i don't like to think of myself as being someone who needs to be "dragged, kicking and screaming" to something that is as important as a lecture by a leading canadian intellectual on something as important as one entitled, "Biosphere Crisis: How Did We Get Here and Where Are We Going?" but apparently i am. my friends from work had tickets to this sold out presentation, and i had to be conned into going - loser that i am. of course, i'm glad that i went, but i had issues to overcome.

being a well respected canadian intellectual for over 40 years, david suzuki was one of the first, most prominent and popular japanese-canadians and as such, he was an influence on me since i was a young boy. my mother was always so impressed by him - he is undeniably charismatic, intelligent, and well-spoken on many important matters and has become one of the pre-eminent voices of global environmental awareness in the world. but my mother, japanese-canadian that she is, always made sure that i was aware of the burden of our culture's historical guilt and foreign-ness in the west. suzuki used to say that as a japanese-canadian, he had to work "three times as hard just to get the same treatment as a white person." i can't say that i've ever felt quite so hard-done-by, but that is probably due to the debt that i now owe to such figures as him for changing old-fashioned prejudices and ways of thinking. still... i have discovered that i have an issue with him - being partly-japanese-canadian, having studied molecular biology and drosophila genetics, and all that - i can't help but feel that i've been living within his shadow and failing to meet me expectations. but that's not the heart of the adventure.

suzuki spoke at convocation hall at the university of toronto and it was fascinating to see the rock-star status that this man has. far from being alarmist, suzuki presented a fascinating and insightful perspective on ecology and the stress that our contemporary economic system places on our world and its resources. he expresses some brilliant themes and colours them with concepts that are accessible and moving. these were some of my favourite:

• there are lessons to be learned from indigenous cultures who have co-existed with nature for thousands of years - perpetuating their culture and way of life in harmony with the land and nature in a balanced and sustainable fashion. modern civilizations have become completely ambivalent to those lessons in the pursuit of "progress", and we are suffering as a direct result;
• the air we breathe, the water we drink, and earth in which we grow our food, and the energy that we harvest from the sun and the chemically stored sources that it has created are all connected - big surprise!  moreover, we are all connected because what we do to each of these "sacred elements" directly and immediately becomes a component of each of us. i think that his favourite image was the sharing of the air molecules in a single breath, which, through diffusion, will become part of everyone else's breath within mere moments;
• economics has completely ignored the cost of resource consumption and environmental impact since its inception. the only value that natural resources have to economics is when they are harvested and consumed, and the environmental impact is not only negligible, but can have a positive impact on artificial indicators like GDP, even/especially if they manifest in gross environmental disaster. resource costs and environmental impact are considered "externalities" to economists and never factor into a cost-benefit analysis of whether or not to proceed in any enterprise;
• the most chilling statistic that suzuki raised was that the population of the planet has tripled in only the last 100 years with more and more of the world becoming industrialized and urbanized, which will only compound the rate of growth and consumption of natural resources. even i can see that the implication here is that if we set global impact reduction targets 50 years out, then that means that we could be dealing with increasingly marginal overall reductions when offset by another probably doubling of the global population;

as i said, suzuki was never alarmist, but i got the distinct impression that even he is wrestling with the conclusion that it may be too late to turn back from the brink of environmental disaster that our way of life seems to be steering us all.

i know that after going to his lecture, i am struggling to be optimistic about our chances. every day as i walk from the subway station to my office, i pass hundreds of cars, vans, trucks, SUVs and hummers that have a single driver making the commute into the city and i wonder how long this can be allowed to continue.

i urge you all to join david suzuki in his nature challenge. we all know that things have to change. it's time to get serious about it, if it's not too late.

- g

ps.  for another perspective on the same event, and a better description of the actual content, my buddy, jim, brilliant and sexy man that he is, was also at the lecture - he was in fact responsible for conning me into going.  here's his blog of the event, which i promise i did not read until after i wrote my own, the post-script aside. :)