My name is Marie Bountrogianni
and I'm the Dean of The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education
at Ryerson University.
I'm delighted to welcome you all to our fourth ChangSchoolTalks 2017 event.
The theme of this year's ChangSchoolTalks is
"2030 Vision: Exploring the Past and Imagining the Future."
In February we featured a talk
from Timothy Snyder, Housum Professor
of History at Yale University, who helped
us examine patterns of history and the
current socio-political context.
His latest book is "20 Lessons on Tyranny."
In April we welcomed Curtis Bonk,
Professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University,
who discussed new and innovative methods of learning.
Earlier this month the visionary Michael
Serbinis,
founder and CEO of Kobo and League,
shared his experience as a tech entrepreneur.
Today we are absolutely thrilled to welcome a Canadian legend
to the ChangSchoolTalks stage: Dr. David
Suzuki.
I will be welcoming Dr. Suzuki to the stage momentarily.
Throughout the event I encourage you to tweet using the hashtag #changschooltalks.
The hotel's guest Wi-Fi network is Courtyard_Conference.
That's Courtyard_Conference and the password
is RYERSON2017. I'm told all caps for
RYERSON2017.
I would like to acknowledge a very few special guests we have in the audience with us.
I mean you're all special, these are very special.
I'm delighted to welcome the Chang family, Donette Chin-Loy Chang, Andrew Chang, and Brigette Chang-Addorisio.
The Chang family has a long-standing
relationship with David
and the David Suzuki Foundation.
Donette and our school's late benefactor and namesake, Raymond Chang,
first met David when he received an honorary Doctorate from Ryerson University.
The Changs and David bonded over a mutual appreciation for
education and connecting students with
the environment.
Ray and Donette especially admired David's practical and critical vision of the
world and how humans exist within it.
Having grown up watching "The Nature of Things" --
Who hasn't? -- Brigette recalls being nervous upon first meeting David and his wife, Tara,
when they once came over for dinner. She envisioned that he would talk
a lot about technical science and
lobbying efforts, however, she was
surprised to find that he was very
approachable and accessible, and spoke
about fishing, traveling, and creating an
urban national park so all people would
have access to nature. The Chang family
and David share a mutual belief that a
better understanding of the world around
you makes you more likely to want to
preserve it. Thank you to the Chang
family for making this afternoon's event
possible. Now I would like to introduce
our esteemed speaker, who will be offering
his insights on how climate is changing.
Dr. Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster,
author, and co-founder of the David
Suzuki Foundation.
He is Companion to the Order of Canada
and a recipient of UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for Science,
the United Nations Environment Program Medal, the 2012 Inamori Ethics Prize,
the 2009 Right Livelihood Award, and
UNEP's Global 500.
He is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver,
and holds 29 honourary degrees from universities around the world including Ryerson.
Dr. Suzuki is familiar to television
audiences as host of the CBC science and
natural history television series "The
Nature of Things" and to radio audiences
as the original host of CBC Radio's
"Quirks and Quarks" as well as the
acclaimed series "It's a Matter of
Survival" and "From Naked Ape to Super Species."
In 1990 he co-founded the David
Suzuki Foundation with Dr. Tara Cullis
to collaborate with Canadians from all
walks of life, including government and
business, to conserve our environment and
find solutions that will create a
sustainable Canada through science-based research, education, and policy work.
His written work includes more than 55 books, 19 of them for children.
Dr. Suzuki lives with his wife and family in Vancouver, BC,
and just last week he inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.
Congratulations on this achievement, Dr.
Suzuki.
[Applause]
Thank you.
Thank you very much for that overgenerous introduction.
I'm delighted to be here today and to remember Ray,
who I came to know originally as someone who
might help us do some of our work, but I
came to admire him and I feel that it was a
privilege to know him as a friend. And
thank you for being a part of today's
meeting and arranging this.
I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the Chang Family.
Before I begin I'd like to remind you that we're meeting on the territory of
the Huron-Wendat First Nations and the Mississauga of New Credit First Nations.
Just to remind you that for thousands of years there were
people here who took care of the land
and we should remember that.
Also, ever since Mr. Harper became Prime Minister, I've had to preface my remarks by saying
I'm not here to speak on behalf of any
organization like the David Suzuki Foundation,
or any political party, like the Greens, or any corporation, or any
other group. I'm speaking today as an
individual, I speak to you as a scientist,
as a grandfather, and as an elder. I think
it's important for you to know why
I say those things. As a scientist I am
sufficiently aware of the scientific
literature to know that we're headed on a very dangerous path and that
the evidence is there. As a grandfather I know very well that the
world I knew as a child is no longer
here for my grandchildren, and there's
something wrong with that. When every
generation throughout time was working
towards making a better opportunity for each successive generation and
that bothers me a great deal. But as an
elder I believe that this is the most
important part of my life. You see, as an elder I don't have to play
games anymore. I'm not looking for a job
or a raise or a promotion.
I'm not after more fame or money or
power. So it frees me, then, to speak the
truth from my heart. And if it offends
people that's their problem, not mine.
It's a very important position to be in,
but I also believe that elders have
something no other group in society has.
We've lived an entire lifetime. We've
made mistakes, had a few successes I hope, and suffered failures. We've learned a
lot. Those are life lessons, and I think
it's my job and every elders job now to
sift through that lifetime of experience
to gain the nuggets of experience
that we must pass on to the coming
generations. So I always tell my
fellow elders, "Get the hell off the couch!
Don't watch so much television, except
'The Nature of Things.' Don't play
any more golf, get on with the most
important part of your life.' Looking
back now I feel at this stage of my life
a very strong sense of urgency, and the
urgency comes from having lived an
entire lifetime. I knew or I had heard of
global warming in the 1970s, but I
remember writing an article back then
that said we're going to have to deal
with this problem of global warming, but
it's a slow-motion catastrophe. I just
didn't think that we would have to be
worried about it as soon as it's come to
be a problem. I was more interested in
questions of clear-cut logging, of
degradation of the ocean, of toxic
pollution. Those were the
factors or the issues I was concerned
with throughout the 70s
and the 80s. I want to remind you that
in 1974, well, the end of '73, the Arab
OPEC oil embargo hit, and for those of
you that can remember that time, it was a
very frightening time as we realized how
dependent we were on the import of oil
and the lineups of the cars at the gas
pump, the price of a gasoline just shot
sky-high. Of course, in the United States
the way they did is they lined up and
started shooting each other to get at
the gas pumps. It was a very frightening
time and we as Canada set up a
commission under the guidance of Dr.
Ursula Franklin, one of Canada's distinguished scientists, to say: What do
we do to confront this whole energy
issue in the 1970s? In 1978, she finished
her study that came out as a document
called Canada as a Conserver Society.
And what she said is, We've got to be much
more careful with the resources that we
use. We've got to stop wasting so much, be
much more efficient in what we use, and
we should put an effort into renewable
energy to become a global leader in
renewable energy. In 1978! And what did we do? Countries like Denmark and Germany
took this the OPEC oil embargo very
seriously.
And they went into wind farms and
windmills, they went into solar energy.
Canada said, "Thank you, Dr. Franklin," put
the study on the shelf, and promptly
forgot it. In 1988, I went for the first
time to Australia, as a guest of the
Commission for the Future, which was a
new organization that the government had set up
to look at the impact of science and
technology and where the country was
heading into the future. And I met for the first time, I
met climatologists who showed me the
data they were getting. And for me that
was the first time I thought, Oh my
goodness, we've got to work on this
immediately we can't wait around. It was
by then becoming clear, the evidence was
in, and it was very serious. In 1988, in
fact, the issue of the environment had
reached its absolute pinnacle. A guy ran
for president of the United States in
1988 and said, "If you vote for me, I will
be an environmental president." Anyone
here want to guess who that was? Bush
Senior. George H.W. Bush. There wasn't a
green bone in his body! But he said it
because Americans had put the issue of
the environment at the top of the agenda.
In 1988, Brian Mulroney was reelected and to
show he cared about the environment, he
appointed his brightest political star
to be the Minister of the Environment.
Anyone remember who that was? That was
Lucien Bouchard. I interviewed Lucien Bouchard three months later, and I said, "Mr. Bouchard, what
do you think is the most important issue
Canadians confront?" and right away he
said, "Global warming." That was impressive.
I said, "How serious a problem is it?" and
these are his exact words: "It threatens
the survival of our species. We must act now."
1988. In 1988, Hare -- Dr. Hare -- What was his first name?  Ken Hare
called 300 climatologist to the
University of Toronto to a conference.
And at the end of the conference their
press release said, "The evidence is in.
Human beings are causing global warming
and this represents a threat to human
survival second only to nuclear war." And
they called for a 20 percent reduction in 15
years in greenhouse gas emissions. So there it was: the scientists said the evidence was
in, and they set a target for us to try
to achieve. Had we done that we would be
so far along the line now towards a
renewable future. Again, well, Brian
Mulroney then set up a committee to say,
Can it be done? Could we reduce our
energy use and our emissions by 20
percent in 15 years? And how much would
it cost? That committee report came back
and said, Yes. We could do it but it will
cost over 70 billion dollars. But we
would save a net 150
billion dollars in health costs, in the
wear and tear of buildings, and all of
that -- when you added it all up,
we would save tens of billions of
dollars. That report was never released.
the reason it wasn't released is that
Mr. Mulroney saw that and he understood
that he would have to take a beating for
saying we've got to spend 70 billion dollars now. And he wouldn't be
in office 15 years later to brag about
the great savings he had made for
Canadians. And this is a problem. The
political process demands that when you
are elected to office your highest
priority is getting re-elected, which
means whatever you do must pay off
before the next election. And an issue
like climate change had simply become
too great for any politician to stake
their career on a real a serious
commitment to reducing the energy use.
We then sailed in 1992 in preparation for a
major conference on the environment in
Rio, that would get the largest
gathering of scientists, of heads of
state, ever in human history. In
preparation for that,
this remarkable document was released.
It's called World Scientists' Warning to
Humanity. It was signed by more than 1,700 leaders, scientific leaders, including
over half of all Nobel Prize winners
alive at that time signed the document.
And let me just read a few lines from
this document -- 1992. "Human beings in 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
sustain life in the manner that we know.
Fundamental changes are urgent if we are
to avoid the collision our present
course will bring about." And then they go
on and list the areas of the collision:
the atmosphere, water resources, oceans,
soil, forests, species, and population. And
then the words grow even more bleak.
This is 1992. "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. A great change
in our stewardship of the earth and life
on it is required if vast human misery
is to be avoided and our global home on
this planet is not to be irretrievably
mutilated." And then they list the five
things that must be started immediately.
This is an amazing document. Scientists
as a rule don't sign or write such
powerful statements or calls to action.
It is very unusual and I'm sure many of you
know that this year on the 25th
anniversary of the publication of this document, 15,000 scientists have now signed a
second version of World Scientists'
Warning to Humanity, and all of the
issues that were raised in this document
are still here except they're worse.
In 1997 -- well, 1992, George Bush, this
great guy that cared about the
environment, said "I'm not going to the
Rio conference unless you water down the
target." Now in 1988, the target had been
20 percent reduction in 15 years. Now
climatologists were saying, Let's use
1990 as a baseline and George Bush said,
"You gotta water that target down,"
and so he got, "We will stabilize 1990
levels by the year 2000." And so he
reluctantly came. Americans were
humiliated to have him come and force
that change on the conference. We went
into 1997 with the Kyoto Conference and
there, thanks to Al Gore, a deal was
brokered at the last minute where the
industrialized nations all said, "We
caused the problem. It wasn't China or India or any of the
African countries. It was us in the
industrialized world. We created the
problem it's our responsibility to cap
and then reduce our emissions." So by the
year 2010 then our emissions would be
down five to six percent below 1990
levels. And then we can ask India and
China and all the other countries to
come into a global agreement. As soon as
Kyoto was over, Alberta and the oil
industries were saying, "That's not fair.
How come we have to do this and
India and China don't have to?" They
didn't create the problem! We were the
ones that created it and then Canadians
started saying, "Yeah, but were only 2 percent of
global emissions." Yeah, but we're only 0.4 percent of global population.
We can already producing a disproportionate amount.
People kept saying, "Well it's not fair,
and we're just a tiny player." And I kept
saying, "Look: we're one of the richest
countries in the world,
we're telling India and China don't do
what we've already done?
Why should they pay any attention to us
if we don't demonstrate that we're doing
that first? We've got to be the model so
that we have credibility in
asking the rest of the world to reduce
their emissions." 2001, Jean Chrétien
ratified Kyoto on behalf of Canada. And
we're very proud at our foundation of a
letter he wrote to us after he ratified
thanking us for the work we had done
that made his job easier to actually
ratify and commit Canada to the Kyoto
target. Unfortunately, neither he nor Paul
Martin, when he became Prime Minister,
they understood the challenge that
Canada made a commitment and then they
did nothing serious about meeting that
commitment. And as you know when Mr.
Harper was elected, then he really began...
I mean I don't think he ever let the
words "climate change" leave his lips. He
just didn't want... He carried out a pogrom
against environmentalists and anybody
saying that we had to do something about
climate change. Anyway, I won't tell you the stories about what
what he did. He was a very, very small man
but he had a vision and I've said over
and over again, I believe that he should
be in jail. Because what he did was
called willful blindness. He deliberately
avoided a discussion about an issue that
probably affects Canadians more than
any other industrialized nation. Canada's
a northern country. Inuit have been
telling us for 40 years that it's
warming up. They can see the changes that are going on. We know that Canada has the
longest marine coastline of any country
in the world.
Sea-level rise from first the warming of
the oceans that you get thermal
expansion and then when the great ice
sheets of Antarctica and
Greenland fall into the oceans, we're
going to get sea-level rise in metres.
And then you think of all of the climate-related activities like agriculture,
forestry, fisheries, tourism, winter sports.
They're all going to be hammered by
climate change, and to have a prime
minister for nine and a half years not
dealing with the issue, trying to clamp
down, so that Canadians don't know about
what the issues are, I believe was
criminal. Especially it's an
intergenerational crime because what
we've done is left the problems to
future generations, and that's simply not
right. Then, as you know, Mr. Harper,
first he modified the baseline. We
always used to say 1990 levels, we've got
to reduce below the 1990 levels, Harper
then said, "No, 2005 is our baseline." So he
allowed 15 years of continued greenhouse
gas emissions and then said, "We're going
to take everything relative to 2005 and
we're going to try to reduce emissions."
He then, as you all know, pulled Canada
out of the Kyoto agreement. The only
country that signed Kyoto to pull out of
the treaty. What kind of a country
are we that we sign international
agreements and then don't feel bound to
meet those agreements, and ultimately
simply pull out? In 2015, of course, the
sun came out. Who could have believed that Justin Trudeau
would become Prime Minister I felt he
was still a bit green, he needed another
another term to just learn the ropes.
But no, this young guy got in and I
like to think that it's because many of
us voted strategically. I voted Liberal
for the first time in my life, just
because I did not want Mr. Harper to get
back in. And he performed magnificently
when he got in, Mr. Trudeau. The first
thing: I have four daughters, and for him
to say gender equity in cabinet was to
me a huge, huge decision, and I was so
proud of him for doing that. And then he
went straight, in two months he went
straight to Paris. You know, this young
Prime Minister went to Paris, not only
declared that Canada was back and signed
the Paris agreement with a flourish he
said, "We aspire to keeping temperatures
rising much above 1.5 degrees."
The Paris target says 2. He said, "We
prefer to be closer to 1.5." And boy
oh boy, did we pound our chests and I
wrote article after article saying how
great this was. But the easiest thing in
the world is saying things. The hard
thing is doing things that live up to
our promises. And I am afraid that Mr.
Trudeau gets a big fat 'F' for his
performance in terms of the actual
commitments we've now made. At the same
time, I just wanted to
give you a brief history to show you
what's happened to this. We've known
about climate change now for over 30
years as a serious issue we've got to
deal with. And look at what we have done.
Our emissions have continued to climb
steadily and we haven't made
the big steps, taken the big decisions, to
show that we're getting off the
trajectory we're on. And what has happened.
Now scientists are debating. We are living in a period called the Anthropocene
epoch. You know the geological ages of the earth are written in different, by
different big events, and you have the
Eocene, and the Miocene, and the Holocene.
They're all marked by triggering events.
We now, and the scientists are debating:
when did they Anthropocene epoch start?
And it sounds like it's between
1945 and 1950 that this is going to be
the beginning of what they call "The
Age of Human Beings, when we have become the major force altering, shaping the
chemical, physical, and biological
properties of the planet on a geological
scale. This is that moment. The problem is:
we have become very powerful but we
don't know enough to be able to use the
power we've acquired in a way that is
truly sustainable. We have no idea how to
do that, and in the process of living as
we do, we are undermining the very things
that keep us alive. How on earth did we
get to this point where we -- one species --
have become such a powerful force? There
has there has never been a single species
able to alter the properties of the
planet as we are doing today.
Never. So you know, I was interested that
in this lecture series you've had
historians coming. How does history help
us when we have an absolutely
unprecedented, unique event happen?
I don't know how much history can guide us except tell us, maybe, about our inability
to meet events of this magnitude. How did
we get to this point of being the
dominant creature? So as a geneticist
I've been very, very intrigued with the
way that scientists can now use DNA, the
genetic material, and track the
movement of human beings across the
planet over time. The very tricky way of
using the DNA and it's very exciting
intellectually. All of the trails lead
back to Africa, 150,000 years ago. That was our
birthplace. And I keep waiting for the Ku
Klux Klan to invite me to give a lecture.
So I can tell them, "We're all Africans
for god's sake, what's your problem?!"
That was our birthplace, and if we try to
imagine what Africa must have looked
like 150,000 years ago, it was filled with animals in
abundance and diversity beyond anything
that you would see today in the
Serengeti. It was a magnificent,
magnificent continent. And human beings
popped up in just little clumps of four
or five or six of these funny-looking,
two-legged, furless apes, and that was us.
Now, I'm absolutely sure none of the
other animals on the plains of Africa
trembled when they saw us, and said to
their kids, "Shh, shh, don't piss them off, they're gonna take over the planet!" We were a
very unimpressive animal. We weren't --
there weren't many of us, we weren't very
big, we weren't fast, we weren't strong, we
didn't have special sensory ability, and
I keep trying to imagine swinging
through the trees without glasses. Man oh
man, I'd be dead in no time. We were not a
very impressive animal, but we did have
one thing going for us that was hidden.
It was a two kilogram organ buried deep
in our skulls: the human brain. That was
our advantage, and boy, what an amazing
thing that was. That brain conferred the
massive memory capacity. No other animal
has a memory capacity of a human brain.
We were curious. We were observant. And we
remembered. We were creative, we were
inventive, we learned by trial and error.
that was a huge, huge leg up for us as a
species, and that brain did something no
other species has ever done: it invented an idea or a
concept called the future. The future doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is now
and what we remember from the past. But
because we invented the notion of a
future, we're the only animal that
realized we can affect the future by
what we do now. Based on our knowledge
and our experiences, we could see or
project into the future where the
dangers lie and where there are
opportunities, and we could deliberately
now choose a path to avoid dangers and
exploit opportunities.
I believe foresight was the great gift
that the brain conferred on us that gave
us a big advantage. You know,
you think about it was very,
very simple, you're walking down a path
and you come to a branch in the past
and you go, "Oh god, I remember I went to
the right and I ran into a sabre-toothed
tiger, damn near killed me. But I went off
to the left of it two years ago and I
found something good to smoke. So I'm
going left." There was that kind of thing,
right? It's not anything profound, but
based on what you know, you made choices. And that brought us to the point we're
at now. You know, I'm not a Christian, but
I know in the Bible, that the importance
of foresight is right there in the
stories. Remember Joseph who got sold to
the Egyptians by his jealous siblings,
and he had this ability to read
dreams. And the Pharaoh came to trust him and told him about his dreams and Joseph
said, "We're heading for a famine,
you better start setting aside grain."
And sure enough the famine came and they survived seven years of famine because
of their foresight that Joseph had. And
you know, Noah the same thing, I mean
Noah's just a carpenter and this voice
comes and says, "Build an ark," and he's
going, "But I'm just a carpenter!" "Build an
ark!" "But my neighbors will laugh at me!"
"Build an ark and put plants and animals
in it because there's a flood coming!" And
he and his family survived. So
those
parables of stories in books like the
Bible just reinforce the importance of
foresight, of looking ahead. And so now
we've come to where we are the dominant
animal on the planet, and we have all of
the advanced ability to look ahead.
We call them scientists. We call them
supercomputers. And with that ability
we've had scientists like the ones I
just read in the World Scientists'
Warning to Humanity that have been
telling us for decades
we are heading along a very dangerous
path. And we have to change directions if
we are to avoid anything really
catastrophic. And now we are turning our
backs on the very survival strategy that
got us to this point. And it's what is
blocking us from using our foresight and
acting on it is politics and economics.
They are the major factors. We
had it in spades with Mr. Harper over
and over again he said, "We can't do
anything about greenhouse gas emissions,
it'll destroy the economy." And so, first
of all, it wasn't true and you know this
is a thing that really pisses me off
about Harper, is that he's claims his big
thing is economics, and yet he never
mentioned this. Sweden imposed a carbon
tax in the 1990s of $130 a ton. Mr. Trudeau is finally
putting one on at $30 a ton starting.
Sweden had one at $130
a ton and they increased that
to $160 in 2008, and now it's upper, I
think it may be close to $200 a ton. And
during the time of that first tax period
their economy grew by 40 percent. So this
business of Mr. Harper is this great
manager of the economy and saying that
you can't impose a tax, it'll
destroy the economy --  he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
And besides which, what he's doing by
saying that, is saying that the economy
has become more important than the very
atmosphere that gives us air, that let's,
that has gives us the weather and
climate and the seasons. That, it seems to
me, is nuts. To elevate the economy above
that. So I believe that what's happened
then through that history I've just
recounted of the warnings starting and
getting more stronger starting in the
late 80s, we we were told and knew that
the science was in, and look at what's
happened during all that time ending up
in the United States, the most powerful
country in the world, electing a man who
is absolutely nuts. Who calls climate
change a hoax. Every single one of the
Republican candidates for that office
was a climate denier. Now we look down
there and go, "Oh, those bloody Americans, they're so stupid." Just to remind you: Mr. Harper
was our prime minister and never talked
about climate change, and how many people
ran to replace Mr. Harper? Thirteen? Every one but one -- what was his name? Michael
Chan? Chang? Chong. Michael Chong. Every one of the others,
including Mr. Scheer, who is now the
leader of the Conservatives, was a
climate denier. So I don't think we
can look down in the States and think,
"Oh, you know, all those poor Americans..." We know what it's like to live with that.
What I believe is we have a very short
window, an article came out in
Nature, one of the prominent scientific
journals, Nature Climate Change, that said
we are on a trajectory at the current
levels of increase to reach a four degrees
rise by 2100. Now, I personally think a 2-degree
rise by 2100 is... we can't imagine what
the impact will be. But we're on a
trajectory for a 4-degree rise by
2100. They say in this article there's a
5 percent chance of keeping it to 2 degrees by the end of this century. I was shocked
that we even have a 5 percent chance, but what that says is there's this very short
window where we can actually do
something to try to keep temperature
rising above 2 degrees. We have a 10 percent chance -- that's twice as much chance -- of
reaching 6 degrees this century. Six, to me,
4 to 6 degrees, I cannot imagine human
beings could survive a change that great.
So we are on a trajectory right now in
which there's a much greater chance of 6
degrees than 2 degrees, where we could
very well become extinct as a species. And the opportunity to do something
has just become very, very short. We can't
fool around anymore. You know, we've
been told for years: "Look, you're all
consumers, it's up to you. What you buy,
what you ride, you know, turn out the
lights and put in LEDs and get an
electric car and yes, it's up to you."
Bullshit! Yes, we all have a role to play,
but there are some big decisions that
have to be made right now. And one is:
we've got to get off fossil fuels, and
that means no more pipelines, no
more dams like the one at Site C on
the Peace because that Valley has to be
the breadbasket of the North. We can't
tolerate a food chain in which food is
grown 4,000 miles from where it's eaten.
All of that is dependent on fossil
fuels to get food to where it's going to
be consumed. The Peace Valley should be
the breadbasket of the North. We have to
eat much more locally and much more
seasonally. We, when I was a boy and I
wanted to to have fruit or vegetables in
the winter, my mom said, "Go to the canned
goods section." Now, our kids want fresh
raspberries and strawberries and
tomatoes. Where the hell do we grow that
in Canada in the middle of winter? But we
can't go on living that way. There have
to be some big changes that are made, and
they're not being made. And so I believe
that we need to have a government that
intends to live up to what its promises
were, and I've said out to the public,
Trudeau is a liar. Trudeau is a liar
because he told us before he was elected that he
was going to change the electoral system.
That we would never have a
first-past-the-post election. Once he was
elected, he again said several times, "This
is the last election of the
first-past-the-post system." And then he
withdrew from that. Now I personally, my
mother and father were born and raised
in Canada. They couldn't vote until 1948
because they were still considered
hyphenated Canadians. Japanese-Canadians. Indigenous people couldn't vote until
1960. The original peoples of this
country. I've taken the right to vote
very, very seriously and have voted in
every single election, and until the last
election I never voted for a party that
won power. So my vote
for all of those years has basically
been wasted because we have a
first-past-the-post system. So when
Trudeau ran promising, I even voted
Liberal for heaven's sakes, but it was
more to keep Harper out than to get
Justin in. But I took that promise very,
very seriously. And he lied to us. He said
he was going to do it and he didn't. So what does that mean, then?
We need big decisions to be made at the
government level, and right now, corporate
governments run on what is basically a
corporate agenda, on the assumption that
what's good for corporations is good for
us. And we know now that Exxon, for
example, has known for over 30 years
through its own scientists that burning
fossil fuels is creating climate change.
And yet, for all of that time, Exxon, their
PR campaign has been to say this is junk
science, this isn't true, it's a part of a
natural process. Corporations exist for
one reason and one reason only: to make
money. And that's fair enough.
But don't then think that corporations
are going to do something different
because they care about people or they
care about First Nations communities.
Nonsense.
Their concern is to make money. And to
counter that, we elect people to office
so that our concerns can be expressed by
the people that we elect to office. So
right now, what is the big challenge we
confront? Get involved in the democratic
process. When 40 or 50 percent of us
aren't voting, we don't have a democracy
anymore. And I believe we've got to all,
if we care about our children and
grandchildren, we have to be the warriors
on behalf of the coming generations, and
any time there's a politician in our in
our reach, reach out and tell them what
we care about, and ask them, "What are you going to do about protecting a future
for my children?" We've got to put it back
on the agenda, and the only way we can do
that is, I believe, by grassroots
mobilization and campaigning through the
democratic process. That's the end of my speech. Now I just want
to tell you a few stories before I end
and turn over to some questions. At my
old age that's what I seem to have become: a storyteller. And the first story was
when I was contacted by the Nlaka'pamux people in Lytton, British
Columbia in the 1980s, and they said,
Would I help them prevent logging in
their sacred valley, called the Stein
Valley. And I said, well, I'll consider it
but first I want to go camping and see
what what I'm going to be fighting for.
So I took my family camping in the Stein
Valley for a week, and it is a
magnificent, absolutely magnificent
valley. But the BC government had given
Fletcher Challenge, a New Zealand forest
company, a permit to log the Stein Valley.
So what the Nlaka'pamux people
wanted to do is start a campaign to
prevent logging in the valley. So we
were coming out of the valley and, you
know, after seven days you smell like
smoke and all kinds of other stuff, you're
pretty grubby, but at the trail's head we
met this huge party of people, and they
were obviously not going camping. The women were dressed in high heels and
skirts and the men were dressed in suits
and ties. But when you're on a trail, you
immediately stop and you chitchat and "Oh
yeah, what are you doing," and very quickly
I realized -- My god, one of these guys is
CEO of Fletcher Challenge, the company that's
gonna log the valley. And very quickly he
realized, "Oh my god, this is that shit
disturber David Suzuki." So needless to
say, within a few minutes what began as
"Oh hello, how are you?" escalated until we were shouting at each
other and finally in frustration he said,
"Listen, Suzuki, are treehuggers like you
willing to pay for those trees? Because
if you're not willing to pay for them,
they don't have any value until someone
cuts them down." And that was an epiphany
for me. I went, "Oh my god, he's absolutely
right." In our system, the fact that the
Nlaka'pamux people regard that valley
as sacred has absolutely no basis in the
economy. Who cares whether it's sacred?
And that was borne out recently, last
week, by the Supreme Court of Canada. You know, there was an indigenous group in
Southeastern British Columbia
that applied to stop a skiing
development in their mountains
because to them, grizzly bears are sacred.
They're venerated, and they didn't want
their habitat threatened. And the Supreme
Court said, "No that's about your belief,
that's got nothing to do with the law."
And they rejected their suit. Where is a
place for the sacred in our society?
Then, the reason I was fighting for that
valley is that all of the trees and the
green things in the valley are taking
carbon out of the air and putting oxygen
back in it. Not a bad thing for an animal
like us. If all the plants in the world
weren't doing that, we wouldn't be here.
And yet when you say to the forestry
company, "Listen: when you cut down those trees, what about the photosynthesis
that's lost?" And their answer is, "That's
an externality. That's got nothing to do...
we're talking economics." The economy
regards that as something irrelevant to
the economic system. That forest is
lifting millions of gallons of water out
of the soil, transpiring it into the air,
and modulating weather and climate.
It's an externality. The trees cling to
the soil so when it rains, the soil
doesn't run into the salmon spawning
grounds -- that's an externality. That
forest, as long as it's intact, is habitat
for countless species of fungi and
bacteria and insects and birds and
mammals.
None of that registers in the economic
system. So arguing with the CEO of the
forest company, I'm having to run around
going, "Well, OK, you can talk about the
number of board feet of timber and
and cubic metres of pulp and jobs and
profit, well, you could pick berries, we
can sell the berries. And what about
salal bushes? We can put them in flower
arrangements, and  maybe we'll discover a cure
for cancer." You see, the system is rigged.
If we have to argue in economic
terms, we're going to lose every time because the reason we're fighting for those
things doesn't register in the economic
system.
I'd like to reinforce that idea by
telling you that I've lived in the same
house in Vancouver for 45 years.
And it's a wonderful part of Vancouver,
and I believe very much that one of the
key things about finding a place and
living sustainably is to stay put. You
put your roots down and you stay and
fight for the place that you're staying in.
So I've stayed put in the same house for
45 years. And we live right on
the ocean in great downtown Vancouver.
In the 1990s, Hong Kong was going to revert back to China, and there was a lot of
money in Hong Kong scared shitless about
what's gonna happen when China takes
over? So I got a letter in the mail from
a real estate agent saying offshore
money is pouring into Vancouver. Now is a
good time to sell your property and buy
up. I'd never even heard the notion of
buying up, but apparently what you do is
you buy a small home which is a starter
home, or house, and then you
sell that and get a bigger house, and
that's buying up. That's what you're
supposed to do. And that made me very
angry, because I thought, That's
crazy. And so I thought, OK, if I was
going to sell my home, what would I put
down that would make it valuable or
worthwhile? And the first thing I wrote
down was that when I was married, I fell
in love with my wife's mother and dad,
and I invited them, when he retired, to
come and live with us. And I never
imagined they would live as long as they
did. Thirty-five years later.
But I put that down because my children
have known Grandma and Granddad upstairs
their entire lives. And that, to me, was
priceless.
My father was a kitchen cabinet maker,
and when Tara and I were first married, he
built a kitchen cabinet for our
apartment. And when I bought this house, I
ripped the cabinet out and put it in the
new house. Looks like hell, it doesn't
belong, but every time I open the door to
that cupboard, I think of my father. And I
put that down. And even in Vancouver,
there's roadkill. Over the years my
daughters have dragged in dead snakes
and birds and squirrels, and they have an
animal cemetery under the dogwood tree,
and I put that down. My father-in-law was
an avid gardener, I went down to the
States for a month on a tour and came
back exhausted, and the first person I
met was my father-in-law and he said,
"David, you know the asparagus I planted
is for you, and so I saved the first crop
that came up until you got home, and here
it is." And I put that down as making
my house my home. My best friend came out from Toronto and spent a week with us.
I was building a new fence along the water,
and he spent three days carving a handle
to put on that gate. He's a lousy
carpenter, but I put it on and I when
I changed the gate I put his
handle there. Because every time I open
the gate, I think of my best friend. And I
put that down. And when my mother died
in 1984, I took Mom's ashes and put
them on a clematis plant that grows
along the fence. And then my niece Janice
died very unexpectedly, and we put
Janice's ashes on there, and every spring
when the flowers bloom, I know that my
mother and my niece are there with me.
And so I've made that list of what makes
my place my home. And to me those are
priceless but on the market they're
worthless. And this is the thing that really, we
don't put the values on things the way
they should be. The things that really
matter and I've only lived in my house
for 45 years.
I think of indigenous people around the
world who've lived in place for
thousands of years, where rocks and trees
and mountains and boulders and
streams are sacred. You think of what a
radically different way those things are
to them. And yet, in our economic system,
they don't register. Let me tell you two
more stories then I'll quit. My great
hero, my inspiration, was my father. And in
1984, he was dying --
sorry, 1994 -- he was dying and I moved in
to care for him the last month of his
life. And I'm so grateful he wasn't in
pain, he knew he was dying, he wasn't
afraid, and that was one of the happiest
periods I ever spent with my father. He
kept saying over and over again, "David, I
die a rich man." And I could never
understand that -- he didn't have a penny
to his name. Tara and I had been
supporting him for many, many years, but
we laughed and we cried and he never
once said, "Do you remember that closet
full of fancy clothes?" He never said, "You remember that big car
I bought in 1990?" or the house we
owned in London, Ontario. That's just
stuff. All he talked about with me was
family and friends and neighbours and the
things we did together. To my father, that
was his wealth and indeed he was a very
rich man. And I thought about that, that
at the end of his life, my father's pride
and joy, what filled him with happiness
was the things he did with other people.
And we've kind of got off on this weird
idea that stuff, that money and what it
can buy, is what is the most important
thing in life.
And I can tell you it's not. By the way,
is that Don Keeshawn over there? No it's
not? OK, looks like, no, the guy looking
around. You look identical to a student of
mine 40 years ago. And the last story
I want to tell you is, as you may know, I
am and the David Suzuki Foundation have been
fighting the Alberta Tar Sands for many
years. We believe that it should be shut
down. This is a crazy way to get our
energy. And four years ago I got a call
from a man who said -- he identified
himself -- he was the CEO of one of the
largest companies in the Alberta Tar
Sands. "Could I come and talk to you?" I
said, "Of course!" I said, "I'm not into
fighting. Yes, I'd be happy to see you." And
he showed up the next day, and I thanked
him profusely and said how honoured I
was and blah blah blah and I said, "Look,
before you come into my office, please, I
want you to do me one favour. I want you
to leave your identity as a CEO of an
oil company outside the door. I want to
meet you man-to-man, human being to
human being, because quite frankly, Mr. CEO," I said, "I
don't see the point of talking about the
tar sands or energy policy or any of
that, until you and I first sit down and
agree. Agree on what life is about, what
matters most, and then we can build up
there. But if we don't have that
agreement, what the hell, we're just all
over the map." Now, I could see from his
body language, he was not happy with this
idea. But to his credit, he came in the
door and sat down. And I said, "Thank you
for doing that." I said, "I know that this
is not what you expected, so let me
explain
what I'm I'm going to present." I said, "We
live in a world that is created,
that is constrained by laws of nature.
There's nothing we can do about it. Those
laws apply and we can't do anything
beyond those laws. In physics,
we know through physics, you can't build a
rocket that will travel faster than the
speed of light. We know the law of
gravity. It says if I trip on that stair
I'm gonna hit my head in the floor. We
know the first and second laws of
thermodynamics tell us you can't build a
perpetual motion machine. Those are
dictated to us by physics and we live
within those constraints. We understand
that. In chemistry, it's the same. The
atomic properties of the elements
determines their freezing points, their
melting points, their boiling points. The
reaction rates, the diffusion constants,
those are all determined by the
properties of the atoms, and chemists
know what they can or cannot put
together and the kind of molecules they
can synthesize. That's dictated by the
laws of chemistry. And we have to live
with that. And in biology it's the same.
Every species of plant and animal has a
maximum number that can be sustained
indefinitely. Exceed that number, your
population will crash. That number is set
by what is called the carrying capacity
of an ecosystem or a habitat. That's just
a simple law of biology. Now, people say,
"Well, but we're not like other
species. We're smart, we adapt to
different habitats or ecosystems." And
it's true, we're not bound by
ecosystems or habitats. But our home is
still the biosphere, that's that zone of
air water and life, where all water and
air, where all life exists. That's our
habitat: the biosphere. And the late Carl
Sagan used to tell us, if you reduce the
earth to the size of a basketball, the
biosphere where all living things exist,
would be thinner than a layer of saran
wrap. And that's it. That's our habitat
and that has a carrying capacity for
human beings. The number of humans
that can be carried indefinitely depends
on our number and our per capita
consumption. So you have to factor those
two things in to tell what can be
sustained indefinitely.
And all indications show
clearly we are far beyond the carrying
capacity of the biosphere, and,
you know, even if we compensate and if we
all lived the way people live in
Bangladesh or Somalia, we are still
overpopulated. We're the most numerous
mammal that's ever been on this planet.
Seven billion of us. And when I say this,
politicians and businesspeople get very
angry at me. You know, "How dare you say
will pass the carrying capacity of the
planet? Look at our stars they're filled with
stuff. Look at our people, we're living
longer, there's never been as many people."
Yeah. We're maintaining the notion that
everything is fine by using up the
rightful legacy of our children and
grandchildren. Talk to any elder in this
room: What was it like in the world when
you were a child? And every one of them
will say: it used to be so different.
There used to be birds that would darken
the sky for hours on end.
Rivers used to be jammed with fish at
certain times of the year. Birds would
fly over and a migration would be in numbers
you can't even imagine today. All over
the world our elders tell us, they
inform us that we're living in a way
that is using up what rightfully should
be passed on from generation to
generation. So I said to the the CEO, "You
and I forget that we are animals." I never
realized how controversial that idea
is. In the 1990s I was asked to speak at
the first annual meeting of Green
Builders in Austin, Texas. Three thousand people.
Hundreds of children sitting at the
front of the room and I said, "Now kids, if
you remember one thing from my speech,
remember we are animals." My god did their
parents get angry at me. This woman came
up, "Don't you call my daughter an animal!
We're human beings!" I said, "Madam, I'm really sorry. If your daughter isn't an animal
she must be a plant." Because we're
either animals or plants. And I said, "Mr.
CEO, as an animal, what is the most
important thing every human being needs?"
And instead of giving an answer as every
one of you would, he went, "Oh well," and I
could see use of thinking a job, money... I
said, "Mr. CEO, if you don't have air for
three minutes you're dead. If you have to
breathe polluted air you're sick. So I'm
asking you: "Would you not agree with me,
air is sacred and that clean air should
be a responsibility every one of us has
as a living organism to protect clean
air?" And then I said, "You and I, we're 60
to 70 percent water by weight. We're basically a
big blob of water with enough thickener
added we don't dribble away on the floor."
But, you know, we do dribble
away comes out of our skin and our eyes
and our mouth and our crotch, and we lose
water all the time. I said, "Mr. CEO, if you
don't have water for four to six days,
you're dead. If you have to drink
polluted water you're sick. So isn't
clean water then sacred, and our sacred
responsibility is to protect clean water
at all costs above anything else and
then food is a little different you and
I could last quite a bit longer. Four to
six weeks without food, and we'll die. If
we have to eat contaminated food, we'll
sicken, and most of our food still does
come from the soil, so can we not say
clean food and soil joins clean water
and clean air and all of the energy in
our bodies that we need to do work to
grow to reproduce all of that energy is
sunlight. Sunlight captured by plants in
photosynthesis converted into chemical
energy, we get that by eating plants or
eating animals that eat the plants. And we
store that energy in our bodies. And when
we need to work or
move, we burn those molecules of energy
and release the sun's energy back out
into our bodies. And all of the fuels
that we burn: coal, oil, gas, dung, peat, wood.
All of that is sunlight. We release
sunlight when we burn them, so
photosynthesis, then, should be up there
with the clean soil and food, clean water
and clean air. Those four elements are
what indigenous people call the Four
Sacred Elements. Earth, air, fire, and water."
And I said, "Mr. CEO, the miracle to me of
our lives on this planet is that those
four elements, those life-giving elements,
are cleansed, replenished, renewed, created by the web of living things. All of the
energy, as I say, is created by or
captured by photosynthesis in plants. In
Vancouver, we get our water from three
watersheds surrounded by old-growth
rainforest. When it rains, the tree roots
and soil, fungi, and bacteria filter the
water and you can drink it right
straight away. Life filters the water and
makes it potable for an animal like us.
And all of the the atmosphere of course
before plants, there was no oxygen in the
air. Plants create the atmosphere we
depend on and every bit of our food was
once alive and as I say most was grown
in the soil and as you know without life
you can't have soil. That's why when Matt
Damon was was stranded on Mars in the
movie "The Martian," you remember, there's
lots of dust and sand and clay. There is
no soil. Because soil is created by life.
In order for him to grow his potatoes on
Mars, he had to dig a hole and then put
poop in it, and then add his potatoes.
Life creates the very soil
on which we grow our food. And I said, "Mr.
CEO, I believe those are the foundation
for all human beings: clean air, clean
water, clean soil, and food. Clean energy
and diversity of living things." I said,
"Other things, the lines we draw around
our property are our cities, our
provinces, our countries,
nature couldn't care less about those
boundaries. They don't mean anything. We
go to war. We will kill and die to
protect those boundaries. Nature doesn't
care." I always go to Alberta and say, "Look,
you want to dig up the tar sands, you go
ahead. Burn it, you want to do that, fine.
As long as whatever you do stays in
Alberta, go ahead." Well of course, it
doesn't work that way because it's one
system around the world.
So borders, boundaries don't mean
anything in this conversation. And other
things. Capitalism, the economy, the market,
corporations, these are not forces of
nature, we invented them.
300 years ago people believed in dragons
and demons and monsters and we took them
very, very seriously. I mean if we thought
dragons were coming, man, we'd give them
gold or jewels or sacrifice virgins. We'd
do anything to placate that, well, now we
know that, you know, dragons were
just a figment of our imagination but
then we go and replace it with another
figment of our imagination called the
economy or the market. This is not, you
know, I was trying to -- Oh god, I keep
forgetting his name -- who's the conservative in Alberta?
Preston Manning. Preston and I get along very well.
He's a real conservative. But anyway,
we're chatting away and then I said, "Well
the market..." and the minute I said "the
market," his eyes went, "The market! Hallelujah! Praise the market!
Free the market! Let the market do its..." What the hell? The market's a human invention. It's like a dragon for god's sake.
And we're going to sacrifice everything for the sake of the market. The only thing we can change
are the things we've created. We can't
manage the world, we don't know enough.
But we can manage ourselves. So I said,
"Mr. CEO, if you would agree with
everything I've said now, if you will
shake hands with me, I will do everything
I can to help you and your company." And
what do you think he did? He couldn't
possibly shake hands with me. He
was a good man, you know, I know that he
went to church every Sunday, he loves
camping, takes his kids camping on
weekends. But he's locked into a system.
If he were to go back to his
shareholders and say, "I had a discussion
with Suzuki and he's right. Whatever our
business does, we can't mess with the air,
water, or soil, he'd get fired so fast
because that's not his job. And so I
believe the great challenge we face now
is to cut that link between corporate
agendas and government agendas. They
should be very, very different. Corporations don't care about the planet.
We know that from the behavior of Exxon,
which has known for decades that burning
fossil fuels is causing climate change.
And yet all of their PR has said this is
junk science, it's a natural cycle, that
isn't real and so on. So that is a
challenge and I believe that, you know,
people are all into "What can I do? What
can I do?" Retake democracy and we've got to really
set the priority of the people we elect to
office at every level on what the real
things are about protecting a future for
our children and grandchildren.
Thank you very much.
