David
Suzuki on the prospects for
humanity and the others we share
this planet with
Common
Ground Magazine (Vancouver) March
2011
http://www.commonground.ca/iss/236/cg236_interview.shtml
Sustainable
activism
A
conversation with David Suzuki on
his 75th birthday
Interview
by Joseph Roberts
Joseph
Roberts:
How did it
all begin?
David
Suzuki:
We started
when the Worldwatch Institute
said
it's the
turnaround decade. We thought we
were
only going
to be here for 10 years. So we
said
every
dollar we raise we're going to
spend
because we
don't have time. Who would've
imagined
that 20
years later we'd still be here
and that
conditions
would be worse.
JR:
And it
hasn't turned around.
DS:
No. We've
had five years now of the
most
anti-environmental
government we've ever had.
We
have a
leader who claims the economy is
his
highest
priority, proroguing parliament
to focus
on the
economy and yet a leading
economist like
Sir
Nicholas Stern says if we don't
deal with
climate
change it's going to destroy the
global
economy.
Our prime minister has never,
ever, said
this is an
important issue affecting Canada
and
we've got
to do something.
JR:
My concern
now is the way global economics
is
actually
speeding up the destruction. With
the UN
declaring
2011 the International Year of
the
Forest and
we have less than a third of
the
forest left
on this planet, what is to be
done?
DS:
From my
standpoint, I don't attend
international
meetings
anymore. I went to Rio in '92 and
Kyoto
in '97. And
we've had, you know, the Year of
the
Child and
the Year of the Ocean and God
knows all
these
wonderful things, but so long as
we cling
to this
economic system, I don't see any
way out
of it. As
you said, it's this economic
drive that
is just
trashing the planet.
JR:
At
universities today, a higher
percentage of
students
are focusing on the so-called
'financial
industries'
and less and less on the sciences
and
the
arts.
DS:
My parents
were survivors of the depression
and
the lessons
they taught me were, to me,
very
important.
Live within your means, save some
for
tomorrow,
help your neighbour as you never
know
when you
might need their help. Simple
lessons.
My dad and
mom said you need money to buy
the
necessities
in life, but you don't run
after
money as if
having more makes you a better
or
more
important person. My parents
didn't like to
talk about
money. They felt there was
something
about that
- that you don't just obsess over
it.
Now, we
have over 500 billionaires. How
can any
human being
be worth a billion dollars, and
at a
time when
two billion people live on two
dollars
or less a
day? This is an
obscenity.
JR:
And 17,000
children die of starvation every
day. This is not
right.
DS:
But we
revel in the economic antics of
Bill Gates
and these
people and I think we've really
lost
our way in
our obsessing with the
economy.
JR:
There was a
line in a book by Matthew Fox
that
really
stopped me: "The human race will
not
destroy
itself from lack of information.
The
human race
will destroy itself through lack
of
appreciation."
Where do you turn to heal
and
regenerate
yourself when dealing with
these
massive
challenges we've just discussed
and the
consequences
of being aware of and witnessing
the
ecological
damage?
DS:
It's
soul-destroying to see what we're
doing to
the planet,
but I have four grandchildren
and
spending
time with them renews my
determination.
For me, the
big breakthrough was, I used to
come
home late
at night going, "I gotta keep
going, I
gotta keep
going, I gotta finish..." And at
one
point I
looked in the mirror and thought,
"Who
the hell do
you think you are? You think
you're
so
important you're going to make
the difference?
You're one
human being. You've got to be
part of
a much
bigger movement, but you yourself
are
insignificant."
That relieved me of this
terrible
conceit
that I was so important I had to
give my
whole life
to the cause. My wife is always
saying
we need
sustainable activism. Too many
people put
everything
into it and burn out and
what
stabilizes
us, of course, is family, and
the
things that
we do together with family,
like
getting out
in nature.
In Richard
Louv's book Last Child in the
Woods,
he says we
are now suffering from a
whole
spectrum of
problems that are classified
under
"Nature
Deficit Disorder." Our children
need to
experience
nature and when you look at
things
like
attention deficit or bullying
or
hyperactivity,
these are all related to the
fact
that our
kids aren't getting out there.
Nature
calms us;
nature heals us. We need to
have
nature.
We're growing a group of kids now
that
spend the
least amount of time outdoors
than any
generation
in human history.
I grew up
in the 50s. We had a house with
six
people in
less than a thousand square feet
so it
was a small
house. I remember the
constant
refrain in
our house was, "Get out of the
house.
Go out and
play!" And if we said, "But mommy
it's
raining
outside," she'd say, "Put a
raincoat on
and go on
outside." And we'd be out in
the
ditches and
the ponds, but it was a
necessity
because the
house was tiny. Now, we don't
want
our kids to
go out. There might be a
pervert
behind a
bush or speeding cars. We want
our kids
inside and
we'd rather have them playing
video
games or
text messaging or working on
the
computer.
We need to experience nature.
It's
certainly
for me my touchstone and my
salvation
in terms of
maintaining my sanity.
JR:
If people
don't love something, they're not
going to protect it.
DS:
Exactly.
JR:
In the
larger arc of your life going
from
childhood
to being a professor, the many
things
you've
done, have there been some common
threads
consistent
to the weaving of it
all?
DS:
I don't
know. I've never gone through
life
planning a
direction. I mean, things happen.
I
was always
taught that if you want to
represent
or stand
for anything you have to be able
to
speak out.
I don't like being the center
of
attention.
I don't like if people hate my
guts.
It goes
against what I am. But I feel
obligated
to speak
out.
I guess the
driving force is that in 1941
on
December 7
when Japan attacked Pearl
Harbour,
even though
I was a third generation Canadian
I
suddenly
became the enemy. I believe
Canada let
down its
principles and ideals, when we
talk
about
democracy and equality and right
to freedom
of speech
and all that. The only time
those
guarantees
become important is when the
crunch
comes
because if you can't guarantee
them during
the crunch
then they don't mean anything. So
the
driving
force for me is trying to get
people to
live up to
their professed ideals. Canada
failed
again in
1970 when Pierre Trudeau invoked
the War
Measures
Act. I think that, in a
democratic
society,
there's no place for a War
Measures Act.
When I see
poor treatment of blacks or Jews
or
gays or
women, it's all part of the same
piece
and I find
myself fighting against
that.
But the
driving thread now I guess is
that as a
scientist,
a biologist, I can see that we
are in
a global
ecological crisis of
unprecedented
proportion.
So even though I'm a geneticist,
not
an
ecologist, I've been focusing
more and more of
my time on
that message. You asked a
question
earlier I
want to respond to. I began my
career
in
television in 1962. At that time,
I'd just
come back
from living in the US for eight
years,
where I got
my education. I was appalled at
the
level of
ignorance about science. There
was no
coherent
science policy in government.
The
funding for
scientists was abysmal and there
was
a total
lack of appreciation that
science, by
far, is the
most powerful force shaping our
lives
and our
society.
I was born
in 1936. When I was a boy, my
mother
and father
wouldn't let me go to movies
or
swimming
pools in the summer because they
were
afraid I
would catch polio. Kids today
have no
idea what
polio is. When I was a child,
hundreds
of
thousands of people died of one
of the most
terrifying
diseases we know - smallpox.
There
hasn't been
a case of smallpox now for over
30
years. It's
extinct. When I was a child,
my
parents
never worried that I was watching
too
much
television, playing video games
or text
messaging
because there was no such thing
then.
There were
no jets, no birth control pills,
no
computers,
no satellites, no transoceanic
phone
calls. I've
got a list of dozens of things -
all
as a result
of the application of science -
that
have
transformed the way we live. When
I tell
kids what
the world was like when I grew up
as a
boy, they
can't believe anybody's that old.
And
the first
question is "What did you do?" A
kid
today
cannot imagine a world in which
you don't
have a
computer or text message and can
phone
anybody on
the cell phone.
We are
being hammered by the impact of
science.
Yet if you
don't know anything about science
how
do you make
decisions about stem cells,
cloning,
genetic
engineering, artificial
intelligence,
space
research, climate change,
deforestation,
toxic
pollution. These are big issues
and yet we
are so
ignorant as a society - we elect
people to
office who
can't even assess the
scientific
advice they
get.
I began my
career in television to try to
educate
people
about it. We now have access as a
society
to more
information than people have ever
had in
human
history. Anyone sitting there
with a good
laptop can
access virtually every book in
the US
Library of
Congress, every encyclopedia
-
information
on a vast scale. Well, what
has
happened?
It turns out we don't ever have
to
change our
minds because there's so
much
information
that if you want to believe
global
warming is
crap you can find dozens of
websites
saying it's
junk science, it's not happening.
All
you have to
do is read the National Post;
you'll
never have
to change your mind. It turns out
we
have too
much information; you can believe
any
crazy idea
you want without ever analyzing
the
information.
"Ah, global warming, pile of
crap. I
found a
website that says there are all
these
scientists
saying, "blah blah
blah."
We're in a
period that is really
terrifying
because a
great number of the global
warming
skeptics
are basically undermining the
science.
They're
saying, "These scientists have
their own
agenda,
'climategate,' all this other
stuff. You
can't trust
science." If we're at a point
where
we can't
even trust science, we're in
deep
trouble
because then you say the Koran
says this,
the Bible
says this, Rush Limbaugh says
this,
Glenn Beck,
Ann Coulter. You know,
the
Competitive
Enterprise Institute, the
Fraser
Institute.
Is that where we're going to go
to
because we
don't want to face the reality of
the
world?
JR:
Sometimes
ignorance is quicker to conclude
than
to
seriously investigate the
truth.
DS:
It's called
dogma.
JR:
Recently in
Egypt, we saw masses of people in
the
street,
motivated for some reason for
some sort
of change.
But many people in North
America
aren't
motivated to take action because
of their
complacency.
At the same time, you just
touched
on the way
even new media and blogs
are
perpetuating
unsubstantiated opinions that
are
not being
challenged in any real sense.
People
believe all
sorts of crazy things. It's like
when
the PR firm
was hired to convince people
that
second-hand
smoke was okay and tobacco is
healthy.
DS:
If you look
at Naomi Oreskes book Merchants
of
Doubt, you
find that the opponents to the
idea
that
second-hand smoke is dangerous,
or even that
smoking is
dangerous, are the same ones
that
ended up
saying that global warming is
baloney.
It has its
roots way, way back. It's a
very
interesting
critique. She's an American
scholar.
What she
does is trace the money for
these
various
denial movements and they all go
back to
a small
group of scientists in the 1950s
that
were
involved in the fight against the
Soviet
Union. It
was communism vs. free
enterprise
capitalism.
These were cold warriors who
were
scientists
and top-notch physicists and when
the
Soviet
Union imploded, what were they
left with?
So then it
was, "Oh the goddamn EPA,
the
environmental
protection agency, is trying
to
oppose
regulations. This is the
beginning of
socialism.
These guys are trying to
get
government,"
etc. So government and its
agencies
becomes the
enemy of these people because
it's
the road
towards communism. It's a
very
interesting
analysis.
JR:
I'm reading
a book right now called
Super
Imperialism
by Michael Hudson and it's the
one
book in the
last five years that's changed
my
perspective
on so much of what's going on
here.
Economics
is driving this thing, but
they'll be
against
anything that gets in the way and
the one
thing we've
got to understand is that they
want
it
all.
DS:
The only
reason corporations exist is to
make
money. They
may do things that we need; they
may
produce
something that is useful, but
their
raison
d'être is not to improve
the quality of
life for
humanity or whatever. Their whole
reason
for
existing is to make money, and as
fast as
they can.
The tragedy is we now have
governments,
because of
the lobbying interests in
the
financing
of candidacy, that have become
boosters
of the
corporate agenda. We claim,
unlike the
Egyptians,
that we live in a democracy. But
when
almost half
of Canadians don't even bother
to
vote, we
don't have a democracy. You
always have
to fight to
get more.
The problem
we face is not only that
the
corporate
agenda has become the
government
agenda, but
that the economic system, which
we
exist
within, is fundamentally flawed
and
inevitably
destructive. So you have
companies
like
Patagonia or the Body Shop or
Capers that
are trying
to do the right thing. But they
live
within an
economic system that is
fundamentally
flawed.
I won't go
into a long critique, but
currently
nature and
nature's services -
cleansing,
filtering
water, creating the atmosphere,
taking
carbon out
of the air, putting oxygen back
in,
preventing
erosion, pollinating flowering
plants
- perform
dozens of services nature to keep
the
planet
happening. But economists call
this an
'externality.'
What that means is "We don't
give
a shit."
It's not economic. Because
they're so
impressed
with humans, human productivity
and
human
creativity at the heart of this
economic
system.
Well, you can't have an economy
if you
don't have
nature and nature's services,
but
economics
ignores that. And that's
an
unbelievably
egregious error.
Then to
maximize the problem, economists
actually
think that,
even though we actually live
within a
finite
biosphere, the economy can grow
forever.
It can't.
Nothing within a finite world can
grow
forever.
Yet we've come to equate growth
with the
definition
of progress and growth, growth,
growth
is all we
drive for. Nobody ever asks,
"What's an
economy
for? Are there no limits? How
much is
enough? Are
we any happier with all this
stuff?"
No, we just
say "growth growth, growth,"
and
that's the
be-all and end-all and that
is
suicidal.
JR:
And we see
examples - the Tar Sands, the
Northern
Gateway
pipeline, fish farms, clear-cut
logging.
Each of
these is an extension of what
you're
talking
about.
DS:
We now have
a campaign on chemicals known to
be
carcinogens
that are in cosmetics. Here
are
manufacturers
that make cosmetics that are
going
to go right
onto your skin, your lips, the
most
sensitive
parts of your body and they don't
give
a shit
whether they're carcinogens or
toxins in
there. What
kind of an economy would
allow
companies
to do that? Look at your food.
Food
isn't about
nutrition anymore. It's about
carving
out a place
in the market, and if we're going
to
load it up
with trans-fats to get it to
taste
better, or
with sugar to make you want
more,
they'll do
it. What kind of an industry is
it
where
nutrition and health aren't the
driving
forces?
It's got nothing to do with that.
This is
a sick
situation we have.
JR:
What do you
do to stay healthy when all
these
things are
being thrown at us,
David?
DS:
If you look
at one of the common factors
in
reducing
the risk of cancer, heart
attacks,
strokes,
Alzheimer's, diabetes there's a
long
list - it's
exercise. The human body was made
to
move. We
evolved out of nature. Long
before
people used
horses or invented cars, people
did
it by sheer
muscle power. The human body
needs to
work in
order to stay healthy. Working,
moving
around, is
the best medicine we can
get.
JR:
And we have
all these kids with early
onset
diabetes
playing video games eight hours a
day.
It's
nuts.
DS:
It's
absolutely crazy. When my kids
were young
and we used
to walk them to school, I'd see
these
big sports
utility vehicles roll up and then
out
would jump
these roly-poly kids. You know,
double
bang for
your buck - pollute the
atmosphere with
SUVs and
drive your kids rather than
walk.
JR:
All this
crap going on and life is still
rich. It's still
exquisite.
DS:
I like to
tell the story that my great
mentor, my
hero, was
my father. When he was 85, in
1994, he
was dying
of cancer. He knew and he was
ready for
it and not
afraid. Thank God, it wasn't
painful.
I moved in
with him for the last month to
take
care of
him, and that was one of the
happiest
times I
spent with my father. Every
night, my
wife would
come over with slides and come
with
the kids
and show pictures of trips we've
taken.
In the
whole time, he kept saying,
"David, I die
a wealthy
man. I'm so rich." In that whole
time,
he never
once said, "Gee, you remember
that
closet full
of fancy clothes or that 1987
Buick I
had or the
house we owned in London,
Ontario."
All we
talked about were family,
friends,
neighbours
and things we did together. That
was
my father's
wealth and he was truly a wealthy
man.
We've got
into thinking things, stuff, are
what
make us
happy, but it's not. I just spent
10
glorious
days with my grandchild - just
watching
and being
with him and there's nothing
better
than that.
Those are the things that
really
matter and
they renew us and recharge
our
batteries.
JR:
There's so
much I'd love to talk to you
about.
There are
details, like the BC Water Act.
One
thing that
came across - I was really
inspired by
an article
by Marianne Williamson. She was
saying
we don't
need to go out and get more
people to
become
aware. God help them if they're
not aware
by now with
all the crap going on. What we've
got
to do is
connect the people that are aware
and
get them
motivated to do what they need to
do.
DS: I think
you're absolutely right. I'm
going to
take part
in a debate in a week or two and
the
topic is
"Why is environmentalism
failing?" I
think it is
failing big time. Part of the
problem
is the
environmental movement that
started in
1962 was
very powerful. When Rachel
Carson's book
Silent
Spring came out, there wasn't a
single
department
of the environment in any
government
on the
planet. The environment didn't
exist.
We've
driven that. You can't imagine
now, even on
the
municipal level, not having a
committee on
the
environment. It's a part of the
way we live.
You think
of clean air and clean water acts
and
endangered
species. Huge amounts have been
done.
But we're
still going the wrong way. We're
still
much more
destructive than we were in 1962.
The
problem is
our underlying value system.
We've
made the
environment just another
political
project or
issue.
I've talked
to Elizabeth May about this,
and
thank
goodness we've got the Greens to
keep the
issues on
the agenda, but the reality is
the
environment
is everybody's issue. We
shouldn't
allow the
other parties to say, "Oh well,
that's
the Greens'
issue. We can focus on the
economy."
The failure
of the environmental movement is
when
you
marginalize it to become just
another special
interest
group and that's what's happened.
We've
got to
broaden our tent way out. I don't
call
myself an
environmentalist. Hunger and
poverty,
those are
my issues. A starving person who
comes
across an
edible plant or animal is not
going to
worry about
whether it's on an endangered
species
list.
They're going to kill it and eat
it. I
would. So
if you don't deal with hunger
and
poverty,
forget about the
environment.
Someone
living under pressures of
genocide,
terrorism
and war is worried about saving
their
ass.
They're not going to be worried
about
protecting
the environment. We've got to
broaden
the tent
out to human rights and social
justice.
Then we
have a very broad tent. These are
all our
issues. So
what is the challenge? In 1940, I
was
four-years-old,
growing up in Vancouver,
in
Marpole. I
remember vividly my dad taking me
in
the
streetcar downtown to go to a
movie and I
suddenly
said, "Daddy, I can read that
sign." And
in 1940
that sign said, "Do Not Spit." In
1940
there were
signs telling people not to
gob
anywhere.
Cut ahead 70 years and there are
no
signs
saying "Do Not Spit." We don't
teach our
kids in
kindergarten not to spit; we
don't have
spit police
who throw people in jail because
not
spitting in
public has become a part of
our
values as
to who we are. There are a lot
of
societies
I've visited where people gob on
the
floor of
restaurants. I was in an
operating room
in China
and the surgeon stepped back from
the
table while
he was operating on this woman
and
gobbed on
the floor.
So we in
Canada understand that as part of
our
values,
what it is to be Canadians, is
you don't
gob in
public places.
But in
terms of the environment, we're
back in
1940. We
have to say, "Don't litter, pick
up,
recycle."
We have to tell people what to
do. When
what it is
to be Canadian is to understand
in our
deepest
roots that air, water, soil that
gives us
our food
and plants that give us our
energy are
what we
are. Those are what keep us alive
and
healthy.
Then it won't matter whether you
elect a
right wing
or a left wing government,
because
everybody
knows that you don't mess around
with
our air,
water and soil. That's what keeps
us
alive.
That's
where we have to go, but right
now we act
as if, "Oh,
air, well, you know, we've got
an
economic
downturn, it's okay you can
pollute the
air a
little more because we know it
costs more
money to
have those pollution devices." We
don't
understand
to our very soul that air, water
and
soil are
the very source of life and
biodiversity
is what
enables us to survive on this
planet.
JR:
You have
found your gift to speak out.
Which
principles
are important for people to get
right
now and
which tools are really useful at
this
point?
DS:
You're
asking someone who's been, I
think, a
total
failure. I've done the best I
could, but I
don't see
much traction. To me, the
most
important
thing is what I wrote in The
Sacred
Balance.
It's the most important book
I've
written and
it's simply trying to remind
people
that we are
animals. There are lots of
places,
like in
southern Alberta or part of
Texas, where
I've given
speeches and told kids, "Don't
forget
we're
animals." Man, their parents get
pissed off
at me.
"Don't call my daughter an
animal. We're
human
beings." We have this attitude
that we deny
our
biological nature.
You can see
it in the way we use language. If
we
call
someone a worm or a snake or an
ape or a
jackass or
a pig or a chicken, these are
insults
because we
think somehow we're above
these
creatures
and we forget the most basic
thing. As
animals,
our most elementary, fundamental
needs
for our
health and happiness are clean
air, clean
water,
clean soil that gives us our
food, clean
energy that
comes from the sun and
biodiversity.
Those are
the rock solid foundations that
we live
on and must
protect.
JR:
I'm so
happy that you've just been who
you are.
At the end
of the day, it's about are we
David or
Joseph? Are
we who we came here to be? Did
we
actualize
our potential as that spark of
life?
DS:
I'm at an
age now where I realize
success,
achieving
what you're trying for, is not
where
it's at.
It's the actual act of trying
that is
the
important thing. If I'm going to
die the way
my dad did,
I want my grandchildren to be
with me
and I want
to look each of them in the eye
and
say that
grandpa did the best he could.
Not that
grandpa
succeeded in a bloody thing, but
did the
best he
could. "I love you and this is
what I've
tried to
do." I think if there are
millions and
millions of
people that do their best, we
can
bring about
huge changes.
JR:
Absolutely.
Now, what's your greatest
hope?
There's the
reality of what's going on,
but
there's
something inside of us as
grandparents,
parents,
children. We need to become
elders and
wiser.
Rather than getting old and
forgetting, we
should be
realizing who we are and letting
the
rest of the
world know that. So your
greatest
hope right
now?
DS:
Well, you
know Moses Znaimer. He's now an
elder
and he
doesn't like calling himself that
so he
calls
himself a 'zoomer.' Now, as an
elder, we're
at the most
important phase of our lives.
We're
no longer
driven by a need for fame or
money or
power or
sex. We're relieved of those
things as
elders. Our
job, our responsibility now, is
to
look back
on a lifetime of experience,
of
thought,
and to distill from that some
lessons we
can pass
on. That's our job as elders,
dammit,
because we
can speak directly from the
heart.
There are
no hidden agendas and we can tell
the
truth.
One of the
most powerful groups in the
peace
movement
were retired admirals and
generals
against
nuclear war because they've gone
through
the whole
system, but once they're free of
that,
they're
retired, they can speak the
truth. That,
I believe,
is the role that elders have
today.
We've been
very marginalized. When we
started the
David
Suzuki Foundation one of the
first things
we did was
to ask a group of elders to come
and
be a
council of elders for the
foundation. My
idea was
that it would be like the role of
elders
in
indigenous communities. You know,
they're like
rock stars
in their communities. I thought,
well,
maybe if we
had elders sitting here, as
people go
about their
jobs here, they might sit down
and
have tea
with Mary or Bob and talk about
their
experiences
as elders. Well, it turned out
it
never
worked. We were so damn busy
trying to save
the world
that we didn't have time for
our
elders.
After 10 years, they're finally
getting
some
traction now I think. They're
going to do
some good
things. But we need to rediscover
our
elders and
reintegrate them into
society.
You asked
what I would like to see done. To
me,
the most
important challenge now is the
economy.
In 1944, as
the allies saw they were going to
win
the war,
the big question was what the
hell to do
with the
world in which so much
devastation had
taken
place. So they called a meeting
of the
allies in
Bretton Woods in Maine. The drive
was
led by John
Maynard Keynes, the
prize-winning
economist,
and out of that meeting a number
of
steps were
taken. Two countries that
were
absolutely
devastated were Japan and
Germany.
They came
back to become economic
powers.
There were
a number of problems. They set up
a
concept of
development based on the
northern
model of
the industrialized countries and
then
tried to
globalize it. Which is crazy. We
need
diversity
not a single notion.
But they
left out nature. What's needed
now is a
Bretton
Woods II conference to deal with
the
challenge
of reintegrating nature as a part
of
our economy
and of realizing that we need to
have
an
equilibrium - an economy that
doesn't grow.
The economy
is already far beyond the
capacity of
the
biosphere to support it. We can't
keep
supporting
it in this fashion.
We've got
to work on a stable economy that
is in
harmony
with the things that make it
possible to
have an
economy. Which is nature - we've
got to
incorporate
the economy as a part of nature
and
stop this
suicidal notion that growth is
the
definition
of progress. The
industrialized
countries
have got to degrow their
economies.
We've got
to shrink. We've been able to
develop
as
economies because we've exploited
the entire
planet and
the ecological footprint of a
country
like Canada
is just massive, way beyond the
land
that we've
got. This is the challenge for me
-
that we've
got to have a totally
different
concept of
economics.
