David Suzuki Foundation - Science Matters

Copenhagen climate summit is crucial

Fri, 30 Oct 09 07:00:00 UT

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

The buzz around the December UN climate summit in Copenhagen is increasing. Some of you may be wondering what it’s all about. Why is this one meeting so important? And does it really matter if it succeeds or fails?

The answer is that it matters a lot, especially if we want to tackle global warming rather than just talking and arguing about it.

Global warming is a global problem requiring global solutions. The atmosphere doesn't stay within federal or provincial boundaries. It is a global commons. Greenhouse gases emitted in Canadian provinces mix with those from every other part of the world and affect everyone. A molecule of carbon is a molecule of carbon. It has the same impact on the environment whether it came from a smokestack in Toronto or a taxi’s tailpipe in Kuala Lumpur.

Every nation must do its part. And each country needs reassurance that others are also acting. We need a global agreement that is legally binding with rules clearly outlined.

The science of climate change is evolving rapidly. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s last report is now two years old, and the research in that report is more than four years old. Recent scientific information shows that the impacts of climate change are happening much more quickly than expected. The polar ice cap is melting at an astonishing rate. Ocean levels are rising more rapidly than predicted. And weather-related disasters are mounting.

Leading scientific institutions such as the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.K. Royal Society, and the Royal Society of Canada have declared that current scientific information points to a need for immediate action.

We have no time to waste. Copenhagen is our moment. In fact, two years ago the world agreed that the Copenhagen summit would be the deadline for forging the next global agreement to strengthen and build on the Kyoto Protocol.

Kyoto was always considered to be the first step by industrialized countries, whose fossil-fuel-powered growth created the problem. Establishing the legal framework was an important part of that first step, as were very modest emission reductions. But Copenhagen has to be more than just another small step. Science suggests the issue is urgent, so this step needs to be much bigger if we want our actions to keep pace with increasing climatic changes.

Industrialized countries need to accept binding commitments to reduce their global warming pollution much more dramatically in the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol, after 2012. But we also need to craft a companion treaty to Kyoto, one that lays out the kinds of actions that major developing countries, like India and Indonesia, will take to curb their emissions.

A recent study commissioned by Global Humanitarian Forum president and former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan indicates that 50 of the world’s poorest countries collectively produce less than one per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Yet, these very same countries have been disproportionally affected by climate change. Thus, an essential part of any fair climate agreement must include support from industrialized countries to poorer nations – support in the form of financing and clean technologies so that poorer nations can wean themselves off fossil fuels and better adapt to the impacts of climate change.

This principle – that rich countries like ours have filled up the atmosphere with pollution in the course of our development, and that it’s now our responsibility to assist less-developed countries to follow a clean path to prosperity – is one that goes back to 1992. It was enshrined in the Rio Convention and reiterated in Kyoto, and again two years ago in Bali. But we have yet to meet that promise, and it is time we did.

It is now up to our global leaders – presidents and prime ministers, ministers of finance and environment – to be visionary, to look beyond shorter-term political timelines and imagine a future world of security and prosperity, where our homes and workplaces are fed by clean energy. And it is up to global citizens to ensure that they do.

Visionary leadership requires active and engaged citizens to keep the politicians’ feet to the fire. Your efforts have never been needed more to help make this happen.

Forests count in our fight against climate change

Fri, 23 Oct 09 07:00:00 UT

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

In 1992, I attended an event that filled me with hope. Canada and the rest of the world had just signed a climate change treaty at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. I remember being optimistic that the world could come together to fight the greatest threat to our planet and our own survival. We had done it before in overcoming other threats, like defeating Nazism in Europe and beating back horrific diseases like polio that once maimed and killed tens of thousands of people each year.

When Canada signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty, we had not yet begun to experience the full consequences of climate change. There were no news reports of starving polar bears in the Arctic, the mountain pine beetle had not yet turned B.C.’s forests crimson, and we weren’t facing a rapid increase in infectious diseases, like Lyme disease, that are exacerbated by warming temperatures.

The effects of climate change are now affecting people and places all over the planet, from the most remote tropical rainforest to the urban parks where many of our kids play. And scientists tell us that some changes, like melting sea ice in the Arctic, are happening much faster than any computer model had predicted.

Though the 1992 UNFCCC treaty set no mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and contained no enforcement provisions (these would come later in the Kyoto Protocol and, we hope, in a forthcoming climate treaty that will replace it), it did set an ambitious science-based goal: to stabilize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent the effects of dangerous climate change.

Scientists say we can only achieve this goal if we radically reduce all major sources of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. While much of the debate and action has focused on curbing emissions from burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and gas, the destruction of our forests, wetlands, grasslands, and peatlands is responsible for about one quarter of all other emissions into the atmosphere. That’s higher than emissions from cars, trucks, boats, and planes together.

In Canada and throughout the world, forests are being rapidly cleared for agriculture and oil and gas development and are being destructively mined and logged. When forest soils are disturbed and trees are burned or cut down for wood and paper products, much of the carbon stored in their biomass is released back into the atmosphere as heat-trapping carbon dioxide, although some carbon can remain stored in longer-lived forest products, like wood used to make furniture or homes.

Thus the destruction of forests and other ecosystems is not only a driver of extinction of species, such as boreal caribou, but is a driver of global warming as well.

We need to adopt a carbon stewardship approach to how we use our forests and the goods and services we take from them.

For some scientists, carbon stewardship means setting aside at least half of all remaining intact forests as protected areas, particularly carbon-rich forests like old-growth temperate rainforests in B.C. and the boreal in Canada’s north, where wildlife like caribou feed, breed, and roam. Protecting intact forests also promotes ecological resiliency so that species and ecosystems can cope with and adapt to the effects of climate change.

That doesn't mean that the logging companies should be allowed to trash the other 50 per cent. Forests that we do manage for wood and paper production should be logged according to the highest standards of ecosystem-based management, without clear-cutting, and with adequate protection for wildlife habitat like caribou, as well as sensitive areas like wetlands.

In December, the world’s nations will meet at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen to negotiate a new strong and fair climate change agreement that will continue and strengthen the Kyoto Protocol. Scientists tell us that to avoid dangerous climate change governments must agree to deep reductions in greenhouse gases, including carbon emissions from the destruction of our forests, wetlands, and other ecosystems. We can achieve this by agreeing to protect our intact forests, taking full responsibility for emissions from logging and other land-use activities, and helping developing nations reduce deforestation.

Let’s use our forests in a truly sustainable way that is better for nature, better for the climate, and ultimately better for our own health and well-being.

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Scientific information on how the destruction of forests and other ecosystems contributes to global warming:
www.davidsuzuki.org/conservation/conference

Campaign to curb greenhouse gas emissions from forest destruction in Canada:
www.makeforestscount.org

Campaign to curb greenhouse gas emissions from tropical deforestation:
http://www.rainforestsos.org/

Facebook campaign to protect boreal caribou and their carbon-rich forests:
http://www.facebook.com/SaveTheBou?v=app_4949752878#/SaveTheBou?v=wall

Copenhagen climate deal must be fair, ambitious, and binding

Fri, 16 Oct 09 07:00:00 UT

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

Developed countries including Canada and the U.S. have benefited tremendously from fossil-fuel exploitation. Resources like oil, gas, and coal have allowed us to industrialize and to expand our economies, making life easier for citizens in so many ways.

Just as developing nations started to follow suit in raising their living standards, though, we began to realize that our current fuels and technologies come at great cost to the world. And even though developed countries have reaped most of the benefits of fossil fuels, developing countries, which have contributed least to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, are feeling the brunt of the consequences. Droughts, severe weather events, food shortages, and waves of refugees are just some of the burdens climate change is forcing on people who were already facing incredible challenges brought on by poverty and a lack of infrastructure for things we take for granted, such as clean air, water, and food. At the same time, these countries are being told that they can no longer rely on the fossil fuels we have used to bring about prosperity.

In other words, the countries that have been least responsible for global warming are being most affected by its impact. In Canada, our government believes that developing nations need to aim for the same targets we are expected to meet to fight global warming. Even though some of the larger developing nations, like China and India, have overall levels of greenhouse gas emissions that are higher than Canada’s, their per capita emissions are a fraction of ours. It’s not fair.

World leaders have a great opportunity to correct this imbalance when they meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, from December 7 to 18 to work out an agreement on how best to deal with climate change. Many organizations from around the world are calling on our leaders to sign a fair, ambitious, and binding deal.

A fair deal would put much of the onus for reducing emissions that contribute to global warming on the developed nations that are mainly responsible for the problem. Scientists agree that developed countries need to reduce their emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020. Developed countries must also help developing nations with financial and technological support so that they can adapt to the worst consequences of climate change, reduce their emissions, and benefit from emerging renewable-energy technologies. A fair deal would also compel rich nations to protect poor and marginalized people in developed and developing countries.

The call for an ambitious deal reflects the urgency of the situation. We have already dumped so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that it will take ambitious global efforts to stall the most severe consequences. That means ensuring that global greenhouse gas emissions peak no later than 2017 and then go down quickly after that so that concentrations in the atmosphere are reduced to less than 350 parts per million.

An ambitious agreement would also ensure that the world takes advantage of the numerous opportunities to create clean jobs and clean energy, which will strengthen global economies. We must also create conditions that will allow people, plants, and animals to survive in a sustainable manner.

For an agreement to be effective, it must be legally binding, with mechanisms in place to make sure that countries are meeting their obligations and to enforce those obligations.

This all may seem overly ambitious and overly expensive – but the alternative, doing little or nothing, could be catastrophic. Consider also the speed with which countries such as the U.S. were able to come up with trillions of dollars to bail out banking systems that were largely the authors of their own troubles.

The world is facing many challenges, of which climate change is just one symptom. The benefits of an agreement in Copenhagen that is fair, ambitious, and binding go beyond simply reducing the severity of global warming. Clean-energy technologies, more attention to the plight of the world’s poor, and recognition of the true value of natural systems and the plants and animals that share this world all provide opportunities to create a sustainable and prosperous world.

There’s little time to lose. We must tell our leaders that we expect them to support a fair, ambitious, and binding solution in Copenhagen in December. Everyone’s future is at stake.

Countdown to Copenhagen

Fri, 09 Oct 09 07:00:00 UT

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

It’s amazing what world leaders can do when they come together for a common cause, as they did in Montreal in 1987 to ban CFCs to protect the ozone layer. In December, our leaders will have a tremendous opportunity in Copenhagen to take the world into a new era of innovation and prosperity.

But, as was the case in Montreal, this opportunity is born out of crisis. The threat of climate change is real and imminent. Scientists from around the world have confirmed this through continuous study and observation – despite what the increasingly desperate and nonsensical arguments from deniers would have you believe.

This is no longer a political issue. It’s an issue of utmost importance to all of us, no matter where on the political spectrum we feel most comfortable. And we’re finally seeing some agreement about confronting this challenge among world leaders from the left, centre, and right. It’s especially a conservative issue. After all, as Denmark’s Minister of Climate and Energy, Connie Hedegaard, points out, a core conservative belief is “that what you inherit you should pass on to the next generation.” And that doesn’t mean passing on our mess!

Conservatives also believe that we should live within our means, save some of what we have for tomorrow, and act with care and caution. Conservatives with deep religious conviction know also that we are stewards of the Earth – and good stewardship means protecting the Earth, its resources, and its life.

The December climate summit in Copenhagen is a crossroads. We can continue to delay while the Earth’s natural systems reach tipping points beyond which we may not be able to find our way back, or we can move forward in our efforts to slow global warming, reduce pollution, and create new opportunities for healthier lives and stronger economies.

Many world leaders are already committed to negotiating an agreement in Copenhagen that is ambitious, fair, and binding, and many have started implementing solutions in their own countries. Unfortunately, Canada is falling behind. Our national targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions have been called ineffective, and our performance at a number of recent climate meetings has been labelled “obstructionist”.

Our inaction comes from fear. Because Canada is a major oil producer, politicians and some businesspeople are afraid that reducing our reliance on fossil fuels will harm the economy. But that’s short-sighted. If we continue to rely on dwindling non-renewable energy supplies, we’ll be left in the dust as the rest of the world moves forward to a green economy, with innovation, jobs, and money from new technologies such as renewable energy infrastructure.

If we were to use our fossil-fuel resources such as oil more wisely, we could make them last longer and derive more national economic benefits from them while we make the transition to a clean-energy economy. The side benefits would include less pollution and environmental damage, a more stable economy, and healthier citizens.

If we continue down the same road, however, we risk catastrophic consequences to our economy and to our very lives. Scientists agree that if average temperatures on Earth rise just another degree, global warming could reach a point of no return, with melting icecaps, rising sea levels, increasing waves of climate refugees, extinction of plants and animals, and floods, droughts, and other severe weather events.

As a northern nation, Canada is particularly vulnerable to climate change. The impact is magnified near the Earth’s poles, largely because of the loss of ice and snow coverage. Canada also has the longest marine coastline in the world, so sea-level rise would have a dramatic effect with enormous economic consequences. Many Canadians are already feeling the sting of climate change, especially in the North and in other communities that depend on forestry, fisheries, and agriculture.

Change is never easy, and taking bold steps can come with costs in the short term. But refusing to change means we are condemning ourselves and our children and grandchildren to an uncertain and dangerous future. We can all take individual action to reduce our emissions, but ultimately, we must let our leaders know that we expect them to seize the opportunity in Copenhagen to create a secure and healthy future for our small blue planet and all the people who share it.

Life altering planetary experience

Fri, 02 Oct 09 07:00:00 UT

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

Insurance companies, politicians, and businesspeople often use the expressions “natural disaster” or “act of God” to deflect responsibility for events beyond our control. Today, human activity and technology have become so powerful that we are contributing to what were once natural disasters.

Hurricanes, tornadoes, freak storms, floods, droughts, pest outbreaks, heat waves, and even earthquakes are occurring with greater frequency and intensity than ever. Some of this can be traced to human activity. Greenhouse gases, immense dams, and deep oil and water wells can all affect natural forces.

Since life first appeared on Earth some four billion years ago, it has played a critical role in altering the physical and chemical properties of the planet. For the first couple of billion years, it was a microbial world, yet those microscopic organisms acted with other forces to break down rock. Over time, this process reduced mountains and boulders to stones, gravel, and dust, releasing minerals and creating soils from the carcasses of organisms.

Life is thought to have evolved in oceans. Here, carbon from the atmosphere dissolved in the water to form carbonaceous shells that offered protection for some life forms. When these died, they sank to the ocean floor where eventually their accumulated shells were pressurized into limestone. Limestone is rock, created by life, which stores carbon in the ground.

As life forms evolved, they grew bigger, in part by incorporating and storing water. In doing so, they became a critical part of the hydrologic cycle, the process whereby water evaporates, forms clouds, and rains back on the Earth in an endless cycle. Organisms could take up dissolved minerals and trace chemicals from the water and release them with their own wastes. After plants evolved into trees on land, they became efficient at sucking water from soil and transpiring most of it into the air to affect weather and climate.

The evolution of photosynthesis was a huge biological breakthrough, enabling Earth’s life to capture vast amounts of energy in the form of sunlight. During photosynthesis, plants release oxygen. Over millions of years, this process reduced the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere while creating oxygen-rich air that animals like us depend on.

So for billions of years, the web of life has played a crucial role in changing the physical, chemical, and biological features of the planet. Life was not just opportunistic in exploiting physical and chemical opportunities; living organisms interacted with and changed the planet’s earth, water, and air, or biosphere. But it took vast periods of time and millions of diverse species. In all that time, no single species was able to rapidly alter the properties of Earth on a geological scale – until now.

Humans appeared during the last moment of evolutionary time, perhaps 150,000 years ago. For most of our brief existence, we were tribal animals who didn’t even know whether other humans lived on the other side of an ocean, desert, or mountain. We only had to worry about our own territory and tribe.

Suddenly, we have become a geological force, the most prolific mammal on the planet, endowed with powerful technologies, impelled by an insatiable appetite for stuff, and supplied by a global economy. Taken together, our numbers, technology, consumption, and global economy have made us a new kind of force on the planet. For the first time, we must ask, “What is the collective impact of 6.8 billion human beings?” As we begin to answer that question, we are left with the extreme difficulty of responding to global threats that our own activity has caused.

Many people harbour an understandable tendency to deny the reality of the crisis in the biosphere. After all, how can puny humans have such a massive impact on this large planet? Some also maintain a conceit that we can manage our way out of the mess, increasingly with heroic interventions of technology. But we’ve learned from past technologies – nuclear power, DDT, CFCs – that we don’t know enough about how the world works to anticipate and minimize unexpected consequences.

The truth is that the only factor or species we can manage on Earth is us. We have no choice but to address the challenge of bringing our cities, energy needs, agriculture, fishing fleets, mines, and so on into balance with the factors that support all life. This crisis can become an opportunity if we seize it and get on with finding solutions.

More science needed on effects of genetically modifying food crops

Wed, 23 Sep 09 07:00:00 UT

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

In gearing up for the 2010 release of its super-genetically modified corn called “SmartStax”, agricultural-biotechnology giant Monsanto is using an advertising slogan that asks, “Wouldn't it be better?” But can we do better than nature, which has taken millennia to develop the plants we use for food?

We don’t really know. And that in itself is a problem. The corn, developed by Monsanto with Dow AgroSciences, “stacks” eight genetically engineered traits, six that allow it to ward off insects and two to make it resistant to weed-killing chemicals, many of which are also trademarked by Monsanto. It’s the first time a genetically engineered (GE) product has been marketed with more than three traits.

Canada approved the corn without assessing it for human health or environmental risk, claiming that the eight traits have already been cleared in other crop seeds – even though international food-safety guidelines that Canada helped develop state that stacked traits should be subject to a full safety assessment as they can lead to unintended consequences.

One problem is that we don’t know the unintended consequences of genetically engineered or genetically modified (GM) foods. Scientists may share consensus about issues like human-caused global warming, but they don’t have the same level of certainty about the effects of genetically modified organisms on environmental and human health!

A review of the science conducted under the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development in 2008 concluded that “there are a limited number of properly designed and independently peer-reviewed studies on human health” and that this and other observations “create concern about the adequacy of testing methodologies for commercial GM plants.”

Some have argued that we’ve been eating GM foods for years with few observable negative consequences, but as we’ve seen with things like trans fats, if often takes a while for us to recognize the health impacts. With GM foods, concerns have been raised about possible effects on stomach bacteria and resistance to antibiotics, as well as their role in allergic reactions. We also need to understand more about their impact on other plants and animals.

Of course, these aren’t the only issues with GM crops. Allowing agro-chemical companies to create GM seeds with few restrictions means these companies could soon have a monopoly over agricultural production. And by introducing SmartStax, we are giving agro-chemical companies the green light not just to sell and expand the use of their “super crops” but also to sell and expand the use of the pesticides these crops are designed to resist.

A continued reliance on these crops could also reduce the variety of foods available, as well as the nutritive value of the foods themselves.

There’s also a reason nature produces a variety of any kind of plant species. It ensures that if disease or insects attack a plant, other plant varieties will survive and evolve in its place. This is called biodiversity.

Because we aren’t certain about the effects of GMOs, we must consider one of the guiding principles in science, the precautionary principle. Under this principle, if a policy or action could harm human health or the environment, we must not proceed until we know for sure what the impact will be. And it is up to those proposing the action or policy to prove that it is not harmful.

That’s not to say that research into altering the genes in plants that we use for food should be banned or that GM foods might not someday be part of the solution to our food needs. We live in an age when our technologies allow us to “bypass” the many steps taken by nature over millennia to create food crops to now produce “super crops” that are meant to keep up with an ever-changing human-centred environment.

A rapidly growing human population and deteriorating health of our planet because of climate change and a rising number of natural catastrophes, among other threats, are driving the way we target our efforts and funding in plant, agricultural, and food sciences, often resulting in new GM foods.

But we need more thorough scientific study on the impacts of such crops on our environment and our health, through proper peer-reviewing and unbiased processes. We must also demand that our governments become more transparent when it comes to monitoring new GM crops that will eventually find their ways in our bellies through the food chain.

It’s time to rethink our approach to garbage

Fri, 18 Sep 09 07:00:00 UT

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

In Mexico City, politicians recently banned the ubiquitous plastic bags that citizens use for everything from groceries to soft drinks. But that will only go part way to reducing the 12,000 tonnes of garbage the city produces every day. Only six per cent of Mexico City’s garbage gets recycled now, but the government has an ambitious plan to recycle, compost, or burn for energy 85 per cent of it by 2013.

Mexico City’s waste-management situation illustrates the importance of the three Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle. And we should add another R: rethink. People in Canada are getting better at this, but we can do more. We recycle just over 20 per cent of our garbage. And, according to Stats Canada, each of us produced an average of 837 kilograms of non-hazardous solid waste in 2006. That’s a lot of garbage going to the landfill, and it’s a lot of resources and energy being wasted. Some European countries, such as Austria and Switzerland, are now recycling more than half their wastes, so there’s a lot of room for improvement.

After all, whatever we throw away represents a waste of resources and money – not to mention time.

Beyond the waste problem itself, landfills produce about one quarter of Canada’s methane emissions – and methane is a greenhouse gas more powerful than carbon dioxide. Some cities are now capturing that methane to burn for energy rather than allowing it to escape into the atmosphere.

Reducing the amount of trash we create in the first place is the best place to start tackling our waste-management problems. Not only does it mean we send less waste to the landfill, it also means we use fewer resources and less energy – as it takes energy to produce and transport packaging and disposable items.

Every day, more people, stores, and cities are finding ways to cut down on use of disposable plastic bags, but we still create a lot of unnecessary packaging and products. Planned obsolescence – the absurd practice of producing goods that won’t last so that the consumer cycle can continue – is still very much with us. We can all avoid buying products that are over-packaged or that are “disposable” – and encourage producers to be more responsible. When we consumers take the time to let stores, businesses, and governments know that we want less packaging and that we want goods that last, we will make a difference. Our changing attitude about plastic bags is a perfect example.

Reusing offers opportunities to get creative. People have always re-tailored clothes to give them new life. Think of the other ways you can use products that no longer function in their intended role. But reusing is an area where some difficulties arise, especially on a larger scale. Reusing waste by converting it to energy is a growing trend. The most common method is burning the garbage and using the heat to produce energy. Although the technology is improving, it still has its problems; burning waste creates emissions, for one. Other methods are also being explored, including breaking down the waste with microorganisms to produce methane and carbon dioxide for biogas.

Recycling is one of the first things that come to mind when we think of waste reduction. Most of us urban Canadians dutifully take our paper, plastic, and bottles and cans to the blue box recycling bins. Again, if we use fewer products that must be thrown away, we’ll have less stuff to recycle and send to landfills. But we should all be aware that our efforts to recycle are not in vain. If we work to ensure that our communities, schools, and workplaces have good recycling and composting programs and that producers and retailers take responsibility for their products, and if we all improve our own efforts to recycle, we will reduce our need for landfills.

Individual action is important, but legislated solutions are also effective. In Switzerland, people buy stickers that they have to attach to garbage before it is picked up. The more garbage you put out, the more you have to pay. Switzerland now has the highest rate of recycling in the world.

We can all do our part as citizens, but as can be seen in Mexico City and Switzerland, a push by governments can go a long way to creating the kind of large-scale change needed to get our waste-management problem under control.

Outdoor schooling has many benefits

Fri, 11 Sep 09 07:00:00 UT

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

As our children and grandchildren head back to school it’s important to consider not just what we are teaching them but how we are teaching them. After all, the world is facing some incredible challenges, and today’s young people will be left to deal with many of them.

So, do we fill their heads with facts and figures so that we can evaluate their progress through standardized testing? Or do we give them tools so they can think for themselves?

Back in 1956, when I was in college, Rachel Carson, a biologist, writer, and ecologist who had a tremendous influence on me, wrote an essay for Woman’s Home Companion magazine, titled “Help Your Child to Wonder”, which she later expanded into her book The Sense of Wonder. In the article, she wrote, “It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.”

Ms. Carson believed, as I do, that we humans are just one part of nature, but that our ability to alter natural systems is what sets us apart. And we often alter natural systems in detrimental ways because we do not understand or appreciate nature. Ms. Carson argued that instilling in young people a sense of wonder about the earth and its marvels and mysteries will make them care more about nature and the environment. And she also thought that it would help them lead fuller lives.

“Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life,” she wrote in the article.

More fulfilled people in a healthier world – it sounds ideal. But how do we accomplish that? Ms. Carson described the value of just getting kids into nature to explore. Doing so will even make the inevitable – and useful – facts and figures that will follow more relevant. “If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow,” she wrote.

But in this age of computer games and text messaging, of standardized testing and declining education budgets, kids are spending less time outdoors than ever before. Of course, parents have a responsibility to get their children outside, but our schools and teachers must play a role as well.

How can we expect our children to become fulfilled and healthy if we neglect to teach them or inspire them to become interested in their place in the natural world? Sure, we can include the natural sciences in curricula and teach it from books and computers alongside reading, writing, and arithmetic – but most children learn and retain information better through direct experience. Recent scientific studies have also shown that humans have an innate affinity with nature and that spending time in nature has immense psychological benefits.

In fact, moving the learning environment outdoors as much as possible will not only give young people an appreciation for nature and the planet that sustains us, but it will also help with other learning. Studies have shown that spending time in natural environments helps with recall and memory, problem-solving, and creativity. Children (and adults) who spend more time outside are also physically healthier.

The possibilities are endless. Think of how much more interesting and valuable math would be if it were made less abstract by relating it to natural phenomena, such as calculating the height of a tree. Reading the work of someone like Rachel Carson makes you realize as well how inspiring nature can be for any kind of writing, from poetry to scientific analysis. It goes without saying that subjects such as biology and geography would be more relevant if taught outdoors. That doesn’t mean all schooling should be moved outside, but we must try at least to increase the amount of time learning takes place in nature.

Instilling a sense of wonder and joy about nature at an early age ensures that “biophilia” (a love of and affinity with nature) rather than “biophobia” (a fear or discomfort with nature) becomes the predominant trait as people grow. Given the deteriorating state of our natural world, this is a compelling reason for moving the classroom outside.

Tiny Township victory sets a big example

Fri, 04 Sep 09 07:00:00 UT

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead

Anthropologist Margaret Mead’s words came to mind when I heard about a recent victory for the citizens of Tiny Township and surrounding communities in Simcoe County, Ontario. The people banded together to stop a garbage dump from being built on one of the purest sources of water on the planet – the Alliston aquifer, a subterranean lake that stretches from Georgian Bay to the Oak Ridges Moraine in southern Ontario.

As well as being the source of drinking water for residents in the region, the aquifer provides cold water to the Wye River and surrounding wetlands. The river and wetlands, in turn, support important wildlife species, including many amphibians, song birds, and fish.

Citizens in the area, including many First Nations, have argued for nearly 30 years that Simcoe County and the provincial government should explore other options to manage the region’s garbage, such as composting programs, upgrades to existing landfills, and improved recycling. Despite those alternatives, local authorities and the Ontario Environment Ministry gave the go-ahead for a solid-waste landfill to be built in and on top of the Alliston aquifer, on a parcel of land known as Site 41.

It’s another clear example of our tendency to ignore the real costs of getting rid of our garbage. We create a lot of solid waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and other forms of pollution, and then we bury them in the ground, dump them into our waters, or pump them into the air and think we can forget about them. In doing so, we fail to take into account the real value of the goods and services that nature provides.

Site 41 became a flashpoint of conflict this summer when area residents peacefully blockaded the landfill site. As the blockade dragged on and the number of people (including elders) being hauled off to jail increased, the “grassroots” struggle to close Site 41 attracted the support of the “grass-tops”, powerful advocacy organizations and unions such as the Council of Canadians, the David Suzuki Foundation, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees. I got involved, in part, because I was impressed by the organizing skills, courage, and dedication of the citizens of Tiny Township and local First Nations in trying to protect our most precious resource, our drinking water.

How this dump got approved in the first place boggles the mind. Experts believe that for the landfill to be built at Site 41, as much as 225 million litres of clean groundwater would have to be pumped out and disposed of before construction. Over the life of the landfill, even more groundwater would have to be pumped out to maintain the dump’s structural integrity. Concerns have also been raised about potential long-term engineering problems and landfill leakage that would contaminate the aquifer.

Landfills are often the preferred solution for dealing with garbage because the costs appear low when compared to other methods of waste management and disposal. But they only seem low because we fail to include the very real costs that dumps incur when they degrade the natural services that watersheds, forests, and other ecosystems provide for our health and well-being – like clean air, clean water, and healthy food.

When these natural services are degraded by development activities such as landfills, they must be replaced with expensive substitutes, such as water-filtration plants, dykes, and other engineering. The economic arguments against the Site 41 dump, with its potential to harm the local drinking-water supply, should kill this landfill plan once and for all.

In response to efforts of local citizens, the province and the government in Simcoe County have approved a one-year moratorium on the Site 41 landfill so that further scientific assessments can be done. This shows that people who join together for a common cause really do have the power to affect the decisions of governments and corporations.

The backhoes and other equipment at Site 41 are now silent, at least temporarily. Let’s hope that the politicians continue to listen to the people of Tiny Township and work to find better ways to deal with our waste.

Uncovering the mystery of B.C.’s disappearing sockeye

Fri, 28 Aug 09 07:00:00 UT

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

The Fraser River’s sockeye salmon are in trouble. And when the salmon are in trouble, we’re all in trouble.

The number of sockeye returning from the ocean to the Fraser River this year is one of the lowest in the past 50 and follows two years of dangerously low returns. In fact, we have witnessed decades of decline for diverse sockeye populations from the Fraser Watershed, some of which are now on the brink of extinction.

Many salmon runs besides Fraser sockeye are also endangered, while others have disappeared altogether. As populations decline, so does genetic diversity. This diversity allows salmon to adapt to the challenges they face and keeps the populations strong and healthy.

The total disappearance of Pacific salmon would be devastating not just for First Nations and families that depend on the fish for food, but for all who consider salmon a healthy and tasty food source and who rely on the money salmon fishing brings to the economy. Salmon are also essential to the healthy functioning of ecosystems. They bring nutrients from the oceans to the rivers and forests and are a valuable food source for whales, bears, birds, and other wildlife.

The Fraser sockeye fishery is one of Canada’s most valuable, accounting for close to 50 per cent of the economic value of all salmon caught in B.C. Their extremely low returns have been called a mystery because finding one simple cause or solution is difficult. However, even though we can’t always link an exact cause to every salmon population decline, we do know the major threats, and that gives us hope that we can change things for the better.

Sockeye have been heavily fished over the years, their spawning habitat in rivers and lakes is being destroyed, their survival is threatened by warming oceans and rivers due to climate change, and they are vulnerable to sea lice and diseases from open-net salmon farms.

While we need to invest more funding in science to understand the exact details behind saving our disappearing salmon, we can and must take precautionary actions to curtail activities that we know harm salmon. Canada’s Wild Salmon Policy provides the tools to do this, but although the government adopted this policy in 2005, it has yet to fund it and put it to work. Now is the time to do so.

Specifically, we need to work with government and industry to find ways to catch salmon from healthy stocks while avoiding catching salmon from threatened populations.

Freshwater habitat needs to be conserved and rebuilt, and destructive practices such as converting fish-bearing lakes to mine-tailings ponds or destroying streamside vegetation should be stopped.

We must also make sure that seafood labelled as sustainable truly meets the necessary criteria. Third-party eco-certification, like that offered by the U.K.-based Marine Stewardship Council, must be reserved for fisheries that are well-managed and don’t further endanger threatened salmon populations.

We need to change salmon farming to remove the impacts of sea lice and disease by creating a thriving closed-containment industry that separates farmed fish from wild.

Canada must also combat global warming by committing to major reductions of greenhouse gases at upcoming negotiations in Copenhagen if the salmon are to survive their long journey from spawning grounds to the sea and back over the long term.

Fortunately, leaders are starting to emerge in the struggle to protect the salmon. Fishermen are working with First Nations in the Skeena watershed to use beach seines to selectively harvest abundant salmon runs. Commercial-scale trials of closed-containment salmon farms are underway off the East Coast of Vancouver Island and at other sites around the world. Municipalities such as Maple Ridge have adopted improved development practices to protect salmon streams.

These efforts employ a holistic, ecosystem-based approach that acknowledges the many factors that affect salmon’s ability to survive and thrive.

By embracing our role as a significant part of the ecosystem and acting with the knowledge that we are connected to it for good or for ill, we have a chance to reshape the way we fish, build communities, and live our lives so that salmon remain a healthy part of this coast. We will all be richer if we succeed.