David Suzuki: an autobiography
By David Suzuki
Allen & Unwin, 2006
416 pages, $29.95 (pb)
REVIEW BY FRANCIE CAMPBELL
A candid self-portrayal of this leading environmentalist. He begins by revisiting his childhood, revealing the racism and discrimination that he and his family experienced as Japanese-Canadians, particularly during World War II. These experiences of prejudice, coupled with a sense of oddity and sometimes failure, have stayed with him during his adult life.
Suzuki traces his education, highlighting how he developed a lively interest in DNA and genetics, because it seemed to be an area that extended into every area of the life sciences. At this time in his early graduate life, Suzuki reflects that he and his co-students were pretty "puffed up" with themselves as a result of recent discoveries in the genetics field, and tended to be condescending to the more traditional sciences like biology and ecology.
As a young man, David's father encouraged him to take up public speaking, and he became increasingly involved in hosting television programs on a range of scientific issues. This included hosting Suzuki on Science (1969); Science Magazine (1974-1979); and a radio program Quirks and Quarks (1975-1979). In 1979 he left the last two programs to became host on a reformatted The Nature of Things with David Suzuki.
Suzuki argues that a huge problem faced today is the overwhelming bias of mainstream media that "equates economic growth with progress". When doing a program in 1982 on the impact of logging, with the indigenous Haida Indians of Windy Bay off the coast of British Columbia, he was set on a "a radically different course of environmentalism". He came to see that the forests and oceans of Windy Bay were critical to the indigenous people's identity, who do not think that "they end at their skin or fingertips", but that the air, water, trees, fish and birds of their land make them who they are.
After a great response to the program, the battle to preserve Windy Bay was eventually won, and it was set aside as parkland. Other campaigns Suzuki focussed on included the Stein Valley, the Aral Sea, the Amazon, and Papua New Guinea.
By 1991, the David Suzuki Foundation was established, aimed at highlighting environmental issues around the world, by focussing on the root causes so that real change could occur. The foundation was explicit in its aim not to receive government grants, to allow it the freedom to speak without jeopardising funding.
Suzuki writes of a love for Australia, which began with his desire to see the duck-billed platypus. His evaluation of Australia is both constructive and critical. He looks at how Indigenous people have been mistreated, but observes how committed many Australians are to reconciliation for Indigenous Australians. Suzuki argues that one of the most terrifying aspects of globalisation is that the kind of knowledge that Indigenous people in Australia have of the land and their culture is not valued. He also criticises the Australian government for not exploiting the free, non-polluting and abundant supply of solar energy.
However, of all the environmental crises confronting the planet today, Suzuki argues that climate change looms the largest. The Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change issued in 1997, highlighted the disparity in energy use by industrialised and developing countries, but the United States and Australia declined to join in ratifying it, despite the rest of the world doing so. Although the scientific evidence for climate change is now overwhelming, in 2005 the media continued to treat climate change as a controversy, giving sceptics who denied global warming media precedence. Suzuki regards this as "tragic".
He finishes off his story by reflecting on science and technology, stating that there is a "scientific illiteracy" among politicians, and that this could hinder the possibility of finding lasting solutions to many environmental problems we face. He cautions new scientists, saying that "the nature of any cutting-edge science is that most of our current ideas are wrong". He says that this is the way science progresses, and science needs time to be developed.
Suzuki points out that in most scientific areas "biomimicry", that is, emulating what we see in nature, should be a guiding principle, rather than overwhelming nature. Decision making should not be subdivided into ministries for agriculture, ministries for energy etc., but looked at holistically, examining the interconnectedness of our ecosystems, to ensure that we will be able to manage resources sustainably.
David Suzuki's story is also an interconnected one. His journey branches into many areas and his personal discoveries and scientific discoveries are interconnected — just as he longs for us to see the interconnection of our planet's ecosystems.