Hope for a troubled planet
On opposition to ratifying the Kyoto climate change protocol: “We’ve got to work way beyond Kyoto; we’ve got to work towards a 75 – 80 per cent reduction in green house gases. (So) it really grieves me to see someone like John Howard, aside from the fact that he’s got his nose so far up Mr Bush’s backside that he can’t hear anything, come out with a complete knee jerk response (to Kyoto) without any kind of rationality to it. It’s a complete myth that the economic cost of doing something to meet Kyoto is going to be unacceptable. He has never read the documents that show the enormous benefits of trying to meet (the protocol).” On globalisation: “The problem is that organisations like the (World Trade Organisation), the (International Monetary Fund), the World Bank, are trying to globalise one idea - an economic paradigm that is so fundamentally flawed that even the people at the World Bank know that what they’re doing is wrong. But they don’t see any other way of doing things. They say we have to have development and economic growth in order for the benefits to trickle down. Well, we’ve had 40 years of unparalleled growth in the economy and it hasn’t been trickling down, the money has been flooding up. There have been fewer and fewer people becoming more and more wealthy.” On politicians: “The people who hold the power in government or in business don’t have a long-term vision at all. Their whole raison d’etre is to maximise profit. Maximising profit at all costs is one of the most hollow, empty, destructive ideas we can imagine and the Enron casse is just the latest in a litany of examples.” On our ability to be pro-active: “Unfortunately we seem to be a crisis driven species.” Suzuki says the problem is that we value material wealth and consumption above all else. That the economic model espoused by the WTO and friends is destroying the earth because it ignores the importance of natural systems. Without topsoil, an ozone layer, insects and underground aquifers, the economy we venerate would not be possible because we would have no future, he says. That’s some of the bad news. The good news is in his latest book, “Good news for a change – hope for a troubled planet,” co-authored with Holly Dressel. The book tells stories of communities who are looking 20, 30, 40 years ahead, making decisions based on a different set of values than consumerism and economic wealth. “Money is no substitute for belonging to a community, having clean air, clean water, clean soil and rich forests. These represent true wealth and we have to try to protect this at all costs. As long as we keep looking at the short line, the quarterly report or the next election, then the people that hold the power are not going to protect the real wealth that we value so much more.” Suzuki hopes that getting good news stories ‘out there’ will help create a new paradigm, a different way of looking at the world. “Sustainability, community health, ecosystem health, these are built in to the various stories I’ve told and we’ve got to get those stories out so that people realise that we have choices.” At present each crisis gets a band-aid solution based on the old way. “We don’t see that there are alternatives.” The stories reinforce the fact that human activity is simply out of sync with the life support systems of the planet, he says. The message is to find the bigger picture, to get back into balance. “That means we have to be much more humble about the way that we do things. We have to have much more respect for the four billion years that life on earth has had to evolve, and we have to try to mimic nature rather than try to bludgeon nature into submission.” Suzuki is frustrated by the private sector and politicians scaremongering that the Kyoto protocol will lead to economic disaster, or there is no ‘real’ alternative to the pro-development road. And that they get more than their share of a Canadian media dominated by a right wing private sector. It means organisations like Green Peace have a vital role in getting an alternate view across and balancing the message the public hears, he says. And it reinforces the need to globalise information to empower people at the grass roots with alternate ways to solve their problems. While he pulls no punches, Suzuki positions himself dead centre on the environmentalists’ spectrum. “We need people that are doing things that are ‘out there,’ jamming things up and creating a great deal of problems because then they make people like me look like absolutely reasonable human beings. So I’m glad that there are those people out their doing their eco-jinks, their high jinks.” Wellingtonians will get a chance to hear David Suzuki for an hour this Friday morning (15 March) when he hits town as part of the New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week. ends © Marieke Hilhorst/ORIGIN NATURAL HISTORY MEDIA |