Dr. Suzuki
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Tonight I attended a speech at the AGO by Dr. David Suzuki, the famous eco-advocate and geneticist. It was very much a sermon to the converted, with plenty of nodded heads at each of his exclamations. He made many good points, some about straw men like the SUV but some stronger points about the toxic state of farmed salmon* - which I think I'm going to have to give up. But all the while there was this sensation that it was a comfortable space for the audience, a sermon to the faithful about the evils of the capitalist system (he denied, at one point, that he lived a capitalist lifestyle!). There was little to take us beyond the simple message that we can't go on.
And several times he railed against the 'brain damaged' economists. Now, I'm the first to admit that the 'economist' view of the world is profoundly flawed; this is, after all, the viewpoint that says that a forest has no value until it is cut down. But when the economists dismiss the ecologists, and the ecologists dismiss the economist, where are we getting?
It was good to see an impassioned speech in this time of inaction and negligent disaster, but it was also disappointing to see how that passion was spent.
*Suzuki told us about a time when he refused a salmon steak dinner at a school to which he'd been invited. The salmon was farmed steak, you see, and he outlined why such fish are not only terrible for the environment but are also quite bad for the people that eat them. Yes, they're full of toxins (even flame retardants, if he's to be believed) and antibacterial agents and molds and parasites. And yes they may well be artificially dyed. But some school kids gathered raised the money to have him speak, and the man couldn't (literally) swallow his shtick and please his young hosts?