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Environmentalist denounces economists’ obsession with GDP

Suzuki: Jail politicians who ignore science



David Suzuki delivered a scathing and powerful speech to a packed house at McGill Thursday night, calling on young people and business leaders to reverse the demise of ecology at the hand of shortsighted economic theory.

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Suzuki, an award-winning Canadian scientist, environmentalist, and broadcaster, kicked off the McGill Business Conference on Sustainability by addressing the conference’s theme of “looking backward and moving forward.” “The only guide for our future is our past, and we don’t look back,” he said. Suzuki underlined the importance of looking backward by explaining that, because the past 50 years have seen a boom in technology and population expansion, ideas of economic growth have been skewed. “That means you have lived your entire lives in a completely unsustainable period,” Suzuki said to the young audience. “You all think [economic] growth and change is normal. It’s not.” He said we need to do more to look forward, as well. He cited a brochure from 1992 entitled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity”, signed by over 600 of the world’s top scientists, that expressed the seriousness of modern threats to the environment. “No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished,” he read from the brochure. He noted that no major news outlets deemed the story newsworthy at the time. “If that brochure was frightening, the response of the media was terrifying,” Suzuki said, adding that the media was instead preoccupied with celebrity figures. He urged today’s youth to speak out against politicians complicit in climate change, even suggesting they look for a legal way to throw our current political leaders in jail for ignoring science – drawing rounds of cheering and applause. Suzuki said that politicians, who never see beyond the next election, are committing a criminal act by ignoring science. But in a nod to the hosts of his speech, Suzuki connected the environment to the economy, explaining the trouble he sees in mainstream economists’ call for unbridled economic growth. “Ecology and economy have the same root word – eco, and it means ‘home’,” he said. “But what we have done is elevate the economy above ecology.” He described speaking to children in Toronto who could not explain where water or food came from, only that it was supplied by the economy. “We think if the economy is doing well we can afford these basic things.” He criticized the short-sightedness of economists and their constant need for increased growth, which will eventually be impossible. “We live within the biosphere. It can’t grow, it’s fixed!” he exclaimed. “We’ve been using up our biological capital for over 20 years. The reason we maintain our illusion of biological plentitude is because we are using up the rightful legacy of our children and grandchildren,” he said. Suzuki also faulted the use of the Gross Domestic Product – which increases after oil spills and health crises – as a “nutty” indicator of growth. “[Using the GDP], an outrageous disaster becomes a phenomenal success.” He gave a scathing critique of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, chastising them for neglecting the environment in favour of economic growth and development of the tar sands. “It is an intergenerational crime that in the face of the work of scientists over the last 20 years, they keep dithering as they are,” he said. Suzuki also underlined the interconnectedness of humans with their natural world – a point not often made by mainstream environment critics. “We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves,” he said. In using DDT to kill insects, he said, we harmed the environment as well as human health before understanding effects of processes like biomagnification – where a toxin increases in concentration at each successive level in food chain – until years after DDT was introduced. He said the same thing is happening with genetically modified organisms. “Mark my words, any scientist that tells you they are safe is either ignorant or lying to you,” he said. Conference co-organizer Sadaf Kashfi said Suzuki’s talk was an inspiration. “Suzuki’s talk gave business students the insight they need to thrive in today’s world,” Kashfi said. The conference, which ran from Thursday to Sunday, was put on by students from the Faculty of Management to draw attention to the need for sustainable practices in business. The McGill Daily


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