Spreading the News

One of my favourite modern day hero is David Suzuki. Being a nature lover, (mostly of the insect and wildflower variety), I remember occasionally watching David Suzuki's "Nature of Things" as a child. Some thirty odd years later, I still enjoy watching his show.

When David Suzuki started out with his campaign to warn people of all the dangerous modern day activities being wreaked upon poor Mother Earth, no one wanted to listen, especially the Big Bad Corporations that were and still are inflicting most of the damages and encouraging the masses' love affair with over-consumption. He was viewed as a trouble maker, and thought of mostly as "Chicken Little", going around with his head cut off, telling everyone that the "Sky is Falling".

Well, 20 years later, David Suzuki changed his tactics. He adopted a more conciliatory approach. Instead of fighting the System, he decided to work with the System. He co-athored a book called "Good News for a Change".

I was thrilled to finally have had the pleasure of meeting my hero back in the Spring of 2002 when he gave a speech during a Book Signing at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre. He signed his then latest book, with the message: "To Joan, Spread the News". I had no trouble absorbing the book's message as my values readily aligned with his. However, being somewhat of an introvert, I did have trouble "spreading the news".

Now, with the help of the internet, I will do my best to "Spread the News"!

If you would like to read examples of some groups' grassroots efforts to use the Earth's valuable resources with a light touch, and even Nature's own self-sustaining methods, I highly recommend the book, "Good News for a Change". Reading this book made me realize that we need a HUGE cultural shift in behaviour, a Cultural Revolution even, to ensure that the Human Race can live in harmony with Nature.

I also recommend reading one of his latest article: "Nature imposes the real bottom line", in which he rails against the Developed Nations' insistence on trying to solve our current global problems with Economic theories and paying little or no attention to the scientific theories of our Biosphere and its limited resources.

Here's an excerpt:

"As biological creatures, we depend on clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy, and biodiversity for our well-being and survival. Surely protecting those fundamental needs should be our top priority and should dominate our thinking and the way we live. After all, we are animals and our biological dependence on the biosphere for our most basic needs should be obvious.

The economy is a human construct, not a force of nature like entropy, gravity, or the speed of light or our biological makeup. It makes no sense to elevate the economy above the things that keep us alive. But that’s what our prime minister does when he claims we can’t even try to meet the Kyoto targets because that might have a detrimental effect on the economy.

This economic system is built on exploiting raw materials from the biosphere and dumping the waste back into the biosphere. And conventional economics dismisses all the “services” that nature performs to keep the planet habitable for animals like us as “externalities”. As long as economic considerations trump all other factors in our decisions, we will never work our way out of the problems we’ve created.

We often describe the triple bottom line – society, economy, and environment – as three intersecting circles of equal size. This is nonsense. The reality is that the largest circle should represent the biosphere. Within that, we have 30 million species, including us, that depend on it. Within the biosphere circle should be a much smaller circle, which is human society, and within that should be an even smaller circle, the economy. Neither of the inner circles should grow large enough to intersect with the bigger ones, but that’s what’s happening now as human societies and the economy hit their limits".

With this in mind, I will endeavour to live a less wasteful life. My family and I already live a lower consumerist way of life than most North Americans. For example, our family of 4 rely on only 1 small economy car, wear a lot of hand-me-downs (with style), cook most of our meals from scratch, thus producing on average, only 1 can of garbage every 2 weeks, do an average of 3 loads of laundry per week and line dry most of our laundry. To be sure, we can do much much more, but it is a start for us and we will continue to find more ways to make more changes in our behaviour to make less waste.

We are so fortunate to be already living such privileged and comfortable lives, I believe we can continue to live deeply satisfying and joyful lives, by giving up some of the excesses we have grown so accustomed. We can do it! Yes we can!