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.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

I’ve heard economists boast that their discipline is based on a fundamental human impulse: selfishness. They claim that we act first out of self-interest. I can agree, depending on how we define self. To some, “self” extends beyond the individual person to include immediate family. Others might include community, an ecosystem, or all other species.

I list ecosystem and other species deliberately because we have become a narcissistic, self-indulgent species. We believe we are at the centre of the world, and everything around us is an “opportunity” or “resource” to exploit. Our needs or demands trump all other possibilities. This is an anthropocentric view of life.

Thus, when faced with a choice of logging or conserving a forest, we focus on the potential economic benefits of logging or not logging. When the economy experiences a downturn, we demand that nature pay for it. We relax pollution standards, increase logging or fishing above sustainable levels, or (as the federal government has decreed) lift the requirement of environmental assessments for new projects.

A fundamentally different perspective on our place in the world is called “biocentrism”. In this view, life’s diversity encompasses all and we humans are a part of it, ultimately deriving everything we need from it. Viewed this way, our well-being, indeed our survival, depends on the health and well-being of the natural world. I believe this view better reflects reality.

The most pernicious aspect of our anthropocentrism has been to elevate economics to the highest priority. We act as if the economy is some kind of natural force that we must all placate or serve in every way possible. But wait! Some things, like gravity, the speed of light, entropy, and the first and second laws of thermodynamics, are forces of nature. There’s nothing we can do about them except live within the boundaries they delimit.

But the economy, the market, currency – we created these entities, and if they don’t work, we should look beyond trying to get them back up and running the way they were. We should fix them or toss them out and replace them.

When economists and politicians met in Bretton Woods, Maine, in 1944, they faced a world where war had devastated countrysides, cities, and economies. So they tried to devise solutions. They pegged currency to the American greenback and looked to the (terrible) twins, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to get economies going again.

The postwar era saw amazing recovery in Europe and Japan, as well as a roaring U.S. economy based on supplying a cornucopia of consumer goods. But the economic system we’ve created is fundamentally flawed because it is disconnected from the biosphere in which we live. We cannot afford to ignore these flaws any longer.

Flaw 1: Beyond its obvious value as the source of raw materials like fish, lumber, and food, nature performs all kinds of “services” that allow us to survive and flourish. Nature creates topsoil, the thin skin that supports all agriculture. Nature removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and returns oxygen. Nature takes nitrogen from the air and fixes it to enrich soil. Nature filters water as it percolates through soil. Nature transforms sunlight into molecules that we need for energy in our bodies. Nature degrades the carcasses of dead plants and animals and disperses the atoms and molecules back into the biosphere. Nature pollinates flowering plants.

I could go on, but I think you catch my drift. We cannot duplicate what nature does around the clock, but we dismiss those services as “externalities” in our economy.

Flaw 2: To compound the problem, economists believe that because there are no limits to human creativity, there need be no limits to the economy. But the economy depends on having healthy people, and health depends on nature’s services, which are ignored in economic calculations. Our home is the biosphere, the thin layer of air, water, and land where all life exists. And that’s it; it can’t grow. We are witnessing the collision of the economic imperative to grow indefinitely with the finite services that nature performs. It’s time to get our perspective and priorities right. Biocentrism is a good place to start.

It’s time for a Bretton Woods II.

____________________________________________

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

One of my favourite summer activities is picking wild blueberries with my family at our cabin in northern B.C. The waning weeks of summer are the best time to be out in the bush, as the berries are ripe and flavourful, in contrast to the sometimes bland-tasting commercial varieties from the grocery store.

Wild-berry harvesting is a Canadian tradition that rural and northern people from Newfoundland to the Yukon share in late August. Wild blueberries have been an important part of the traditional diet of First Nations and Métis for generations, especially in the boreal forest where several varieties, including the lowbush and velvet leaf blueberry, grow well in the acidic and nutrient-poor soils.

According to University of Victoria ethnobotanist Nancy Turner, berry gathering has always been a social activity in aboriginal communities. Family members and friends often set up berry-picking camps, where they will stay for days or even weeks to take advantage of nature’s bounty. Berries are great fresh, but they’re also tasty in jams, jellies, fruit leathers, and pies. They can also be sold commercially, which provides important seasonal income in rural and northern communities.

Our approach to managing the wild lands where these berries grow, such as the boreal forest, leaves something to be desired, though. According to prevailing economic thought, the only value in these areas is in the money we can make from harvesting or extracting resources – most often lucrative timber, oil and gas, or minerals. And so when a natural forest is cleared, we replant it with a single or a few economically desirable tree species of the same age and genetic stock, and then we try to maximize the growth of these species by using toxic chemicals to kill any insects or “competing” plants that would slow them down.

It’s time we started to recognize the significant economic importance of wild blueberries and other native plants – what rural economists call “non-timber forest products”.  For example, economists estimate that the Canadian boreal forest is worth between $261.4 million and $575.1 million a year to aboriginal people for subsistence food alone.

And these foods are increasingly becoming a delicacy for non-northerners. A pint of wild blueberries from Northern Ontario sells for close to eight bucks in the trendy health-food stores of Toronto, where many consumers are motivated not only by the fantastic taste but also by increasing scientific evidence about the health benefits of the fruit.

Harvesting, processing, and selling wild blueberries brings pleasure and profit to many rural and northern communities. It’s distressing that industrial activities such as herbicide spraying by logging companies can kill wild blueberry plants and other vegetation, which are considered competitors for resources needed by the trees, such as light, nutrients, and water.

In Canada, the most popular herbicide for this purpose is Vision, produced by agri-chemical giant Monsanto. This column’s co-author, David Suzuki Foundation science director Faisal Moola, has studied the impacts of Vision herbicide on wild blueberry plants, and has published research showing that chemical spraying harms the plants, reducing the amount of berries available for people and wildlife like bears and birds.

Logging companies typically spray the herbicide in mid to late summer, which is when the berries are ripe. Because of this, wildlife and berry-pickers may also be accidentally exposed to chemical residues when they eat contaminated fruit (even though warnings must be posted when areas are sprayed).

Scientific debate over whether Vision poses a serious risk to human and wildlife health is ongoing. Still, some indigenous and local people have expressed concerns that chemical spraying could make the berries less healthy and are therefore reluctant to eat them.

This indirect consequence of spraying herbicides in our managed forestlands concerns us. Wild berries are a free, healthy, and traditional source of nutrition for northern communities. If fears about toxicity, real or perceived, keep people from eating berries or the animals that graze on them, the consequences will be serious for people who are already ravaged by a western diet of too much sugar, salt, and fat.

We should do everything we can to encourage people to eat safe and nutritious “traditional country foods”, such as wild blueberries and other plants and resources of the forest (including wild fish and game). We must protect the traditional foods of First Nations and others who live off the land from the damage that industrial activities can cause.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Carbon offsets: a tool in the fight against global warming

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

The science is clear: human-caused global warming is a reality. Now it’s time to focus on solutions. We need strong leadership from our governments in setting firm greenhouse gas reduction targets, and we need to look at a range of policies and practices. There’s no legitimate argument about whether the problem exists, but there is still some debate about the best ways to tackle it.

Take carbon offsets. Some people compare them to “indulgences” granted by the church allowing sinners to avoid punishment for some transgressions. Others argue that offsets can be one of many legitimate tools used to tackle climate change, and that high-quality carbon offsets can result in real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon offsets are becoming an increasingly popular way for individuals, businesses, and even governments to reduce their impact on the environment. The “voluntary” carbon market, made up of all these purchases of carbon offsets, increased in value globally from $305 million in 2007 to $460 million in 2008. If you add in the offsets that are used in national and international regulatory programs, such as the Kyoto Protocol and European Emissions Trading System, the total carbon market now approaches $139 billion a year.

So carbon offsets are here to stay. But what are they? Well, a carbon offset is a credit for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions generated by one project, such as a solar-power installation, that can be used to cancel out the emissions from another source. Carbon offsets are typically measured in tonnes of CO2 or their equivalent. Those who buy offsets are essentially investing in other projects that reduce emissions on their behalf, either because they are unable to do so themselves or because it is too expensive to make their own reductions.

One thing to note is that not all carbon offsets are created equal. Because the market is new and largely unregulated, some offsets are unlikely to have any benefit for the climate. This is one reason why carbon offsets have gotten a bad rap.

So, what makes a good offset? Opinions vary on some of the finer points, but most experts agree that several conditions are necessary. Good offsets are “additional”; that is, they result in greenhouse gas reductions that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred without the incentive of carbon offsets. For example, if a company is required by regulation to install technology to reduce emissions from its factory, the resulting emission reductions should not be sold as offsets.

A good carbon offset should also result in “permanent” reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This is one reason why some organizations, including the David Suzuki Foundation, recommend against using tree-planting to generate offsets. Although trees have many benefits for the environment, they make risky carbon offsets because they are susceptible to fire, logging, and insect infestation – any one of which can release the stored carbon back into the atmosphere and render the offset worthless.

Good carbon offsets should also be verified by qualified auditors to ensure that the reductions have actually taken place.

Carbon offsets that are real, additional, and permanent can have a direct, positive impact on the climate. And they can create some other important benefits. They provide money for much-needed renewable-energy and energy-efficiency projects, which can help move society away from fossil fuels and toward a clean-energy economy. Buying carbon offsets can also help to deal with emissions that aren’t currently covered by government regulations, such as international air travel. Carbon offsets can also put a value on carbon, and help to educate businesses and consumers about the climate impact of their daily decisions, and where they should target their own reduction efforts.

Of course, people should do everything they can to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but when that isn’t possible or feasible, buying high-quality offsets at least ensures that an equivalent amount of reductions is made elsewhere.

Carbon offsets alone won’t solve climate change. We still need to find ways to make deep reductions in our own emissions. But the problem of climate change is so massive that it requires a whole range of solutions, and offsets can be part of that.

For additional help in guiding your decisions about carbon offsets, my foundation and the Pembina Institute have just released a guide, Purchasing Carbon Offsets, available at www.davidsuzki.org.

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.
Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

The world’s richest countries appear to be taking climate change seriously. At their recent meeting in L’Aquila, Italy, G8 countries agreed that global warming should not exceed two degrees Celsius, on average, over the pre-industrial temperature. The European Union, along with more than 100 other countries, heeded the advice of climate scientists some time ago in committing not to breach the threshold – but it took this meeting to get Canada, the U.S., and Russia on board.

The reason for the limit is simple. Scientific research shows that the impacts of climate change would be dramatic if average global temperatures were to rise above this level. Crop yields would decline, many more of the world’s plants and animals would be at risk of extinction, water availability would decrease significantly for many human populations, violent storms would become more frequent, and oceans would rise more quickly.

The threat of sea-level rise is so serious that 43 island states have set 1.5 degrees as their “dangerous” threshold. Scientists predict that an increase of two degrees would raise ocean levels high enough to swamp many of these island nations.

Tuvalu and Vanuatu have asked nearby Australia and New Zealand to provide refuge for all of their citizens as the ocean rises. The 49 countries that make up the “least developed countries” also use 1.5 degrees as their threshold. And Inuit leader Sheila Watt-Cloutier has said that two degrees of warming would provoke “the destruction of Arctic ecosystems” and create serious consequences for Inuit culture.

A pledge by the world’s most prosperous countries to limit warming to two degrees is a step forward, but it’s a small step. To succeed, nations must reduce greenhouse gas emissions sharply over the next decade and continue to reduce them until at least 2050. Action from everybody – governments, industry, and individuals – is essential.

Even if nations fulfill their promises, it won’t be enough. According to a recent article in Nature, “Halfway to Copenhagen, no way to 2°C”, emission-reduction commitments by the world’s industrialized countries are inadequate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that to stay below two degrees, industrialized countries must reduce emissions by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. But the Nature article calculated that the collective commitments of industrialized countries add up to only 10 to 16 per cent. The research showed that, even if all countries met their targets, there would be “virtually no chance of limiting warming to 2oC.”

The Nature article also concluded that pledges by developing countries are inadequate. This too can be laid at the feet of the world’s industrialized countries. Wealthy nations filled the atmosphere with greenhouse gases over the course of their development, and so they agreed at the United Nations talks in Bali in December 2007 to provide clean technologies and financial resources so that developing nations could grow sustainably. But rich countries have yet to agree on how to deliver that support.

Reducing poverty is often the first priority for developing nations, and many remain reluctant to make any commitments to curb emissions until they get support from industrialized countries. The head of the UN’s climate program, Yvo de Boer, said it would be “like jumping out of a plane and being assured that you are going to get a parachute on the way down.”

All is not lost though. There may be little time before the decisive Copenhagen conference in December, but countries can still work to solve the climate crisis. A G20 meeting in Pittsburgh in September is expected to result in financial commitments for developing countries to adapt to climate change and tackle emissions. Three more UN negotiations are scheduled before Copenhagen.

The discouraging part is Canada’s interpretation of the G8 commitments. The ink wasn’t yet dry on the final agreement at L’Aquila when Environment Minister Jim Prentice said Canada did not have to change its position to meet the two degree commitment.

With the longest marine coastline of any country and an economy that still depends on climate-sensitive activities such as agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and tourism, Canada is particularly vulnerable to global warming. How can any Canadian leader claim to be working for the future well-being of citizens while stalling on hard targets and deep reductions?

Given that Canada is considered the worst performer in the G8 on climate change and has the weakest 2020 target, the minister should take another hard look at the science.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

The few North Atlantic right whales left in the world visit the waters off Canada’s East Coast every summer and fall. They’re big animals, weighing up to 80 tonnes and measuring up to 18 metres. But even though the whales enjoy prolonged multi-partner mating and the males have the biggest cojones in the animal kingdom, they’re slow breeders and haven’t been able to increase their numbers much above 400 for some time.

Their name was bestowed on them by early whalers, who considered them the “right” whale to hunt because they are large, swim slowly and often close to shore, and usually float when they are killed. Although people haven’t hunted them since 1935, we’re still putting them in danger from collisions with ships or entanglement in fishing gear in the busy waters off the U.S. and Canada.

These factors have made this giant mammal one of the most endangered whales in Canada. But there has been some recent good news for the North Atlantic right whale. The federal government released its final recovery strategy for the whales in June, and it includes identification of the whale’s critical habitat.

Critical habitat refers to areas necessary for a plant or animal species to survive or recover. Under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, once an endangered species’ critical habitat has been identified in a recovery strategy, the government must legally protect it if it falls within federal jurisdiction, as oceans do.

In the case of the right whale, the government has 180 days from the release of its strategy to protect habitat features necessary for recovery. This means ensuring the whales have a functioning ecosystem that supports their primary needs and that they are protected from collisions with ships and entanglements in fishing gear.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s original proposed recovery strategy in January did not identify the Roseway Basin, an area 48 kilometres south of Nova Scotia, as critical habitat. But the David Suzuki Foundation, with advice from Ecojustice, argued that the Roseway Basin and Grand Manan Basin must be included. The revised recovery strategy reflected this advice by adding the Roseway Basin to the critical habitat identification.

It’s great that the government has moved to protect the habitat of these magnificent mammals, but more needs to be done if our Species at Risk Act is to be effective. A report card issued in April by conservation groups including the David Suzuki Foundation showed that few of the 449 species listed under the act are receiving adequate protection, especially where there might be competing interests.

The Banff Springs snail, which lives in the already protected Banff National Park, is the only species to get an action plan in the act’s six-year history. Meanwhile, numerous species like the boreal woodland caribou, northern spotted owl, and polar bear continue to disappear with no protection of their critical habitat under the act.

Habitat loss and degradation are the primary causes of decline for 84 per cent of Canada’s species at risk. We can’t expect a plant or animal to survive or recover if it doesn’t have a healthy place to live.

Of course, governments often find it difficult to put the needs of plants and animals above competing human interests. Protecting critical habitat often means that industrial activities such as logging and mining must be halted or practices significantly improved in areas critical to species’ survival. But we often fail to realize that the consequences – both ecological and economic – of losing species and the functioning ecosystems upon which they depend are more severe than the consequences of altering or halting industrial activity within that habitat.

When a species disappears, it affects entire ecosystems. The species may be important as a food source for other animals, or for maintaining the pH of the forest floor, or it may be a predator that keeps other species populations from expanding too rapidly. Functioning ecosystems are far more complex than we realize. Damaging ecosystems that bring us services such as carbon sequestration and storage, pollination, nutrient cycling, and water and air purification tampers with the composition of the natural systems that support wildlife and humans alike.

Some of Canada’s at-risk species don’t have a lot of time left. We must view the protection strategy for these whales as an example to follow for protecting other endangered species – for their sake and ours.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

We often point out that ecology and economy have the same root, from the Greek oikos, meaning “home”. Ecology is the study of home and economics is its management. But many people still insist on treating them as two separate, often incompatible, processes.

At its most absurd, the argument is that we simply can’t afford to protect the environment – that the costs will be so high as to ruin the economy. But if you don’t take care of your home, it will eventually become uninhabitable, and where’s the economic justification for that?

Others argue that the economic advantages of some activities outweigh the environmental disadvantages. This, too, is an absurd argument. A recent posting on the website Grist.org points to a number of studies and articles showing that many of these activities are not even beneficial from an economic standpoint.

Take coal mining. Research from West Virginia University found that “coal mining costs Appalachians five times more in early deaths as the industry provides to the region in jobs, taxes and other economic benefits.” And, according to Grist, the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development found that “the coal industry takes $115 million more from Kentucky’s state government annually in services and programs than it contributes in taxes.”

The website also refers to a peer-reviewed study in the journal Science that concluded logging in Brazil’s rainforests offered only short-term gains in income, life-expectancy, and literacy, but that the gains disappear over the long term “leaving deforested municipalities just as poor as those that preserved their forests.”

Yet another study found that all the big three U.S. automakers need to do to become profitable and to compete with Japanese car manufacturers is to meet new government-mandated fuel economy standards.

We recently noted in this column that bear-watching can be more profitable than bear-hunting, and the Grist article likewise notes that whale-watching is far more profitable than killing whales.

Often the problem is not so much with resource exploitation itself, but rather with the way we exploit our resources, and the reasons for the exploitation. With CEOs looking at quarterly results and politicians looking at three- or four-year terms of office, the incentives for long-range thinking are not always clear.

One of the most horrendous examples of this worm’s-eye view can be seen in Canada’s tar sands. As author Andrew Nikiforuk argues in his award-winning book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, this resource could be used wisely to “fund Canada's transition to a low-carbon economy.” Instead, industrial interests and the Alberta and federal governments are hell-bent on full-scale liquidation. And so we will end up with some short-term profits and a seemingly healthy economy in exchange for massive environmental damage and the rapid depletion of a resource that may still be necessary for some time to come – along with the negative economic consequences of all that.

Part of the problem lies in the real reason for much of our resource exploitation and industrial activity. A lot of it is done not out of necessity but out of a desire for a relatively small number of people to make lots of money quickly. And when the money is rolling in and jobs are being created, the politicians who foster the activities look good.

We may need fossil fuels, at least for now, but do we really need them so that one or two people can propel themselves to the grocery store in a massive SUV made from tonnes of metal?

We also see, not surprisingly, that the dinosaurs of the fossil fuel and other industries will go to great lengths to protect their interests. If that means spreading misinformation and outright lies about the consequences of their industries, well so be it.

And so, even though the scientific proof for human-caused global warming is undeniable, we have the coal and oil industries funding massive campaigns to cast doubt on the science and we have politicians implying that the world’s scientists are involved in some sinister plot – all so we can continue to rely on diminishing supplies of polluting fuels instead of creating jobs and wealth through a greener economy that may save us from catastrophe.

We need only to look at recent events in the United States to see that the people standing in the way of progress on the environment are often just as ignorant about the economy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please!
~ Joni Mitchell

 Any parent knows that it can be a challenge to get kids to eat vegetables and some fruits. We’ve learned all the tricks: smothering broccoli with cheese sauce, putting peanut butter and raisins on celery sticks and calling it “ants on a log”, convincing kids that eating spinach will give them Popeye muscles.

Some kids just don’t like the taste of certain fruits and veggies, and some have issues with the way the food looks. Adults are usually less picky about taste but can be finicky when it comes to the appearance of our fruits and veggies. We’ve become accustomed to blemish-free produce. But what’s wrong with a few spots on our apples?

Well, according to the executives at two of the world’s largest agricultural companies, Monsanto and Dole, our kids may be right: there is something wrong with spots, as well as the shape, texture, and taste of some vegetables. Or, at least, that’s what they’d like you to think.

The two companies have come up with a five-year plan to produce new varieties of spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce with improved nutrition, flavour, colour, texture, and aroma.

We’ve never really had a problem with the way these vegetables looked or felt or tasted. But then, we now live in a world where square, seedless watermelons are seen as desirable, and where companies like Monsanto can hold patents on genetically engineered seeds to grow food that has a uniform quality. The patents have allowed the biotech giant to sue farmers for “patent infringement” if the plants are found growing on their farms without a licence – even if the plants may have arrived by wind rather than plan.

Monsanto was also one of the first companies to start commercially marketing DDT, and has also been a major producer of Agent Orange, Roundup, and other toxic chemical pesticides, as well as bovine growth hormone to increase milk production in cows.

Dole has been involved in some controversies over its pesticide use, among other things, as well.

The issue isn’t just about the agri-giants and pesticides and genetically modified foods, though. (In fact, the two companies say their collaborative project will be done through breeding and not genetic engineering.) The issue is about our relationship with food.

Along with trying to maximize profits, the agriculture industry has made it possible for food to be transported around the world, and for produce to keep longer without spoiling. This can benefit areas that have food shortages or short growing seasons.

It also means, though, that we are giving up a lot of our control over one of the basics of life to large corporations that may not always have our best interests in mind. As Michael Pollan writes in his bestselling book In Defense of Food, eating goes beyond biological necessity: “Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, and about expressing our identity.”

Agribusiness will continue to play a role in our food production and delivery systems, but that doesn’t mean we can’t embrace some of the other trends emerging in the way we feed ourselves. As Mr. Pollan argues: “What we need now, it seems to me, is to create a broader, more ecological – and more cultural – view of food.”

That means eating more locally grown and organic food, eating less meat, steering away from processed foods, and not worrying about the odd spot on your apple. Or, as Mr. Pollan says in the opening of his book: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

These small measures will help make us healthier, and they’ll also make the planet healthier, by reducing the emissions generated in food production and transportation and by improving the ways we use our land base. Not only that, but they may even help get your kids to eat more vegetables. Carrots and peas are more fun to eat if your children grow and pick them from the garden.

Come to think of it, we can all find spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce with better nutrition, flavour, colour, texture, and aroma than some of the factory-farmed produce found on grocery-store shelves. We just have to look in the farmers markets, or in our own backyard or community gardens.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

The environmental challenges facing Canada are daunting – the lack of a credible plan to address climate change, the overreliance on tar sands to fuel our energy needs and economy, the snail’s pace with which we work to protect endangered species and their habitat, including iconic wildlife like polar bears and caribou.

But Canada Day got us thinking about all we have to celebrate. Thanks in large part to the efforts of individual Canadians, First Nations, and environmental organizations, our municipal, provincial, and federal governments have made some great strides to protect Canada’s natural heritage.

Just last month, the federal government and the Dehcho First Nation announced a plan to permanently protect more than 30,000 square kilometres of boreal wilderness in Nahanni National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories. That’s an area the size of Vancouver Island!

The announcement came on the heels of a new law introduced in Ontario that legally commits the government to protect at least half of the province’s northern boreal forest, as well as a promise by Quebec premier Jean Charest to do the same in that province. Canada’s boreal forest is globally significant, even though most Canadians know less about its majesty and plight than about other conservation battlegrounds, such as the Amazon or Indonesia’s tropical rainforests.

Misunderstood as a foreboding landscape of black flies, bogs, and “rocks and trees and trees and rocks and water” (to quote comedy group the Arrogant Worms), the boreal’s ecological values leave one awestruck. This is a forest that spans the nation, like a great green cloak, from Newfoundland to the Yukon. It is larger than all of the other great forests of the planet, including the Congo Basin, the Amazon, and the Russian Taiga.

The boreal stores more freshwater in its wetlands and lakes and more carbon in its trees, soil, and peatlands than anywhere on Earth. It supports three billion migratory songbirds, the world’s largest herds of caribou, millions of waterfowl and shorebirds, and abundant populations of large predatory animals, including wolves, grizzly bears, polar bears wolverines, and lynx. And it is home to hundreds of First Nations communities that depend upon the region’s ecosystems for their livelihoods and rich culture.

The boreal isn’t the only place we’ve seen good news lately. The federal government has also made some moves to protect aquatic wildlife in our oceans, lakes, and rivers.

Last month, it issued a recovery strategy for the endangered North Atlantic right whale, which included identifying the 80-tonne mammal’s critical habitat – the habitat it needs to survive. Under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, the identification of the whale’s habitat triggers protection.

The government is also working to protect critical habitat for killer whales off the B.C. coast, though it took a lawsuit by the David Suzuki Foundation and other organizations to convince the government to act. We’re cautiously optimistic that the whales may finally get the legal protection they need to survive.

Different levels of government in Canada have protected or committed to protect hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests, tundra, rare grasslands, lakes, rivers, and other terrestrial, freshwater, and ocean ecosystems. This is cause for celebration on this 142nd anniversary of Confederation.

But in the midst of the monumental landscapes that will forever be wild, one story that really inspires us is that of Canada’s most unusual new park. This year the city of Guelph established the world’s first pollinator sanctuary on a former landfill site on the edge of town. Heaps of rotting garbage within a sarcophagus of soil and clay are being restored with native vegetation to create much needed urban habitat for perhaps the hardest-working species on the planet: insect pollinators. Many of these critters are declining throughout Canada as a result of sprawl, pesticides, global warming, and intensive agricultural activities.

Canadians have always celebrated the spectacular natural bounty that makes ours one of the most beautiful and prosperous nations on Earth – from oceans and coastlines to mountains and foothills to prairies and grasslands. Conserving our land and waters is a gift to the planet, though much more needs to be done to protect the richness of wildlife and wilderness with which we are blessed, especially in our oceans, as less than .5 per cent of Canada’s vast marine realm has legal protected status. If we continue to work together, we can ensure that we and our children and grandchildren will have much to celebrate long into the future.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at http://www.davidsuzuki.org/.

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

Protecting our planet is no longer seen as a fringe activity. Most people now consider themselves to be environmentally aware and are taking steps to help. Caring for the environment has become mainstream – it’s the “new normal”. And that’s refreshing!

The environmental problems we face today are so serious that people from all sectors of society must work together to solve them. That’s why it’s so heartening to see an increasing number of corporations pitching in to protect nature and our planet’s ecosystems. From restaurants to grocery stores to clothing retailers, businesses are looking for ways to make their operations more sustainable and environmentally responsible. They’re taking tangible steps by offering better choices to consumers.

One of the best things about the growing number of environmentally responsible initiatives is that they demonstrate how powerful individual citizens can be. Businesses respond to consumer demand, and the right demands can result in real benefits for the environment. Some of the changes we’ve seen as a result of consumers using their power include reusable grocery bags, hybrid cars, locally grown and organic food in stores, products and clothing made with recycled materials, green buildings, and sustainable seafood in restaurants and stores.

So much can be achieved when people work together. Researchers at universities and environmental organizations often conduct studies and provide information. Citizens take that information and change their daily behaviour, sometimes by encouraging businesses to act on this new knowledge. Businesses respond by changing their practices and offering more sustainable choices. This in turn causes their suppliers to improve the way they produce their products.

One quickly growing consumer trend that has been satisfying to me is the increasing demand for sustainable seafood. My grandparents came to Canada from Japan because of the abundance of fish in our oceans. My most cherished childhood memories are of camping and fishing in B.C. But over the years, I’ve seen a lot of changes. Many of the fish species that were once so abundant are now in decline, with some facing extinction.

At the David Suzuki Foundation we’ve worked hard over the years with our allied organizations in the SeaChoice program to scientifically assess which fish and seafood species are still thriving and which are threatened by overfishing and habitat loss. We’ve also looked at aquaculture practices to see which ones provide food without harming the environment and which have unacceptable impacts like spreading parasites and disease to wild fish.

We’ve also been working with fisheries, aquaculture producers, and governments to translate the demand for sustainable seafood to real change in the oceans. After all, the end goal is to protect species and marine ecosystems.

We’ve used this information to inform people about the best and worst choices for seafood. And individuals have responded by demanding that stores and restaurants start offering sustainable choices and refraining from carrying species that are at risk or that are produced in a way that is harmful to the environment or to other species.

Fortunately, the tide has started to turn across Canada. Many chefs, restaurants, and seafood distributors are working with SeaChoice and other sustainable seafood programs to offer better options.

Recently, the Overwaitea Food Group, which operates 117 stores in 80 communities in Western Canada, agreed to collaborate with the David Suzuki Foundation and the SeaChoice initiative on a sustainable seafood program for its stores. The grocery chain is now working with us to develop and implement a six-point sustainability plan for buying and selling seafood. We’re at the beginning of the journey, but we commend Overwaitea for demonstrating leadership and committing to help improve the health of our oceans.

It was especially gratifying to hear the grocery chain’s president, Steve van der Leest, say that he chose to work with SeaChoice because when they started looking for experts to help out, we had the “best science” they could find.

Mr. van der Leest knows that switching to more sustainable seafood comes with challenges, including the fact that some sustainable fish can be more expensive than non-sustainable options, but he noted at a news conference that “Doing the right thing always pays off.”

We couldn’t agree more. People everywhere should know that they can help businesses do the right thing by asking them to offer sustainable choices and by supporting businesses that do.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.