Dressed in a black open-collared shirt and black pants, David Suzuki looks, at 78, as vital as ever. Sitting in the Toronto office of the foundation he co-founded 24 years ago, (he left a few years ago so his political commentary wouldn’t land the non-profit in hot water with federal charity laws), Suzuki says he’s through with fighting. But charcoal eyes ablaze, there’s no denying there’s plenty of fire left in him.
Suzuki has taken to the road one final time, on the Blue Dot Tour, in an effort to convince Canadians of the need to enshrine the right to a healthy environment in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The award-winning scientist, broadcaster and activist, who sat down with NOW before his October 3 Toronto stop on his tour at Massey Hall, calls this the most important thing he’s ever done.
After decades leading the environmental movement, you’ve said you and others in it have failed. Why?
“What we celebrated as successes back in the 1970s and 1980s – stopping oil tanker traffic down the west coast of B.C., stopping [the building of hydro-electric] dams – we’re fighting the same battles 30 years later. So the failure was in [not] shifting the paradigm. We saved this forest from clear cutting but we didn’t explain to people why that was important. I don’t want to fight anymore because when you fight there’s a winner and loser. We’ve got to meet people and work out what we agree on.”
So what can we agree on?
“I had a guy call me from Fort McMurray, the CEO of a huge oil company in the tar sands. I said, ‘Look I’m really honoured that you’d come and talk to me but I’m asking you before you come in the door if you can leave your profession outside. I want to meet you human to human. I want to talk to you about what we can agree are basic human needs.’ I said, ‘What is the most important thing every human being needs?’ He didn’t know. I said, ‘If you don’t have air for three minutes you die. If you have to breath in contaminated air you’re sick so could you agree with me that the absolute highest priority we have is clear air?’ If we can’t start at the basics, then I’m not interested.”
What’s the paradigm shift that needs to happen?
“It’s getting rid of all the overloaded garbage of the economy. I’ve been told over and over again that the economy is the bottom line. ‘Be realistic Suzuki.’ Until very recently people knew nature was the source of our happiness and our wealth. The huge shift from being a farming animal to being big city dwellers is what signaled the change. When you come into the city, what is your highest priority? It’s your job. So we lose all contact with nature.”
How do we fix that?
“Getting kids outside. The foundation have the 30×30 Challenge [a campaign to get Canadians to spend 30 minutes in nature every day for 30 days every spring]. When they first came to me [with the idea], I said, ‘What the hell are you talking about? It should be two hours!’ I signed up and god damn if I didn’t miss three days. I found that in order to meet the challenge I have to actually schedule nature in. What kind of a fucked up world is that? When I see everyone with their head in their phone [and] you’ve got the world at your fingertips, you don’t need to go outside. You want to see whales? Hell, I can see a great video of whales. You don’t need nature.”
But it creates a fundamental rift in our psyche.
“Well, the thing I don’t understand is you have a guy like [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper who is a childhood asthmatic. I would have thought anybody with asthma would understand what you put into the air has consequences. Years ago I wanted to do a show on asthma. We went to Toronto General on a smog alert day, I couldn’t believe the old people and kids literally gasping for air, being brought in by people who were scared shitless that they couldn’t get to the hospital in time and they drove up in a sports utility vehicle. Then you realize, ‘Holy cow, do we live in a fragmented world.’ We don’t see the causal connections in our lives and the consequences. The funny thing is all of our polling says 90 per cent of Canadians say nature is important to our identity. If you say, what do you think of the idea of enshrining the right to a healthy environment, 85 per cent say ‘Of course.’ So even though we have become so disconnected people understand in some way, ‘Yeah, [we need] a healthy environment.'”
How will enshrining the right to a healthy environment into the Charter change things?
“Right now if you want to build a pipeline you come in with a proposal and say it offers this many jobs and this much income for the coming years, then environmentalist have to prove it’s a danger. All the burden of proof is on environmentalists. What this does is guarantee the right to a healthy environment. You want to build that pipeline you have to prove that this is not going to harm air, water, soil, biodiversity. It starts from the fundamental premise that air, water, soil, are the critical things. It changes the whole game.”
Would putting environmental rights in the charter necessarily create the economic shift you are talking about?
“I’m hoping there’s going to be a big help to us and that’s another [economic] meltdown like 2008. Can you imagine, we gave General Motors [and banks] hundreds of billions of dollars and we didn’t ask for anything in return? We need that kind of a crisis to be our opportunity. And there’s just no question capitalism has got to go out the window, it’s got to be a different kind of system. I personally think it should be much more local. Globalization has been our greatest destruction.”
I’ve heard you say the environmental slogan think global act local is –
“Disempowering. Think and act locally, for any chance of being effective globally.”
Which leads to me to ask for your thoughts on upcoming climate change negotiations.
“The French ambassador to Canada came up to Peter [Robinson, CEO of the Suzuki Foundation] and I and said we’re having this big meeting in Paris, do you have any advice about what we should do. And I said, ‘Yeah, what you have to do is say ‘We’ve been meeting now for 15 years. And it is a total failure. And this is not going to be another year of the same old thing.’ Einstein said [that] doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. And that’s what’s happening. It’s the same goddamn thing. The crisis has gotten so much greater now, there’s got to be something radically different. Otherwise who cares?
So what do we do?
“I don’t know. What [People’s Climate March organizer] Bill McKibben has done is just amazing. But we can’t afford to keep building so the next march is 2 million people. So I just don’t know.”
Back to local then. A lot of people will say enshrining environmental rights into the charter is a pipe dream.
“The problem we face is this huge dysfunctional system of first past the post. I’ve voted in every federal election since I turned 21. I’ve never voted for a party that got into power. My vote has just been [wasted]. We need an overhaul.”
The Blue Dot campaign says we should go after our city governments first to effect change, then provinces before we go after the feds. What advice would you have for our readers on how to get engaged?
“Municipalities are where the rubber hits the road. It’s where there’s real opportunity for change. If you look at Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, all unbelievable mayors. We’re only one-quarter of the way through our tour and we’ve already got something like 1,500 people who want to start a movement in their cities. The city of Richmond is going to vote on a declaration on environmental health on October 28. The minute we get commitment from provinces, they become our cheerleaders to cheer on others [at the federal level] to join us. So this is the plan. The tour is lighting the fuse.”
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Blue Dot Marks The Spot
David Suzuki’s plan to enshrine the right to clean air, food and water in the Charter is not as out-of-this-world as it sounds.
110 Number of countries that have constitutional rights to healthy environment.
181 of 193 UN countries that support recognition of enviro rights. Canada and the U.S. don’t.
Montreal
The first Canadian city to recognize environmental rights.
It’s not a lefty thing
France’s environmental charter came courtesy of former centre-right president Jacques Chirac.
What difference would it make
Stronger enviro laws, better enforcement of existing laws and an end to rollback of today’s laws.
bluedot.ca
Where you can join or lead your community movement for the right to a healthy environment.
44,169
Number of Canadians who’ve signed on to the Blue Dot movement so far.
Compiled by Adria Vasil Compiled by Adria Vasil
adriav@nowtoronto.com | @ecoholicnation
