David Suzuki & Jeff Rubin Address Our Economy’s Disconnect With Reality

I had the good fortune this week to be in the audience during Dr. David Suzuki and Jeff Rubin’s Eco Tour stop in Winnipeg, part of a cross-country book tour. Dr. Suzuki is a world-renowned geneticist and Canadian television personality who has hosted the CBC science show, The Nature of Things, for 31 years. He has become one of the most articulate and public voices speaking up for a sane environmental policy, in the face of runaway climate change and biodiversity loss. Mr. Rubin was formerly the chief economist for CIBC and is now a best-selling author whose latest book is entitled The End of Growth (his previous one was Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller).  An ecologist and an economist – not a pairing that one sees very often, but one that should be happening a whole lot more.

Both men spoke for about 15 minutes about their perspectives on the looming crises in both the economy and the environment. Rubin highlighted how peak oil isn’t about how much oil reserves in total the world has, but rather how much oil can be retrieved in a way that generates profit; even with triple digit oil prices, it just isn’t economically feasible to go after high-risk reserves. Rubin also asserted that triple-digit oil prices dampen down global economic growth, which has been propped up by cheap oil prices for decades (hence the title of his book). Of course, he said a whole lot more but that was his intro.

Suzuki started off by reminding us that, despite our amazing technological advances and sophisticated industrialized way of life, we humans are, after all, animals. We need to breathe air and drink water and consume food to survive. And yet, inexplicably, we continue to pour pollution into our air and pump toxic chemicals into our water and our soil. He posed the question “why is it that the market, which is something that humans have created, dictates what our ecosystem is used and abused for, rather than the other way around?” The market, Suzuki asserts, has become what dragons were in medieval times – the scary, untouchable monster that humans had to look out for and fear. It’s time that humans realized that, just like dragons, the market is a creation of the human imagination and our fear of it needs to disappear the same way our fear of dragons did hundreds of years ago.

During a short question and answer session that followed their short presentations, I asked for both of their responses to the International Energy Agency’s 2011 World Energy Report, which warned that if fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed (by 2016), the world will lose for ever the chance to avoid catastrophic climate change. Jeff Rubin’s response was that the IEA based it’s calculations on a world whose GDP was growing by 4% a year, and he doesn’t think this will happen, for the reasons he outlines in his book, related to the high price of oil. He also places some faith in human ingenuity and technology. David Suzuki, on the other hand, responded by discussing Australian author and intellectual Clive Hamilton’s recent book, Requiem For A Species; the species Hamilton is referring to in the title is humans. The book focuses on how and why humans have ignored the warning of science about global warming until now, so that now it is too late.

My head wanted to believe Jeff Rubin, and believe that we still have the time and ability to turn this crisis around, but in my heart I felt the pain and sadness that Suzuki clearly feels about this issue, and the truth of Hamilton’s message. I haven’t given up hope – I can’t, I have two daughters who are going to be living in the world that we have created – but I do know that the situation is bleak. The only response I know is to keep doing what I can to change the outcome through education and activism, while at the same time preparing for the “Great Disruption” in our economy and personal lives that is about to happen to all of us, whether we are ready for it or not. And, while I’m at it, I plan on spending time with the people I love, doing things that feed my spirit.

David Suzuki at Toronto EcoTour, photo: C. McNamara

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Photo: Occupy Canada

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Graphic: Give a Shit About Climate Change (www.facebook.com/giveashitaboutclimatechange)

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More links:

Suzuki Cautions Resource Rich Saskatchewan

Suzuki, Rubin Book Tour Links Ecology, Economics

McCarthyism, Canadian Style

In Tuesday’s Huffington Post Cameron Fenton, National Director of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, wrote an excellent article about the Harper government’s hounding of environmentalists and First Nations opposed to the Northern Gateway Pipeline. In Harper Government Can’t See the Forest For the Trees, Mr. Fenton starts off by describing a repetitive nightmare he is having these days (and he’s not alone):

The light in the hearing room is bright, hot and pointed right at me. The heat is suffocating, and I am visibly sweaty, the senator leans over, taps his microphone and begins to read questions from a typed sheet.

“Mr. Fenton, Have you ever donated to or been a member of the Sierra Club of Canada?”

“Do you own a book or books written by Dr. David Suzuki?”

“Did you or did you not write blog posts that were critical of the oilsands?”

That’s usually about the time I wake up, but instead of relief that my nightmare is over, I make the mistake of turning on the radio or picking up the paper to find my speculative fiction becoming more and more real.

Environmental groups in Canada are in the crosshairs of the government, not simply under investigation for fiscal mismanagement, but the targets of criminalization, misinformation and a smear campaign.

Most recently, Canada’s environment minister started to use the term “money laundering” to criminalize the acceptance of foreign funding by Canadian organizations.

At first I was taken aback by this, but the more I think about it, it’s a great idea. If you will permit me to change metaphors for a moment, it’s high time that we find our own Elliot Ness and unleash a Canadian team of Untouchables to root out this corruption, to find those charitable groups using foreign money, to hijack our legislative processes and hold my generation’s future hostage.

Let’s start with the Fraser Institute.

A recent investigation by the Vancouver Observer showed that the Fraser Institute received half a million dollars from the U.S.- based Koch Foundation. As the philanthropic arm of Tea Party darlings and fossil fuel industry billionaires Charles and David Koch, this foundation has been linked across the globe to campaigns that promote climate denial, lobby against clean energy legislation and stand in the way of global progress on curbing emissions. To read the full article, click here.

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More links:

RCMP spied on B.C. natives protesting pipeline plan, documents show

Government Pipeline Rhetoric Reminiscent of Cold War, McCarthyism: Prof

Suzuki Quit Foundation Over Fed ‘Bullying’

If you’re Canadian, you can go to the Lead Now site to sign a petition against the Conservative government’s rush to push through the omnibus budget bill that would strip our environmental protections, silence our environmental watchdogs, and damage our economy: click here.  Or better yet, call your Member of Parliament and tell them enough is enough.

David Suzuki On Occupy Movement: The Future Of Young People Is Being Sacrificed To Corporate Agenda

David Suzuki was interviewed at the Occupy Montreal event last Saturday:

“We’ve got to take back our country, and take back our democracy..Stop serving the corporate agenda. It seems that money is everything that determines what our priorities are right now…The economy by itself is nothing. We use the economy for something else – do we want justice, do we want greater equity, do we want environmental protection?..This is about the future for these  young people, that is being sacrificed for the sake of the corporate agenda right now…What are corporations for? They exist for one reason, and one reason only. They may be doing things that we need that are really useful, but their only reason for existence is to make money, and the faster they make the money, the better it is. And that is not an acceptable way to run the world. What about people? What about the future, and jobs for young people?”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUTDxUicSmo]

More links:

David Suzuki Foundation: Occupy Wall Street Reflects Increasing Frustration

Mercer And Holmes On Solar Panels

Just in time for the Ontario election, where Tory leader Tim Hudak is promising to kill the innovative Green Energy Act if elected, here’s Rick Mercer and Mike Holmes, two Canadian icons,in a  great clip from last week’s Mercer Report:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmI2BjOO9gg&feature=player_embedded]

For more examples of the kind of business and energy advances that the Green Energy Act and its feed in tariffs have enabled, check out Stand Up For Solar.ca

To check in on the 33 solar panels on our roof, and see how much energy they are producing right now, go to our Enphase Energy website.

David Suzuki asks “What’s the Real Bottom Line?”

David Suzuki,  a Canadian scientist, broadcaster, and tireless environmentalist who was recently voted the person Canadians most trust, has a new CBC radio show on Sundays between 11:00 and noon. The 10-part show,  The Bottom Line, premiered last week.  The first two hours have been fascinating listening. The show describes its goal as:

“Exploring the disconnect between our modern values and the natural world. Environmentalists are often told by politicians and corporate executives that without a strong growing economy we can’t afford to do the kind of things they are demanding, that the economy is the bottom line. This series is a celebration of the earth, the atmosphere, water, soil, and energy of the sun that work in tandem to sustain life on this planet. The true ‘bottom line’.”

The first episode featured discussions between Mr. Suzuki and Jim Prentice, Canada’s Environment Minister while they were in Haida Gwaai marking the expansion of a federal park. Suzuki pushes Prentice on the false dichotomy that still persists in this government’s attitude between the environment and the economy. The old “we can’t do anything about the environment unless we have a strong economy” argument. Suzuki clearly presents the urgency of climate change and environmental degradation, and Prentice doesn’t “get it” at all. His responses to Suzuki’s questions include such platitudes like: “It’s about balance.” “We are taking steps forward.”We’ve set a goal of reducing emissions to 17% below 2005 levels.” “I’m proud of the scientists we have at Environment Canada.” “We need technology to address these issues over time.

Really Mr. Prentice?!The former Chief Economist at the World Bank has said that if the world doesn’t deal in a heroic way to reduce emissions, the consequences of climate change are economically catastrophic. The risk to humanity from climate change is second only to the threat of nuclear war. And yet this is the anemic response Canadians get from our government – “we hope that some technology comes along to save us eventually because we can’t possibly find ways to reduce our emissions, the highest per capita in the world”! Good grief. It’s pathetic.

Anyway, The Bottom Line is worth listening to, just to hear Suzuki and Prentice offer their very different points of view. And Mr. Suzuki is pretty gentle on Mr. Prentice, considering that the Environment Minister’s responses were so inadequate.

Also in the first episode is an interesting interview with Lord Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist at the World Bank and author of a report on climate change and economics for the British government. Stern says that the current view that separates the economy and the environment is “a basic analytical and intellectual mistake.” In the future, he asserts, the two will be seen as working together. And in response to David Suzuki’s questions about the lack of urgency in the world’s response to this looming disaster, Stern states that Britain and the rest of Europe know from their experience with two World Wars last century that the inability to cooperate internationally leads to disaster, and hopefully this experience will assist in addressing the problem of climate change:

We’ve got to use the rationality that developed with evolution to anticipate these problems. We’ve got the ability, we’re going to have to use that. If we wait for experience to tell us we’re in trouble it’s going to be almost impossible to get out of it. People need to understand the great dangers, but we need to go beyond that and talk about the great opportunities that we’ll create if we go the sensible route.

“Sensible route”? Sounds good to me! Are you listening, Mr. Prentice and Mr. Harper?

Listen to “The Bottom Line”.

More links:

David Suzuki Looks Back With a Hint of Regret. Globe and Mail

“The Bottom Line” on Facebook

The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity by Nicholas Stern.

David Suzuki On The Harper Government’s Climate Change Plan: “They Don’t Have A F*!?*g Clue”

When Canadian environmentalist and scientist David Suzuki released his autobiography in 2006, he had this to say about the federal government’s climate change plan under Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

“Harper claims that he’s going to develop his own plan,” Suzuki said. “The thing that’s really outrageous is he has no plan. We’ve got this from Ambrose’s assistant now. We were talking to him, ‘Are you doing this? Considering a carbon tax?’ ‘Nothing yet, we’re open to everything.’ In other words, they don’t have a fucking clue. I think it’s outrageous that he’s coming in, gutting Kyoto, and he’s acting like he’s going to substitute something and he doesn’t have an idea.”

And four years and many more millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere later, and it seems that Suzuki was right on with his assessment of this government’s understanding of the issue of climate change.  Just last week Harper, who is under increasing pressure internationally to put climate change on the agenda of the upcoming G8 and G20 meetings, indicated that the economy is the most important issue to consider, and anything else is “noise”.  Harper and his Environment Minister Jim Prentice have indicated their plan to address climate change is to wait until the U.S. has a plan, and then follow that.  And this is called leadership!!? In fact, Prentice recently dismissed the push to reduce greenhouse gases as “utterly pointless”.

Suzuki also commented on the understanding shown by federal Conservatives on this issue during his interview with Straight.com:

“The thing that just terrifies me is trying to imagine George Bush or Ralph Klein or Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day, or [Nova Scotia MP] Peter MacKay trying to really understand what exactly is global warming. Or what is a stem cell. If you can’t at least be literate enough to understand the basic principles, then you end up making decisions for purely political reasons. And that’s what’s really terrifying. These guys are still convinced by the skeptics, the people paid for by the fossil-fuel industry, that global warming is bullshit. And they don’t have the ability to judge for themselves.”

The good news in 2010 is that the Harper government continues to be in a minority position.  The recent passing of Bill C311, The Climate Accountability Act, was possible because of this.  All three opposition parties worked together to get it through the House of Commons.  Unfortunately Harper has had the opportunity to appoint over 30 new Conservative Senators to the upper chamber, so the bill will face stiff Conservative opposition as it makes its way through the Senate.  Canadians who want a brighter, greener future for our children need to make our voices heard.  Click here for contact information and sample emails for letting Senators know they can’t oppose the will of the elected House of Commons on this issue.  If you would like to call or email Prime Minister Harper, click hereClick here to find out how to contact Minister Prentice, and let him know that his efforts on climate change so far have been pointless.

Here’s a recent video of David Suzuki talking about the Climate Accountability Act:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGy7at7XJqM&feature=player_embedded]