194. David Suzuki: Environmentalist on Corporate Greed & Climate Change

David Suzuki joins to discuss the state of the environment, climate change, the carbon tax, overpopulation, Indigenous knowledge, and whether we can still save the planet. Suzuki delivers an unfiltered take on humanity’s failures, corporate greed, and the urgent action needed to avert catastrophe.

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Episode Transcript

Aaron Pete (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger
Than Me podcast.
Here is your host, aaron Peet.
Are we going to save the planet?
Today I'm speaking with aCanadian academic and science
broadcaster about the state ofthe environment, climate change,
the carbon tax and the futureof planet Earth.
My guest today is David Suzuki.

(00:20):
David, thank you so much forbeing willing to join us today.
Would you mind first brieflyintroducing yourself?
I'm David Suzuki.
David, thank you so much forbeing willing to join us today.
Would you mind first brieflyintroducing yourself?

David Suzuki (00:28):
I'm David Suzuki.
I was born in Vancouver in 1936, spent most of my adult life
growing up in Ontario, but cameback to Vancouver in 1963, and
I've been here ever since, and Ilike to identify myself as an

(00:50):
elder and a grandfather.

Aaron Pete (00:53):
Beautiful.
I'd like to start looking atthe state of the environment
today.
Are we making progress?
Are we heading in the rightdirection or the wrong direction
?

David Suzuki (01:01):
We're right over the cliff and it's too late.
Too late to get back onto thecliff.
You know, I used to say I feltlike we're in a giant car
heading at a brick wall at 100miles an hour and everybody's
arguing about where they want tosit, doesn't matter who's
driving, they have to put on thebrakes and turn the wheel.
But now I don't use thatmetaphor anymore.

(01:25):
I say, uh, you know, roadrunner, the little bird.
Well, uh, he's always beingchased by wiley coyote.
And they come to a roadrunner,comes to the edge of a cliff,
yeah, and of course he does a 90degree turn.
But wiley coyote's got so muchmomentum, he goes right over the
cliff.
And there's that moment whenhe's suspended and he realizes

(01:49):
oh my God, I'm over the cliff,that's where we are.
But then people say, well, isit too late?
Yeah, it's too late to get backto the edge of the cliff.
But it makes a differencewhether you fall 10 feet or 100
feet.
So I'm still there, trying tohang on to something on the side

(02:13):
to keep from falling all theway down.
But the science is in.
The science has been in forover 30 years, for over 30 years
, and I want to remind you thatin 1992, in anticipation of the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeirothat was, the Earth Summit was

(02:35):
the largest gathering of headsof state ever in human history,
and it was meant to signal ashift in the way that human
beings were living.
And so, before the meeting,over half of all Nobel Prize
winners signed a document calledWorld Scientists Warning to

(02:56):
Humanity.
And the document opens bysaying human beings and the
natural world are on a collisioncourse.
Human activities inflict harshand often irreversible damage on
the environment and on criticalresources.
If not checked, many of ourcurrent practices put at serious

(03:20):
risk the future we wish forhuman society and may so alter
the living world that it will beunable to support life in the
manner that we know.
Fundamental changes are urgentif we are to avoid the collision
our present course will bringabout.
Now, that was a very powerfuldocument.

(03:43):
They then listed the areaswhere we are colliding with our
environment the atmosphere, theocean, fresh water, species
extinction, and it just goesdown the whole list forestry and
so on.
And then the document gets evenmore grim.
It says no more than one or afew decades remain before the

(04:09):
chance to avert the threats wenow confront will be lost and
the prospects for humanityimmeasurably diminished.
They then call for action infive areas that have to be
started immediately.
I don't have the document soI'm doing this all from memory,

(04:31):
but the first is that we have tobring all of our practices into
some kind of balance or harmonywith the natural world that
sustains us that's number onewith the natural world that
sustains us that's number one.
The second was there are thosethings that we need, that we use
, that are non-renewable, likeminerals and metals, and it says

(04:55):
we've got to use theseresources much more carefully in
the way that we exploit them.
The third thing, in the waythat we exploit them.
The third thing we have toeliminate poverty.
The fourth thing we have toreduce population.
And the fifth thing was that wehave to empower women to

(05:18):
control their own reproductivefuture.
So those were the five criticalthings to bring humans back
into some kind of balance, andthe document said this is very,
very urgent.
We've got to start doing thisright away, and the reason I say
we're over the edge is wehaven't done a goddamn thing to

(05:43):
try to act on this very powerfulwarning.
So 25 years after that documentwas published, 16,000 scientists
published World ScientistsWarning to Humanity a second
chance, and they pointed outthat the only area where we've

(06:04):
done anything was to begin toreduce our impact on the ozone
layer.
We have reduced that, but allthe other areas are worse today
than they were in 1992.
And there are new problems wedidn't know about in 1992.
So the warnings have come in,the science has been there and

(06:31):
we've come to think.
We're so bloody smart that theinstitutions that we've created,
the legal institutions, theeconomic institutions and the
political systems these aresystems all built around us to
guide and constrain us.

(06:51):
But what about Mother Nature?
Mother Nature that we depend onfor our very survival are not
in the systems we've developed.
Our economic system is designedaround human productivity and
human innovation.
So Mark Carney, in his bookValues, points out in his first

(07:16):
chapter that Amazon, jeff Bezos'company, is valued by the
economy in the tens of billionsof dollars.
But Amazon, the rainforest, thegreatest ecosystem on the
planet, has no economic valueuntil it is logged, mined,

(07:39):
dammed or grows soybeans, cattleor cities.
Now it is the economy that isso fucked up that it doesn't
even pay attention to the verythings that keep us alive.
And yet look at us.
We're running around.
Now we have a madman presidentof the most powerful country on

(08:01):
the planet.
He is dismantling all of thesmall things that Joe Biden did
the EPA and some of the laws andsome of the support of
renewable energy.
Trump is throwing all of thatout.
He's eliminating the very wordsclimate change out of all
government documents.
I mean we've held 28 COPmeetings, council of All Party

(08:29):
meetings, to deal with climatechange.
The first meeting was in 1992,in which we at that time said
we've got to cap emissions andbring them down.
In all that time, guess what?
Emissions have continued toclimb steadily.
The only time we had a levelingoff was when COVID slowed us

(08:51):
down for one year, but it's beengoing up steadily.
That's why Greta Thunberg hassaid we're taught in schools,
kids are taught to pay attentionto science.
And she said I pay attention tothe science and what scientists
say is we're on a path wherekids don't have a future.

(09:13):
And she was telling the truth.

Aaron Pete (09:16):
I want to ask specifically, just to start with
, about how we deal with thechallenges of the population.
That is something, to my mind,that has become really political
.
On the one hand, you haveindividuals like Mr Elon Musk,
who points out that we areactually on a steady decline and

(09:38):
that Western countries likeCanada, the US, we have seen a
reduction in reproduction fromown people and we've been
immigrating people in, which iskeeping the amount of people
here higher, but that we Westerncountries are reproducing less
on average and there's a fear, Ithink, among many, that there's
an anti-human sentiment to someof the talk about there's too

(10:02):
many people on the planet andI'm just wondering how you
square that Well.

David Suzuki (10:08):
Paul Ehrlich wrote a book called Population Bomb
in 1958.
And that said it there.
It's a simple matter ofexponential growth and you can't
sustain a population growingindefinitely.
What we've done is ignore hiswarnings and said said the
greatest thing to hit the planetis humans.
The more humans we have, thebetter will be.

(10:29):
And I remember interviewing aneconomist who is saying I've
forgotten his name now, simonSimon, something.
Anyway.
I said well, what about thepopulation problem?
He said what population problemthis is in 1988.
I interviewed him.
I said well, there are too manypeople.
He said the more humans we have, the more Albert Einsteins

(10:53):
we'll have, the better it'll be,because they're going to be
finding new things.
We can go on and double andredouble human populations and
it will only get better andbetter.
So in 1992, when the EarthSummit was to be held in Rio
there are a lot of before thesebig meetings there are what they

(11:14):
call prep com meetings,preparatory committee meetings.
So people come in from allcountries and they look at
forestry and fisheries andclimate change, all these areas,
and they work out papers andthen the papers are presented at
the meeting and all thedignitaries find them.
So at the prep comm meetings.

(11:36):
Immediately people began to saywell, it's population.
And as soon as they said that,the developing world said you're
racist, you're picking on us.
You say it's our problem.
The problem is overconsumption,and they're right
Overconsumption.
If you want to get an idea ofpopulation impact, you have to

(11:59):
take the population of Canadaand multiply by 30 or 40 to get
the equivalence of Somalians orBangladeshis.
You want to compare us to Chinaor India, you have to multiply
by at least 10.
And when you look at it thatway, it's the rich countries
that are by far having a greaterimpact than the poor countries.

(12:21):
But they're both a problem.
The consequence at the prepcomm meetings was because they
were controversial.
They said we won't talk aboutthat at the Earth Summit.
And to this day it's consideredracist to talk about
overpopulation.
But you see, if you plotpopulation growth and economic

(12:45):
growth, guess what?
They're congruent.
When the population goes up,the economy goes up.
That's a correlation.
But everybody assumes there's acausal connection, that the
growth in population is drivingeconomic growth.
China tried a one-child policybecause they said holy cow, we

(13:05):
can't just keep growing.
And they were successful.
But now they've got over abillion people.
Their population is finallybeginning to drop and
everybody's going oh my god,this is catastrophic.
Their population is growing.
Now their economy is going togo drop down as well.
Canada, we say oh, we're a bigcountry with a small population,

(13:29):
yeah, but our ecologicalfootprint, the amount that we
take out of the earth, is verybig.
There are already too manyCanadians living in Canada.
And I asked probably one of thegreatest ecologists in the
world, a man named Ed Wilsonfrom Harvard.

(13:51):
He's dead now.
I said, ed, how many people doyou think could be sustained
indefinitely, forever?
And he said look, I don't know,but off the top of my head, if
you want to live like Americans,if everybody in the world lived
like Americans 200 million,we're at 8 billion.

(14:13):
Canadian population, finally,is dropping for sure, and even
the environmentalists are sayingthis is disastrous.
We've got to keep usingimmigration to keep that curve
going up, and we're getting alot of immigration from the
developing world.

(14:33):
We want to take them fromcountries that are low, have a
low ecological footprint, bringthem to Canada and convert them
into high consumers to keep oureconomy growing.
This is crazy.
We're already.
We've got to talk aboutdegrowth degrowth in the economy
, degrowth in the population butthat is considered lunacy by

(14:57):
most people.
Look up until very, veryrecently, human beings
understood that we were a partof nature.
Even after, for 95% of ourexistence on Earth, we were
nomadic hunter-gatherers.
What does that mean?
Every day we had to go out andfind our food.

(15:18):
It boggles my mind that all ofour ancestors had to go out and
find their food every day.
They didn't know how to smoketheir food, or can it, or
refrigerate it.
They had to find it.
That tells you earth must havebeen abundant and generous that

(15:40):
we were able to do that for 95%of our existence.
And we knew we were one strandin a web of relationships with
all other species of animals andplants, with air, water, soil
and sunlight.
That's been our understandingsince the beginning of time.

(16:03):
But then we got in Europe, youget the, and even after the
agricultural revolution, whichstarted 10,000 years ago, that
began the modern era.
Because of agriculture wedidn't have to keep moving and
foraging for food.
We could stay in one place, wecould build permanent structures

(16:24):
.
We began to get villages andthen towns, and we began to
differentiate what we did.
Everybody can't be a farmer,but it was farming that enabled
empires to spring up andkingdoms.
All of that was built on theback of farming.
And farmers know very well thatthe amount of snow in the

(16:47):
winter directly related to theamount of moisture in the soil
in the summer.
They know that insects arefundamental to flowering plants.
They know that certain plantswill take nitrogen from the air
and fix it as fertilizer in thesoil.
They understand that they'redependent on weather, climate

(17:10):
and the season.
They understand farmers know weare a part of the web of nature
.
But starting in the Renaissancein Europe, people began to think
oh, we're different, we don'thave to pay attention to natural
laws, we're smart.

(17:30):
So René Descartes said cogitoergo sum.
Bet you never had any Latin,did you?
No, I haven't had any Latincome up yet.
I studied Latin for four yearsin high school and this is the
only time I can show off with itnow.
Cogito ergo sum means I think.
Therefore, I am.
So the brain became everythingof what we are.

(17:54):
And then Francis Bacon saidscientia potestas est Scientia,
science or knowledge is power.
Scientia, science or knowledgeis power.
So through the brain, throughscience, we could now gain
information, knowledge toempower us.
And then we had Isaac Newton,who then at that time said look,

(18:15):
the universe is like a giantclockwork mechanism.
If we study the parts, we caneventually understand how the
mechanism is made up, and then,when you put the parts back
together, we'll explain thewhole thing.
And so that's a way of learning.

(18:35):
We call reductionism Reducenature.
Look at a small part of nature,focus on that part and you
learn a great deal about thatpart.
The problem is that when youtake that part and put it in the
whole system, it behaves in atotally different way.
What we're studying is not abit of nature, it's an artifact,

(19:00):
it's a creation.
But in the real world you put aplant in the field, it rains,
it snows, winds blow all kindsof things happen that you don't
see when you focus.
And so the whole reductionistthing we find doesn't work.
And yet most of biology andscience today is reductionist.

(19:24):
We focus, you know.
And so what happens?
You have biologists saying, oh,our caribou populations all
across Canada are disappearing.
Well, wolves eat caribou.
So that must be the problemKill wolves.
This is the stupidest goddamnidea that we're going to manage

(19:47):
these animals, as if you knowknowing wolves eat caribou.
And if you kill wolves, youknow we do all these things.

Aaron Pete (19:55):
And we shoot them from helicopters, which is
insane, insane.

David Suzuki (19:59):
We drop poison carcasses onto the fields and
the crows and ravens andeverything else eats those.
You know it's the same thingwith our orca, the southern
resident orca, now reduced to 72or 73 in population, and for
some reason this group of whaleseats primarily Chinook salmon.

(20:22):
That's really weird.
What is it about it?
But you know, chinook salmonare the target of sport
fishermen.
They love Chinook salmon.
They're big, they fight hard.
So, okay, well, we'll put azone around the orca and not
fish for Chinook, and somehowthat's going to give them more.
This is the stupidest goddamnway of managing it, because in

(20:46):
all of these managementprocesses we never look in the
mirror and say, look, the causeof all of this is that
incredible predator, thisinvasive species, humans.
We got it.
Managing those populationsmeans pulling us out and leaving
them alone, but we don't dothat.
I'd like to Let me finish this.

(21:08):
We get the Renaissance, nowelevating the brain.
Then, a few hundred years later, you get the Industrial
Revolution and suddenly you'vegot machines that can move us at
great speed.
That can move us at great speed, that move enormous weights,
that can cut the tops ofmountains and shift them, and

(21:31):
these can do things.
The machines can do things nobiological creature can.
And we, through the IndustrialRevolution, we said humans are
so smart, we don't have to payattention to nature.
We can fly fast.

(21:56):
We can fly like a bird, we canfly faster than the speed of
sound.
We can drill through the crustof the planet.
We can live under the ocean.
We can escape gravity and livein outer space.
And so look at us.
Know you get me, elon Musk, inthese.
God gonna go to, I'm gonna goto Mars.
The planets totally fucked up.
I'll leave them and go to Mars.
But we're so smart, you knowthis is the sooner he goes, the

(22:17):
better.
Get him up there.
It's the port must go and takeall your cronies with you.
This, but then Lord must go andtake all your cronies with you.
But then you come to where weno longer think.
We live in a web ofrelationships.
We're so smart, we don't haveto pay attention to nature.
We now live in a pyramid.

(22:38):
We're at the top, everythingdown below is for us, and all
those environmentalists aremouthing out yeah, yeah, we'll
be more careful, but it'sbasically, it's all ours, and so
that's.
The problem now is that humanshave become so powerful, but

(22:58):
with so little understanding ofthe reality that we're not in
charge.
You know?
You look at the age ofexploration, when Europeans
discovered a way to go over vastdistances, they could navigate,
so they knew where they were bythe stars and they could find
their way home Once you could doa return trip.

(23:20):
Then the age of explorationbegan.
And guess what?
Those Europeans, the Spaniards,the Portuguese, the English,
the Germans, the French.
They discovered new places.
They were already inhabited bycolored people.
In Africa, in South America,north America, australia,
everywhere, there were alreadypeople, but they called them

(23:41):
savages.
They said these primitivepeople, they don't look like us.
They said these primitivepeople, they don't look like us,
they don't dress like us, theydon't even speak our language.
I mean, they're primitivepeople and we just went after.
We weren't interested in howcould they survive here for
thousands of years.
We didn't give any, we didn'tcare about that.
We just said, hey, I want thatgold there.

(24:04):
Those trees are great for themasks of ships.
Then we started to go oh, thosedamn native people.
They think they own this land.
They're a pain in the ass.
Genocide, get rid of them.
Cultural genocide, get rid ofthem.
They're in the way of usgetting, and the tragedy is, of
course, those people all overthe world who had lived there

(24:27):
for thousands of years.
Their body of knowledge,indigenous knowledge, was the
blueprint for how you livesustainably in place, but we
paid no attention to that.
We didn't learn a goddamn thingfrom them.
We weren't curious about that,and so we're in the mess that we
didn't learn a goddamn thingfrom them, we weren't curious
about that, and so we're in themess that we're in now.

Aaron Pete (24:50):
That leads perfectly into something I just wanted to
share with you.
This is from Stahelis FirstNations Reconciliation Agreement
.
It's their origin story and Ijust want to read it to you
because I think it perfectlyspeaks to some of the pieces
you've just outlined.
Before the world was here, thesun and the moon fell in love.
They sent their emotions andfeelings towards each other, and

(25:12):
where those feelings met waswhere the world was created.
In the beginning, the world wascovered with water and through
time and evolution, some beingstook different shape and form.
Some became the winged, somebecame the four-legged fur
bearing, some became the winged,some became the four-legged
fur-bearing, some became theplant people and the root people
, some became the ones that swimin the rivers and oceans and
some became the humans.

(25:33):
Early in time, we, the humans,were the weakest and needed the
most help to survive.
All our relations felt sorryfor us.
They took pity on us.
An agreement was made wherethey agreed to give themselves
to us for food, shelter,clothing, utensils and medicine.
The only thing they asked forin return was to be respected,

(25:57):
be remembered, only take what weneed, share with those that are
less fortunate, and to notgather or harvest at certain
times and places to allow themto reproduce.
Before we gather, harvest orhunt, we say a prayer of
forgiveness and a prayer ofthanks to all our relations for
taking their life to feed ourfamily.

(26:17):
We commit to use everything andwe will share with those that
are less fortunate.
In honoring the sacredagreement, we are the stewards
of the land, environment, thewinged, the four-legged, the
plants and the ones that swim inthe rivers and oceans.

David Suzuki (26:35):
I don't know how to.
That's it.
The tragedy is, it's there.
That's it.
That's the way we have to live,but we regarded the people that
say things like that as savages.
The tragedy is, you know,there's huge change happening in

(26:57):
Canada.
Now.
We use words likereconciliation, listen.
We desperately need tounderstand what those words mean
and to know how profound thoseare.
You see, the Indigenous peoplein North America they weren't
always here.
Ten thousand years ago, canadawas covered in a sheet of ice

(27:18):
miles thick.
That when the ice began to meltand animals and plants began to
return.
Then we found our way in and wefollowed them and we made
mistakes.
We did some.
Things were easy, easy to catch, they were yummy and we took
them.
When I hear Haida, I have theHaida grandsons, so I know their

(27:42):
culture and you hear the Haidalegend.
They talk about when the plantsbegan to come back and the
order in which the trees cameback and they all make sense.
But then people got greedy.
The Ulicans used to come intoHaida Gwaii, but people got
greedy, said wow, look at this.
And they took them and guesswhat?

(28:03):
They went away.
They're not there anymorebecause people were greedy.
That's what you learn.
All of that knowledge isembodied in what we call
indigenous knowledge,traditional knowledge that was
acquired through experience.
People, you know, the evidenceof science is that we all began

(28:27):
as a species 200,000 years agoin Africa.
I keep waiting for the Ku KluxKlan to invite me to speak so I
can tell them we're all Africans, what the hell's your problem?
But from Africa after 40 to50,000 years we began to move.
I mean, try to imagine Africa200,000 years ago.

(28:49):
The savannas were filled withanimals and plants beyond
anything you would ever see onthe Serengeti today.
I mean, the abundance wasenormous and the little clumps
of three, four or five, thesefunny-looking two-legged furless
apes, that was us Not veryimpressive, but we lived there

(29:13):
for 40,000 to 50,000 years.
And then we don't know why, butwe began to move.
And you know, probably therewere enough people to have
tribal disagreements and battlesover territory.
Maybe we depleted certainresources.
I like to think it wasteenagers looking for excitement

(29:34):
over that mountain or acrossthe desert.
We now know that humans bred.
We bred with Neanderthals.
Maybe they said well, you know,there's some good-looking
Neanderthals over there andthey're not as smart as we are,
so be easy targets.
But whatever the reason webegan to move and we moved into

(29:55):
new territory.
We were an invasive animal.
We didn't know how, the rulesyou know?
Oh wow, look at all these birdswithout any wings.
They're easy to catch andthey're yummy.
And we killed them.
And the big, slow-moving slothseven with a stone axe you could
kill them.
If you follow the movement ofhumans and we moved on foot,

(30:21):
carrying everything we own whenyou follow our movement you see
extinction of the slow-moving,easily caught birds and mammals,
because we were an effectivepredator.
But as we moved into newterritory, then we learned, holy
cow, we shouldn't have killedso many.
And we learned throughexperience the things that work

(30:44):
and the things that don't work.
That's the essence ofindigenous knowledge.
Through trial and error,through mistakes and successes,
through observation, we learnedhow to live in balance with the
earth.
And the indigenous knowledge isplace-specific, it's for that

(31:07):
area of Earth and it's priceless.
No science will ever replacethat knowledge.
And we're right now at thatcritical point where so many of
those knowledges and languagesare right on the verge of
extinction.
And each time we lose theculture, that's catastrophic

(31:32):
because we'll never get thatknowledge back again.
So that's where we're at now.

Aaron Pete (31:39):
So I'm going to put this to you and I would love
your feedback, because this issomething I hear fairly often,
so it's something I'm sureyou've experienced.
There's this argument that I'veheard that extinction level
events have happened throughoutEarth's history, throughout our
solar system.
That extinction is not uncommon, it's not something to feel

(32:00):
uncomfortable with, like youdescribe.
We have periods of time wherethe dinosaurs were here.
Now there's not dinosaurs.
So this happens throughouthistory and, from what I've
heard from individuals like MrMusk, the argument is we can
either have a species that'swilling to try and escape this
planet and becomemulti-planetary, because life,

(32:22):
regardless of what form it comesin, could be destroyed.
We're in the height right now ofa solar storm as of 2025.
And that puts us at risk ofsolar winds and all of these
different challenges.
We could have an asteroid hitin BC.
We just had a large earthquake.
Lots of different things couldhappen.
A super volcano could wipe outall of life on Earth

(32:43):
instantaneously.
And so there's this argumentthat, no matter what humans do,
even if as flawed and I alwayslike to connect what you're
describing with the problemsthat humans bring as original
sin, because there's such a deepconnection there to me that we
are flawed.
We bring so many problems.
We are imperfect creatures andwe operate imperfectly.

(33:03):
But how do we balance this withthe fact that there is this
argument that we should prepareand we should start to dream big
again and to start to expandourselves and go okay, well, we
could bring life, we could dowhat Noah did with the ark in
that story and take life todifferent planets.
We could start to try andbecome multi-planetary.
What is your feedback on thatexpansionist mindset?

David Suzuki (33:23):
Well, he's absolutely right Extinction is
normal.
In fact, extinction isnecessary because in the 3.9
billion years that life hasexisted on this planet, the
conditions of the planet havechanged enormously.
3.9 billion years ago, just ascells were starting to appear,

(33:45):
2.9 billion years ago, just ascells were starting to appear,
the Sun was 30% cooler than itis now, the Sun's 30% hotter
today than it was way back then.
We have had these greattectonic plates have pulled
apart, moved, crashed into eachother, mountain ranges have come
up, worn down, oceans havefilled, emptied.

(34:06):
We've had warm periods and iceages.
Intermittently, the polarmagnetic poles have reversed and
re-reversed.
All kinds of things havehappened and life has persisted
and flourished.
How?
By the elimination of thosethat were there before these

(34:29):
catastrophic changes, and fromthem we drew out those that were
best adapted to the newconditions and life evolved and
changed.
99.9999, four decimal points,percent of all species that have
ever lived are extinct today.

(34:50):
What's different?
We've had five periods ofmassive extinction when up to
95% of all species in the fossilrecord disappear.
That's catastrophic.
Can you imagine if today, 95,we've already eliminated over

(35:12):
half of the species that werehere when I was born?
Wow, we're in a catastrophicextinction period, but after 95%
were gone, life recovered.
Different, but guess what?
It took 10 million years.
We've been around for 200,000years.

(35:35):
We've only become this massivedestructive force in the last
150 years, so we very recentlyachieved this status.
The tragedy is intelligence wasour gift, it was our survival
attribute and it worked, and oneof the gifts the brain did.

(35:59):
With this massive brain, wefound that we could affect the
future by what we do in thepresent.
Based on what we have observedand learned, we could look ahead
and see where the dangers areand where the opportunities are,
and we could deliberatelychoose to avoid danger and

(36:20):
exploit opportunity.
You know, at first it's easyYou're walking along and the
path branches and you go.
Oh yeah, dad went to the rightand he damn near got killed by a
saber-toothed tiger, but momwent to the left and found some
good berries to eat, so let's goleft.
Yeah, foresight was that greatgift that this brain gave us,

(36:41):
and you can see why it's soimportant.
This is why indigenous peoplespeak of seven generations.
Seven generations will rememberwhat our ancestors taught us as
they gave us the earth.
And then we think ahead onseven generations.
You don't just go for this fornow there are repercussions, you

(37:05):
think, seven generations aheadand that I think today we've got
scientists, scientists armedwith supercomputers.
They can look ahead.
You know?
One thing I'm amazed at isweather forecasts.
Now you may not know this, butwhen I was, you know, back when

(37:25):
I was a kid, a teenager, weatherforecasts were a joke.
You know, if they said it'sgoing to rain today, ah yeah,
they're.
You know they're wrong.
Most of the time, forecastingwas a very iffy thing.
Today, I'm amazed.
I mean, they're actually sayingthere's an atmospheric river
coming in three days.

(37:45):
Get ready, you know we'reheading into a period of drought
.
We better prepare, like theforecast now, because science
and computers have become sopowerful that we have much more
knowledge and ability to look inthe future.
The tragedy is, this is thefirst time one species has

(38:09):
deliberately changed the air,the water, the soil,
photosynthesis the things thatkeep us alive.
We've deliberately destroyed somuch of this.
We know what the problems are.
We know about climate change.
We've known about climatechange since the early 1900s.

(38:30):
We knew that global warming wasa possibility and that fossil
fuels were the primary cause.
We've known about the loss ofspecies now for many, many
decades, and scientists havebeen telling us.
But now you know anybody who'sgot a.
I got a wart on my big toe, sothat must mean blah, blah, blah,

(38:55):
and on the Internet they haveas much credibility as the
scientists who spend all hislife working on a subject.
So it's a tragic time.
We're the only species that hasever created the conditions we
know will drive us.
We're driving already millionsof species to extinction.

(39:17):
But it's going to drive us toextinction and environmentalists
for decades have been sayingthis is what we have to do Shift
direction, go down here andhere's how we get a sustainable
future.
The programs are all there, butthe power of science, of the
economy.
You see, in the last 150 yearswe've undergone an enormous

(39:43):
shift in the way that we live.
In 1900, there were only 10million people in Canada 10
million, can you imagine?
There were no cities in Canadawith a million people.
Most Canadians lived in ruralvillage communities.
If you look at a map in 1900 ofthe prairie, it was dotted with

(40:06):
villages of 150, 200 people,all built around agriculture and
the railroad, but they wererelatively self-sufficient.
But now of course, we become.
85% of us in Canada live in bigcities and the majority of
people around the world now livein big cities, and in a city,

(40:27):
your highest priority becomeswhat, aaron?
What is it?
I'm not sure, tell me, come on,you do your job.
You need a job to earn themoney to buy the things that you
want.
And so the economy to us livingin the city?
And we think, well, nature isout there, nature is, you know,
as long as we've got parks outthere and reserves, that's

(40:50):
nature.
But in the city we've got toworry about the economy.
And that's why, you know, wehad for 10 years a prime
minister, stephen Harper, whosaid we can't do anything about
climate change.
That's crazy economics.
So by saying that, he elevatedthe economy above the atmosphere

(41:13):
that gives us air to breathe,that gives us weather, climate
and the seasons.
You think the economy is moreimportant than that economy is
more important than that.

Aaron Pete (41:29):
That is fucking crazy.
Fair enough.
I'm curious when you hearconcepts like the carbon tax has
become a huge talking point inCanada and I imagine you view
that as like a blunt force, likeyou're bringing a hammer to try
and build a whole house, likeyou're not even participating in
the conversation, if you'refocused on one policy that's
going to fix all of the problemswe're facing.
Am I correct on that?

David Suzuki (41:48):
Absolutely.
And don't forget, the carbontax is brought in by Gordon
Campbell, who was a conservative, a conservative government, and
we all celebrated.
Now people like me said it'sway too small.
I think he brought in $20 or$25 a ton and it would go up

(42:09):
ultimately to $50 a ton.
Meanwhile, in the 1980s, swedenwas already charging $180 a ton
and we're quibbling about $25 aton Give me a break.
But it was the first NorthAmerican attempt to begin to
impact our emissions and wecelebrated that and bragged

(42:32):
about it.
Now, after he brought it in, theNDP said ax the tax.
Mr Pauliev, you didn't inventthat slogan, it was the NDP in
BC.
And guess what?
They lost the election.
The NDP was poised to win theelection and they then took on
axe attacks andenvironmentalists like me came

(42:54):
out and we opposed the NDP'sposition and they lost the
election.
So it's so funny now that, howmany years later is it?
And we've got a conservativethat didn't learn a goddamn
thing from that, and we're atwhat?
$40 or $50 a ton.
It should be about four or fivetimes that.

(43:22):
But for him, for Polyam, to actas if oh well, carbon tax is a
terrible burden on human beingsis absolutely ridiculous, but
we're in a terrible state.
We have Polyev, poised possiblyto take over Canada, and we
have Danielle Smith in Alberta,who won't even mention the words
climate change, who blames allthe problems of the oil patch on

(43:46):
those foreign-funded radicalslike Suzuki and his organization
, and we have a guy that camewithin two seats of winning the
BC election and he was kickedout of his original party
because he was a climate denier.
He set up his own party, theConservative Party, and he came

(44:07):
that close to winning.
So this is why I look in themirror and say I've been part of
a movement the environmentalmovement that has fundamentally
failed.
Why do you?

Aaron Pete (44:22):
feel that way, look where we are 100%, but what do
you think happened?
Where did the conversation gowrong?
Is it just ramming up againstthe economy and like that's just
.
That's too important to people?
Where is money.

David Suzuki (44:35):
In the 1980s and 90s, environmentalists were kind
of held up.
You know, oh, they're kinddreamers, but they're on the
right side.
People knew thatenvironmentalists had
credibility and the corporatecommunity said, shit, we got to
be smarter about this.
And they began to set up groups.

(44:55):
You know the share groups in BC.
You know, share the forest,don't let those greedy
environmentalists stop thelogging here.
Share the forest with everybody.
And you know they startedsaying it's those foreign-funded
radicals, you've got to get ridof the foreign funding that's
coming in to environmentalgroups.
And they began to pour At thevery time they were the most

(45:18):
profitable sector in society,they were still taking huge
amounts of tax dollars insubsidies and they were spending
ultimately hundreds of billionsof dollars in a campaign of
disinformation.
They'd say this is not true,even though we know for a fact

(45:40):
that in 1959, edward Teller, oneof the great physicists in the
world, spoke to the AmericanPetroleum Institute, the API,
and said burning fossil fuels iscreating a problem of warming
of the planet, that if youcontinue on the way you're going
, by the year 2000, it couldvery well be catastrophic.

(46:03):
They have known since 1959 thatthe science was in and their
own scientists, exxon's ownscientists in the 1960s said
Teller's right, our data, ourexperiments shows he's right,
we're putting out our greenhousegases.

(46:24):
He's right, we're putting outour greenhouse gases, it's going
to warm the planet.
So the industry to me this isthe height of evil in the name
of profit.
And the more profit, the fasterwe can get it, the better.
You don't think?
Those fossil fuel CEOs knowdamn well the implications of

(46:46):
climate change from burningtheir product, but they won't
spend a nickel trying tofind—they should call themselves
energy companies, not oilcompanies.
And so they should work withenvironmentalists to show that
there are other energiespossible that are affordable,
that are green and renewable.

(47:06):
The David Suzuki Foundationcame out with a document I'm
very, very proud of Last year.
Working with the University ofVictoria scientists, we've shown
that Canada could have itscomplete electrical grid powered
by affordable, renewable, greenenergy by 2035.

(47:27):
We don't have to burn fossilfuels for our electricity.
If we make the commitment nowand pour the money into it, we
can do it.

Aaron Pete (47:38):
Can I just ask how do you digest, like I hear?
Like we're a lot on hydro andone of the criticisms we've
heard, particularly from FirstNation communities, is that some
dams throughout BritishColumbia they've cut them off
and the communities down belowwhere they rely on the river to
flow have been cut off and theneverything dries up and then

(47:59):
there's no life there and thatthe decisions by human beings to
crank on the power or turn itoff impacts those systems as
well, that when we look at solar, it doesn't break down.
I always like to remind peoplethat solar energy is so
interesting because we're soproud of it.
Yet trees do this and theydon't leave anything behind.
And yet solar systems do leaveso much metal and plastic behind

(48:22):
.
So these green systems areoften critiqued.
Leave so much metal and plasticbehind, so these green systems
are often critiqued.
I think wind is critiqued onhow many birds that it ends up
killing every year, by how muchthose things spin.
So what green energy excitesyou that you think is not
causing a bad harm?
I?

David Suzuki (48:37):
think there is enormous possibility.
We're just at the cusp.
Solar energy, of course, is theobvious one, and it's now
become.
You know, the argument againstsolar by the oil industry was
always way too expensive.
We can't afford to do that Now.
Of course it's cheaper thanconventional fossil fuels.
But wind, I think, is still apossibility.

(49:00):
We have to position theturbines in the right place, but
I think there are reallyrevolutionary turbines.
I saw one last week in SaltSpring that really will get over
the killing of Other animals.
You know, if we're reallyconcerned of the with a killing
of wildlife, especially bird,then most Birds are killed by

(49:22):
domestic cats.
It's true.
It's true.

Aaron Pete (49:26):
It's like a billion or something like that.
Right, it's a crazy, insanenumber and tall buildings and
cars.

David Suzuki (49:33):
So you know you want to save all those.
Windmills are no?
Windmills do kill bats, they dokill birds, but it's a matter
of positioning them to minimizethat impact.
But you know, we've got to doall those things.
But when we got a heat pump putin our house, I couldn't
believe it.
It's like a miracle, thislittle machine.

(49:55):
All it's doing is pumpingfluids around and exchanging
heat, and in the summer it coolsmy house and in the winter it
warms it.
It's just a little heat pump.
Like why the hell have we hadthese for 50 years?
We think we're so smart, butthe potential, I think, is just

(50:19):
enormous.
But you know, I take my hat offto Elon Musk for the way he
drove electric cars onto theagenda.
There's just no taking awayfrom the way that he did.
He made EVs what they are today.
The problem, of course, iselectric cars aren't a solution.

(50:42):
They simply minimize our impact.
We shouldn't be owning privatecars.
Public transit should be theway that we go For longer
distances.
Maybe you could rent a car orsomething, but the idea that
everybody's got to own a car,especially in a city, is just
bloody crazy.

(51:02):
So electric cars?
You know, the first time Ivisited China in the 1970s, I
was just amazed that in Beijing,most people were still riding
bicycles.
But the scale of people.
I wrote an article and I saidif every Chinese wants a
motorbike, we're screwed.

(51:23):
Well, guess what?
They don't want a motorbike,we're screwed.
Well, guess what?
They don't want a motorbike,they want their car.
Which is worse.
You know they're leading theworld in electric cars, but
that's getting a millionelectric cars instead of a
million internal combustionengines.
That's not a solution.
It's just slowing down ourimpact.

Aaron Pete (51:44):
I have two more questions for you.
One I'm regularly and I'm sureyou are as well fascinated by
nature, and one that stood outto me.
I've never lost it.
You may know Susan Simard fromUBC.
She studied fungi most of herlife and she was a part of a
movie called Fantastic Fungithat was on Netflix for a period

(52:05):
with Paul Stamets, anotherbrilliant mycologist, and the
piece that really stood out tome that I've never forgotten is
that trees communicate with eachother through fungi and
mycelium underneath the groundand can actually encourage one
tree to grow farther away sothat it's able to get away from

(52:26):
pests or access more nutrients,and that they're a part of that
and that they communicate.
I think that's just.
It humbled me, because we dolook at trees and we have some
admiration for them, but whentrees are not older than sharks
which also shocked me to findout and then that they have this
communication and fungi is justone area that I've become very

(52:48):
fascinated by.
Is there another topic thatyou've learned about over your
years that stands out to you,about how nature operates and
that would surprise people Overand?

David Suzuki (52:57):
over again, we learn how ignorant we are.
It really gets me, you know,when you get an expedition going
to the South Seas of thePacific and guess what?
They discovered 10 new speciesof fish.
What the hell Can you imagine?
Let's suppose there were alienscoming to Earth and they had

(53:20):
their rockets 10 miles above theplanet and they dropped down
these little nets, you know,maybe 100 meters wide, and they
pulled the nets along the groundfor 10 miles and then pulled
them up and said, oh, look atwhat you've got by, what they
caught in there.
I mean, that's what we're doing,and we know nothing about

(53:43):
what's in the oceans.
We know nothing about what'sunder the.
We're a terrestrial,air-breathing mammal.
Our territory is on the surface, on the ground.
We know nothing about what'sunder there.
We know nothing about what's inthe ocean, and yet we construct

(54:03):
all of our models on the basisof what little we know.
You know, if you were going tohave a shoe factory and you
wanted to be a sustainable shoefactory for 100 years, what
would you need to do that?
I would think you'd need twothings.
One is you need an inventory ofeverything in your factory and

(54:27):
then you need a blueprint of howeverything in the factory is
connected.
So if we're going to manage awater system, a watershed, or if
we're going to manage a speciesin its habitat, how many plants
and animals are there in theworld?
We have no idea.
Many in back in the 80s I'veforgotten his name now they

(54:51):
asked you know, if you go to atropical rainforest like the
Amazon?
If you're, you go in thedaytime, nothing's happening.
All you hear is a lot of noisein the canopy up above, and that
comes out at night.
So what this guy did was saywhat the hell's up in the canopy

(55:12):
?
Nobody's ever studied.
So he spread plastic on thefloor and then shot a cannon of
pesticide into the canopy of onetree and it rained insect and
almost all of them had neverbeen seen by a human being

(55:33):
before.
Wow, so you've got NevilleWinchester, who was a PhD
student at the University ofVictoria, to Klaiquat and said
oh, western Canada Wilderness,has started to set up a canopy
camp up in Klaiquat and I'mgoing to do my PhD study in the

(55:59):
canopy of Klaiquat.
Guess what he discovered?
Virtually everything up therehe'd never seen before has the
highest concentration ofcarnivores of any ecosystem on
the planet Carnivores, spiders.
There is such a diversity ofspiders living on the insects up

(56:20):
there, like a whole ecosystemwe knew nothing about.
And yet we develop all thesemodels of management Now in the
oceans.
Our whole, up until 20 yearsago, our whole ecosystem was the
picture of the way it was.
Plankton are at the bottom, youknow phytoplankton and

(56:42):
zooplankton, animal and plants,and then the plankton are eaten
by bigger animals and you go offthe food chain the salmon and
whales and so on.
But then about 20 years ago,someone discovered there are
cells smaller than plankton.
Our plankton nets are too, themesh is too big and they

(57:02):
discovered phytoplankton whichare 10 times smaller than
phytoplankton, which are tentimes smaller than phytoplankton
.
And today they thinkphytoplankton are responsible
for half of the CO2 absorbed bythe oceans.
And yet our whole model didn'teven know they existed until

(57:25):
they we.
You know the thing I'vediscovered as a geneticist every
time you do an experiment andyou make a discovery, what you
really discover is how ignorantwe are, because you pull open
that little bit and then realize, oh my god, the ramifications
are so great.
You discover our ignorance, butwe act as if every discovery is

(57:50):
yay, we're gonna make money onit.
You know, it's just crazy.
So when I look at a tree, thetree should be the model For the
way we live.
When a tree seed lands on theground, it's stuck.
It can't say, oh, what a shittypiece of land.
There's not enough water, it'sstuck.
And once its root goes down,it's there forever.

(58:14):
And you think how modestly itlives.
All it takes is water, carbondioxide from the air and
sunlight to give you the energy,and it creates its entire
structure from those threecomponents.
And all the time it's growing.
Everything wants to eat them.

(58:35):
Why do you think the forest inHaida, the cedar forest in Haida
, gwaii, are in such trouble?
Because the people, whitepeople, it came there when, oh,
these poor people, all they'vegot is seafood.
They must be starving.
Let's bring deer here.
And of people, all they've gotis seafood, they must be
starving.
Let's bring deer here.
And of course, when theybrought the deer the deer love
baby cedars they just wiped outthe small cedars and they've

(58:58):
been very, very destructive.
So you know, we just don't knowanything.
And now, you see, we've got thisproblem with climate change and
we know that we're warming theplanet at a catastrophic rate.
So we think, oh well, we're sosmart.
Sunlight's coming down, let'sput up shields, let's put up a

(59:20):
giant umbrella and reflect thelight, or let's spray sulfur
compounds into the atmosphere.
David Keith, a Canadian who'sat the University of Chicago now
making huge bucks, and his ideaof geoengineering the planet
will have a fleet of 747spraying 24 hours a day,

(59:42):
spraying sulfur that deflectslights, and so they will behave
like a volcano and it will coolthe planet.
But the problem is that jetplanes that are flying 24 hours
a day are emitting all thiscarbon, so every year, you
haven't stopped climate change,you've just held it up.

(01:00:03):
You have to add more sulfur,because you can see, this is
crazy yeah, my last question foryou.

Aaron Pete (01:00:12):
I've had the opportunity to interview Rick
Hansen, another Canadian icon.
Yourself, you're an absolutelegend, and my fear is you
mentioned Greta Thunberg.
I'm just we have so manylegends but we don't have an to
me.
From what I see a newgeneration of people Taking up

(01:00:32):
the torch and carrying itforward to the same extent that
individuals like yourself have.
Individuals like Rick Hansen,terry Fox, individuals who, just
they, went farther than anybodyhad ever gone or anybody
thought to go.
How can we carry on your legacy?

David Suzuki (01:00:47):
well, after, after greta.
Now, first of all, you have toremember there was someone
before greta and that was mydaughter, seven, and you know, I
would hope you could play herun talk at the earth summit when
she was 12 in 1992.
So the europeans called uhseven, the first, first Greta.

(01:01:09):
But she was saying all thethings that Greta was saying and
with Greta she's had a hugeimpact.
It was so powerful.
The image of her sitting all byherself with a sign that just
said stop climate change was, uh, one of those pictures that
shocked and and moved the worldand tragic and you saw greta's

(01:01:35):
bringing up all over the place.
In canada there were all kindsof teenagers that were getting
up and they were, you know,greta was their great idol and
they were, they were copying, uh, greta.
But covid hit and covid reallytook the wind out of their sails
and that's one of the tragediesthat something big had been

(01:01:55):
built by greta and it washappening all over the world.
But can I just push back asmidge.

Aaron Pete (01:02:00):
You earned everything that you had done.
You had done years of research.
You're an absolute expert inwhat you know and I'm not trying
to fault greta.
But the challenge is she is,she didn't.
There isn't a person who knowsas much as you on that field.
That's doing what you did.
To the same extent, she raisesawareness, which is absolute to
your point, an absolute, pivotalpiece, but she doesn't bring

(01:02:22):
that wealth of knowledge andexpertise and training and
education and validity inscientific research and rigor
that you have been able to bring, that Bill Nye, the science guy
, brought.
That individuals carried thescientific execution alongside a
passion for protecting theplanet.

David Suzuki (01:02:40):
Well, you've got to remember that Greta was
building on the science.
She wasn't saying I know allthis stuff, she's just saying I
take the science seriouslybecause that's what I was taught
in high school.
You don't need an expert whenyou've got the scientist.
The tragedy now is, you knowthere's so much talk about the
elite.

(01:03:00):
The elite is such a you know adegrading word that you look
down on anyone who's an elitist.
So you know, there was a timewhen I began in television when
scientists and doctors were atthe highest level of public
respect.
But today, when you look at thekind of rabbit holes you can

(01:03:24):
get down into of rabbit holesyou can get down into, my God,
like what's going on.
Social media has empoweredanybody to say anything and
people believe it, so thatexperts.
If you look at Michael Mann,the climatologist who first

(01:03:46):
talked about the hockey stick,what he had to endure from the
fossil fuel industry wasabsolutely outrageous.
I mean legal suits tried to gethim fired from the university,
tried to discount all the workthat he's done.
He hung in there.
I think one of the.
If I were to fault anyone, itis the scientific community

(01:04:10):
itself.
When I began to popularizescience, my first national
program was in 1962.
And I began with the Nature ofThings, which was already going.
The Nature of Things started in1960.
I became the host in 1979.
It was already an establishedshow, but the respect for

(01:04:32):
scientists was very, very high.
But then you have therelentless pressure of the right
wing of the industries pouringmoney into saying this is BS,
that the scientists are not tobe trusted, this is BS, that the
scientists are not to betrusted.

(01:04:55):
And you end up with Kennedy nowas a minister of health.
You know his father would turnin his grave if he knew that he
was now in a position of power.
And I met Kennedy several timeswhen he came to BC campaigning
for rivers.
He was great, he was fantastic.
But I don't know where he'sgone off, but he's gone off the

(01:05:20):
really deep end.
But it's the triumph, then,over expertise, over expertise.
And the scientific communityhasn't spoken up.
And you know I was elected tothe Royal Society many years ago
.
That's supposed to be the topscientist.
Blah, blah, blah.
And I quit Because I said Idon't see the point of this.

(01:05:42):
You're not doing anything, youjust celebrate.
Oh, we're the best.
I said so.
I wrote a letter recently tothe well, a couple of years ago
now, to the president, I saidlook, why aren't you guys
hounding down the door of thepoliticians of the government
saying what are you basing yourpolicies on?
The science is here, it'scrystal clear.

(01:06:04):
Why aren't you acting on it?
And his response was well, youquit the Royal Society, so you
should know what we're.
You know like he was pissed offat me because I quit the Royal
Society.
And it's tragic that thescientists have the knowledge
and we've degraded their imageso much that we don't pay

(01:06:29):
attention.
That's incredibly heavy.
So let me end by saying I gavea talk to a group of teachers
and their students in a programcalled TREC.
Do you know the TREC program?
It's a program in grade 10where kids from all across the
city have half a year ofacademics and half a year of

(01:06:49):
outdoor camping and canoeing andall that stuff.
And both of my daughters werein trek and now my grandson is
in it.
So I gave a talk and at the endpeople were very distressed and
they said well, you're sayingthat we're already over the edge
.
Where's your hope?
You're saying that we'realready over the edge, where's
your hope?
And I said we use hopium, hopeas hopium.

(01:07:11):
You know, just shoot up somehopium and everything will be
okay.
My hope only is in action.
And they're saying teenagers nowhave become so terrified that
they're just, you know, they'returning off, they're committing
suicide, they're reallydepressed.

(01:07:32):
I mean, it is true, it's aproblem Because, like Greta,
they pay attention to what thescience is saying.
And to me the only hope is ifmom and dad are busting their
ass and that's not just writingletters or giving money or
making phone calls Heavilyinvolved in whatever

(01:07:52):
environmental group, in whateverhunger and poverty in whatever.
Anti-patriarchy, these groups,social justice these are all a
part of trying to change the waythat we live.
You cannot live sustainablywhen you have this enormous
inequity of money, of power, andexist within a patriarchy in

(01:08:15):
which women are discounted.
We can't when you're hungry oryou're poor.
You've got other prioritiesthan worrying about the
environment.
These are all issues that we'reall about, but mom and dad have
to show they care about kids'future because they're doing all
they can.
If mom and dad aren't doing it,those kids really do not have

(01:08:37):
any hope.
If the two people that mattermost in their lives aren't
working their asses off forchange.

Aaron Pete (01:08:44):
I love that, David.
How can people follow your work?
How can they connect with yourfoundation?

David Suzuki (01:08:49):
Well, they can come to the website and you know
I've written dozens and dozensof books, including 18 for
Children.
But you know it's all out there.
The problem we face todaythere's too much stuff.
I'm getting stuff all the timeJust for climate change groups.
I can't read it all.
There's too much stuff andpeople, because of that, people

(01:09:15):
are just entertaining themselvesand, quite frankly, I'm
addicted I agree, I admit toYouTube, and YouTube offers me
all kinds of respite from thereality of what's going on.
So I mean, I love what I canget on YouTube.

(01:09:37):
But I think you know when theIntergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change came out with aspecial report saying we must
not allow temperature to risemore than 1.5 degrees above
pre-industrial levels by 2021.
That was the call.

(01:09:57):
That was it.
That's the target.
The next day so the media therewere some reports in the papers
.
The next day, marijuana becamelegal in Canada and, guess what,
disappeared from the media.
So in 19, oh, sorry, in 2019, Ithink, the United Nations came

(01:10:20):
out with this terrifying reporton biodiversity that, as I said,
showed over half of the speciesthat were on the planet when I
was born in 1936 are now extinctand I went oh my God, we're in
a major extinction crisis.
The next day, harry and Meghanhad a baby and guess what

(01:10:42):
disappeared from them.
We're not serious about this.

Aaron Pete (01:10:45):
No, that's not good.
David, it has been an honor tospeak with you.
I want you to know that Ireally appreciate the uncensored
nature in which you've talked.
I think the way you're speakingis how we should start talking
about these conversations, abouthow we're addressing the issues
.
I view your name as connectedwith caring about the

(01:11:08):
environment.
When I've told people I havethe privilege of speaking with
you today, they go oh yeah, Ineed to do more to to do right
by the environment.
I need to start payingattention more like.

David Suzuki (01:11:17):
You are connected with that in such a deep way
that I just have such admirationfor the work you've done and I
just appreciate you so muchthank you, aaron, but I have to
tell you everything I've learnedabout the environment,
everything I've told you I'velearned from Indigenous people,
and my gratitude today is thatpeople have fought to retain

(01:11:38):
their culture and their language.
And if you knew the forces thatthis government has imposed to
try to stamp the Indian out ofthem, to stamp out that culture,
they are the true survivors andwe should be so grateful that
they've hung on to thosevestiges because they have so

(01:11:59):
much to teach us.
You know, and it's such achange in the past 20 years,
when I started with the Natureof Things, if we were doing a
program on alcohol, we wouldn'thesitate to show a drunken First
Nation person on Skid Row,throw it up there, wouldn't even
think about it.
That was the stereotype.
Today we wouldn't.

(01:12:21):
Nobody would dream of doingthat.
You can't go to a meeting inCanada without beginning by
acknowledging the traditionalterritory of the Indigenous
people.
So now we're ready to take thenext big step.
If it's the traditionalterritory, give it the hell back
.
We say this is Crown land.

(01:12:43):
That's not Crown land, that'sIndigenous land, give it back.
And if we say, well, I mean weown property now in Vancouver or
Toronto, okay, but we still sayit's Indigenous territory,
unceded, pay rent and if we cando that, that will empower those
communities, the land, the landprotectors.

(01:13:05):
It'll empower them so they haveenough land to practice their
knowledge base to put that intoaction.
But we've got to support themin this fight and we've got to
learn from it.
This is no longer just a caseof social justice for the First
Nations.
This is for survival of uscolonialists here, our settlers.

(01:13:27):
They are the source of theknowledge we need and the values
and the perspective that weneed to come to grips with the
crisis that we face today.
What a beautiful way to end.
Don't acknowledge me.
I mean thank you for all that.
Acknowledge those people thathave fought to protect their

(01:13:49):
territory.

Aaron Pete (01:13:50):
Thank you, david.
So much for your time.
Thank you.