Kathy Bardswick is

director of the Institute for Clean Growth and Climate Change, which was launched in April 2019 and is funded, in part, by the federal government. Made up of 15 organizations, the institute will support integrated research investigating the risks and opportunities associated with clean growth and climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. From 2002 to 2016, Bardswick was the president and CEO of the Co-operators Group Ltd., an insurance company based in Guelph, Ont. The Star reached Bardswick while on a recent trip to Winnipeg.

What is the one thing about climate change that keeps you up at night?

What keeps me up is that I don’t think we fully understand how significant the challenges are — the level of disruption, destruction, the quality of life lost — and that the more vulnerable people around the world, as is so often the case, are most severely impacted and will continue to bear the brunt.

What also keeps me up at night is that we haven’t yet realized that humanity is so creative, so innovative, with such forethought and with such capacity, that we can solve climate change. We can leverage the challenges that are facing us — we can benefit from them, whether that’s socially or economically, if we get our heads around it.

What I most struggle with is that we’ve continued to talk so negatively, and with such dire, defensive, often divisive, polarizing language, about climate change. And yet, as humanity, the only way we are going to be able to respond and find the opportunities is if we come together and identify where the commonalities are and figure out how we are going to solve this as a civilization.

What is the one thing Canadians can do to act on climate change?

We all need to understand, as people, as individuals, that we can make a difference — each and every one of us can make a difference. That would be my rallying cry: In whatever walk of life you are in, however big or small, whatever kind of leadership role you choose to take, please take one.