Terry O'neill, Brent Foster,
No one knows how many forests have been felled to print all the stories that have been published about David Suzuki, Canada's much-honoured but continuously controversial environmental crusader. The dead trees probably number in the many thousands, a (supposedly) global-warming-causing harvest so plenteous as to lead one to assume that preacher Suzuki might have begun moderating his apocalyptic sermonizing, lest he trigger yet another round of clear-cutting.
But no. Instead, Suzuki has lately pumped up his rhetoric with even more frantic language, apparently as part of an all-out, last-ditch attempt to persuade Canadians that the world is fast approaching an environmental meltdown. It's not clear whether he's changing any minds with his new bellicosity, but he has at least been doing his bit to keep the country's loggers busy.
So what exactly has Suzuki, who is on the university-lecture circuit these days, been saying? For starters, he told a University of Toronto audience last month that the next federal election ought to be about the environment. No problem there. However, as reported by a student newspaper, he then opined that government leaders who aren't acting quickly enough to save the environment "should go to jail for what they're not doing right now … What our government is not doing is a criminal act."
His allegation of law-breaking was apparently no mere slip of the tongue. Speaking a few weeks later at McGill University, Suzuki again equated governments' alleged inaction on the environment with a criminal act; in fact, he is reported to have said students ought to find a legal way to throw politicians in jail for ignoring climate-change science.
The geneticist-turned-broadcaster had particularly harsh words for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Ed Stelmach of Alberta because of their alleged favouring of economic growth over environmental protection. "It is an intergenerational crime" -- there's that concept again -- "that, in the face of the work of scientists over the last 20 years, they keep dithering as they are," Suzuki declared.
Suzuki's alarmism is nothing new, and more-prudent scientists have long ago answered his hyperbole and exposed his faulty logic. And it's also long been abundantly clear from his speeches and books that his position is driven by both a quasi-religious zeal and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of humanity's relationship with the natural world.
On this latter matter, he told the McGill crowd there is actually no difference between human beings and the environment in which they live. "We are the environment. There is no distinction," he declared, thereby equating, for example, a newborn baby with a mud puddle. How heartening.
But this is old ground. What we haven't seen from him until now is such an incendiary call to arms. Taking to the streets to protest climatechange inaction is one thing. Calling for the jailing of politicians is quite another -- especially considering the fact that, the last time I checked anyway, there is nothing in the Criminal Code of Canada to prevent the Prime Minister from attempting to enhance both the country's economy and its environment. It's called balance.
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