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The Legacy (Greystone $25)
We've been hearing gloomy messages about the environment ever since Rachel Carson published her ground-breaking revelations about the effects of DDT, The Silent Spring, in 1962.
Much has changed since then-for the worse. But David Takayoshi Suzuki, like Martin Luther King, has a dream. He hangs onto that dream despite the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Canada's continuing commitment to the oil sands project. "How about a world where the air is clean, and kids don't get asthma?"; he says. "A world as it was when I was a child.
"We would just drink water out of any river or lake? A world that is covered with forest, and we can log it forever because we are doing it the right way?";
You may say he's a dreamer, but he's not the only one.
"We've got to make our cities more people-friendly and less car-friendly,"; he says, during an interview at his headquarters in Kitsilano. "We've spent millions and millions of dollars on roads and bridges.";
The geneticist-turned-environmentalist is a big fan of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson's efforts to increase cycling in the city. But Suzuki says there are culprits who continually vapourize dreams, such as politicians who are fixated on re-election, and company CEOs driven to maximize profits in the shortest possible time while ignoring the environment.
To articulate his vision, Suzuki, now in his 70s, has published, The Legacy (Greystone $25), subtitled "An Elder's Vision for Our Sustainable Future."; With a glowing foreword by Margaret Atwood, the book argues that humans must join as a single species to respond to the problems we face, and accept that the laws of nature must take precedence over economics.
The Legacy is possibly Suzuki's final book among 40 titles he has published since 1988, and he is particularly pleased by it. "I love this book. Most of my books I've co-written-someone else has researched it, done a lot of the writing, because I don't have time. This one I wrote completely myself, but I did it over months and months ... so it's much more organized. Usually when I write, I just blast, you know-I've got the idea and I write it down. But this one I took time, I honed it, I shaped it.";
Suzuki expanded The Legacy from a December 2009 lecture he gave at the University of B.C., a traditional activity for retiring professors. Accompanied by a National Film Board of Canada film and Greystone Books' first simultaneous e-book, The Legacy sums up Suzuki's global and environmental philosophy developed over a lifetime.
He says human beings have always been able to look into the future and "dream of a world that is yet to come-it's one of our distinguishing features ... And because we've been able to do that, we've been able to see where the dangers are, where the opportunities lie, and deliberately choose a path that will avoid the dangers and exploit the opportunities.
"That has been our survival mechanism-if I go this way, I know there are sabre-toothed tigers out there, and they'll eat me ... We've done that since the beginning of time.";
There are some bright spots. In Sweden, the carbon tax is now set at $110 a tonne. And Bolivia's new constitution includes flora and fauna, not just humans. So our present course can be averted.
"All I have is hope,"; Suzuki says. "We still don't know anything about how Nature works. So I don't think anyone has the right to say it's too late. How can we say that if we don't know how Nature works? I hope Nature is filled with surprises-and some of them will be good surprises.
"But there's no question we've got to get off our asses and make some big changes,"; he says. "And there are no quick fixes. There are environmentalists around who talk about '100 easy ways to save the planet,' or '10 easy ways.' Well, there are no easy ways. We are heading right over a cliff.
"I'm enough of a scientist to know, if you just follow the curves of how we're going in terms of population, well, by 2050, there will be no fish in the oceans. But I can still dream of a better kind of world, and I know we could get it-if we start today and work towards it.";
To encourage us to join together and overcome our environmental crisis, Suzuki harkens back to the 1950s when he was attending Amherst College in Massachusetts. The Soviet Union had electrified the world by launching a Sputnik satellite in 1957. Russia proceeded to launch a dog into space, then a man, then a team of cosmonauts, then the first woman to orbit the earth.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy boldly announced Americans would be first to land on the moon. It appeared preposterous. But it was done. Suzuki believes a similar level of commitment can be mounted to confront our ecological challenges.
Suzuki quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back . . . The moment one definitely commits, then Providence comes, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred . . . Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."; 978-1-55365-570-1
[BCBW 2010] by Elizabeth Godley
Much has changed since then-for the worse. But David Takayoshi Suzuki, like Martin Luther King, has a dream. He hangs onto that dream despite the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Canada's continuing commitment to the oil sands project. "How about a world where the air is clean, and kids don't get asthma?"; he says. "A world as it was when I was a child.
"We would just drink water out of any river or lake? A world that is covered with forest, and we can log it forever because we are doing it the right way?";
You may say he's a dreamer, but he's not the only one.
"We've got to make our cities more people-friendly and less car-friendly,"; he says, during an interview at his headquarters in Kitsilano. "We've spent millions and millions of dollars on roads and bridges.";
The geneticist-turned-environmentalist is a big fan of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson's efforts to increase cycling in the city. But Suzuki says there are culprits who continually vapourize dreams, such as politicians who are fixated on re-election, and company CEOs driven to maximize profits in the shortest possible time while ignoring the environment.
To articulate his vision, Suzuki, now in his 70s, has published, The Legacy (Greystone $25), subtitled "An Elder's Vision for Our Sustainable Future."; With a glowing foreword by Margaret Atwood, the book argues that humans must join as a single species to respond to the problems we face, and accept that the laws of nature must take precedence over economics.
The Legacy is possibly Suzuki's final book among 40 titles he has published since 1988, and he is particularly pleased by it. "I love this book. Most of my books I've co-written-someone else has researched it, done a lot of the writing, because I don't have time. This one I wrote completely myself, but I did it over months and months ... so it's much more organized. Usually when I write, I just blast, you know-I've got the idea and I write it down. But this one I took time, I honed it, I shaped it.";
Suzuki expanded The Legacy from a December 2009 lecture he gave at the University of B.C., a traditional activity for retiring professors. Accompanied by a National Film Board of Canada film and Greystone Books' first simultaneous e-book, The Legacy sums up Suzuki's global and environmental philosophy developed over a lifetime.
He says human beings have always been able to look into the future and "dream of a world that is yet to come-it's one of our distinguishing features ... And because we've been able to do that, we've been able to see where the dangers are, where the opportunities lie, and deliberately choose a path that will avoid the dangers and exploit the opportunities.
"That has been our survival mechanism-if I go this way, I know there are sabre-toothed tigers out there, and they'll eat me ... We've done that since the beginning of time.";
There are some bright spots. In Sweden, the carbon tax is now set at $110 a tonne. And Bolivia's new constitution includes flora and fauna, not just humans. So our present course can be averted.
"All I have is hope,"; Suzuki says. "We still don't know anything about how Nature works. So I don't think anyone has the right to say it's too late. How can we say that if we don't know how Nature works? I hope Nature is filled with surprises-and some of them will be good surprises.
"But there's no question we've got to get off our asses and make some big changes,"; he says. "And there are no quick fixes. There are environmentalists around who talk about '100 easy ways to save the planet,' or '10 easy ways.' Well, there are no easy ways. We are heading right over a cliff.
"I'm enough of a scientist to know, if you just follow the curves of how we're going in terms of population, well, by 2050, there will be no fish in the oceans. But I can still dream of a better kind of world, and I know we could get it-if we start today and work towards it.";
To encourage us to join together and overcome our environmental crisis, Suzuki harkens back to the 1950s when he was attending Amherst College in Massachusetts. The Soviet Union had electrified the world by launching a Sputnik satellite in 1957. Russia proceeded to launch a dog into space, then a man, then a team of cosmonauts, then the first woman to orbit the earth.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy boldly announced Americans would be first to land on the moon. It appeared preposterous. But it was done. Suzuki believes a similar level of commitment can be mounted to confront our ecological challenges.
Suzuki quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back . . . The moment one definitely commits, then Providence comes, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred . . . Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."; 978-1-55365-570-1
[BCBW 2010] by Elizabeth Godley
Submitted on September 2, 2010 in By David.
