Letters to my Grandchildren

by David Suzuki

  Our impact on Earth has been amplified many times by technological advances that allow us to explore and extract resources from every part of the planet, from ocean depths to mountaintops, from deep within the earth and across deserts. In the ocean, fish hardly have a chance against huge factory ships that can stay at sea for weeks, freezing catches brought in by longlines that are miles long with thousands of hooks, or nets big and strong enough to hold several 747 jets, dragged along the ocean floor between two boats. Navigation and communication technologies used in the process include radar, GPS, sonar, cellphones, and computers. But we don’t think about that when we buy fish.

  Consider the dozens of ingredients in a pizza, car, or cellphone. From spices like pepper to rare earth metals, rubber, and lithium, components of the things we all buy and use come from around the world, but we are unaware that purchasing them has global repercussions. When activists lead campaigns (for example, against Nike for exploitation of workers in poor countries), recommend sustainable seafood or lumber, or support fair trade with the growers of coffee, consumers do learn and respond, but this happens for tiny fractions of the products now whiz-zing from every part of the globe.

  Add together the collective global impact of population, consumption, the global economy, and technology, and it is clear how we have become a geological force. Human activity has so disrupted processes on the planet with consequences that what were once called “acts of god” or “natural disasters” now carry the undeniable imprint of our species. We have become almost like gods as we affect natural events such as weather and climate, earthquakes, floods, drought, mega-fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Once, our fear of gods acted to restrain human excesses, but now we have ourselves become the gods.

  We should pay far greater attention to ourselves—our actions, motives, and consequences—but we have become so impressed with how clever and inventive we are that we think this is all progress and that we can carry on as we do. However, we are too ignorant about how the world works to anticipate the consequences of our new technologies. That’s why I have broken from most of my colleagues in genetics who feel that GMOS (genetically modified organisms) are a boon to humankind. I believe that there are enormous potential benefits to them but also that our knowledge of how genes act within a genome is still so primitive and incomplete that there will be unintended and deleterious consequences of our manipulation, and that therefore we should rein in our impulse to exploit GMOS, as well as every other new insight or invention, as quickly as possible. That’s an economically driven imperative, not a thoughtful goal. We should always remember that technologies widely heralded as wonderful innovations, from nuclear power to DDT and CFCS to pharmaceutical drugs, have often failed to live up to the hype or been found years later to have unanticipated consequences. We need a different way of assessing the long-term consequences of new technologies when they are invented and a greater sense of humility in the face of our ignorance.

  A general principle governing the way we deal with toxic waste seems to be “out of sight, out of mind.” So we have disposed of some of the most potent toxins—nerve gases—by dumping them into deep ocean trenches, and we seem unconcerned that the encasing canisters will corrode there over time. Now it is proposed to entomb long-lived nuclear waste in mines deep in the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, forgetting that even the pyramids are only a few thousand years old and are wearing away. Nothing humans have created has resisted breakdown and corrosion over thousands of years.

  If co2 is pumped into depleted wells, more oil can be recovered while the co2 remains in the ground. So the industry proposes to remove co2 from emissions and pump it underground, a technique called carbon capture and storage (CCS). Now that the fossil fuel industry is being forced to confront the need to reduce carbon emissions, the government has poured billions into this technology. This assumption that ccs will be the answer sometime in the future allows the companies to continue pumping oil out of the ground and us to burn it without reducing greenhouse gas emissions—in other words, business as usual. But we don’t know why the co2 doesn’t come back out, and we know almost nothing about life underground and what effects the acidification of co2 and the etching of limestone caps will have. We are simply happy to believe that putting massive amounts of co2 out of sight is a solution.

  Energy powers modern society, and we have built our way of life around fossil fuels. But as with nuclear power, problems are created by the end products: radio-active waste and greenhouse gas. “Peak oil”—the point when humans will have used half of all oil deposits— was predicted decades ago, and the spectre of declining availability spurred further exploration in extreme environments, deeper water, farther underground, in the Arctic. Environmentalists embraced peak oil as the threat that would drive innovation and a shift away from fossil fuels, but to our shock, new deposits continued to be found, and then hydraulic fracturing (fracking) exploded as a source of “natural” gas and oil.

  Fracking—like chemical pesticides that kill all insects just to eliminate the one or two pests—has to be one of the dumbest, most shortsighted, and most dangerous practices. Fracked gas is released by pumping massive amounts of water and sand containing dozens of chemicals, including known carcinogens, under high pressure into wells deep underground, causing shale to shatter and release bubbles of gas and oil that were trapped in the rock. It is astounding that there is so much oil and gas trapped this way, but suddenly the explosive growth of fracking in the United States has supposedly created a “glut” of energy. I can’t see how there can be a glut of any nonrenewable resource—only a seeming abundance that is temporary. The gas released is methane, a greenhouse gas that is twenty-two times as potent as co2, and Americans are finding a high rate of leakage that more than offsets the claims that fracked gas is a “transition” to renewable fuels because of its lower climate change footprint than coal or oil. As should be obvious, oil and gas from a fracked well will deplete rapidly, thereby requiring more and deeper wells for an ever-diminishing return. Water pumped into the wells is contaminated and can flow into underground aquifers, while the intense concentration of high-pressure wells is inducing seismic activity, including earthquakes. Fracking clearly indicates the lack of concern for consequences both immediate and long term.

  People often ask, “What is the most critical problem we face? Is it climate change, toxic pollution, overpopulation, deforestation, ocean degradation, species extinction?” My answer is that these are all critical issues, and there are more. We don’t know which one may be the issue that will do us in, though right now climate change looms as our existential challenge. I firmly believe that habitat destruction and species extinction will greatly diminish the chances that our own species will survive even if we do manage to get greenhouse gas emissions under control.

  To me, the real challenge is the human mind, which is driving our actions: our beliefs and values shape the way we see the world, which in turn determines how we will treat it. So long as we assume that we are the centre of the universe and everything revolves around us, we will not be able to see the dangers we create. To see those, we have to recognize that our very lives and our well-being depend on the richness of nature.

  The wired world we thrive in today, with personal electronic devices that give us access to the world’s information and to the rest of the world’s population, shatters everything into tiny snippets in which the exquisite interconnectivity of all becomes invisible. Throughout human existence, the search for causal relationships has been vital. What caused that storm? Why did he get sick? Where did the animals go?—these crucial questions were often answered by “the gods” or other superstitions. But in asking the questions, we could also be led down a path to understanding. Today, there are many crucial issues whose causal basis leads to solutions—Why are fish in Banff National Park contaminated by Russian pesticides? Where are the immense piles of plastic in the oceans coming from? What causes autism?—but in our electronic worl
d, these connections are often invisible. Things happen, but we seldom ask anymore why or how.

  Even when we do carry out environmental assessments, they are done for individual projects, such as a well for fracking or a clear-cut patch, but ignore the collective impact of many such developments together.

  We base many of our projects on the assumption that continued “progress” in technology will help minimize or eliminate the negative “costs” of development. So, for example, although the science clearly indicates that we have to radically reduce the output of greenhouse gases to avoid catastrophic climate change, rather than reducing fossil fuel use and moving toward a clean renewable energy future, we invest in unproven ideas like carbon capture and storage on the assumption that it will work and therefore we can carry on without changing our actions. Moreover, since technological innovation is assumed, the cost of climate change for future generations, who will bear the brunt of those costs, is discounted. Do not be assured by these assumptions.

  What will the world be like when all of you reach adulthood? I have spent much of my life thinking about that and dreading the possibility that the events I’ve been warning about may come to pass. In 1988–89, when I was preparing for the radio series It’s a Matter of Survival, I interviewed more than 140 scientists and experts from around the world, and by telescoping all their input into a few months, I could see that the biosphere was under assault. I thought of the world as a basketball covered in ants that were eating away its surface. The accelerating decline in biodiversity on Earth results from the continuing destruction of habitat that is now referred to as “ecocide.”

  There have been all kinds of scientific reports on the state of the planet, on air, water, soil, biodiversity, oceans— all depressingly similar. Human beings have become so numerous and demanding that we are causing the continued decline in the life-support systems of Earth. Climate change has suddenly exploded as a very real threat to the survival of our species, and what happens in the next decade could well determine our fate. Even if we were, by some miracle, to work together and switch off fossil fuels to clean renewable energy, biodiversity will already have been drastically diminished.

  How can people bring children into a world when the future is so uncertain? There have been other moments in history when the future must have seemed equally bleak— when human numbers were reduced to catastrophically few as during great epidemics like the “plague” in Europe, the North and South American epidemics of smallpox and other European diseases that wiped out entire populations of indigenous people, and the Holocaust in Europe. This moment differs in that it is the entire biosphere, on which all life depends, that is being transformed. But your parents, by virtue of having you, have made a big commitment to work hard for your future.

  I am a big fan of George Monbiot, a columnist for the Guardian. In October 2014, he wrote a very moving cri de coeur, a cry from the heart, in response to a report that 52 percent of animals in known vertebrate species had disappeared in the previous forty years:

  Who believes that a social and economic system which has this effect is a healthy one? Who, contemplating this loss, could call it progress?5

  But our current extinction of animals is not a new phenomenon. Humankind has had a long history of extinguishing species, beginning with the big, slow-moving ones that provided a lot of meat and could be outwitted by an ape like us, armed with a nimble brain and simple tools like stone axes, clubs, and spears. Monbiot adds:

  The loss of much of the African megafauna—sabretooths and false sabretooths, giant hyaenas and amphicyonids (bear dogs), several species of elephant—coincided with the switch towards meat eating by hominims (ancestral humans) . . . As we spread into other continents, their megafauna almost immediately collapsed.

  In fact, Monbiot suggests that the sudden disappearance of big animals may be the best indication of the arrival of humans to an area. According to him, even ecosystems regarded as untouched wilderness have already been modified by our species:

  The habitats we see as pristine—the Amazon rainforest or coral reefs for example—are in fact almost empty: they have lost most of the great beasts that used to inhabit them, which drove crucial natural processes.

  Since then we have worked our way down the food-chain, rubbing out smaller predators, medium-sized herbivores, and now, through both habitat destruction and hunting, wildlife across all classes and positions in the foodweb.

  But why have we become such a hyperdestructive animal? Three obvious factors are rapid population growth, because every additional person needs water, food, and shelter; the explosive growth of powerful new technologies, which amplify our ability to travel and to detect and exploit more of Earth’s species and habitat; and a hyper demand for consumer goods, all of which come from Earth and go back to it when we are finished with them. Monbiot reaches a bleak conclusion about the consequences of the industrialized way of life:

  In a society bombarded by advertising and driven by the growth imperative, pleasure is reduced to hedonism and hedonism is reduced to consumption. We use consumption as a cure for boredom, to fill the void that an affectless, grasping, atomised culture creates, to brighten the grey world we have created.

  When I was a boy, my Depression-scarred parents urged us to purchase necessities, but you only have to go to a big box store like Walmart to see that we have moved far beyond buying what we need. Instead, we indulge ourselves in the purchase of useless gadgets and items that are meaningless and ultimately without value. Monbiot takes this into account too:

  The extraction of the raw materials required to produce them, the pollution commissioned in their manufacturing, the infrastructure and noise and burning of fuel needed to transport them are trashing a natural world infinitely more fascinating and intricate than the stuff we produce. The loss of wildlife is a loss of wonder and enchantment, of the magic with which the living world infects our lives.

  We are constantly harangued about the necessity of maintaining growth in the economy, but growth is simply a description of a system. Growth cannot be an end; it can only be a means to something. Why do we aspire to endless growth? And in a world in which even nature is finite, not limitless, steady growth forever is impossible. Studies indicate that the growth that does occur benefits primarily the already obscenely wealthy: the richest 1 percent of Americans reap 93 percent of the benefits of growth, namely, more purchasing power for frivolous things—houses, boats and planes, fashionable clothing, automobiles, anything to flaunt that wealth. Workers, in contrast, labour at boring jobs, work longer hours, and are burdened with more stressful demands. Yet there seems to be little alternative to the current economic system, which has been so tightly embraced by politicians and corporate executives alike.

  In Monbiot’s words again,

  Thus the Great Global Polishing proceeds, wearing down the knap of the Earth, rubbing out all that is distinctive and peculiar, in human culture as well as nature, reducing us to replaceable automata within a homogenous global workforce, inexorably transforming the riches of the natural world into a featureless mono-culture... Is this not the point at which we challenge the inevitability of endless growth on a finite planet? If not now, when?

  I can’t imagine a more urgent moment for a fundamental shift in the way we see our place within the biosphere. To carry on as we have is suicidal and a terrible denial of our unique attribute of foresight. Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything raises climate change as the crisis of our time and points to capitalism itself as the cause of our inability to stem our destructive path. I agree. How can we shift the paradigm?

  Yet Monbiot’s bleak words offer us an insight that provides real hope. The triad of issues—population, technology, and consumption—unlike the issues of habitat loss, ocean depletion, and climate change, are tractable because they are human issues. We may think we know enough to manage the planet, but we don’t. That is a human conceit. The challenge is us, and we are capable of changing; we can strongly
influence the way we behave; we can learn and develop. With greater humility, with understanding of the exquisite interconnectivity and interdependence of everything on Earth, we can relearn to value nature and rediscover our place within this world.

  {ten}

  BARRIERS TO CHANGE

  Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back . . . The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too

  . . . A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way

  . . .

  Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!

  W.H. MURRAY, quoting Goethe

  MY LOVELY ONES,

  You are living through a moment unprecedented in all of human existence. The sudden confluence of explosive growth in human numbers, technological dexterity, and consumptive demand is having a huge impact on the properties of the planet itself. Some of the consequences include an alteration in the biological and chemical com-position of the atmosphere, water, and soil and massive geophysical change in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. It means that you are heading toward huge changes in weather and climate as well as in the biological productivity of forests, reefs, wetlands, and prairies. The scientific warnings of our potential fate have been issued with increasing urgency over decades, but there has been reluctance to meet the challenge on the scale that is needed. The question is why.