I'm really changed by my research. This book ["This Changes Everything" ]is very different from what I set out to write.

I've always kind of hated films about climate change.

The thing that our system is designed to do is keep us alone and isolated in our little consumer bubble. And the most revolutionary act of all might be finding a community of like-minded people where you can talk about these issues and figure out what to do together.

What we face in Canada are multiple overlapping crises. We have the climate crisis, which is screaming down on us - all of the predictions are coming true even faster than the scientists thought. We have the inequality crisis, where the Panama Papers are a great reminder that the one per cent have actually created their own economy. We still have the crisis of child poverty, which has never been dealt with despite decades of concerned words from politicians.

The United States had eight years of Barack Obama. He made it incredibly clear that he was a right-wing Democrat. He cited Ronald Reagan lovingly in every stump speech for the last six months of the presidential 2008 campaign. And he made it clear that he was going to be a business-friendly Democratic president, and that he was not going to rock the neoliberal boat. And he didn't.

Film 'This Changes Everything' is not a sad story. It's not a slit-your-wrists climate film. It's a story about people who are making change happen.

The book and the film [This Changes Everything] fed into each other in ways that were compounding and very exciting. The pain was shared.