Chatelaine_April_May_2019

16 CHATELAINE • APRIL/MAY 2019 Photography by JOHANN WALL

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ast December, environmental activist Tzeporah Berman

joined thousands of activists, scientists, policy makers

and industry reps in Katowice, Poland, for COP24, the

2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference. She was

scheduled to present a comprehensive analysis of the increase

in Canada’s oil and gas emissions. Berman has been to many

such gatherings, but Katowice, located in the heart of Poland’s

coal country, provided a particularly bitter lesson in the con-

tradictory nature of climate change talks. “I would leave my

hotel and walk through coal-choked streets, coughing, to get

to the climate negotiations,” she says. Once there, the irony

only deepened: While Berman listened to the world’s experts

on renewables talk breathlessly about price drops and leaps

in technology, in the room next door, Canadian government

representatives cozied up to execs from

Suncor. The next day, the Intergovern-

mental Panel on Climate Change pre-

sented its grim Special Report on

Global Warming of 1.5 C. “I’d never seen

scientists like that before,” she says,

“near tears, frantic and scared, saying

it’s worse than we thought.”

Since she was 23, when she first helped

coordinate logging protests in B.C.’s

Clayoquot Sound, Berman’s mission has

been to bring together political enemies

(those experts and Suncor execs). In 1993,

during what was dubbed “The War in the

Woods,” she famously organized block-

ades that got her arrested and charged

with 857 counts of criminal aiding and

abetting (the charges were ultimately

stayed). Her determination, along with

testy negotiations between environmen-

tal groups, logging companies and First

Nations, ultimately protected the major-

ity of the Sound’s remaining rainforest.

In the decades that followed, Berman

became known as one of the country’s

most formidable environmentalists, with

a reputation as a passionate but prag-

matic deal maker who could nimbly bal-

ance the needs of industry, the desires of

politicians and the health of the planet.

In 2000, alarmed by the pace of climate

change, she co-founded ForestEthics, an

environmental group that morphed into

the more broadly focused NGO Stand.

earth in 2016. With Berman as interna-

tional program director, Stand.earth has

taken on the shipping and fashion industries, both of which

have enormous carbon footprints. Last year, the organization

convinced Levi’s to commit to reducing 40 percent of its green-

house emissions by 2025. Her biggest target, however, has

been oil and gas pipelines. “The idea that we’re going to build

more fossil fuel infrastructure, and we’re going to move off fos-

sil fuels, is absurd,” Berman says. “It’s like saying ‘I’m dieting,

but I’m going to eat more cake and chips.’” Stand.earth has

been instrumental in delaying or stopping 21 pipeline and train

projects and, in 2019, Berman expects more wins, from Trans

Mountain to the Phillips 66 refinery near San Francisco. Even

after this long of a battle, she remains optimistic. “What I have

learned is that there are good people everywhere,” she says.

“They’re just caught in bad systems.”

notebook TRAILBLAZER

MS. CHATELAINE

Tzeporah Berman

The rainforest-saving environmental activist has

become the oil industry’s number one enemy

By JASON MCBRIDE

Age 50

Occupation Environmental activist

Lives Vancouver

Loves Walks on the beach with her

dog; trips to Cortes Island, B.C., to

kayak, swim and hike; and especially

her husband and two sons