From the Seattle Times today. As I stated when I declared that there was no reason to continue this blog because “Environmentalism is dead” a new interview with David Suzuki, the leading environmentalist in Canada for over 50 years, has also declared it over, once again. Suzuki pronounced the environmental movement dead about 10 years ago in an interview in McClean’s Magazine, which I covered in this blog at the time. This time around he does not mince words.
“Suzuki says the environmental movement, once so promising in the early days of Greenpeace, has fundamentally failed because of its microfocus on saving endangered species instead of promoting a radical overhaul of economic systems. At no time does he whitewash his culpability.”
Read the whole story in the Seattle Times. Support local journalism. We are about to lose it.
‘Absolute self-destruction’: David Suzuki has bad news about the environment
https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/march-23-david-suzuki-feature/
Filed under: Olympic Peninsula |
So glad you are still writing these posts Al – thank you. I’m not sure that focusing on endangered species is the real culprit, but definitely think the economy is the problem. Plus, so many environmentalists are employed as environmentalists and do not seem to have the same passion. I once asked a grassroots group trying to breach the LSRDs to use a campaign of how to reduce your energy (by 4% since that is the amount the dams produce) and all consumption so salmon and SRKWs could recover. The response was “no, we don’t need to do that – we can have it all.” The thinking, I guess, is that exchanging one extractive economy (fossil fuels) with another (mining minerals) is all we need do. America did a great job of promoting the American Dream across the world in order to open markets for profits. Well, we have now consumed almost everything – Earth Overshoot Day occurs earlier and earlier every year (https://www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/resources/updates/earth-overshoot-day/#scroll-nav__2).
thanks, Teri. Restoring the Earth is something that I think that we really need to give up. The forces that are arrayed against this happening are so huge and control so much media that it’s very hard to get through to the average consumer about how important it is. we did manage to get them to shift their ideas towards wanting electric vehicles, but that simply meant a different type of consumption and it actually in a way plays into the forces of destruction, because it’s ultimately a consumption game. I’ve been attacked, in good humor, by friends who have bought electric cars, saying “what type of environmentalist are you that you don’t just go out and buy an electric car since you can afford to.” my answer has always been the same. I bought a brand new car in 2016, and it has less than 100,000 miles on it and it is running fine. Why should I go out and pay money to have more earth and manufacturing done in my name at this point since I don’t need this new thing. I don’t think that it gets through to them that the consumption is the problem. but the scale of me and my tiny pollution that’s based on a four-cylinder efficient car is dwarf by the vast amount of pollution being put into the atmosphere on an hourly basis in China, India and even here in some of the US. That’s why I really have backed off this blog and add to it only when I find something that might help someone understand that they have to make major changes if they want to call themselves and environmentalist and the only way to save the earth right now is to save this government. Take care.
Not unless we give up and quit trying.
I guess my thought is that if we’re not gonna be living in a democracy and not fighting for that democracy right at this very moment it’s not really worth much to fight for the environment. We won’t be around to see it.