EXPERT OPINIONS

Michael Harris - David T. Suzuki - Howard Garrett - Dr. Paul Spong
Expert Quotes

WHAT CAN I DO?
David T. Suzuki
August 12, 2003

People often ask me "What is the most urgent environmental issue confronting us - is it climate change, species extinction, toxic pollution or deforestation?" The only honest answer is: "all of the above and more are serious ecological issues but no one knows for certain which one might trigger an irreversible and catastrophic collapse in the planet's life support systems." There is no single act that will somehow avoid the looming eco-crisis.

I believe the overarching crisis resides inside the modern urban human mind, namely the values and beliefs that are driving much of our destructiveness. Throughout the history of our species, human beings have always understood that we are deeply embedded in and utterly dependent on the natural world. People knew that in nature, everything is connected to everything else, that nothing exists alone or in isolation. In such a web of exquisite interconnections, any action has consequences that reverberate throughout the web. Rachel Carson taught us that when she pointed out how insecticides that are sprayed to kill pests, inadvertently end up affecting fish, birds and human beings. So every deliberate act carries responsibilities to think beyond the immediate issue to the whole system.

Throughout time, many of our songs, dances and rituals celebrated nature's generosity and reaffirmed our commitment to act properly to maintain her generosity and abundance. But we have severed that understanding and commitment. Our world has been shattered by a number of factors: the reductionist view of scientists that fragments the world into bits and pieces; our habitation of large cities dominated by the products of human activity; fragmentation of information in the media and internet; the short sighted vision and objectives of politicians and businesspeople; and the global economy that overrides local communities and ecosystems.

Today it's difficult to recognize our continuing connection with and dependence on nature. So try this thought exercise: Imagine that scientists have created a time machine and we travel back four billion years, before life had evolved on the planet. Instead of unlimited resources and opportunity, we would discover a place inhospitable to human life. The atmosphere was poisonous, rich in carbon dioxide and devoid of oxygen. When life arose and discovered photosynthesis, carbon dioxide was removed from the atmosphere and oxygen released, and eventually the air animals like us need was created. Before life arose, freshwater was not filtered of toxic materials by plant roots, soil fungi or microorganisms. There was nothing to eat in the pre-life world because every bit of our food is composed of plants, animals and micro-organisms. And even if we had brought a stash of food and seeds in the time capsule to stay a while, there would be nowhere to grow food because soil is created by the mixture of molecules from life forms with the matrix of sand, silt and clay. Four billion years ago, there was nothing to burn to create heat because all fuels - coal, gas, oil, wood and peat are created from life. Even if we brought paper and wood to make a fire, the absence of oxygen precluded flame anywhere on earth. So the four sacred elements - earth, air, fire and water - that traditional people tell us sustain all life, are created, cleansed or replenished by the web of life that we tend to call nature.

The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is deity, not a pile of ore, a river is the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water, a forest is a sacred grove, not timber, other species are our biological kin, not resources, or the planet is a living entity, not an opportunity, we will behave differently in each case. That is the challenge, to re-examine the world through a different perspective.

Please visit The David Suzuki Foundation's website for more information and to take the Nature Challenge. www.davidsuzuki.org