent world’s population. In other words, a skewed sample.
Also, the founder and CEO of the Reputation Institute went to Queen’s University, suggesting he may be Canadian. And just FYI – the HSBC Expat Explorer Survey ranked Canada fourth in friendliness, behind New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa.
If it’s any consolation, the global community does seem to think that Justin Trudeau is awfully nice. After scoring the hoots and chuckles, he also got the Signing Ceremony’s first spontaneous applause. The clapping roared when he said that Canada doesn’t only have the responsibility to invest green at home. “We have a role to play in supporting developing countries. They shouldn’t be punished for a problem they didn’t create!”
It wasn’t exactly Kennedy declaring, “Ich bin ein Berliner!” in the just-divided Germany. But for a group of diplomats probably still peeved about your Harper decade (especially the part when former your former Minister of the Environment Peter Kent announced Canada's withdrawal from the Kyoto Accord one day after participating in marathon climate talks with 200 other nations) it played really well.
Still, the other star on the the roster wasn’t intimidated. When he closed the Opening Ceremony, Academy Award winner/UN Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio basically repeated what he said that pissed off Trudeau in Davos earlier this year—that corporate greed caused climate change.
Trudeau told reporters that he told DiCaprio that wasn’t very nice. “[T]hat both Alberta and Canada have new governments over the past year that are committed to action on climate change…and that there are families suffering, out of work, who need to be supported, and inflammatory rhetoric doesn’t necessarily help.”
On Friday in New York, DiCaprio said:
“[N]o more talk. No more excuses. No more ten-year studies. No more allowing the fossil fuel companies to manipulate and dictate the science and policies that effect our future.” After he finished speaking, the actor got the day’s second (and probably last) shriek of girlish delight.
No word on whether the Canadian star sought out the Hollywood one to make nice.
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