“We have failed to shift the narrative and we are still caught up in the same legal, economic and political systems,” said David Suzuki in an exclusive interview with iPolitics. “For me, what we’ve got to do now is hunker down.”
July 2nd, 2025
Davis Legree
We celebrated Canada this week, so I wanted to start with your reflections. What’s top-of-mind for David Suzuki during this year’s national celebration?
First of all, I’m grateful to Donald Trump for keeping Pierre Poilievre out of office because that’s an amazing thing, but the overarching thing is that we’re in deep trouble.
As far as I’m concerned, Mark Carney is the most well-informed prime minister on climate change that we’ve had. We all celebrated when Justin Trudeau came in after Stephen Harper. Trudeau went to Paris and signed the agreement to limit the rise of global temperatures, but then he bought a pipeline two and a half years later.
I talked to Carney when he was head of the Bank of England and it’s very clear he understands the threat we face with climate change and the need to act immediately. The problem is it’s all about politics, and politics is so disconnected from the real world.
I absolutely disagree with Carney that the economy and market forces need to be used because the economy itself is driving us into the ditch. It’s based on the creed of cancer — steady growth — and you can’t have endless growth in a finite world. The global economy is far too big, it’s got to shrink, and it’s got to be distributed more equitably around the world.
It’s crazy that we celebrate people who are billionaires. It should be illegal for Christ’s sake. It’s got nothing to do with money, and everything to do with how big their dick is. We should have awards and whenever someone achieves $100 million, which is already obscene, we give them a bronze statue of a dick, and when you get $1 billion, we could give them an even bigger dick.
That’s what it’s all about. Give the rest of the money back.
So, can I assume you were not invited to Jeff Bezos’ wedding in Italy?
What a disgusting phenomenon.
I lived in the United States for eight years getting an education that I couldn’t possibly get in Canada at the time, and I got a scholarship to a very eminent university because they believed foreign students added value to the education of American students. They gave us money to do that, but now we evaluate everything in terms of money, and that’s why I left the United States in 1962.
At that point, it was clear the Americans were behind the Russians and, as a Canadian down there, all I had to say was I liked science and they threw money at us.
I ended up leaving at the height of American support of scientists because I couldn’t stand the values of America that we see expressed today. Trump is the exact reflection of what happens with unbridled capitalism. It’s all about the deal and the money.
Now, in Canada, we run around saying Vancouver is a world-class community. What the fuck are we talking about? How do you evaluate a city based on the number of billionaires and corporations. To me, if you want to see a world-class city, you look at the state of your weakest, poorest and most vulnerable people.
That has got to be the measure of our society.
I returned to Canada in 1962 because we were different than the U.S., maybe not better, but different. I mean, we have a party that would be banned as communist in the United States.
Do you still think we’re different? I assume you’re referring to the NDP, and that party was almost wiped off the map in this spring’s election. Do you still see those differences?
I do, but they’re rapidly disappearing.
We still have many of the things that I value, like medicare, and I loved that we had an equalization payments system where the provinces that were better off shared with the poorer provinces. I thought that was fantastic.
And we had the National Film Board and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and we had Quebec. I think those differences within society are really important.
Let’s get back to politics. You mentioned Mark Carney. He left a climate finance post at the United Nations to pursue a political career, but one of his first moves in office was to eliminate the consumer carbon price.
Well, he had to do that. It was a purely political act.
But do you think he’s an environmentalist?
I think he understands the climate issue, but he really thinks you can do it by using market techniques. The problem is he’s a politician now and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has got him right by the shorts.
Alberta is behaving like the South before the American Civil War, when the southern people said it would destroy the economy if we get rid of slavery. The North went to war over that because some things matter more than the economy.
Economic growth, which is the driving force of politics and business, is what determines our fate.
It’s clear you haven’t lost your passion for a lot of the issues that you care about, but do you ever feel like you’re banging your head against the wall? If you look at public opinion data, climate change is often well down the list of priorities for most Canadians.
When you see that, where do you find the motivation to continue speaking to the values you believe are important?
I believe an informed public will do the right thing. Public concern in the late 1980s was right at the top and we had the first international conference on the atmosphere in 1988, where there were 300 people, over 40 governments, environmentalists, scientists, private sector people, you name it.
At the end of that conference, they said global warming represented a threat to humanity, second only to global nuclear war. If the world had followed the conclusions from that conference, we would not have the problem we face today and we would have saved trillions of dollars and millions of lives.
Now, it is too late.
I’ve never said this before to the media, but it’s too late. I say that because I go by science and Johan Rockström, the Swedish scientist who heads the Potsdam Institute, has defined nine planetary boundaries. These are constraints on how we live. As long as humans, like any other animal, live within those nine constraints, we can do it forever, and that includes the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, the pH of the oceans, the amount of available fresh water, the nitrogen cycle, etc.
There are nine planetary boundaries and we’ve only dealt with one of them — the ozone layer — and we think we’ve saved ourselves from that threat. But we passed the seventh boundary this year, and we’re in the extreme danger zone. Rockström says we have five years to get out of the danger zone.
If we pass one boundary, we should be shitting our pants. We’ve passed seven!
And, if you look at those boundaries, like the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, we’ve had 28 COP meetings on climate change and we haven’t been able to cap emissions.
We’re on our way to more than a three-degree temperature rise by the end of this century, and scientists agree we shouldn’t rise above one and half degrees.
You say we’re too late to address climate change? That’s a pretty stark quote. Does that mean you’re giving up on the fight?
I’m not giving up on the immediate years, but the focus on politics, economics, and law are all destined to fail because they are based around humans. They’re designed to guide humans, but we’ve left out the foundation of our existence,
which is nature, clean air, pure water, rich soil, food, and sunlight. That’s the foundation of the way we live and, when we construct legal, economic and political systems, they have to be built around protecting those very things, but they’re not.
You’ve been quoted many times over the last couple decades saying it’s not too late to tackle climate change, so when did you come to this realization that the battle is lost?
It’s been coming all along.
We had previously said that the choice with climate change was mitigation and adaptation, and people began saying 20 years ago that we had to talk about adaptation. Other people said we can’t talk about adaptation because that acknowledges that climate change is real and impacting people. Well, we’re way past the time when we should have been thinking about adaptation.
Look, I’m not giving up in the sense of not doing anything, but Trump’s election was the dagger in my heart. Trump’s win was the triumph of capitalism and neoliberalism, and he’s going to wreak havoc. There’s nothing we can do about
that, except maybe incremental changes. That’s not what we need. We need revolution. Can you have a peaceful revolution? I don’t know.
But I’m saying, as an environmentalist, we have failed to shift the narrative and we are still caught up in the same legal, economic and political systems.
For me, what we’ve got to do now is hunker down. The units of survival are going to be local communities, so I’m urging local communities to get together. Finland is offering a great example because the Finnish government has sent a letter to all of their citizens warning of future emergencies, whether they’re earthquakes, floods, droughts, or storms. They’re going to come and they’re going to be more urgent and prolonged.
Governments will not be able to respond on the scale or speed that is needed for these emergencies, so Finland is telling their citizens that they’re going to be at the front line of whatever hits and better be sure you’re ready to meet it. Find out who on your block can’t walk because you’re going to have to deal with that. Who has wheelchairs? Who has fire extinguishers? Where is the available water? Do you have batteries or generators? Start assessing the routes of escape. You’re going to have to inventory your community, and that’s really what we have to start doing now.
www.ipolitics.ca
July 2nd, 2025
Davis Legree
We celebrated Canada this week, so I wanted to start with your reflections. What’s top-of-mind for David Suzuki during this year’s national celebration?
First of all, I’m grateful to Donald Trump for keeping Pierre Poilievre out of office because that’s an amazing thing, but the overarching thing is that we’re in deep trouble.
As far as I’m concerned, Mark Carney is the most well-informed prime minister on climate change that we’ve had. We all celebrated when Justin Trudeau came in after Stephen Harper. Trudeau went to Paris and signed the agreement to limit the rise of global temperatures, but then he bought a pipeline two and a half years later.
I talked to Carney when he was head of the Bank of England and it’s very clear he understands the threat we face with climate change and the need to act immediately. The problem is it’s all about politics, and politics is so disconnected from the real world.
I absolutely disagree with Carney that the economy and market forces need to be used because the economy itself is driving us into the ditch. It’s based on the creed of cancer — steady growth — and you can’t have endless growth in a finite world. The global economy is far too big, it’s got to shrink, and it’s got to be distributed more equitably around the world.
It’s crazy that we celebrate people who are billionaires. It should be illegal for Christ’s sake. It’s got nothing to do with money, and everything to do with how big their dick is. We should have awards and whenever someone achieves $100 million, which is already obscene, we give them a bronze statue of a dick, and when you get $1 billion, we could give them an even bigger dick.
That’s what it’s all about. Give the rest of the money back.
So, can I assume you were not invited to Jeff Bezos’ wedding in Italy?
What a disgusting phenomenon.
I lived in the United States for eight years getting an education that I couldn’t possibly get in Canada at the time, and I got a scholarship to a very eminent university because they believed foreign students added value to the education of American students. They gave us money to do that, but now we evaluate everything in terms of money, and that’s why I left the United States in 1962.
At that point, it was clear the Americans were behind the Russians and, as a Canadian down there, all I had to say was I liked science and they threw money at us.
I ended up leaving at the height of American support of scientists because I couldn’t stand the values of America that we see expressed today. Trump is the exact reflection of what happens with unbridled capitalism. It’s all about the deal and the money.
Now, in Canada, we run around saying Vancouver is a world-class community. What the fuck are we talking about? How do you evaluate a city based on the number of billionaires and corporations. To me, if you want to see a world-class city, you look at the state of your weakest, poorest and most vulnerable people.
That has got to be the measure of our society.
I returned to Canada in 1962 because we were different than the U.S., maybe not better, but different. I mean, we have a party that would be banned as communist in the United States.
Do you still think we’re different? I assume you’re referring to the NDP, and that party was almost wiped off the map in this spring’s election. Do you still see those differences?
I do, but they’re rapidly disappearing.
We still have many of the things that I value, like medicare, and I loved that we had an equalization payments system where the provinces that were better off shared with the poorer provinces. I thought that was fantastic.
And we had the National Film Board and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and we had Quebec. I think those differences within society are really important.
Let’s get back to politics. You mentioned Mark Carney. He left a climate finance post at the United Nations to pursue a political career, but one of his first moves in office was to eliminate the consumer carbon price.
Well, he had to do that. It was a purely political act.
But do you think he’s an environmentalist?
I think he understands the climate issue, but he really thinks you can do it by using market techniques. The problem is he’s a politician now and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has got him right by the shorts.
Alberta is behaving like the South before the American Civil War, when the southern people said it would destroy the economy if we get rid of slavery. The North went to war over that because some things matter more than the economy.
Economic growth, which is the driving force of politics and business, is what determines our fate.
It’s clear you haven’t lost your passion for a lot of the issues that you care about, but do you ever feel like you’re banging your head against the wall? If you look at public opinion data, climate change is often well down the list of priorities for most Canadians.
When you see that, where do you find the motivation to continue speaking to the values you believe are important?
I believe an informed public will do the right thing. Public concern in the late 1980s was right at the top and we had the first international conference on the atmosphere in 1988, where there were 300 people, over 40 governments, environmentalists, scientists, private sector people, you name it.
At the end of that conference, they said global warming represented a threat to humanity, second only to global nuclear war. If the world had followed the conclusions from that conference, we would not have the problem we face today and we would have saved trillions of dollars and millions of lives.
Now, it is too late.
I’ve never said this before to the media, but it’s too late. I say that because I go by science and Johan Rockström, the Swedish scientist who heads the Potsdam Institute, has defined nine planetary boundaries. These are constraints on how we live. As long as humans, like any other animal, live within those nine constraints, we can do it forever, and that includes the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, the pH of the oceans, the amount of available fresh water, the nitrogen cycle, etc.
There are nine planetary boundaries and we’ve only dealt with one of them — the ozone layer — and we think we’ve saved ourselves from that threat. But we passed the seventh boundary this year, and we’re in the extreme danger zone. Rockström says we have five years to get out of the danger zone.
If we pass one boundary, we should be shitting our pants. We’ve passed seven!
And, if you look at those boundaries, like the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, we’ve had 28 COP meetings on climate change and we haven’t been able to cap emissions.
We’re on our way to more than a three-degree temperature rise by the end of this century, and scientists agree we shouldn’t rise above one and half degrees.
You say we’re too late to address climate change? That’s a pretty stark quote. Does that mean you’re giving up on the fight?
I’m not giving up on the immediate years, but the focus on politics, economics, and law are all destined to fail because they are based around humans. They’re designed to guide humans, but we’ve left out the foundation of our existence,
which is nature, clean air, pure water, rich soil, food, and sunlight. That’s the foundation of the way we live and, when we construct legal, economic and political systems, they have to be built around protecting those very things, but they’re not.
You’ve been quoted many times over the last couple decades saying it’s not too late to tackle climate change, so when did you come to this realization that the battle is lost?
It’s been coming all along.
We had previously said that the choice with climate change was mitigation and adaptation, and people began saying 20 years ago that we had to talk about adaptation. Other people said we can’t talk about adaptation because that acknowledges that climate change is real and impacting people. Well, we’re way past the time when we should have been thinking about adaptation.
Look, I’m not giving up in the sense of not doing anything, but Trump’s election was the dagger in my heart. Trump’s win was the triumph of capitalism and neoliberalism, and he’s going to wreak havoc. There’s nothing we can do about
that, except maybe incremental changes. That’s not what we need. We need revolution. Can you have a peaceful revolution? I don’t know.
But I’m saying, as an environmentalist, we have failed to shift the narrative and we are still caught up in the same legal, economic and political systems.
For me, what we’ve got to do now is hunker down. The units of survival are going to be local communities, so I’m urging local communities to get together. Finland is offering a great example because the Finnish government has sent a letter to all of their citizens warning of future emergencies, whether they’re earthquakes, floods, droughts, or storms. They’re going to come and they’re going to be more urgent and prolonged.
Governments will not be able to respond on the scale or speed that is needed for these emergencies, so Finland is telling their citizens that they’re going to be at the front line of whatever hits and better be sure you’re ready to meet it. Find out who on your block can’t walk because you’re going to have to deal with that. Who has wheelchairs? Who has fire extinguishers? Where is the available water? Do you have batteries or generators? Start assessing the routes of escape. You’re going to have to inventory your community, and that’s really what we have to start doing now.
‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost - iPolitics
"We have failed to shift the narrative and we are still caught up in the same legal, economic and political systems," said David Suzuki in an exclusive interview with iPolitics. "For me, what we've got to do now is hunker down."
www.ipolitics.ca
