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Greenpeace has named a Canadian to head its international climate change campaign, ensuring that Canada's actions on global warming will remain in the environmental organization's sights.

Tzeporah Berman, the telegenic face of the anti-logging movement in the 1990s on the west coast, aims to transform Alberta's oil executives into clean energy converts.

"My hope is that we have oil executives calling themselves energy executives," she said in an interview. "We need to diversify our economies to kick-start a clean energy revolution."

It may sound far-fetched, but her track record with Canada's forestry chiefs shows the media-savvy strategist has a knack for making the implausible happen.

"She's very skilled, she is solution-oriented, she's not one of the people interested in being permanently indignant," said Avrim Lazar.

That's high praise from the president of the Forest Products Association of Canada. His industry was beset by Ms. Berman's campaigns first in Clayoquot Sound, and later with ForestEthics. The industry was forced to change practices as customers succumbed to the pressure of eco-campaigns.

"She is sometimes in more of a hurry than we can afford to be, but I'm very respectful of her," he said.

Ms. Berman will co-chair the campaign with Stefan Flothmann, a longtime Greenpeace campaigner from India and Germany.

"I want to shine an international spotlight on Canada," Ms. Berman said. "I want to bring greater resources to bear on ensuring our government stops being defeatists about Canada's capacity to build a clean economy."

Andrew Weaver, an internationally-recognized climate scientist from the University of Victoria, said Ms. Berman's appointment will help counter Canada's battered reputation on global warming following the country's retreat on its Kyoto commitments.

"The irony will not be lost on the international community," he said. "Canadians are considered laggards and obstructionists on the climate change portfolio. . . Hopefully they'll see her appointment as evidence that not everyone in Canada is supportive of our shameful record."

Ms. Berman takes on the climate portfolio at a challenging time, when the science of global warming has come under fire. The so-called Climategate scandal and other research embarrassments have fueled global warming skeptics.

"This is a challenge but the fact that skeptics have reared their head to muddy the waters is a last gasp of the carbon economy," she said. "Regardless of Climategate, the world is moving forward aggressively on investments in renewable energy."

Ms. Berman's first career choice was as a fashion designer but she ended up on the West Coast and found herself the middle of a "war in the woods" over logging practices in the early 1990s. She is credited for mobilizing the largest civil disobedience protest in Canada's history in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island, where she and hundreds of others were arrested in a summer-long anti-logging protest.

That role brought her to the attention of Greenpeace, and she was recruited as a campaigner before she went on to co-found ForestEthics.

Never media-shy, she landed on the red carpet in 2007, when she was featured in Leonardo Di Caprio's environmental documentary 11th Hour. More recently, she was the cover girl for Readers' Digest as "The New Face of Environmentalism."

Ms. Berman is a veteran and respected campaigner but she's also battle-scarred from a messy fight within B.C.'s environmental community over run-of-the-river power. As a leading proponent of the clean energy alternative, Ms. Berman has been criticized by activists on the side of wild rivers.

She said that fight has helped prepare her for the climate campaign ahead.

"The climate challenge requires us all to reevaluate our priorities," she said. "We've seen that in the environmental movement's struggle to move from focusing on wilderness politics and place-based campaigns, to be willing to stand up for solutions that require development."

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