A Call to Action
Dennis Edell, president and founder of event-sponsor Partners and Edell then shifted gears. Rather than discuss tactics, case-studies, metrics or technologies, Edell instead posed a question to the audience: is not climate change the greatest threat facing humanity today? His talk set the stage for RFK Jr., who subsequently delivered an expertly eloquent, personal, almost off-the-cuff monologue about the “real cost of coal” and a very rational, economic argument for the adoption of clean energy in the United States and beyond.
RFK Jr. represented an encapsulation of Hunt’s argument. The moment he graced the stage, the event shifted in tone. It was no longer about marketing social change, it was about social change. He was bridging the gap that Hunt described. There was little in the way of advertising parlance in RFK Jr.’s talk. Rather, he almost casually rattled off a very sound argument for those nay-sayers who propose that clean energy comes at a cost to the economy. His propositions were fluid, his gravely, affected Kennedy inflection added gravitas to the discussion, his anecdotes ranged from interesting to terrifying to inspiring. Whilst listening to him, one was overcome with a sense that he had great comfort with the material he was presenting. That for him, this talk was something he’d run through at lunch with various congressman friends and that he ultimately believed, that just around the corner, was a better world. A cleaner world. A richer world for all of us…
If we were to “just do it”.