http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/02/16/FFXSZUDB7JC.html THE AGE New generation gives Suzuki a retirement gift: hope By CLAIRE MILLER Friday 16 February 2001 After nearly four decades of fighting to save the planet, the evergreen Dr David Suzuki is talking about retirement. It is not that he has burned out, or even given up on what he fears may now, more than ever, be a lost cause. It is just that he believes it is time for a generational change. "I start drawing my old-age pension this year," Suzuki, who turns 65 next month, tells The Age. "I want the young people to take over. I am not going to go on much longer. My foundation is 10 years old this year, and people think I will go on strong forever till I am 75 or 85, but, you know, the slope to the end is getting steeper and steeper." The Canadian scientist, who is in Sydney this week for a series of private lectures, says he will retire as professor at the University of British Columbia's Sustainable Development Research Institute, as required of academics when they turn 65. He says he intends to devote more time to the David Suzuki Foundation, a charity he and his wife set up in 1990 to explore human impacts on the environment. "But I am happy that, over the next few years, we will begin to work on finding a replacement for me on the television series The Nature of Things," Suzuki says. "I am in good health and I will keep steaming along full bore, but as you get older that good health becomes less reliable. You have to find people to take over from old dogs like me." It has been a long campaign trail. Suzuki, a geneticist by profession, entered the environmental fray as an activist after reading Rachel Carson's seminal 1962 work Silent Spring. He has written 32 books, including 15 for children, and fronted dozens of television and radio documentaries popularising science and conservation. Critics say he is too much of a doomsayer, always preaching that the end of the world is nigh. Suzuki shrugs, and counters that he is a realist who tells it like it is. In any case, the public is still lining up to hear the bad news; functions at which Suzuki speaks in Australia are routinely sold out even after 20-odd visits over the past 13 years. Asked what keeps him going, Suzuki says his grandchildren. In an interview last year, he said he wanted to be able to look them in the eye and say he had tried. He believes many species and ecosystems are beyond the point of no return, but for the sake of future generations all effort must be made to save as much as possible. More recently, he has focused his message on the underlying social and economic dynamics that are driving environmental degradation. He sums up the problem in a single word: globalisation. More precisely, globalisation in which governments relinquish their duty of care to the people, and instead deregulate trade to suit the business interests of multinational corporations. Suzuki argues that an economic system that widens the gap between rich and poor countries, and between rich and poor within nations, will doom the environment. "People who are hungry will eat endangered animals. If we don't deal with hunger and poverty, we won't save the environment. People need jobs and hope for the future, so we have to deal with inequality and injustice. People in war zones are not concerned about the environment when they have to survive themselves." While despairing that little has changed in the mindset of politicians and corporate managers, Suzuki is heartened by a groundswell of activism on university campuses such as Yale, where his daughter is studying. Overwhelmingly, he says, young people are saying globalisation as now practised is unacceptable in its disregard for social equity and justice. Increasingly they are taking to the streets to be heard, persistently disrupting the meetings of global forums representing the status quo such as the World Trade Organisation and the World Economic Forum. But politicians seem deaf to public opinion - in part, Suzuki says, because political parties rely on corporate donations for election campaigns. With the notable exception of Beyond Petroleum (formerly British Petroleum), which has invested heavily in solar power research and development, Suzuki says multinationals are still only talking about doing the right thing, not actually doing it. He points to car companies that still promote fuel-guzzling four-wheel-drives over their more environmentally friendly hybrid cars. Internationally, according to Suzuki, the outlook is grim for meaningful action on trade reform, climate change, forests and other issues. He sees the election of George W. Bush to the White House as a particularly ominous development. "It is not just Bush's record as Texan governor, when he absolutely trashed the place environmentally. All the indications are that he is not very bright, and that combination is deadly." As for Australia, Suzuki says its political establishment is keeping company with Canada, widely recognised as an environmental reprobate. The Howard Government, he adds, stands out in the international community for its retrograde stance. At the aborted climate change conference in The Hague last November, when 160 countries failed to agree on the tiniest of steps to cut greenhouse emissions, non-government organisations put together a league table of national positions on global warming. Canada was rock bottom, but Australia was a close second. "Canada was pushing for every loophole going," Suzuki says. "Australia did come out better because it hasn't got a nuclear industry to defend." But if it did ... He laughs. Well, no contest then. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
