.png)
BIGGER THAN ME PODCAST
Get inspired by people who make a difference bigger than themselves with host Aaron Pete. From overcoming obstacles to finding motivation, these guests will inspire you to dream bigger and strive for greatness!
Popular guests include Premier David Eby, Vassy Kapelos, Brent Butt, Ariel Helwani, Rav Arora, Tara Henley and the Millennial Therapist.
BIGGER THAN ME PODCAST
194. David Suzuki: Can We Save Planet Earth?
David Suzuki joins to discuss the state of the environment, climate change, the carbon tax, overpopulation, Indigenous knowledge, and whether we can still save the planet. Suzuki delivers an unfiltered take on humanity’s failures, corporate greed, and the urgent action needed to avert catastrophe.
Rooted ResilienceRooted Resilience: Intersectional Narratives of 2SLGBTQIA+ Creatives in MA
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, aaron Peet. Are we going to save the planet? Today I'm speaking with a Canadian academic and science broadcaster about the state of the environment, climate change, the carbon tax and the future of planet Earth. My guest today is David Suzuki. David, thank you so much for being willing to join us today. Would you mind first briefly introducing yourself? I'm David Suzuki. David, thank you so much for being willing to join us today. Would you mind first briefly introducing yourself?
David Suzuki:I'm David Suzuki. I was born in Vancouver in 1936, spent most of my adult life growing up in Ontario, but came back to Vancouver in 1963, and I've been here ever since, and I like to identify myself as an elder and a grandfather.
Aaron Pete:Beautiful. I'd like to start looking at the state of the environment today. Are we making progress? Are we heading in the right direction or the wrong direction?
David Suzuki:We're right over the cliff and it's too late. Too late to get back onto the cliff. You know, I used to say I felt like we're in a giant car heading at a brick wall at 100 miles an hour and everybody's arguing about where they want to sit, doesn't matter who's driving, they have to put on the brakes and turn the wheel. But now I don't use that metaphor anymore. I say, uh, you know, roadrunner, the little bird. Well, uh, he's always being chased by wiley coyote. And they come to a roadrunner, comes to the edge of a cliff, yeah, and of course he does a 90 degree turn. But wiley coyote's got so much momentum, he goes right over the cliff. And there's that moment when he's suspended and he realizes oh my God, I'm over the cliff, that's where we are. But then people say, well, is it too late? Yeah, it's too late to get back to the edge of the cliff. But it makes a difference whether you fall 10 feet or 100 feet. So I'm still there, trying to hang on to something on the side to keep from falling all the way down.
David Suzuki:But the science is in. The science has been in for over 30 years, for over 30 years, and I want to remind you that in 1992, in anticipation of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that was, the Earth Summit was the largest gathering of heads of state ever in human history, and it was meant to signal a shift in the way that human beings were living. And so, before the meeting, over half of all Nobel Prize winners signed a document called World Scientists Warning to Humanity. And the document opens by saying human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future we wish for human society and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to support life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about. Now, that was a very powerful document. They then listed the areas where we are colliding with our environment the atmosphere, the ocean, fresh water, species extinction, and it just goes down the whole list forestry and so on. And then the document gets even more grim. It says no more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.
David Suzuki:They then call for action in five areas that have to be started immediately. I don't have the document so I'm doing this all from memory, but the first is that we have to bring all of our practices into some kind of balance or harmony with the natural world that sustains us that's number one with the natural world that sustains us that's number one. The second was there are those things that we need, that we use, that are non-renewable, like minerals and metals, and it says we've got to use these resources much more carefully in the way that we exploit them. The third thing, in the way that we exploit them. The third thing we have to eliminate poverty. The fourth thing we have to reduce population. And the fifth thing was that we have to empower women to control their own reproductive future. So those were the five critical things to bring humans back into some kind of balance, and the document said this is very, very urgent. We've got to start doing this right away, and the reason I say we're over the edge is we haven't done a goddamn thing to try to act on this very powerful warning.
David Suzuki:So 25 years after that document was published, 16,000 scientists published World Scientists Warning to Humanity a second chance, and they pointed out that the only area where we've done anything was to begin to reduce our impact on the ozone layer. We have reduced that, but all the other areas are worse today than they were in 1992. And there are new problems we didn't know about in 1992. So the warnings have come in, the science has been there and we've come to think. We're so bloody smart that the institutions that we've created, the legal institutions, the economic institutions and the political systems these are systems all built around us to guide and constrain us. But what about Mother Nature? Mother Nature that we depend on for our very survival are not in the systems we've developed. Our economic system is designed around human productivity and human innovation.
David Suzuki:So Mark Carney, in his book Values, points out in his first chapter that Amazon, jeff Bezos' company, is valued by the economy in the tens of billions of dollars. But Amazon, the rainforest, the greatest ecosystem on the planet, has no economic value until it is logged, mined, dammed or grows soybeans, cattle or cities. Now it is the economy that is so fucked up that it doesn't even pay attention to the very things that keep us alive. And yet look at us. We're running around.
David Suzuki:Now we have a madman president of the most powerful country on the planet. He is dismantling all of the small things that Joe Biden did the EPA and some of the laws and some of the support of renewable energy. Trump is throwing all of that out. He's eliminating the very words climate change out of all government documents. I mean we've held 28 COP meetings, council of All Party meetings, to deal with climate change. The first meeting was in 1992, in which we at that time said we've got to cap emissions and bring them down. In all that time, guess what? Emissions have continued to climb steadily. The only time we had a leveling off was when COVID slowed us down for one year, but it's been going up steadily. That's why Greta Thunberg has said we're taught in schools, kids are taught to pay attention to science. And she said I pay attention to the science and what scientists say is we're on a path where kids don't have a future. And she was telling the truth.
Aaron Pete:I want to ask specifically, just to start with, about how we deal with the challenges of the population. That is something, to my mind, that has become really political. On the one hand, you have individuals like Mr Elon Musk, who points out that we are actually on a steady decline and that Western countries like Canada, the US, we have seen a reduction in reproduction from own people and we've been immigrating people in, which is keeping the amount of people here higher, but that we Western countries are reproducing less on average and there's a fear, I think, among many, that there's an anti-human sentiment to some of the talk about there's too many people on the planet and I'm just wondering how you square that Well.
David Suzuki:Paul Ehrlich wrote a book called Population Bomb in 1958. And that said it there. It's a simple matter of exponential growth and you can't sustain a population growing indefinitely. What we've done is ignore his warnings and said said the greatest thing to hit the planet is humans. The more humans we have, the better will be. And I remember interviewing an economist who is saying I've forgotten his name now, simon Simon, something. Anyway. I said well, what about the population problem? He said what population problem this is in 1988. I interviewed him. I said well, there are too many people. He said the more humans we have, the more Albert Einsteins we'll have, the better it'll be, because they're going to be finding new things. We can go on and double and redouble human populations and it will only get better and better.
David Suzuki:So in 1992, when the Earth Summit was to be held in Rio there are a lot of before these big meetings there are what they call prep com meetings, preparatory committee meetings. So people come in from all countries and they look at forestry and fisheries and climate change, all these areas, and they work out papers and then the papers are presented at the meeting and all the dignitaries find them. So at the prep comm meetings. Immediately people began to say well, it's population. And as soon as they said that, the developing world said you're racist, you're picking on us. You say it's our problem. The problem is overconsumption, and they're right Overconsumption. If you want to get an idea of population impact, you have to take the population of Canada and multiply by 30 or 40 to get the equivalence of Somalians or Bangladeshis. You want to compare us to China or India, you have to multiply by at least 10. And when you look at it that way, it's the rich countries that are by far having a greater impact than the poor countries. But they're both a problem. The consequence at the prep comm meetings was because they were controversial. They said we won't talk about that at the Earth Summit. And to this day it's considered racist to talk about overpopulation. But you see, if you plot population growth and economic growth, guess what? They're congruent. When the population goes up, the economy goes up. That's a correlation. But everybody assumes there's a causal connection, that the growth in population is driving economic growth. China tried a one-child policy because they said holy cow, we can't just keep growing. And they were successful. But now they've got over a billion people. Their population is finally beginning to drop and everybody's going oh my god, this is catastrophic. Their population is growing. Now their economy is going to go drop down as well.
David Suzuki:Canada, we say oh, we're a big country with a small population, yeah, but our ecological footprint, the amount that we take out of the earth, is very big. There are already too many Canadians living in Canada. And I asked probably one of the greatest ecologists in the world, a man named Ed Wilson from Harvard. He's dead now. I said, ed, how many people do you think could be sustained indefinitely, forever? And he said look, I don't know, but off the top of my head, if you want to live like Americans, if everybody in the world lived like Americans 200 million, we're at 8 billion. Canadian population, finally, is dropping for sure, and even the environmentalists are saying this is disastrous. We've got to keep using immigration to keep that curve going up, and we're getting a lot of immigration from the developing world. We want to take them from countries that are low, have a low ecological footprint, bring them to Canada and convert them into high consumers to keep our economy growing. This is crazy. We're already. We've got to talk about degrowth degrowth in the economy, degrowth in the population but that is considered lunacy by most people.
David Suzuki:Look up until very, very recently, human beings understood that we were a part of nature. Even after, for 95% of our existence on Earth, we were nomadic hunter-gatherers. What does that mean? Every day we had to go out and find our food. It boggles my mind that all of our ancestors had to go out and find their food every day. They didn't know how to smoke their food, or can it, or refrigerate it. They had to find it. That tells you earth must have been abundant and generous that we were able to do that for 95% of our existence. And we knew we were one strand in a web of relationships with all other species of animals and plants, with air, water, soil and sunlight. That's been our understanding since the beginning of time.
David Suzuki:But then we got in Europe, you get the, and even after the agricultural revolution, which started 10,000 years ago, that began the modern era. Because of agriculture we didn't have to keep moving and foraging for food. We could stay in one place, we could build permanent structures. We began to get villages and then towns, and we began to differentiate what we did. Everybody can't be a farmer, but it was farming that enabled empires to spring up and kingdoms. All of that was built on the back of farming. And farmers know very well that the amount of snow in the winter directly related to the amount of moisture in the soil in the summer. They know that insects are fundamental to flowering plants. They know that certain plants will take nitrogen from the air and fix it as fertilizer in the soil. They understand that they're dependent on weather, climate and the season. They understand farmers know we are a part of the web of nature.
David Suzuki:But starting in the Renaissance in Europe, people began to think oh, we're different, we don't have to pay attention to natural laws, we're smart. So René Descartes said cogito ergo sum. Bet you never had any Latin, did you? No, I haven't had any Latin come up yet. I studied Latin for four years in high school and this is the only time I can show off with it now. Cogito ergo sum means I think. Therefore, I am. So the brain became everything of what we are. And then Francis Bacon said scientia potestas est Scientia, science or knowledge is power. Scientia, science or knowledge is power. So through the brain, through science, we could now gain information, knowledge to empower us. And then we had Isaac Newton, who then at that time said look, the universe is like a giant clockwork mechanism. If we study the parts, we can eventually understand how the mechanism is made up, and then, when you put the parts back together, we'll explain the whole thing. And so that's a way of learning.
David Suzuki:We call reductionism Reduce nature. Look at a small part of nature, focus on that part and you learn a great deal about that part. The problem is that when you take that part and put it in the whole system, it behaves in a totally different way. What we're studying is not a bit of nature, it's an artifact, it's a creation. But in the real world you put a plant in the field, it rains, it snows, winds blow all kinds of things happen that you don't see when you focus. And so the whole reductionist thing we find doesn't work. And yet most of biology and science today is reductionist. We focus, you know. And so what happens? You have biologists saying, oh, our caribou populations all across Canada are disappearing. Well, wolves eat caribou. So that must be the problem Kill wolves. This is the stupidest goddamn idea that we're going to manage these animals, as if you know knowing wolves eat caribou. And if you kill wolves, you know we do all these things.
Aaron Pete:And we shoot them from helicopters, which is insane, insane.
David Suzuki:We drop poison carcasses onto the fields and the crows and ravens and everything else eats those. You know it's the same thing with our orca, the southern resident orca, now reduced to 72 or 73 in population, and for some reason this group of whales eats primarily Chinook salmon. That's really weird. What is it about it? But you know, chinook salmon are the target of sport fishermen. They love Chinook salmon. They're big, they fight hard. So, okay, well, we'll put a zone around the orca and not fish for Chinook, and somehow that's going to give them more. This is the stupidest goddamn way of managing it, because in all of these management processes we never look in the mirror and say, look, the cause of all of this is that incredible predator, this invasive species, humans. We got it. Managing those populations means pulling us out and leaving them alone, but we don't do that. I'd like to Let me finish this. We get the Renaissance, now elevating the brain. Then, a few hundred years later, you get the Industrial Revolution and suddenly you've got machines that can move us at great speed. That can move us at great speed, that move enormous weights, that can cut the tops of mountains and shift them, and these can do things. The machines can do things no biological creature can. And we, through the Industrial Revolution, we said humans are so smart, we don't have to pay attention to nature. We can fly fast. We can fly like a bird, we can fly faster than the speed of sound. We can drill through the crust of the planet. We can live under the ocean. We can escape gravity and live in outer space. And so look at us. Know you get me, elon Musk, in these. God gonna go to, I'm gonna go to Mars. The planets totally fucked up. I'll leave them and go to Mars. But we're so smart, you know this is the sooner he goes, the better. Get him up there. It's the port must go and take all your cronies with you. This, but then Lord must go and take all your cronies with you. But then you come to where we no longer think. We live in a web of relationships. We're so smart, we don't have to pay attention to nature. We now live in a pyramid. We're at the top, everything down below is for us, and all those environmentalists are mouthing out yeah, yeah, we'll be more careful, but it's basically, it's all ours, and so that's. The problem now is that humans have become so powerful, but with so little understanding of the reality that we're not in charge. You know?
David Suzuki:You look at the age of exploration, when Europeans discovered a way to go over vast distances, they could navigate, so they knew where they were by the stars and they could find their way home Once you could do a return trip. Then the age of exploration began. And guess what? Those Europeans, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the English, the Germans, the French. They discovered new places. They were already inhabited by colored people.
David Suzuki:In Africa, in South America, north America, australia, everywhere, there were already people, but they called them savages. They said these primitive people, they don't look like us. They said these primitive people, they don't look like us, they don't dress like us, they don't even speak our language. I mean, they're primitive people and we just went after. We weren't interested in how could they survive here for thousands of years. We didn't give any, we didn't care about that. We just said, hey, I want that gold there. Those trees are great for the masks of ships.
David Suzuki:Then we started to go oh, those damn native people. They think they own this land. They're a pain in the ass. Genocide, get rid of them. Cultural genocide, get rid of them. They're in the way of us getting, and the tragedy is, of course, those people all over the world who had lived there for thousands of years. Their body of knowledge, indigenous knowledge, was the blueprint for how you live sustainably in place, but we paid no attention to that. We didn't learn a goddamn thing from them. We weren't curious about that, and so we're in the mess that we didn't learn a goddamn thing from them, we weren't curious about that, and so we're in the mess that we're in now.
Aaron Pete:That leads perfectly into something I just wanted to share with you. This is from Stahelis First Nations Reconciliation Agreement. It's their origin story and I just want to read it to you because I think it perfectly speaks to some of the pieces you've just outlined. Before the world was here, the sun and the moon fell in love. They sent their emotions and feelings towards each other, and where those feelings met was where the world was created. In the beginning, the world was covered with water and through time and evolution, some beings took different shape and form. Some became the winged, some became the four-legged fur bearing, some became the winged, some became the four-legged fur-bearing, some became the plant people and the root people, some became the ones that swim in the rivers and oceans and some became the humans.
Aaron Pete:Early in time, we, the humans, were the weakest and needed the most help to survive. All our relations felt sorry for us. They took pity on us. An agreement was made where they agreed to give themselves to us for food, shelter, clothing, utensils and medicine. The only thing they asked for in return was to be respected, be remembered, only take what we need, share with those that are less fortunate, and to not gather or harvest at certain times and places to allow them to reproduce. Before we gather, harvest or hunt, we say a prayer of forgiveness and a prayer of thanks to all our relations for taking their life to feed our family. We commit to use everything and we will share with those that are less fortunate. In honoring the sacred agreement, we are the stewards of the land, environment, the winged, the four-legged, the plants and the ones that swim in the rivers and oceans.
David Suzuki:I don't know how to. That's it. The tragedy is, it's there. That's it. That's the way we have to live, but we regarded the people that say things like that as savages. The tragedy is, you know, there's huge change happening in Canada. Now. We use words like reconciliation, listen. We desperately need to understand what those words mean and to know how profound those are.
David Suzuki:You see, the Indigenous people in North America they weren't always here. Ten thousand years ago, canada was covered in a sheet of ice miles thick. That when the ice began to melt and animals and plants began to return. Then we found our way in and we followed them and we made mistakes. We did some. Things were easy, easy to catch, they were yummy and we took them.
David Suzuki:When I hear Haida, I have the Haida grandsons, so I know their culture and you hear the Haida legend. They talk about when the plants began to come back and the order in which the trees came back and they all make sense. But then people got greedy. The Ulicans used to come into Haida Gwaii, but people got greedy, said wow, look at this. And they took them and guess what? They went away. They're not there anymore because people were greedy. That's what you learn. All of that knowledge is embodied in what we call indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge that was acquired through experience.
David Suzuki:People, you know, the evidence of science is that we all began as a species 200,000 years ago in Africa. I keep waiting for the Ku Klux Klan to invite me to speak so I can tell them we're all Africans, what the hell's your problem? But from Africa after 40 to 50,000 years we began to move. I mean, try to imagine Africa 200,000 years ago. The savannas were filled with animals and plants beyond anything you would ever see on the Serengeti today. I mean, the abundance was enormous and the little clumps of three, four or five, these funny-looking two-legged furless apes, that was us Not very impressive, but we lived there for 40,000 to 50,000 years. And then we don't know why, but we began to move. And you know, probably there were enough people to have tribal disagreements and battles over territory. Maybe we depleted certain resources. I like to think it was teenagers looking for excitement over that mountain or across the desert.
David Suzuki:We now know that humans bred. We bred with Neanderthals. Maybe they said well, you know, there's some good-looking Neanderthals over there and they're not as smart as we are, so be easy targets. But whatever the reason we began to move and we moved into new territory. We were an invasive animal. We didn't know how, the rules you know? Oh wow, look at all these birds without any wings. They're easy to catch and they're yummy. And we killed them. And the big, slow-moving sloths even with a stone axe you could kill them.
David Suzuki:If you follow the movement of humans and we moved on foot, carrying everything we own when you follow our movement you see extinction of the slow-moving, easily caught birds and mammals, because we were an effective predator. But as we moved into new territory, then we learned, holy cow, we shouldn't have killed so many. And we learned through experience the things that work and the things that don't work. That's the essence of indigenous knowledge. Through trial and error, through mistakes and successes, through observation, we learned how to live in balance with the earth. And the indigenous knowledge is place-specific, it's for that area of Earth and it's priceless. No science will ever replace that knowledge. And we're right now at that critical point where so many of those knowledges and languages are right on the verge of extinction. And each time we lose the culture, that's catastrophic because we'll never get that knowledge back again. So that's where we're at now.
Aaron Pete:So I'm going to put this to you and I would love your feedback, because this is something I hear fairly often, so it's something I'm sure you've experienced. There's this argument that I've heard that extinction level events have happened throughout Earth's history, throughout our solar system. That extinction is not uncommon, it's not something to feel uncomfortable with, like you describe. We have periods of time where the dinosaurs were here. Now there's not dinosaurs. So this happens throughout history and, from what I've heard from individuals like Mr Musk, the argument is we can either have a species that's willing to try and escape this planet and become multi-planetary, because life, regardless of what form it comes in, could be destroyed.
Aaron Pete:We're in the height right now of a solar storm as of 2025. And that puts us at risk of solar winds and all of these different challenges. We could have an asteroid hit in BC. We just had a large earthquake. Lots of different things could happen. A super volcano could wipe out all of life on Earth instantaneously. And so there's this argument that, no matter what humans do, even if as flawed and I always like to connect what you're describing with the problems that humans bring as original sin, because there's such a deep connection there to me that we are flawed. We bring so many problems. We are imperfect creatures and we operate imperfectly. But how do we balance this with the fact that there is this argument that we should prepare and we should start to dream big again and to start to expand ourselves and go okay, well, we could bring life, we could do what Noah did with the ark in that story and take life to different planets. We could start to try and become multi-planetary. What is your feedback on that expansionist mindset?
David Suzuki:Well, he's absolutely right Extinction is normal. In fact, extinction is necessary because in the 3.9 billion years that life has existed on this planet, the conditions of the planet have changed enormously. 3.9 billion years ago, just as cells were starting to appear, 2.9 billion years ago, just as cells were starting to appear, the Sun was 30% cooler than it is now, the Sun's 30% hotter today than it was way back then. We have had these great tectonic plates have pulled apart, moved, crashed into each other, mountain ranges have come up, worn down, oceans have filled, emptied. We've had warm periods and ice ages. Intermittently, the polar magnetic poles have reversed and re-reversed. All kinds of things have happened and life has persisted and flourished. How? By the elimination of those that were there before these catastrophic changes, and from them we drew out those that were best adapted to the new conditions and life evolved and changed. 99.9999, four decimal points, percent of all species that have ever lived are extinct today. What's different? We've had five periods of massive extinction when up to 95% of all species in the fossil record disappear. That's catastrophic. Can you imagine if today, 95, we've already eliminated over half of the species that were here when I was born? Wow, we're in a catastrophic extinction period, but after 95% were gone, life recovered. Different, but guess what? It took 10 million years. We've been around for 200,000 years. We've only become this massive destructive force in the last 150 years, so we very recently achieved this status.
David Suzuki:The tragedy is intelligence was our gift, it was our survival attribute and it worked, and one of the gifts the brain did. With this massive brain, we found that we could affect the future by what we do in the present. Based on what we have observed and learned, we could look ahead and see where the dangers are and where the opportunities are, and we could deliberately choose to avoid danger and exploit opportunity. You know, at first it's easy You're walking along and the path branches and you go. Oh yeah, dad went to the right and he damn near got killed by a saber-toothed tiger, but mom went to the left and found some good berries to eat, so let's go left. Yeah, foresight was that great gift that this brain gave us, and you can see why it's so important. This is why indigenous people speak of seven generations. Seven generations will remember what our ancestors taught us as they gave us the earth. And then we think ahead on seven generations.
David Suzuki:You don't just go for this for now there are repercussions, you think, seven generations ahead and that I think today we've got scientists, scientists armed with supercomputers. They can look ahead. You know? One thing I'm amazed at is weather forecasts. Now you may not know this, but when I was, you know, back when I was a kid, a teenager, weather forecasts were a joke. You know, if they said it's going to rain today, ah yeah, they're. You know they're wrong. Most of the time, forecasting was a very iffy thing. Today, I'm amazed. I mean, they're actually saying there's an atmospheric river coming in three days. Get ready, you know we're heading into a period of drought. We better prepare, like the forecast now, because science and computers have become so powerful that we have much more knowledge and ability to look in the future.
David Suzuki:The tragedy is, this is the first time one species has deliberately changed the air, the water, the soil, photosynthesis the things that keep us alive. We've deliberately destroyed so much of this. We know what the problems are. We know about climate change. We've known about climate change since the early 1900s. We knew that global warming was a possibility and that fossil fuels were the primary cause. We've known about the loss of species now for many, many decades, and scientists have been telling us. But now you know anybody who's got a. I got a wart on my big toe, so that must mean blah, blah, blah, and on the Internet they have as much credibility as the scientists who spend all his life working on a subject. So it's a tragic time. We're the only species that has ever created the conditions we know will drive us. We're driving already millions of species to extinction. But it's going to drive us to extinction and environmentalists for decades have been saying this is what we have to do Shift direction, go down here and here's how we get a sustainable future.
David Suzuki:The programs are all there, but the power of science, of the economy. You see, in the last 150 years we've undergone an enormous shift in the way that we live. In 1900, there were only 10 million people in Canada 10 million, can you imagine? There were no cities in Canada with a million people. Most Canadians lived in rural village communities. If you look at a map in 1900 of the prairie, it was dotted with villages of 150, 200 people, all built around agriculture and the railroad, but they were relatively self-sufficient. But now of course, we become.
David Suzuki:85% of us in Canada live in big cities and the majority of people around the world now live in big cities, and in a city, your highest priority becomes what, aaron? What is it? I'm not sure, tell me, come on, you do your job. You need a job to earn the money to buy the things that you want. And so the economy to us living in the city? And we think, well, nature is out there, nature is, you know, as long as we've got parks out there and reserves, that's nature. But in the city we've got to worry about the economy. And that's why, you know, we had for 10 years a prime minister, stephen Harper, who said we can't do anything about climate change. That's crazy economics. So by saying that, he elevated the economy above the atmosphere that gives us air to breathe, that gives us weather, climate and the seasons. You think the economy is more important than that economy is more important than that.
Aaron Pete:That is fucking crazy. Fair enough. I'm curious when you hear concepts like the carbon tax has become a huge talking point in Canada and I imagine you view that as like a blunt force, like you're bringing a hammer to try and build a whole house, like you're not even participating in the conversation, if you're focused on one policy that's going to fix all of the problems we're facing. Am I correct on that?
David Suzuki:Absolutely. And don't forget, the carbon tax is brought in by Gordon Campbell, who was a conservative, a conservative government, and we all celebrated. Now people like me said it's way too small. I think he brought in $20 or $25 a ton and it would go up ultimately to $50 a ton. Meanwhile, in the 1980s, sweden was already charging $180 a ton and we're quibbling about $25 a ton Give me a break. But it was the first North American attempt to begin to impact our emissions and we celebrated that and bragged about it.
David Suzuki:Now, after he brought it in, the NDP said ax the tax. Mr Pauliev, you didn't invent that slogan, it was the NDP in BC. And guess what? They lost the election. The NDP was poised to win the election and they then took on axe attacks and environmentalists like me came out and we opposed the NDP's position and they lost the election.
David Suzuki:So it's so funny now that, how many years later is it? And we've got a conservative that didn't learn a goddamn thing from that, and we're at what? $40 or $50 a ton. It should be about four or five times that. But for him, for Polyam, to act as if oh well, carbon tax is a terrible burden on human beings is absolutely ridiculous, but we're in a terrible state. We have Polyev, poised possibly to take over Canada, and we have Danielle Smith in Alberta, who won't even mention the words climate change, who blames all the problems of the oil patch on those foreign-funded radicals like Suzuki and his organization, and we have a guy that came within two seats of winning the BC election and he was kicked out of his original party because he was a climate denier. He set up his own party, the Conservative Party, and he came that close to winning. So this is why I look in the mirror and say I've been part of a movement the environmental movement that has fundamentally failed.
David Suzuki:Why do you?
Aaron Pete:feel that way, look where we are 100%, but what do you think happened? Where did the conversation go wrong? Is it just ramming up against the economy and like that's just. That's too important to people? Where is money.
David Suzuki:In the 1980s and 90s, environmentalists were kind of held up. You know, oh, they're kind dreamers, but they're on the right side. People knew that environmentalists had credibility and the corporate community said, shit, we got to be smarter about this. And they began to set up groups. You know the share groups in BC. You know, share the forest, don't let those greedy environmentalists stop the logging here. Share the forest with everybody. And you know they started saying it's those foreign-funded radicals, you've got to get rid of the foreign funding that's coming in to environmental groups. And they began to pour At the very time they were the most profitable sector in society, they were still taking huge amounts of tax dollars in subsidies and they were spending ultimately hundreds of billions of dollars in a campaign of disinformation.
David Suzuki:They'd say this is not true, even though we know for a fact that in 1959, edward Teller, one of the great physicists in the world, spoke to the American Petroleum Institute, the API, and said burning fossil fuels is creating a problem of warming of the planet, that if you continue on the way you're going, by the year 2000, it could very well be catastrophic. They have known since 1959 that the science was in and their own scientists, exxon's own scientists in the 1960s said Teller's right, our data, our experiments shows he's right, we're putting out our greenhouse gases. He's right, we're putting out our greenhouse gases, it's going to warm the planet. So the industry to me this is the height of evil in the name of profit. And the more profit, the faster we can get it, the better.
David Suzuki:You don't think? Those fossil fuel CEOs know damn well the implications of climate change from burning their product, but they won't spend a nickel trying to find—they should call themselves energy companies, not oil companies. And so they should work with environmentalists to show that there are other energies possible that are affordable, that are green and renewable. The David Suzuki Foundation came out with a document I'm very, very proud of Last year. Working with the University of Victoria scientists, we've shown that Canada could have its complete electrical grid powered by affordable, renewable, green energy by 2035. We don't have to burn fossil fuels for our electricity. If we make the commitment now and pour the money into it, we can do it.
Aaron Pete:Can I just ask how do you digest, like I hear? Like we're a lot on hydro and one of the criticisms we've heard, particularly from First Nation communities, is that some dams throughout British Columbia they've cut them off and the communities down below where they rely on the river to flow have been cut off and then everything dries up and then there's no life there and that the decisions by human beings to crank on the power or turn it off impacts those systems as well, that when we look at solar, it doesn't break down. I always like to remind people that solar energy is so interesting because we're so proud of it. Yet trees do this and they don't leave anything behind. And yet solar systems do leave so much metal and plastic behind. So these green systems are often critiqued. Leave so much metal and plastic behind, so these green systems are often critiqued. I think wind is critiqued on how many birds that it ends up killing every year, by how much those things spin. So what green energy excites you that you think is not causing a bad harm? I?
David Suzuki:think there is enormous possibility. We're just at the cusp. Solar energy, of course, is the obvious one, and it's now become. You know, the argument against solar by the oil industry was always way too expensive. We can't afford to do that Now. Of course it's cheaper than conventional fossil fuels. But wind, I think, is still a possibility. We have to position the turbines in the right place, but I think there are really revolutionary turbines. I saw one last week in Salt Spring that really will get over the killing of Other animals. You know, if we're really concerned of the with a killing of wildlife, especially bird, then most Birds are killed by domestic cats. It's true. It's true.
Aaron Pete:It's like a billion or something like that. Right, it's a crazy, insane number and tall buildings and cars.
David Suzuki:So you know you want to save all those. Windmills are no? Windmills do kill bats, they do kill birds, but it's a matter of positioning them to minimize that impact. But you know, we've got to do all those things. But when we got a heat pump put in our house, I couldn't believe it. It's like a miracle, this little machine. All it's doing is pumping fluids around and exchanging heat, and in the summer it cools my house and in the winter it warms it. It's just a little heat pump. Like why the hell have we had these for 50 years? We think we're so smart, but the potential, I think, is just enormous.
David Suzuki:But you know, I take my hat off to Elon Musk for the way he drove electric cars onto the agenda. There's just no taking away from the way that he did. He made EVs what they are today. The problem, of course, is electric cars aren't a solution. They simply minimize our impact. We shouldn't be owning private cars. Public transit should be the way that we go For longer distances. Maybe you could rent a car or something, but the idea that everybody's got to own a car, especially in a city, is just bloody crazy. So electric cars?
David Suzuki:You know, the first time I visited China in the 1970s, I was just amazed that in Beijing, most people were still riding bicycles. But the scale of people. I wrote an article and I said if every Chinese wants a motorbike, we're screwed. Well, guess what? They don't want a motorbike, we're screwed. Well, guess what? They don't want a motorbike, they want their car. Which is worse. You know they're leading the world in electric cars, but that's getting a million electric cars instead of a million internal combustion engines. That's not a solution. It's just slowing down our impact.
Aaron Pete:I have two more questions for you. One I'm regularly and I'm sure you are as well fascinated by nature, and one that stood out to me. I've never lost it. You may know Susan Simard from UBC.
Aaron Pete:She studied fungi most of her life and she was a part of a movie called Fantastic Fungi that was on Netflix for a period with Paul Stamets, another brilliant mycologist, and the piece that really stood out to me that I've never forgotten is that trees communicate with each other through fungi and mycelium underneath the ground and can actually encourage one tree to grow farther away so that it's able to get away from pests or access more nutrients, and that they're a part of that and that they communicate. I think that's just. It humbled me, because we do look at trees and we have some admiration for them, but when trees are not older than sharks which also shocked me to find out and then that they have this communication and fungi is just one area that I've become very fascinated by. Is there another topic that you've learned about over your years that stands out to you, about how nature operates and that would surprise people Over and?
David Suzuki:over again, we learn how ignorant we are. It really gets me, you know, when you get an expedition going to the South Seas of the Pacific and guess what? They discovered 10 new species of fish. What the hell Can you imagine? Let's suppose there were aliens coming to Earth and they had their rockets 10 miles above the planet and they dropped down these little nets, you know, maybe 100 meters wide, and they pulled the nets along the ground for 10 miles and then pulled them up and said, oh, look at what you've got by, what they caught in there.
David Suzuki:I mean, that's what we're doing, and we know nothing about what's in the oceans. We know nothing about what's under the. We're a terrestrial, air-breathing mammal. Our territory is on the surface, on the ground. We know nothing about what's under there. We know nothing about what's in the ocean, and yet we construct all of our models on the basis of what little we know.
David Suzuki:You know, if you were going to have a shoe factory and you wanted to be a sustainable shoe factory for 100 years, what would you need to do that? I would think you'd need two things. One is you need an inventory of everything in your factory and then you need a blueprint of how everything in the factory is connected. So if we're going to manage a water system, a watershed, or if we're going to manage a species in its habitat, how many plants and animals are there in the world? We have no idea. Many in back in the 80s I've forgotten his name now they asked you know, if you go to a tropical rainforest like the Amazon? If you're, you go in the daytime, nothing's happening. All you hear is a lot of noise in the canopy up above, and that comes out at night. So what this guy did was say what the hell's up in the canopy? Nobody's ever studied. So he spread plastic on the floor and then shot a cannon of pesticide into the canopy of one tree and it rained insect and almost all of them had never been seen by a human being before. Wow, so you've got Neville Winchester, who was a PhD student at the University of Victoria, to Klaiquat and said oh, western Canada Wilderness, has started to set up a canopy camp up in Klaiquat and I'm going to do my PhD study in the canopy of Klaiquat. Guess what he discovered? Virtually everything up there he'd never seen before has the highest concentration of carnivores of any ecosystem on the planet Carnivores, spiders. There is such a diversity of spiders living on the insects up there, like a whole ecosystem we knew nothing about.
David Suzuki:And yet we develop all these models of management Now in the oceans. Our whole, up until 20 years ago, our whole ecosystem was the picture of the way it was. Plankton are at the bottom, you know phytoplankton and zooplankton, animal and plants, and then the plankton are eaten by bigger animals and you go off the food chain the salmon and whales and so on. But then about 20 years ago, someone discovered there are cells smaller than plankton. Our plankton nets are too, the mesh is too big and they discovered phytoplankton which are 10 times smaller than phytoplankton, which are ten times smaller than phytoplankton. And today they think phytoplankton are responsible for half of the CO2 absorbed by the oceans. And yet our whole model didn't even know they existed until they we.
David Suzuki:You know the thing I've discovered as a geneticist every time you do an experiment and you make a discovery, what you really discover is how ignorant we are, because you pull open that little bit and then realize, oh my god, the ramifications are so great. You discover our ignorance, but we act as if every discovery is yay, we're gonna make money on it. You know, it's just crazy. So when I look at a tree, the tree should be the model For the way we live. When a tree seed lands on the ground, it's stuck. It can't say, oh, what a shitty piece of land. There's not enough water, it's stuck. And once its root goes down, it's there forever. And you think how modestly it lives. All it takes is water, carbon dioxide from the air and sunlight to give you the energy, and it creates its entire structure from those three components. And all the time it's growing. Everything wants to eat them.
David Suzuki:Why do you think the forest in Haida, the cedar forest in Haida, gwaii, are in such trouble? Because the people, white people, it came there when, oh, these poor people, all they've got is seafood. They must be starving. Let's bring deer here. And of people, all they've got is seafood, they must be starving. Let's bring deer here. And of course, when they brought the deer the deer love baby cedars they just wiped out the small cedars and they've been very, very destructive. So you know, we just don't know anything.
David Suzuki:And now, you see, we've got this problem with climate change and we know that we're warming the planet at a catastrophic rate. So we think, oh well, we're so smart. Sunlight's coming down, let's put up shields, let's put up a giant umbrella and reflect the light, or let's spray sulfur compounds into the atmosphere. David Keith, a Canadian who's at the University of Chicago now making huge bucks, and his idea of geoengineering the planet will have a fleet of 747 spraying 24 hours a day, spraying sulfur that deflects lights, and so they will behave like a volcano and it will cool the planet. But the problem is that jet planes that are flying 24 hours a day are emitting all this carbon, so every year, you haven't stopped climate change, you've just held it up. You have to add more sulfur, because you can see, this is crazy yeah, my last question for you.
Aaron Pete:I've had the opportunity to interview Rick Hansen, another Canadian icon. Yourself, you're an absolute legend, and my fear is you mentioned Greta Thunberg. I'm just we have so many legends but we don't have an to me. From what I see a new generation of people Taking up the torch and carrying it forward to the same extent that individuals like yourself have. Individuals like Rick Hansen, terry Fox, individuals who, just they, went farther than anybody had ever gone or anybody thought to go. How can we carry on your legacy?
David Suzuki:well, after, after greta. Now, first of all, you have to remember there was someone before greta and that was my daughter, seven, and you know, I would hope you could play her un talk at the earth summit when she was 12 in 1992. So the europeans called uh seven, the first, first Greta. But she was saying all the things that Greta was saying and with Greta she's had a huge impact. It was so powerful. The image of her sitting all by herself with a sign that just said stop climate change was, uh, one of those pictures that shocked and and moved the world and tragic and you saw greta's bringing up all over the place. In canada there were all kinds of teenagers that were getting up and they were, you know, greta was their great idol and they were, they were copying, uh, greta. But covid hit and covid really took the wind out of their sails and that's one of the tragedies that something big had been built by greta and it was happening all over the world. But can I just push back a smidge.
Aaron Pete:You earned everything that you had done. You had done years of research. You're an absolute expert in what you know and I'm not trying to fault greta. But the challenge is she is, she didn't. There isn't a person who knows as much as you on that field. That's doing what you did. To the same extent, she raises awareness, which is absolute to your point, an absolute, pivotal piece, but she doesn't bring that wealth of knowledge and expertise and training and education and validity in scientific research and rigor that you have been able to bring, that Bill Nye, the science guy, brought. That individuals carried the scientific execution alongside a passion for protecting the planet.
David Suzuki:Well, you've got to remember that Greta was building on the science. She wasn't saying I know all this stuff, she's just saying I take the science seriously because that's what I was taught in high school. You don't need an expert when you've got the scientist. The tragedy now is, you know there's so much talk about the elite. The elite is such a you know a degrading word that you look down on anyone who's an elitist. So you know, there was a time when I began in television when scientists and doctors were at the highest level of public respect. But today, when you look at the kind of rabbit holes you can get down into of rabbit holes you can get down into, my God, like what's going on. Social media has empowered anybody to say anything and people believe it, so that experts. If you look at Michael Mann, the climatologist who first talked about the hockey stick, what he had to endure from the fossil fuel industry was absolutely outrageous. I mean legal suits tried to get him fired from the university, tried to discount all the work that he's done. He hung in there. I think one of the. If I were to fault anyone, it is the scientific community itself.
David Suzuki:When I began to popularize science, my first national program was in 1962. And I began with the Nature of Things, which was already going. The Nature of Things started in 1960. I became the host in 1979. It was already an established show, but the respect for scientists was very, very high. But then you have the relentless pressure of the right wing of the industries pouring money into saying this is BS, that the scientists are not to be trusted, this is BS, that the scientists are not to be trusted.
David Suzuki:And you end up with Kennedy now as a minister of health. You know his father would turn in his grave if he knew that he was now in a position of power. And I met Kennedy several times when he came to BC campaigning for rivers. He was great, he was fantastic. But I don't know where he's gone off, but he's gone off the really deep end. But it's the triumph, then, over expertise, over expertise. And the scientific community hasn't spoken up.
David Suzuki:And you know I was elected to the Royal Society many years ago. That's supposed to be the top scientist. Blah, blah, blah. And I quit Because I said I don't see the point of this. You're not doing anything, you just celebrate. Oh, we're the best. I said so. I wrote a letter recently to the well, a couple of years ago now, to the president, I said look, why aren't you guys hounding down the door of the politicians of the government saying what are you basing your policies on? The science is here, it's crystal clear. Why aren't you acting on it? And his response was well, you quit the Royal Society, so you should know what we're. You know like he was pissed off at me because I quit the Royal Society. And it's tragic that the scientists have the knowledge and we've degraded their image so much that we don't pay attention.
David Suzuki:That's incredibly heavy. So let me end by saying I gave a talk to a group of teachers and their students in a program called TREC. Do you know the TREC program? It's a program in grade 10 where kids from all across the city have half a year of academics and half a year of outdoor camping and canoeing and all that stuff. And both of my daughters were in trek and now my grandson is in it.
David Suzuki:So I gave a talk and at the end people were very distressed and they said well, you're saying that we're already over the edge. Where's your hope? You're saying that we're already over the edge, where's your hope? And I said we use hopium, hope as hopium. You know, just shoot up some hopium and everything will be okay. My hope only is in action.
David Suzuki:And they're saying teenagers now have become so terrified that they're just, you know, they're turning off, they're committing suicide, they're really depressed.
David Suzuki:I mean, it is true, it's a problem Because, like Greta, they pay attention to what the science is saying. And to me the only hope is if mom and dad are busting their ass and that's not just writing letters or giving money or making phone calls Heavily involved in whatever environmental group, in whatever hunger and poverty in whatever. Anti-patriarchy, these groups, social justice these are all a part of trying to change the way that we live. You cannot live sustainably when you have this enormous inequity of money, of power, and exist within a patriarchy in which women are discounted. We can't when you're hungry or you're poor. You've got other priorities than worrying about the environment. These are all issues that we're all about, but mom and dad have to show they care about kids' future because they're doing all they can. If mom and dad aren't doing it, those kids really do not have any hope. If the two people that matter most in their lives aren't working their asses off for change.
Aaron Pete:I love that, David. How can people follow your work? How can they connect with your foundation?
David Suzuki:Well, they can come to the website and you know I've written dozens and dozens of books, including 18 for Children. But you know it's all out there. The problem we face today there's too much stuff. I'm getting stuff all the time Just for climate change groups. I can't read it all. There's too much stuff and people, because of that, people are just entertaining themselves and, quite frankly, I'm addicted I agree, I admit to YouTube, and YouTube offers me all kinds of respite from the reality of what's going on. So I mean, I love what I can get on YouTube.
David Suzuki:But I think you know when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with a special report saying we must not allow temperature to rise more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2021. That was the call. That was it. That's the target. The next day so the media there were some reports in the papers. The next day, marijuana became legal in Canada and, guess what, disappeared from the media. So in 19, oh, sorry, in 2019, I think, the United Nations came out with this terrifying report on biodiversity that, as I said, showed over half of the species that were on the planet when I was born in 1936 are now extinct and I went oh my God, we're in a major extinction crisis. The next day, harry and Meghan had a baby and guess what disappeared from them. We're not serious about this.
Aaron Pete:No, that's not good. David, it has been an honor to speak with you. I want you to know that I really appreciate the uncensored nature in which you've talked. I think the way you're speaking is how we should start talking about these conversations, about how we're addressing the issues. I view your name as connected with caring about the environment. When I've told people I have the privilege of speaking with you today, they go oh yeah, I need to do more to to do right by the environment. I need to start paying attention more like.
David Suzuki:You are connected with that in such a deep way that I just have such admiration for the work you've done and I just appreciate you so much thank you, aaron, but I have to tell you everything I've learned about the environment, everything I've told you I've learned from Indigenous people, and my gratitude today is that people have fought to retain their culture and their language. And if you knew the forces that this government has imposed to try to stamp the Indian out of them, to stamp out that culture, they are the true survivors and we should be so grateful that they've hung on to those vestiges because they have so much to teach us. You know, and it's such a change in the past 20 years, when I started with the Nature of Things, if we were doing a program on alcohol, we wouldn't hesitate to show a drunken First Nation person on Skid Row, throw it up there, wouldn't even think about it. That was the stereotype. Today we wouldn't. Nobody would dream of doing that. You can't go to a meeting in Canada without beginning by acknowledging the traditional territory of the Indigenous people.
David Suzuki:So now we're ready to take the next big step. If it's the traditional territory, give it the hell back. We say this is Crown land. That's not Crown land, that's Indigenous land, give it back. And if we say, well, I mean we own property now in Vancouver or Toronto, okay, but we still say it's Indigenous territory, unceded, pay rent and if we can do that, that will empower those communities, the land, the land protectors. It'll empower them so they have enough land to practice their knowledge base to put that into action. But we've got to support them in this fight and we've got to learn from it. This is no longer just a case of social justice for the First Nations. This is for survival of us colonialists here, our settlers. They are the source of the knowledge we need and the values and the perspective that we need to come to grips with the crisis that we face today. What a beautiful way to end. Don't acknowledge me. I mean thank you for all that. Acknowledge those people that have fought to protect their territory.
Aaron Pete:Thank you, david. So much for your time. Thank you.
.png)
