PURPOSE
ARTICLE & INTERVIEW
I’m Right and You’re
an Idiot:
The Toxic State of Public Discourse
and How to Clean it Up
by James Hoggan
T
The environment is not the
main subject of my new
book, but the seed for I’m
Right and You’re an Idiot
was planted more than a
decade ago, shortly after
I was appointed to the
board of the David Suzuki
Foundation, Canada’s
best known sciencebased environmental
organization.
I
was invited to join because of my experience
as a public affairs consultant and after my
first board meeting we all adjourned to dinner at a French bistro in Old Montreal where I
was seated across from David Suzuki.
The board members at our end of the table were
having a lively conversation about the lack of action
on environmental problems when Suzuki looked at
me and asked one of his famously blunt, straight-
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