Former CBC host says he is embracing role as an elder — and not having ‘to kiss anybody’s ass’

This article was written by Marco Chown Oved and was published in the Toronto Star on June 4, 2023.

There are many origin stories for the climate movement.

Some point to the testimony of NASA scientist Jim Hansen before U.S. Congress in 1988. Others say it was the signing of the UN Convention on Climate Change in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, or the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, or the Paris Agreement in 2015.

But few remember that Toronto hosted one of the first major climate meetings in 1988, issuing a final statement warning that “the Earth’s atmosphere is being changed at an unprecedented rate” and the “ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war.” It was then that David Suzuki — one of Canada’s best known television hosts even back then — was captivated.

He wrote a book, “A Matter of Survival,” on the emerging scientific consensus around the dangers of climate change and then started his own foundation, dedicated to finding and promoting solutions. And he’s never looked back.

Accomplished geneticist, gifted communicator, author of 16 books, recipient of 29 honorary degrees, Companion of the Order of Canada and cultural icon from coast to coast, 87-year-old Suzuki is a still strident advocate for the climate and the planet.

Since announcing his retirement as host of the CBC’s flagship environmental program, “The Nature of Things,” after 44 years, he says he’s been “freed” from the travel schedule and the strictures of the national broadcaster and can now focus on his role as an elder, imparting lessons learned from a life at the nexus of science and activism.

He came into the Star’s podcast studio for a wide-ranging talk about his career, the climate movement, technological and nature-based solutions and how he sees his role evolving after TV. These are some highlights from the conversation, edited for length and clarity:

On the role of elders

When you’re an elder, you don’t have the same vested interests. I don’t have to kiss anybody’s ass to get a job, a raise, or a promotion. I’m way beyond worrying about fame or money or power. So it allows me to speak the truth from my heart without all of that stuff tempering what I say. And I believe this is the most important part of my life. As elders, we have had the privilege of living an entire life. We’ve made mistakes. We’ve had failures. We had maybe some successes. Those are life lessons. And our job now is to sift through that life for some of the important lessons to pass on to the young ones so they don’t make the same mistakes.

I was involved in the peace movement way back in the ’60s and ’70s, and one of the most powerful groups was retired admirals and generals against nuclear war. These are guys that had gone through the system saying: ‘We need nuclear deterrence. We’ve got to build up our arsenal.’ And the minute they retired, they could tell us the truth. They said: ‘This is crazy. These are not making us safer.’ And they had a powerful impact. So I call on CEOs and corporate presidents, for God’s sakes, once you’ve retired and made your money, speak the truth. Tell us the truth.

On his own bias

We have been hammered all through the years that I’ve done “The Nature of Things” because we’ve covered issues of logging, of the disappearance of birds, of (the harms caused by) fossil fuels. And does the corporate sector go, “I wonder what if ‘The Nature of Things’ is right?”

That’s never the response. It’s always: ‘You’re biased, CBC. You’re biased, ‘The Nature of Things.’ And when the criticism comes to me it’s: ‘Get that guy off the air!’ or ‘Fire him from the university!’ And they’re all ways of not confronting the issues being raised.

Yes, we are biased. There’s no doubt about it. But our bias is that we are deeply embedded in the natural world. And whatever we do to the natural world, we’re doing directly to ourselves. That’s our bias.

On who bears responsibility for addressing climate change

It’s people, but it’s also the system we’re embedded in. We all have contributed in various ways. The problem is that we’ve created systems — and this is at the heart of it — (that) have disengaged ourselves from the web of relationships (in nature).

We think the world is a pyramid in which we’re at the top, and everything else below is for us. All of our laws, our economy, our politics are built on that assumption. We’re at the top of the pyramid and we’re in charge of it all. We need to remember that we’re part of a web of relationships. We’re just a little strand within it.

On whether individual or collective action is more important

Both. People are always looking for a magic bullet. There isn’t one. They say, ‘What can we do? What’s the one thing?’ Well, you know, we can change the way we behave. And there are ways to make a big difference individually. And I could talk about that. But the other thing is that we’re living within a system within which big decisions are made and we have to hammer those who represent us.

We say democracy is the best system, (because) all people eligible to vote now can determine government policy. But children don’t vote. Future generations don’t vote. And yet they are impacted more heavily by decisions made today than we are.

On nuclear power

Of course, nuclear doesn’t have the greenhouse gas emissions that burning fossil fuels does. But I think what we’ve learned that when you put all of your eggs in big, big technology, you become very, very vulnerable. There’s no way that nuclear can be a part of the challenge we have right now.

Nuclear couldn’t possibly kick in within the next 20 years as a significant (solution). And that’s if you had an all-out building program. SMRs — small (modular) nuclear reactors — we don’t even know whether they’re a possibility. The scale of small nuclear reactors that would be needed to deal with it would be enormous. And it’s way in the future. We’re dealing (with) right now and nukes are not the answer.

They (take a long time to build) and they’re the most expensive. And, you know, there are all of the (other) problems associated with it. I know the industry likes to say, ‘Oh, no, people weren’t killed by nuclear power.’ We have no idea what the long-run effect is when you’re creating isotopes that are going to last for thousands of years.

On critical mineral mining for batteries

Mining is one of the most destructive activities we have. And I think the place we have to do almost all of our mining now is in our debris, our waste areas. We’ve got to start mining our garbage dumps and all of the places where we’ve thrown all of the crap that we’ve made and consumed.

Batteries certainly must be a part of the future towards which we’re going. I think that lithium right now is the best atom that we can use. But there are sodium batteries that are coming out. They’re heavier. They can’t hold as much energy. I think that we have to hope that there will be in the future batteries of a totally different dimension.

But the problem now is lithium has become the atom of choice and the demand is going to be enormous. Right now a decision is going to be made about whether we should be mining the ocean bottom, because there are huge lithium deposits. This is the absolute insanity now of our species. We are a terrestrial animal and we ought to be very careful. We don’t know anything about the oceans that cover 70 per cent of the planet and we want to go in and trash it in order to get lithium? That’s not the solution.

On why Canada needs to cut its emissions, though we can’t fix climate change on our own

That was the same argument (I heard) at Kyoto in ’97. The Alberta delegation was there and they were saying that we’re a trivial part (of global emissions). Why should we be subjected to (limits)? And my response then as it is now is, first of all, we are a part of the major contributors and we are the rich countries. What right have we got to ask the developing world not to do what we’ve done?

We’re setting the example for the poorer countries to try to follow. They want to achieve the kind of wealth and position that we’re in. We’re the example. If we can’t show that this is the wrong path, that we’ve got to change, why the hell should they pay any attention to us?

On nature’s version of nature-based solutions

The problem that we face is we’ve run out of time. We simply don’t have the time. Over the history of life on the planet for 3.9 billion years, there have been these five mega-extinctions. Ninety-five per cent of organisms disappear from the fossil record. And nature recovered. I mean, that’s such an astounding shift. But it took 10 million years. And this is the point. Nature will always win out.

People say, ‘We’re destroying the planet. We’re changing the planet, destroying the biosphere.’ But the earth and nature will carry on. Radically different, perhaps, but it’ll carry on. It doesn’t need us.

We’re trying to ramp up nature. So people are going, ‘We’ve got to plant six trillion trees.’ We’ve got to stop using nature as an aid to us, to talk about a forest or a wetland as a carbon sink. No, they’re this entity that has evolved on its own and it does what it does. We’ve got to just leave nature alone. But we won’t because we don’t have time.

So we’ll plant trees in the assumption they will suck in enough carbon to get us out of the problem. And it’s going to take time. And there’s no way we can ramp that up.

On nature surprising us

After (the Second World War), we ended up in Leamington, Ont., on Lake Erie, and every spring there was a hatch of mayflies you wouldn’t believe. They hatch out of the water. They live for 24 hours and they’re basically a flying gonad. They’ve just got to find a partner, mate and die and their carcasses would pile up on the beaches a meter deep. They’d cover houses so that you couldn’t see through the windows. They would cover the highways and cars would get into an accident skidding on their bodies. Within a decade, they were gone. That immense biomass was gone because of pesticides. Farmers began to apply them in massive amounts and they washed into the lake. And Lake Erie soon after that was declared dead.

Lake Erie, I gather, has rebounded now. And people are writing to me all the time saying: ‘the mayflies are back.’ Yeah, they’re back, but nothing like what they were. Our problem is that we forget what nature’s abundance really was.

On changing baselines

Daniel Polley, one of Canada’s eminent fisheries biologist, started this idea of shifting baselines. Every generation we forget what it was (like) in the previous generation.

Callum Roberts wrote a book about the oceans and there’s a shot on a dock in Florida, taken about 50 years ago. And you see the fishermen standing there with these giant fish groupers and things. And they’re all very happy and proud with these fish.

Then there’s a shot on the same dock taken 30 years later. And now the fish, they don’t have the giants, they’re medium-sized ones. The fishermen are delighted. They’re happy as can be.

And then the final one is a current picture, same dock. And now the people are holding (tiny) fish. And each generation thinks this is great. That gives you an idea of the extent to which we’ve really diminished the planet’s plenty.

We don’t remember what it was like. That’s why among Indigenous people, elders are so important to them. They remember the world as they learned it through their elders.