0:00

I'm speaking to you at a moment of

0:02

grave crisis. I'm

0:05

Jeff Turner and this is Recall.

0:07

It's a series about history. Not

0:10

the ancient past, but history that's

0:12

still hot to the touch. In

0:14

this first season, I explore a revolutionary

0:17

political movement that brought a modern democracy

0:19

to the brink. You can find

0:21

Recall, how to start a revolution

0:24

on the CBC Listen app or wherever

0:26

you get your podcasts.

0:31

This is a CBC Podcast.

0:34

Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala

0:36

Ayyad. I'm David Suzuki. You

0:39

and I belong to a unique species.

0:42

Armed with the muscle power of science and

0:44

technology, we have managed to

0:47

conquer the earth in just a few decades.

0:50

But our ideology of progress and

0:52

development is killing this planet.

0:55

For

0:55

this unique species, it's a

0:57

matter of survival.

1:01

David Suzuki's radio series was

1:03

originally broadcast in 1989. It

1:06

warned us about the impact of climate

1:08

change and as you'll hear, was

1:11

alarmingly prescient.

1:13

This is the third episode in our series.

1:16

We're basing on that original one in 1989. We're

1:19

calling it Suzuki's Survival

1:21

Guide, a retrospective.

1:33

In my darkest moments,

1:35

I have real concerns that my son,

1:37

I just have one child, will

1:39

in fact not be able to grow up.

1:49

It's already too late for my son.

1:51

He will not enjoy a clean ocean

1:54

as I was able to do. He will not enjoy

1:57

clean air and clean water as I

1:59

have been. able to do and the

2:01

more he waits the more

2:03

difficult it will become to see undisturbed

2:07

beauty. The

2:14

reason for my intense

2:16

involvement in this really

2:19

is my children

2:20

and their children. I'm

2:24

haunted by the thought of

2:26

them living decades from now

2:29

in a world of chaotic

2:32

climate change with

2:36

all manner of man-made

2:39

horrors unleashed upon

2:42

this earth,

2:43

but I'm inspired by the vision

2:45

of what we could create

2:47

instead. A

2:54

university professor, an ecologist

2:56

with the World Bank, a US senator

2:59

who ran for president, all tell

3:01

us that we are cheating our children.

3:04

It doesn't make any sense. We

3:07

love our children, and we want them

3:09

to have more opportunity for a better life

3:11

than we did. But look around.

3:13

We're stealing their future

3:16

from them. We feed

3:18

them, clothe them, shelter them,

3:20

and send them into a changing world

3:23

they may not even survive.

3:25

Citizen advocate Ralph Nader. The

3:27

storm is going to come in the 90s. You

3:30

see, it's one thing when you have a

3:32

river that's polluted here and a

3:34

air pollution inversion in some city

3:37

there, but now you see what are the new ecological

3:40

spectacles. They are global. They

3:43

are acid rain. They are a

3:45

greenhouse effect. They are the ozone

3:47

hole. They are the impact

3:50

on the plankton and the oceans. They are the

3:52

destruction of the rainforest, and

3:55

it's almost like an invasion from Mars. In

3:57

fact,

3:57

it's even more insidious than an invasion.

4:00

from Mars, we have been invading

4:02

and destroying our own world. All

4:06

over the world, including North America, plant

4:08

and animal species are disappearing

4:11

at the rate of 20,000 a year. Now

4:15

put one more potentially lethal ingredient

4:17

into the mix, the warming of the Earth,

4:20

and you've got a situation that puts all

4:22

human life at risk.

4:24

What has happened to us? Twenty

4:26

years ago, an economist from MIT,

4:29

Jay Forrester, told us what was

4:31

in store for us in a book called World

4:34

Dynamics.

4:35

He thinks our problems can be traced

4:37

to the role we've chosen for ourselves.

4:40

There has been for one

4:43

or two thousand years the idea

4:45

that mankind should

4:48

conquer the Earth, that the Earth is here

4:50

for the use of the human species.

4:54

The entire Judeo-Christian

4:56

tradition of the world

4:59

being here for mankind,

5:02

taking dominion over the world,

5:04

has led

5:06

to geographical exploration, to

5:09

the subjugation of primitive

5:12

cultures, and now

5:15

to the subjugation

5:17

of the

5:19

environment in a way that is

5:21

going to produce a backlash

5:24

against the attacker.

5:25

We see that now in the form

5:28

of acid rain-killing forests,

5:31

the concern about pollution, the

5:34

falling water tables from pumping

5:37

more water than is coming down as

5:39

rain, the solid

5:42

waste dumps that we no longer know

5:44

what to do with, the

5:45

oil spills in

5:48

the ocean that are producing a film

5:50

across the surface of the ocean. These

5:53

are

5:54

kinds of reactions back from

5:56

the natural environment that

5:59

are in proportion to the

6:02

vigor with which we attack that environment.

6:05

And yet if we look around,

6:07

we can see that we are part of a web

6:09

of life on the Earth. We can't

6:11

live without the air, the water, the

6:13

soil,

6:14

any more than any other life forms.

6:17

Yet we've slowly been poisoning these

6:19

life support systems.

6:21

It's as if we don't understand

6:23

our place in the world.

6:25

Have we lost our sense of place?

6:28

Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador

6:30

to the United Nations.

6:32

Sure we've lost our sense of place and

6:34

I don't know whether

6:37

it can be recaptured.

6:43

There are a lot of people

6:45

like me who have

6:47

been

6:48

fashionable environmental

6:50

rhetoricians,

6:52

not like you, like

6:55

me, who have never

6:57

understood until recently

7:00

how deep this runs, what's really

7:03

at stake.

7:05

People just understanding very,

7:07

very late that

7:09

all of this is out of control and

7:11

that it's just coming to public attention

7:14

now. And

7:16

the species doesn't have a sense of place.

7:18

We are totally discombobulated, totally

7:21

unnerved.

7:21

We don't know what our kids are

7:23

going to inherit and you don't

7:25

have a sense of whether you can reverse it

7:28

because it seems so far

7:29

along. And you know the stilted

7:32

myopia of parochial

7:35

politicians who worry about their

7:37

next election campaign and answer

7:39

all questions in a Pavlovian way, I've

7:41

got to keep my voters satisfied, don't bother

7:44

me about the world or the future.

7:46

So it's as though all of it crept

7:48

up and all of you who

7:51

were warning us over the years

7:53

and all of the pollution probes, etc.,

7:57

just didn't

7:59

reach. the rest of us quickly

8:02

enough.

8:03

Music Growth

8:14

is what we've come to live for. It

8:17

has been the inspiration for our political

8:19

and economic systems.

8:21

We've been brought up with the idea

8:23

that there were no limits to growth. The

8:26

environment was an infinite sink

8:28

that we could dump our waste into, and

8:31

the Earth supplied all the raw materials

8:33

we needed to fuel the comforts

8:35

of our lives.

8:37

And not only could we grow,

8:39

it was vital that we grow. If

8:41

not,

8:42

there were economic recessions and depressions.

8:45

Jay Forrester. That indeed

8:48

is the normal reaction that it is

8:50

vital to grow, but then the question

8:53

is why?

8:54

Is it vital that we have ever

8:56

more people? Is it vital that we

8:59

move toward the time

9:02

of one square yard per person? That's

9:04

only a few hundred years away. At the present population

9:07

growth rate, you're only a few

9:09

hundred years away from the

9:11

point of one square yard per person.

9:14

It's only a short time beyond

9:17

that, less than a thousand years at

9:19

this growth rate, when you must move the

9:21

wavefront of humanity out at a third of

9:23

the speed of light to clear the inside

9:25

space. In other words, this

9:28

process cannot continue. It

9:30

will not continue. And the

9:33

World Dynamics and Limits to Growth argument was

9:35

that

9:36

an end is coming, and

9:38

it can come by different means. It can come

9:41

from disaster.

9:42

It can come from poisoning the entire

9:45

environment. It can come from atomic

9:47

war brought on by social pressures

9:50

that are brought on by crowding.

9:53

Or we can look down that road

9:56

and choose a different way of

9:58

bringing this growth process.

9:59

to an end. Do

10:02

we want to control that process

10:05

or do we want the process to control

10:07

us?

10:08

I think we should look upon this process

10:10

very much

10:12

like a biological

10:15

cancer. Biological

10:17

cancer grows until it kills

10:19

the host on which it is living and

10:21

thereby kills itself.

10:23

And I think mankind

10:26

in the

10:28

world environment is quite

10:30

capable of following that same

10:33

scenario unless we become

10:35

alert to what is happening and take

10:37

the necessary fundamental

10:40

steps

10:41

to move into an equilibrium

10:45

with our environmental capacity.

10:48

How did we get obsessed with this need

10:51

to grow?

10:52

Herman Daly is an economist with

10:54

the World Bank in Washington.

10:56

He is an economist like no other

10:58

economist. Listen and

11:00

you'll see what I mean.

11:02

You know historical perspective

11:04

gets a little blurred sometime. We tend

11:06

to think of growth as if it had been

11:09

the eternal norm. It's really

11:11

only been the past 200 years that

11:13

growth has been

11:15

really a part of our lives.

11:18

Prior to that on an annual basis

11:20

growth was negligible

11:23

and the idea that we must either grow

11:25

or die or something like that is just

11:28

not supported by history. And I

11:30

think the contrary is much more likely

11:32

if we continue to grow than surely will die.

11:36

Herman Daly is an economist who thinks

11:38

that growth means death.

11:40

But he's unique among economists.

11:42

Till now economics has never

11:45

considered what the environmental costs

11:47

are for our toxic emissions. We

11:49

pump out all sorts of garbage as

11:51

byproducts of industry and have always

11:54

considered air water and soil as

11:56

limitless and able to dilute out

11:58

these poisons forever.

12:00

But we can see all around us that

12:03

it isn't the case.

12:04

We know now that we live in a world

12:06

with limits. Why has

12:09

the science of economics never dealt

12:11

with that?

12:12

Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich.

12:15

Well, the trouble is that economists are trained

12:17

in ways which make them utterly clueless about the

12:19

way the world works. Economists

12:22

think that the world works by

12:24

magic. In other words, if you open a standard

12:27

economics text, you'll find in the beginning of

12:29

it a diagram of the generation of gross national

12:31

product which has no inputs at all

12:33

from the real world. Economists are the only

12:36

major group of scholars who believe in perpetual

12:38

motion. They believe in an infinity of

12:40

resources. They believe in all kinds of things that are simply

12:43

fairy tales. And one of the most serious problems

12:45

we have on our planet is educating

12:47

economists. Less than 1% of the

12:49

economists in the world have even

12:51

the vaguest idea how the world works. And

12:53

yet the politicians listen to the economists.

12:56

They're economists who argue though that through

12:58

science and technology, we can continue

13:00

to stay on top of our problems. That

13:02

is, there's an infinite potential

13:04

of the human mind to solve

13:06

the kinds of problems that we have here on earth

13:09

and to bring us, in fact, virtually

13:12

infinite new sources of energy and materials

13:14

from outer space. Yeah, well, it's interesting

13:16

that many economists do believe

13:18

that sort of nonsense.

13:19

So they say that the ultimate resources

13:22

people, actually all they really prove is that the one

13:24

thing will never run out of is imbeciles. No

13:27

scientists believe that. The

13:29

Club of Earth, which is made up of scientists

13:31

who belong to both the American National Academy

13:34

of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,

13:36

the two most distinguished scientific groups in the country,

13:39

unanimously say that's not true.

13:41

And so does everybody who examines the situation.

13:43

But economists live again in a fairy tale world

13:46

and they believe fairy tales. Scientists know better.

13:48

Many people

13:49

I've encountered say that the long

13:51

term hope for the environment really lies in

13:54

getting industry economists, business people

13:56

on board. So they realize that there's

13:58

money to be made in cleaning.

13:59

up the environment. Well,

14:01

there may be some money to be made in cleaning up the

14:03

environment, but what's your way you've got to get business people

14:05

and economists on board is for them to understand

14:08

that if they don't get off of this economic growth

14:10

kick, if they don't start changing their behavior, their

14:12

kids are going to be dead. In other words, it doesn't matter

14:15

whether you can make money on it or not. It's like saying, well,

14:18

we'll try and breathe next year if we can make

14:20

money at it. You don't have any choice. The ecological

14:22

systems support the economic system. We don't

14:24

maintain the ecological systems. There won't be

14:27

any economic system. There won't be any businessmen

14:30

and there won't be any economists.

14:31

But if you talk to a politician

14:33

today or a businessperson and say, what

14:36

is the bottom line? What, you know, what,

14:38

why are we here? What are we doing? They say

14:40

a business person would say, my job is

14:42

to maximize profit. A politician,

14:45

I think almost to a person will say that we must

14:47

do everything we can to ensure that

14:49

our country carves out its place in the global

14:51

economic community and that we have steady

14:54

growth.

14:55

Well, first of all, what anybody

14:57

has to understand is that perpetual growth

15:00

is the creed of the cancer cell. Steady

15:02

growth or sustainable growth is a non

15:04

sequitur. It is just simply cannot

15:06

be done on a finite planet. You

15:08

may be able to grow intellectually for a long time,

15:11

but you cannot grow physically for a long time.

15:13

We're already past the limits of sustainable

15:16

growth. So if you hear somebody saying that, you know,

15:18

again, they simply don't understand the situations. And

15:20

that's an old Navy line. You know, if

15:22

you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs,

15:24

you don't understand the situation. That's true

15:26

of most businessmen, almost all economists and

15:28

most politicians, although a few are coming

15:30

around to understand that if you're going to maximize

15:33

profits, it's got to be maximized in

15:36

a constraint which says the total

15:39

economic activity is absolutely

15:41

limited. If you're going to make your profits bigger, somebody

15:43

else's profits are going to have to get smaller, barring

15:46

certain kinds of technological advances. If your company

15:48

is going to grow, then somebody else's company

15:50

has to shrink. If your population

15:53

grows, then somebody else's population is going

15:55

to have to shrink. If you're trying to carve out a

15:57

bigger piece of the world economy for yourself,

15:59

then that

15:59

you're trying to keep other countries from carving

16:02

out as big a piece for themselves. It's

16:04

a zero-sum game. It's a zero-sum

16:06

game as dictated by nature. There

16:08

is nothing we can do about it. There

16:10

are certain rules of the universe that humanity

16:12

simply cannot repeal. And

16:14

as the sooner economists and politicians and

16:17

businessmen begin to understand that, the sooner

16:19

we'll begin to have a possibility of a future

16:21

for their children and grandchildren.

16:23

If you think about it, the whole

16:25

idea of economics is an incredible

16:27

conceit. I mean, there

16:30

may be 30 million species on this

16:32

planet.

16:33

Human beings are only one of them. Yet

16:35

we have invented a system that only

16:38

sees value in human terms.

16:40

If we can think of a use for something,

16:43

it has economic worth.

16:45

If we can't, then it's worthless.

16:47

So in economic terms, the

16:49

Amazon rainforest is undeveloped

16:52

and only full of economic potential,

16:55

even though to the millions of species that have

16:57

lived there for millions of years, the forest

17:00

is already fully occupied and fully

17:02

developed.

17:03

To economists, the fact that

17:05

a standing forest performs

17:08

services like cleansing the air, modulating

17:11

weather and climate,

17:12

preventing erosion and flooding, supporting

17:14

animal and plant communities,

17:16

has no economic meaning.

17:19

Those services are called externalities

17:22

that are not costed in standard economic

17:24

analysis.

17:25

It's no wonder then that the head of

17:27

a major multinational corporation could

17:29

state that a tree has

17:32

no worth until it's cut down.

17:34

That's the economic mentality

17:37

at work.

17:38

Can we bring an about turn?

17:40

Bill Rees is a professor of urban

17:43

planning at the University of British Columbia.

17:45

I guess my greatest hope is that we,

17:48

over the next 20 years, can abandon

17:52

the ethic of growth as

17:54

the be all and end all. We've lost sight

17:56

of so many other potentials that human

17:59

beings have. And it's simply been

18:01

submerged in this interminable

18:04

quest for material possession

18:06

and new wealth. Stickers

18:08

on bumpers that you see around town here,

18:11

He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins,

18:14

is a kind of symbolic representation

18:16

of the games people play in our economy at the

18:18

present time. It's a joke, but it's not

18:20

funny. Many people take it very seriously.

18:24

The great tanker spill

18:26

in Alaska, for all

18:28

its environmental damage, for all the tragedy

18:30

that has created for local people, added

18:33

several millions of dollars to the U.S.

18:36

gross national product. So it

18:38

goes down by our standard indicator

18:41

of progress as a great benefit, because

18:44

it created new jobs in the shipyards

18:46

that will have to repair the tanker, hundreds

18:49

of new jobs in terms of the people cleaning

18:51

up the mess and so on. All of those things are

18:53

added to GNP, when in fact the quality

18:56

of the life for people

18:56

there, and indeed for the globe

18:58

as a whole, has deteriorated. Well,

19:01

this is an absurd system. We

19:03

have to shift from a system in which material

19:06

progress is the only measure of worth.

19:09

We are in fact in need of what

19:11

people call a paradigm shift or a change

19:14

in world view. And it will require

19:17

a massive effort at every level

19:19

of society to change the

19:21

value set, the expectations of people,

19:24

by which we now operate on a daily

19:26

basis, if we're going to move

19:28

in the direction necessary to, well,

19:31

save the species, save the planet.

19:34

What Bill Rees is talking about is a fundamental

19:37

change in our value system. We've

19:39

become blinded by the idea of

19:42

progress that is defined by technological

19:44

domination and economic growth.

19:47

Mustafa Toba, the head of

19:49

the United Nations Environment Program, told

19:52

me how as a schoolboy growing up

19:54

in Egypt, he was shown pictures

19:56

of factories in Cairo belching

19:58

out thick smoke over the country.

19:59

countryside and proudly told

20:02

by his teacher, this is a sign

20:04

of progress. An ad

20:06

for a Canadian tractor shows

20:08

untouched forests as a before

20:11

picture and an after picture in

20:13

which the entire landscape is now

20:15

a completely cleared and plowed field,

20:18

symbols of success, domination,

20:21

control, and growth. Meanwhile,

20:24

the planet is being skinned

20:27

of its life support. Don't

20:29

you think it would be an astounding achievement

20:32

to live in balance or equilibrium

20:34

with the rest of nature?

20:36

Don't you think that would be a true

20:38

measure of progress and growth? Human

20:41

growth. Al Gore

20:43

is chairman of the Environmental Study Group

20:45

of the U.S. Senate. Our challenge

20:48

really is to create in a single generation

20:51

a future in which people think

20:54

and behave so differently that

20:56

they look back on 1989 at

20:59

the kind of pollution that is now

21:01

underway, at the kind of destruction

21:04

now underway, at the

21:06

kind of suffering we tolerate with 37,000

21:10

children under the age of five dying every 24

21:12

hours of starvation and

21:15

preventable diseases. And

21:18

they wonder as they shake their heads,

21:20

how could people have thought in

21:24

ways that allowed them to tolerate this

21:26

kind of activity?

21:28

I think we're capable of such a change, but

21:32

the jury is still out.

21:35

The answer is up to us.

21:38

We have to regain our

21:40

belief that our

21:42

children's grandchildren will

21:45

inhabit this earth and that

21:47

what we do now should be

21:49

undertaken with them in mind. Why

21:52

is it that our generation in

21:54

the 1980s and 1990s has the right to reach back through

21:59

millions of years of geologic

22:02

time to get deposits

22:04

that fuel our civilization and then

22:07

quickly transform them into

22:09

pollution that will be here for thousands

22:12

and hundreds of thousands of years into

22:14

the future. Don't we need

22:16

to think about those who come

22:19

after us?

22:30

I'm Daisy Watt. I'm

22:32

living in the Good Jock. I'm

22:36

born 1922. I'm old lady now. Eskimos,

22:46

they call them, eh? Long time

22:48

ago, they called me Inuit now. We

22:53

used to live happy together

22:57

long time ago, eh? Before

23:00

the white people came around,

23:03

we used to live on the only animals

23:07

from land, the fish,

23:10

caribou, tarmicans,

23:14

everything from land. I

23:16

was upset about it,

23:18

you know, real upset for

23:22

Inuit because

23:24

that's our food, eh? Real

23:27

sad we hear

23:29

about the polluted

23:32

everywhere. PCBs,

23:35

DDT, mercury,

23:38

cadmium, lead, all

23:41

those contaminants which are perhaps

23:44

best known in situations like the

23:47

Great Lakes and the Gulf of St. Lawrence

23:50

are also found in the Arctic.

23:54

Yes,

24:01

it worries him long time ago.

24:03

They never had to worry about any

24:05

kind of contamination in the food. Until

24:07

recently, starting back in 1970s, they started hearing

24:09

such thing as contaminants.

24:18

But

24:23

now that it's part of the food chain, now

24:25

that it's existing in

24:28

the food chain and the seal, it worries

24:30

him.

24:44

I'm Joanna Awa, I'm an

24:46

Inuk, and the north is my home. When

24:49

I was a little girl back in the 60s,

24:51

houses were being built and communities

24:54

were being formed. It was the

24:56

beginning of civilization for the Inuit.

24:59

But my father, who had 11 children

25:01

to worry about, refused to join

25:03

a new settlement. We lived out

25:06

on the land while kids my age

25:08

were sleeping in heated homes.

25:10

But my dad more than made it for the

25:12

loneliness. We had abundance

25:14

of wildlife for food, fresh

25:17

water from the rivers, miles and

25:19

miles of tundra to play on.

25:21

You'd just walk a few steps from the camp

25:23

and catch an arctic char for dinner.

25:26

That was my world. I really

25:28

felt secure in the vast land. And

25:31

if I wanted a snack, I'd just pick

25:33

leaves off the bushes and munch.

25:35

But I've been told by southern

25:37

scientists that the food which made me

25:40

grow then can make me sick

25:42

today.

25:43

That's ironic because for thousands

25:45

of years we have lived in harmony

25:47

with nature. The thought never

25:49

occurred to me that this very land

25:52

we've respected could turn its back

25:54

on us.

25:55

We were told by our ancestors

25:58

not to exploit and play on. on

26:00

with nature because it has

26:02

the power to backfire. Where

26:05

did we go wrong?

26:16

You're listening to Ideas and to the third

26:18

of our special summer series we're calling

26:21

Suzuki's Survival Guide, a retrospective.

26:24

We're a podcast and a broadcast,

26:27

heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada,

26:30

across North America on Sirius XM,

26:33

in Australia on ABC Radio

26:35

National and around the world at

26:37

cbc.ca slash ideas.

26:40

Find us on the CBC Listen app and

26:42

wherever you get your podcasts. I'm

26:45

Nala Ayed.

26:47

Throughout the 1980s, a

26:49

strange phenomenon was sweeping North

26:51

America. They were in a panic. And

26:54

like people in a panic, they want solutions. Allegations

26:57

of underground satanic cults torturing

27:00

and terrorizing children. The

27:03

thing is, there were no satanic

27:06

cults preying on children. And nearly 30

27:08

years later, the people

27:10

touched by it all are still picking

27:13

up the pieces. This isn't a work

27:15

of fiction. This is a work of history.

27:18

Satanic Panic. Available

27:20

now.

27:31

Back in 1989, David

27:33

Suzuki hosted a radio series called

27:35

It's a Matter of Survival. And

27:38

while some of the specifics have changed since

27:40

the 1980s, the themes

27:40

he hit on then are

27:43

prescient for us today, nearly 35 years

27:45

later.

27:48

This episode features excerpts

27:50

from that 1989 series, which

27:53

zeroes in on the clash between economics

27:55

on the one hand and ecology

27:58

on the other.

28:03

According to the World Watch Institute

28:05

in Washington, we have just 10

28:08

years to make the changes that may

28:10

save our world so it will be livable

28:12

in the future. Lester Brown

28:14

is president of the Institute, which takes

28:16

the pulse of the world on an annual basis.

28:19

In effect, each year we give the

28:22

Earth an annual physical exam and we check its

28:24

vital signs and what we

28:26

find is that each year the

28:29

forests are shrinking, the

28:31

deserts are expanding, the ozone

28:33

layer is being depleted, topsoil

28:35

is eroding, the concentration

28:38

of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is rising.

28:41

The number of plant and animal species on Earth

28:43

is diminishing and the

28:45

unfortunate thing is that

28:47

now,

28:48

even as we begin to work on 1990, state of the world 1990,

28:51

we know that each of

28:53

those trends will continue. There's not anything

28:55

in prospect to turn any one of those around

28:58

in the near future.

28:59

But there is an expression today that politicians

29:02

and economists hope will turn things

29:04

around in the future.

29:06

It's called sustainable development.

29:09

Gro Harlem Brundtland, the prime minister

29:11

of Norway, headed the UN Commission

29:13

on the Environment, which coined the phrase.

29:16

The Commission defines sustainable

29:18

development as meeting

29:22

the needs and aspirations of

29:25

present generations without

29:27

compromising the ability

29:30

of future generations to meet

29:32

their needs. We

29:34

must learn to accept the

29:36

fact that environmental

29:38

considerations are part

29:41

of a unified management of

29:44

our planet. This

29:47

is our ethical challenge. This

29:50

is also our practical challenge

29:53

and it is the challenge that

29:56

we must all take.

29:59

aspirations of present generations, without

30:02

compromising the ability of future generations

30:05

to meet their needs.

30:06

Doesn't it seem we should have been living

30:09

this way all along?

30:10

Yet we heard these words, sustainable

30:13

development, only two years ago.

30:16

Ironically, something similar

30:18

was said to us a hundred years ago,

30:20

but we didn't listen then. Maybe

30:23

because the words were spoken by a man we

30:25

all then would have called a savage.

30:28

In 1854 the Duwamish

30:31

Indian Chief Seattle warned

30:33

about the need to sustain the land

30:35

for future generations.

30:37

The white man does not understand our ways.

30:40

One portion of land is the same to him

30:42

as the next, for he is a stranger

30:45

who comes in the night and takes from

30:47

the land whatever he needs.

30:49

The earth is not his brother but his enemy,

30:52

and when he has conquered it

30:54

he moves on. He leaves

30:56

his father's graves behind and he

30:58

does not care. He kidnaps

31:00

the earth from his children. He

31:03

does not care. His father's

31:05

graves and his children's birthright are

31:07

forgotten. He treats his mother the

31:10

earth and his brother the sky as

31:12

things to be bought, plundered, sold

31:15

like sheep or bright beads. His

31:18

appetite will devour the earth and

31:20

leave behind only a desert.

31:24

We certainly didn't listen to Chief Seattle

31:26

then, and there are people who say

31:28

we're not listening to the spirit of sustainable

31:30

development now, that in

31:32

fact the system may already

31:34

be in the process of perverting the

31:37

intent.

31:38

MIT economist Jay Forrester.

31:41

I think the idea of sustainable

31:44

development is a deception.

31:48

It is never very clearly defined

31:51

if by sustainable development we

31:53

mean continued growth of

31:55

industry and population, then

31:58

it is the same.

31:59

old process.

32:01

The very word development

32:03

does not convey the idea

32:06

of coming to an equilibrium balance with

32:09

the environment. Bill Rees

32:11

of UBC has similar thoughts.

32:14

The system has responded to the

32:16

concept of sustainable development in a way

32:19

that really enables it to justify

32:21

the status quo. So it's not sustainable

32:24

environment that we're talking about here, it's

32:26

become sustainable development. And

32:28

just a couple of years ago when the term was popularized

32:31

by the Brundtland Commission report, the so-called

32:33

report on the global environment, I guess it's just

32:36

called our common future, when

32:38

it came out I think in most people's

32:40

mind there was a strong association to

32:42

the environment. But gradually

32:44

as industry have jumped onto

32:46

the bandwagon, as governments have come onto

32:48

the bandwagon, increasingly we hear

32:50

sustainable economic development rather

32:53

than the emphasis being on the environmental

32:55

side of things. In fact I've collected

32:57

a large number of papers referring to

32:59

sustainable development and

33:02

every group, every individual who have

33:04

written about this have defined it

33:06

to satisfy their own ideological perspective.

33:09

So groups on the left or on the environmental

33:11

side tend to define the term more

33:14

or less in terms of slowing

33:16

down growth in the north of the developed

33:18

countries, a greater emphasis on social

33:21

and political issues, on the equity

33:23

issue in the globe. So from

33:25

the left sustainable development

33:28

is seen as a means of justifying

33:31

the developed countries looking seriously

33:33

at the moral and ethical issues of that unequal

33:36

division of wealth in the globe and

33:39

thinking of ways to increase the equitable

33:41

distribution of what wealth there is. On

33:43

the right, because we've always used

33:45

economic growth frankly as our primary

33:48

instrument of social policy, they've

33:50

jumped on the term as a means to rationalize,

33:53

increase another round of global

33:55

economic growth so that the poorest countries

33:58

will get a larger share of wealth and then it

34:00

will mean no sacrifice at all to those

34:02

of us in the North or in the developed

34:04

countries. So the real question is, does

34:07

the world's ecosphere have the capacity

34:10

to sustain yet another round

34:12

of economic growth on the scale that would

34:14

be required? And if you recall

34:17

my proportional distribution of wealth that

34:19

I mentioned just a moment ago, it doesn't

34:21

take much to realize that

34:23

it would require a five to tenfold

34:26

increase in the nature of

34:28

material industrial activity to

34:30

bring the third world up to more or less European

34:33

standards of living. Well, in

34:35

a world in which all of the indicators

34:37

in terms of changing atmosphere, changing

34:39

marine environments, deteriorating

34:42

soils around the world, forest

34:44

destruction and so on, it becomes a real

34:46

question whether the ecosphere can sustain

34:49

even a doubling of the current rates of

34:51

economic activity. I really do

34:53

not think that a five to tenfold increase

34:56

in the rate of material consumption by

34:58

a much more massively

35:01

demanding economy is in the ecological

35:03

cards. And if that's the case, we

35:06

have a very serious amount of

35:08

thinking to do about how we're going to get through the next 40

35:10

to 50 years. What kinds of

35:12

decisions do we have to make?

35:14

My parents used to say, we have

35:17

to live within our means. And in the

35:19

40s, that meant depending on neighbors

35:21

and relatives, growing and bottling

35:24

a lot of our own food, making do

35:26

with the bare necessities. It

35:28

wasn't that we were enlightened. We

35:31

had to live that way. Once

35:33

the optimism and growth of the 50s were

35:35

underway, we were swept up in it

35:37

like everyone else.

35:39

But the point is, we've only been

35:41

wasteful and short-sighted in recent

35:43

times, and there is still a memory

35:46

of how to live with a lot less.

35:48

But the fundamental change that

35:51

we need to get us through is a different

35:53

way of viewing our place with

35:55

the rest of life on Earth. That

35:58

other worldview exists right in our...

35:59

amidst among the native people of Canada.

36:03

Henry Lickers is the director of

36:05

the Environment Division of the Mohawk Council

36:07

of Akwesasne. I think

36:09

the basic way you went wrong

36:12

is you forgot that you were people. You

36:14

looked on yourself as God's themselves

36:18

and as that you said this is our

36:20

land to do with as we please to

36:23

make as much, I want

36:25

to say, profit or value to us. You

36:29

forgot that everything in this earth has

36:31

an intrinsic value to itself and

36:34

that value is very important. You

36:37

forgot there is a family and that

36:39

family is this earth and the earth

36:41

is your mother

36:44

and when that happened you

36:46

left aside those things and you

36:48

called them unreasonable

36:51

and that the only reasonable path that

36:53

we could take was one that made

36:56

us wealthy and that I

36:58

think is probably the that

37:00

is the the deepest way that you've gone

37:02

wrong

37:03

and now what you're seeing is is that and

37:06

the despair that you feel I don't

37:08

feel quite that despair that we don't have time

37:11

yet. I still think we

37:13

have time.

37:15

The despair you feel is that

37:18

there's not enough money left. You

37:20

know that you've come to the end of the barrel

37:22

when one of our elders

37:25

told Eisenhower you

37:27

know that when you know the last tree is cut

37:29

down when the last river has been

37:31

polluted and when the last animal

37:35

has been slaughtered to

37:37

feed your consumption

37:38

and your last hunk of money has been produced

37:41

you won't be able to eat that money and

37:44

you won't survive and the

37:46

only thing that you can do is integrate yourself

37:48

back.

38:03

My name is Brian Walsh. I'm

38:05

a fisherman in Bay de Verde, Newfoundland, and

38:08

it's a really miserable day. We have a northeast wind,

38:11

rain, drizzle and fog, typical Newfoundland weather

38:13

for this time of year. Fishing

38:16

is not just a job, it's not just another

38:19

job, it's a sort of a way of life. It's something that

38:21

you really have to be dedicated

38:23

to and you really have to be an eternal

38:25

optimist. I suppose all fishermen are

38:28

optimistic. You're always going to get more tomorrow

38:30

than you got yesterday, which is

38:33

not always the case. One

38:35

thing that you learn is that the sea is neither crew nor kind,

38:37

it's completely indifferent to everything and everybody

38:40

because there's no fish out there to catch. So

38:43

we can know we can't catch what's not there. God

38:45

knows we try hard enough. It

38:47

just seems to be pretty well on the bottom. I

38:49

don't know if it can get any worse than what it's been for the last

38:51

few years. This

38:57

is my 58 year fishing. It's

39:00

a long cave. A man

39:02

is fishing. He's

39:05

taking in what's going on. He knows

39:07

just what's going on. But

39:12

those scientists,

39:14

I don't believe our Canadian scientists

39:16

put half enough time on the ocean

39:20

to see the real thing. Now

39:24

there's no turbot left, there's no flounder

39:27

left and a cod. Well,

39:30

when I was fishing you could go out here,

39:32

go anywhere around back of the loo, you could catch cod, oh,

39:36

anywhere from two and a half to

39:38

four feet long. Now you

39:40

go out, you get them 12

39:43

inches long, 18 inches, not too

39:46

often you get any cod

39:48

in his house. Oh, that's

39:51

discouraging to see what's going on. Unfortunately,

39:58

fish are different from trees. If

40:01

we fly over new for land, we can very clearly

40:03

see the damage that the fires and

40:06

the budworm has done to our forest. We

40:08

can see that. So we believe it and

40:11

we do something about it.

40:12

The thing that bothers me is that in

40:14

the ocean, unfortunately,

40:17

we can't see the fish.

40:19

So we assume that everything is

40:22

going okay. But I think

40:24

a fisherman can kind of see through

40:26

it. The fisherman can visualize

40:29

oil spills and whatever because there's tankers

40:31

beyond tankers going within our course. He

40:34

can visualize the dragger

40:37

taking so much fish away from him that

40:40

he sees that the ocean

40:42

is not clean anymore. And therefore, it will

40:44

affect the pattern

40:46

of fish for one thing. It will affect the numbers

40:49

of fish for another thing. So you

40:51

put all that together

40:52

and he sees that as a real strength.

41:01

Her ancestors, they started in 1812. They

41:06

had a plantation over here and they're

41:09

fishing rooms and they've been fishing

41:11

ever since. And

41:15

their fishing has steeped into the wasps

41:18

anyway. And

41:20

now, for everything to fall

41:22

up, it's going to be a sad day.

41:25

A very sad day. I

41:29

don't know what's going to happen. It doesn't make

41:31

much difference to me now. I'm

41:35

just about had it. But

41:37

for the younger generation,

41:41

if they don't look after

41:43

our stocks, the bit

41:44

is left. That's

41:46

going to be nothing left for the inshore of fishing. Nothing.

42:02

Our lives are changing before our very

42:05

eyes. Can we afford to continue

42:07

on the path we're on? Jeremy

42:10

Leggett is the Director of Science for the environmental

42:12

group Greenpiece in England. In

42:15

the last analysis it's really very simple.

42:17

It boils down to an issue of survival. If

42:20

we want our species to survive, indeed

42:23

in a more immediate term, if

42:25

we want our children and their children

42:27

to survive, to have a future, a viable

42:29

future, we have to radically change

42:31

the way we think. Now it doesn't necessarily

42:34

have to involve a dramatic lowering

42:36

of lifestyle. There are ways of doing

42:39

it that don't involve that,

42:41

but they are very, very radical

42:44

and they involve restructuring

42:47

of the entire basis of the

42:49

way we live. If you look

42:51

at vegetation, we control 40%

42:53

of all the

42:54

vegetation on the planet for our

42:56

own needs. If you look at raw

42:59

materials, every man, woman, and child

43:01

on the planet uses, or we

43:04

use on their behalf, 10

43:06

tons a year. That's 50 billion

43:10

tons of material. More material

43:12

than is carried by all the rivers

43:14

on the earth in one year. And

43:17

of course, this involves toxic

43:19

materials which are going to leak out, which

43:21

are going to be deposited where they can get

43:23

into the bio materials, which are going to leak

43:25

out, which are going to be deposited where

43:28

they can get into the biosphere,

43:30

into living systems and do us down.

43:33

And it can't continue. It's just fundamentally

43:35

non-sustainable. And if you look at

43:38

what much of that stuff is for, it's for

43:40

luxury goods, it's for things we don't need,

43:42

it's for accoutrements, little minor

43:44

modifications to our ridiculous

43:47

lifestyle.

43:49

Robert Goodland is an ecologist

43:51

with the World Bank in Washington. In

43:53

an institution that is not known

43:55

for its outspokenness, he is

43:57

surprisingly blunt. Robert

44:00

Robert Goodland says it's time to change.

44:04

Business as usual with a token

44:07

cosmetic add-on, a black

44:09

box on the end of the tailpipe or a

44:11

higher chimney is out. Of

44:13

course in the interim until we can revamp

44:18

our economic thinking to a more

44:20

sustainable approach then a band-aid

44:22

is better than hemorrhage. But

44:25

no, business as usual is no answer.

44:28

Time has already run out for vast

44:30

areas of the world period. For

44:33

the rest time is running out very

44:35

fast. We may already have

44:37

overshot. In other words some

44:40

large damage may already have occurred

44:43

of which we're unaware or the effects of this damage

44:46

haven't started to hurt us yet. The

44:49

perforation of the ozone layer occurred

44:51

as one sudden dramatic

44:54

large hole in one unexpected

44:57

part of the world. It did not occur

44:59

as expected as a gradual

45:02

thinning of the ozone layer

45:05

fairly uniformly let's say worldwide.

45:07

That is an example of how unpredictable

45:10

some of the environmental damage

45:12

is likely to be. With acid rain,

45:15

carbon dioxide greenhouse effect and

45:18

the extinction of species we already

45:20

may be too late. We may have already

45:22

put so much carbon dioxide and

45:24

other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that

45:27

even if we cease tomorrow which is exceeding

45:29

unlikely we may already be

45:31

in for a lot of damaging economically

45:33

damaging effects. Sea level rise,

45:37

unpredictability of the weather,

45:40

drought and rain and floods

45:43

in other places. So

45:45

I think basically it's too late in many areas

45:48

and it's getting too late in much

45:50

of the others. It is a cause for alarm

45:53

but

45:54

everyone can contribute to the solution.

45:57

This world is such a beautiful enthralling,

45:59

fascinating. place that whatever

46:01

is left is certainly more than

46:04

worth saving. Don't leave it to

46:06

the scientists of which I'm one. You,

46:08

everyone, has their place. Do

46:11

whatever you think you can do, and

46:14

that is more than enough. Activism

46:17

is much more important now in the less

46:20

than one decade remaining to save

46:22

the globe than any amount of science.

46:25

If you're good at organizing people,

46:27

if you're good at sipping

46:29

frozen daikiris with chief executive

46:32

officers, go do it. If, on the

46:34

other hand, you want to impose a

46:36

soft body between the harpoon and

46:38

a whale, then go and do that, and God bless

46:41

you. Everyone has their place in

46:43

society. Do what you do best,

46:46

but do something, and we can

46:48

save it.

46:49

For the past five weeks, we've listened

46:51

to a grim litany of the destructive

46:54

path we're on. I wish

46:56

it were just a nightmare so we could wake

46:58

up, or a radio drama that

47:00

is just make-believe. But

47:02

it isn't. We have to face

47:05

the reality of what scientists are

47:07

telling us. It's a cop-out

47:09

to say it's too depressing or it's too

47:11

overwhelming. We have a stake

47:14

in what happens because our children

47:16

will inherit what we leave them.

47:19

But until we truly accept the reality

47:21

that this planet may soon become

47:24

unlivable, will only make

47:26

token gestures. You

47:28

see, my parents always taught me,

47:31

we are what we do, not what

47:33

we say. If our leaders

47:35

among government, industry, and

47:37

workers really see that it's

47:39

a matter of life and death,

47:41

a matter of survival, then

47:44

they would have to act. If

47:46

the very stuff that we need to breathe,

47:48

drink, and eat hangs in the balance,

47:51

can we continue to say that economic

47:54

growth,

47:54

profit, material goods, or

47:57

even political power are the bottom

47:59

line? In times of crisis,

48:02

people have pulled together and forgotten

48:04

their mistrust and petty rivalries. They've

48:07

changed their lives, sacrificed,

48:10

and worked to get out of it.

48:12

There has never been a bigger crisis than

48:14

we face now, and we are the

48:16

last generation that can pull us out

48:18

of it.

48:19

We have to act because

48:22

this is the only home we have.

48:25

It is a matter of survival.

48:32

Music

48:39

Production assistants Steve Payne

48:41

and Ben Schaub. Field

48:43

producers Lynn Glazier and Chris

48:45

Grosskirth of the program Sunday Morning. Writers

48:49

Anita Gordon and David Suzuki. Technician

48:53

Larry Morey with technical assistants from

48:55

Dave Field. Producer

48:58

Penny Park. The executive

49:00

producer is Anita Gordon. Music

49:10

I'm David Suzuki. Please

49:12

remember, it is a matter

49:14

of survival. Music

49:20

The excerpts you've been hearing till now

49:22

were drawn from the last episode of

49:25

It's a Matter of Survival, which was first

49:27

broadcast in 1989.

49:29

In our next episode of our radio retrospective

49:32

of David Suzuki's work, we'll

49:34

jump ahead to the 1999 series he produced for Ideas.

49:39

That series was called From

49:41

Naked Ape to Super Species and

49:43

explored the human capacity to address

49:46

problems that we ourselves have created.

49:49

In September of 1991, eight

49:52

people were sealed into a giant bubble

49:55

in the middle of the Arizona desert.

49:57

It was called Biosphere 2.

49:59

and it was meant to recreate the Earth's

50:02

natural systems.

50:03

It housed different ecosystems like

50:06

desert, ocean, grasslands,

50:08

and tropical forest. 3,800 different

50:10

plant and animal species were

50:14

collected and set up inside.

50:16

It was an attempt to create an airtight,

50:19

self-sustaining system that would eventually

50:21

make long voyages in space possible.

50:25

It was a miniature version of Biosphere 1,

50:27

the Earth,

50:28

and it was supposed to provide the clean

50:31

air, water, and food needed

50:33

to support the Bionauts over

50:35

two years. It

50:37

was, you might say, the arc of technology.

50:41

As an ecologist, Gretchen

50:43

Daley had a keen interest in

50:45

how it all turned out. $200 million

50:48

went into creating a tiny

50:51

little self-contained ecosystem

50:53

in which eight people were hoping

50:55

to live for a period

50:57

of two years. So this little area,

51:00

it's down in Arizona, it's

51:03

about maybe three or four acres in

51:05

the area. And it's got a little

51:08

ocean. It's got croplands. It's got

51:10

rivers. It's got all kinds of stuff in

51:12

there that would, in theory,

51:14

help purify waste and all that stuff, perform

51:17

all these services. And yet the people

51:19

that went into this found that even

51:21

with heroic efforts, they

51:24

couldn't keep it going. Rapidly, the oxygen

51:26

levels plummeted because of activities of

51:28

some of the soil organisms I told you about. And

51:32

so the oxygen level went down to what you'd

51:34

find at over 17,000 feet in elevation. So

51:37

they're nearly going hypoxic

51:40

in there. Then nitrous oxide

51:42

levels skyrocketed to

51:45

a level at which function of the brain

51:47

can be impaired or actually severely

51:50

damaged. All kinds of things happened.

51:53

All of the pollinators went extinct, and many

51:55

of the species they had put in there went extinct,

51:57

thereby dooming most of the plant.

52:00

species to eventual extinction. The

52:03

water had to be purified by hand

52:05

because none of the natural purification

52:07

systems that they thought they had designed in there

52:09

were working. And all sorts of other things

52:12

happened. Cockroaches and katydids

52:14

and these crazy ants lost

52:16

their minds and took over. Vines

52:19

grew out of control. So people had to spend

52:21

a huge amount of time just cutting

52:23

back and trying to control the organisms that

52:26

took advantage of this situation and the lack

52:28

of natural controls on their

52:30

activities. So what

52:32

that shows you is most of

52:34

these services are so complex,

52:37

they operate on such large scales,

52:40

and they're so little explored

52:42

that we can hope to replace

52:44

them with technology.

52:46

In a way, this was a

52:48

successful experiment because

52:51

it proved we don't have any idea

52:53

how to create an environment

52:55

that supports us like the one we already

52:57

get for free. As

53:00

we tear at that fabric of life, we

53:02

like to think that human ingenuity

53:04

will always make up for our destructiveness.

53:08

So far, we're not even close.

53:11

Gretchen Daley.

53:12

It is humbling. I mean, it makes you laugh.

53:16

It shows, I don't know, some of the good

53:19

sides of humanity, you could say, our curiosity,

53:21

our determination. In many ways,

53:24

we would think of them as noble qualities. I

53:26

mean, they're interesting things. But at the same time,

53:29

we're like little kids. We've

53:32

amassed this power, and

53:34

we've deceived ourselves somewhat. I mean, in modern

53:37

urban societies today, and in basically the

53:40

richest and most powerful parts

53:42

of the world, people are so removed

53:45

from these ecosystem services that they've

53:48

basically all but faded from view.

53:59

You were listening to Suzuki's

54:02

Survival Guide, a retrospective.

54:09

You can find past episodes of this series

54:12

and hundreds of other Ideas episodes

54:15

on your favorite podcast app, including

54:17

the CBC Listen app.

54:32

Series Producer, Nicola Luchsich

54:36

Lisa Aiyuso is the web producer

54:38

for Ideas. Technical Production,

54:40

Danielle Duval. Senior Producer,

54:43

Nicola Luchsich. Greg Kelly

54:45

is the executive producer of Ideas.

54:48

And I'm Nala Iyad.

55:00

Music