Dear David,
You don’t know me. But I know you, in the same way that pretty much everyone knows you, as the one and only David Suzuki, the scientist, environmentalist, broadcaster, author, public intellectual, and gadfly who calls it like it is and never pulls his punches.
But I never pegged you for a cynic, until I read your interview with iPolitics.
To be fair, you got a lot of things right: Market solutions to the climate crisis aren’t working; endless economic growth in a finite world is a contradiction; the billionaire class is obscene; Jeff Bezos’ wedding in Venice was, to use your word, disgusting. The conspicuous display of wealth. The private jets. The carbon footprint.
But then you dropped this bombshell when talking about how we should have acted sooner: “I’ve never said this before to the media, but it’s too late.”
To say that it’s too late, that the fight against climate change is over, and that the best we can do is to hunker down and brace ourselves for what is coming down the pike isn’t honest realism. It’s depressing cynicism, because – and I can’t believe that I need to tell you this – it’s not over.
The fight is everywhere and ongoing. In labs, classrooms, and communities, in institutes, nongovernmental organizations, and direct action groups, and in fiction, nonfiction, and art, cool people are doing cool things to imagine a low-carbon future that is at once less hierarchical and more reciprocal.
Just last month, the European Union achieved a huge milestone: For the first time, the majority of its electricity came from solar power. Meanwhile, wind power generates a remarkable 47% cent of the electricity in Kansas. And Kansas is a red state!
Moreover – and as a scientist, you know this – every tenth of a degree matters, meaning a 3.4°C scenario is a helluva lot worse than a 2.8°C scenario. Both are terrifying, but one means less extreme weather, less sea level rise, and less loss and damage than the other. It’s up to us, you and me and everyone else, to choose which future we want.
Look, I get it. I teach climate politics, and I know how dysfunctional they are. Our international negotiation process probably isn’t fit for purpose. Canada axed its tax when Mark Carney, in his first official act as prime minister, put politics over policy and canceled the consumer carbon price, which incentivized a shift to climate-friendly behavior. And British Columbia, a place you know and love, quickly followed suit, even though it had been a world leader in carbon pricing.
No one said the news is good. In fact, it’s bad. And I haven’t even mentioned Donald Trump, whose 2024 election platform didn’t contain a single reference to climate breakdown, but did promise, in all caps, to “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”
But none of this means that the climate fight is over, or that, as you clearly intimated, we should throw in the towel, buy a generator, charge our phones, and wait for the climate apocalypse. Instead, it means rolling up our sleeves, getting our hands dirty, and electing leaders who get climate change, who understand the urgency, and who can use climate justice in a sentence and actually mean it.
I suspect you already know this, because in the same interview, you also said that you’re not giving up in the immediate term. But that’s not what grabbed the headlines, and later you attempted to walk back some of your comments.
David, you are an amazing human being and a global icon. So I hope you take this the right way, but next time you find yourself discouraged at the state of things, stuff a sock in it.
I know. I shouldn’t say that. My 97-year-old mother will be cross with me. But you have a fondness for colloquial and colorful language, and I am guessing you’ve heard worse.
Oh, and while you’re at it, please reread your own essays, which are so full of wonder and hope, and which challenge us to rethink the world and our place in it.
Twenty-plus years ago, you wrote something that has stayed with me. It’s as true today as it was then.
“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are our biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity – then we will treat each one with respect. That is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.”
Hopefully yours,
Donald Wright
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