by Oliver St John

     When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ran a poll a few years ago to name the greatest Canadians of all time, everyone expected Wayne Gretzky to make the list. Very few expected that Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki would be ranked even higher than the name synonymous with Canadian hockey.

     Suzuki has been a tireless environmental campaigner for decades. A Japanese-Canadian whose family suffered internment during the Second World War, Suzuki was moved to Ontario for much of his childhood. There he pursued his interests in science and nature, subsequently attending college in the United States and earning a doctorate in zoology. The Green Room was fortunate enough to get a moment of Dr. Suzuki's time recently.

     His environmental epiphany came after reading Rachel Carson's controversial 1962 book Silent Spring. In the book Carson warned about the dangers of pesticides damaging the fragile ecosystem, opening Suzuki's eyes to the myriad ways in which humanity is unwittingly causing harm to its home. "I was just starting my scientific career, and the message in Silent Spring was that 'you scientists are clever, you can make things like DDT to kill insects, but you don't realize that the lab is not the real world' - and for me, that was just absolutely huge. What we study in the lab, I had always thought, was just a miniature replica of the world, so you set up your conditions in a lab, or a flask, or a growth chamber, and then once you do your studies there you can extrapolate out to the real world. But what she was saying was that in the lab you create an artifcat, you remove a part of nature and you lose sense of the context or the rhythms and the cycles that it's a part of. So you spray, and show in the lab that DDT kills insects alone, but you spray out in the real world and you discover that everything is connected, and you end up affecting fish and birds. It was clear then that you can't just stay in the lab and do you work and think 'oh well, eventually we'll understand the way the whole system works'. Because of her, I got involved in environmental issues in British Columbia."

     Since 1979, Suzuki has hosted The Nature of Things, a CBC television show that has hit the airwaved in almost fifty countries around the world. In this show, Suzuki set out to kindle viewers' interest in the natural world, to illustrate some of the threats to human well-being and wildlife, and to educate the public about some promising alternatives in terms of sustainability. Suzuki has been a very strong proponent of renewable energy sources and alternative fuel research. A Planet for the Taking, a 1985 hit series, won him a United Nations Environment Programme Medal in 1985. His perspective in this series is summed up in his statement: "We have both a sense of the importance of the wilderness and space in our culture and an attitude that it is limitless and therefore we needn't worry." He concluded the show with an exhortation to people to develop a major "perceptual shift" in their relationship with nature. Suzuki also recorded The Sacred Balance, a five hour mini-series on Canadian public television which was broadcast in October 2001.

     In 2007, Suzuki made a cross-country tour in a diesel bus from St. Johns, NF to Victoria, BC, appearing at 42 events and "raising heck about the environment", lecturing Canadians about climate change and urging compliance with the Kyoto Accord. Gold Standard carbon offsets were purchased by the David Suzuki Foundation for all bus travel and tour activities. During this tour, he also took the time to introduce Barenaked Ladies at their hometown show (reviewed in last month's issue). "The response was electrifying; we talked to tens of thousands of Canadians and sent messages to Ottawa." Suzuki also appeared alongside Al Gore in Montreal last month in a joint effort to raise still more heck.

     Suzuki stresses that he could not pinpoint an event to consider his greatest environmental accomplishment. "People always ask me that, but I never think of that. I think I'm just a part of a huge movement. I know there are a lot of groups and people going around claiming 'I saved this' and 'I saved that', but I just don't like that way of looking at things. I'm a part of a movement, and I don't think that things happen because of any one person or any one group. I've been involved in a lot of issues. Our foundation was very heavily involved in climate change back in the early 90's, at a time when it was very very difficult to raise any kind of money to carry out climate initiatives. We worked our asses off for well over a decade on the issue. When Al Gore's film came out it was like putting a match into a gasoline puddle - it just exploded! But I don't say that Al Gore has single-handedly got us over the edge I think the film, and the impact that it had, was made possible by a hell of a lot of people working for many many years. And Al's been a part of it; he's known about it for a long time. If I were Al Gore, I'd never claim that my film has been The Big Thing, so I feel very uncomfortable answering a question like that - I feel very proud to have been part of a movement that has involved thousands and thousands of people. After our Prime Minister ratified Kyoto, he sent me a personal letter thanking me and my foundation for the work that made the ratification possible."

     The major problem with environmental achievements, says Suzuki, is that they are often fleeting. "I think that when you stop a dam or stop logging in forests, those are achievements, and there have been a lot of those. The problem is, I was involved in protesting a dam that was going on the Peace River, and we stopped it, and we stopped a proposal to drill for oil in Hackett Strait off the coast of BC, but now we've got a right-wing government in power, and the dam and the drilling are back on the agenda, so we wait thirty years and we're fighting that battle again. The terrible aspect of of environmental issues is that you don't win very many battles and when you do they're only temporary. In Canada right now the climate change and the environment have rocketed up to the absolute number one concern of the day. We didn't anticipate that it would come up so quickly last year,l but it has. For me, it's a bittersweet moment - sweet because this IS the issue our our time now, but bitter because we've been here before - in 1988 the environment was at the absolute top of the agenda around the world. Just to remind you, in 1988, a guy ran for President of the United States and said 'if you vote for me I'll be an environmental president. You remember who that was? George H.W. Bush. And it was only because the American public had said this was their number one issue. The minute he was elected, he proved to be the absolute worst environmental president you've ever had, at least until his son came along, but he had to say that because it was at the top of the agenda. In 1988 our Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was re-elected and appointed his brightest star to be the minister of the environment, and I interviewed that minister two months after he was appointed and I said 'What is the most important issue facing us at this time?' and he said global warming. I said 'how serious is it?' and he said 'This threatens the survival of our species. We have to do something now.' That was 1988. The Prime Minister called a meeting of atmospheric scientists in Toronto and that group was so concerned about global warming that they said it represents a threat second only to all-out nuclear war, and that we needed a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 15 years. Can you imagine if we had done it? That's the thing that, for me, is such a bitter part of this. We've already been here, but now we've had twenty years of inaction, and it's been in large part because the fossil fuel industry spent tens of millions of dollars supporting a handful of naysayers to create the illusion on the part of the public that it was still an unsettled issue. It was settled in 1988! But it's now taken us twenty years to get back to that point."

     So can humanity save itself? Suzuki thinks there's still time to rise to the challenge. "What we've already done is irreversible. We've added over 30% more carbon dioxide to our atmosphere, and there's no way we can take that back. The ramifications of that are going to reverberate for the next several centuries, so even if we were able magically to stop adding more greenhouse gases overnight - which would take over a 90% reduction - there's no way we can stop what we've already done. So the only question is are we just going to carry on with business as usual and make it that much worse, or are we going to try to bring our emissions down so we come back into balance? Do I think there are alternatives? You bet! There are all kinds of opportunities, and I think a lot of things that we won't even be able to anticipate now because we haven't put the effort into it.

What we need to do is marshal the kind of effort that we took after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor - I don't remember a single person after Pearl Harbor saying 'we can't afford to do anything about this; it'll ruin the economy.' There was only one thing to do, and that was to put everything into it to win that war. I'm a Canadian, but I was in the United States going to school, and I was a senior in college in 1957 when we were electrified to hear that the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik. It was an amazing time, because we didn't even know there was a space program in the works, but in the months that followed the United States Navy, Army and Air Force each had their own sets of rockets to match the Soviet Union and they kept blowing up on the launch pad. Meanwhile, the Soviets launched the first animal in Space: a dog, Laika, the first man in space: Yuri Gagarin, the first team of cosmonauts, the first woman: Valentina Tereshkova, and we realized 'holy shit, they're really far advanced in engineering, math and science'. The United States didn't say 'oh well, they're too far advanced, there's no way we can catch up, it'll be too expensive'. The United States said 'there's only one thing we can do, we've got to put everything into it and win this war.' And you poured billions and billions of dollars into a space program. Not only did the US get to the moon first, but in 1957 you had to book a phone call to Europe because there was a limited number of lines. We had to book days in advance to get a line to England. Today, any kid can pick up a cellphone and dial anywhere on the planet. That all resulted because America said 'we've gotta win this war'. No one anticipated cellphones or all of that technology, no one anticipated CNN and all of the global telecommunications networks, that all came as a result of the race against Sputnik. And last year - 2006 - almost fifty years after Sputnik, American scientists won every single science Nobel Prize, and that's because the US stepped up and said 'we've got no choice, we've got to win this'. And I think it's absolutely un-American to say 'oh well, we can't afford to do anything about global warming'. The science is in, scientists say this represents a threat second only to all out nuclear war... where is the kind of will we saw after Pearl Harbor and Sputnik? It's just ridiculous that we're still dickering about whether or not we can do anything. Of course there's huge opportunities. Look what we've done in the past! All it takes is a sense of urgency and the commitment that you pull out all the stops because you've gotta win this one."

     Noting the heroes and villains of this drama, Suzuki says, "I was at Kyoto in 1997 when the Protocol was adopted. The European Union was just way ahead of everybody, they were pushing for a 15-20% reduction in emissions, but the JUSCANZ countries - Japan, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - were fighting against these kinds of targets, so things got watered down. Europe was way ahead of the rest of the world on that. 34 countries have signed and ratified Kyoto, and 30 out of those 34 are going to meet the Kyoto target, and virtually all of them are European countries. So there's lots of good news; Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, all the Scandinavian countries are just getting on with reductions, and I'm sure you've seen what the European Union is doing now led by Prime Minister Merkel of Germany - they're aiming for 40-50% reductions, so they're really getting on with things. Arnold Schwarzenegger is leading the charge in the United States, and he's now teamed up with the Premier of British Columbia... lots of things happening at the state and municipal levels, over 300 mayors now signed up to meet or beat the Kyoto targets. So despite Mr. Bush, there are tremendous things happening in North America. The United States federal government could be doing more, and unfortunately the United States now has Canada and Australia in its hands even though Canada's ratified Kyoto - we've got a Prime Minister who's turning his back on it and saying we're not going to meet it. But I think the Canadian public is forcing him to rethink that. The position that Bush holds is absolutely shameful; you've got the National Academy of Sciences, which is the institution for all of the leading scientists in the US, the most prestigious scientific organization in the world. For over ten years the NAS has been saying that humans are at the base of global warming and we have to do something. And for the Presidfent of the country to turn his back on that is an unbelievable insult to the scientific community, it just shows that this is an administration that doesn't take science seriously. Every scientist in the country should be outraged at the position the federal government is taking."

     "There are many levels at which we can be active. One thing I would ask of all your readers is to go to our website, davidsuzuki.org, and look at what we call the Nature Challenge, which is the ten most effective things that individuals can do. We worked this out with the Union of Concerned Scientists in the United States. We're challenging Canadians to sign up, and we've got almost 300,000 Canadians signed up now. We're looking to try to get a million Canadians - if we can do that, it's not only a significant reduction in our ecological footprint, but it'll become a political tool in that no politician will be able to refuse signing on themselves if we've got a million Canadians signed up to do it. The reality is that we need governments that are going to take their position seriously, especially at the federal level. We need legislation. We need leadership. We need courage."

     Truer words have rarely been spoken