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Climate Crisis and Capitalism: David Suzuki on Why We Must Rethink Everything · How To Protect The Ocean

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In 1988, the world's top scientists warned us climate change was our greatest threat.
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After nuclear war, we heard the alarm, but we hit the snooze button
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year after year, decade after decade.
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Meanwhile, emissions climbed, ecosystems crumbled, and
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tipping points passed quietly.
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David Suzuki, once hopeful, now sounds a different note.
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It might be too late.
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He doesn't blame science.
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The evidence has been clear all along.
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He blames the systems politics obsessed with power and economies
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addicted to endless growth.
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We choose short-term profits over long-term survival, quarterly
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gains over planetary health.
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Suzuki says If these systems won't change, then maybe we should stop pretending.
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Stop pretending we're gonna solve the crisis and start bracing for what's coming
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because if we keep prioritizing money over nature, giving up might not be a choice.
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It'll be a consequence.
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We're gonna react to David Suzuki's controversial comment on
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a CBC news radio station that he made, and we're gonna talk about.
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Maybe he regrets a little of it and says that we still should keep fighting.
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We're gonna talk about all this stuff on this episode of the How
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to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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Let's start the show.
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Hey everybody.
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Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find
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out what's happening with the ocean, how you could speak up for the
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ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.
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And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about something that is very
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familiar to a lot of conservationists, a lot of ocean scientists, and just
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wildlife scientists in general.
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We're gonna be talking about climate change and how we feel at certain times.
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When we discuss climate change, whether it's in an interview, whether
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it is with somebody in our family or in our friend group, and how we talk
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about it, because there's sometimes where we talk very positively.
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We're very optimistic of the changes that we're seeing maybe behind the scenes or
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in our work, and we see little changes get bigger and bigger and bigger, and every
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once in a while we see a huge change, whether it be in policy, a government,
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what have you, it doesn't matter.
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We start to see this change and other times we just
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start to be really realistic.
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And we start to really wonder all these things that are happening over
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time and are happening recently.
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Whether we're really serious about protecting the environment and are we
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serious about protecting the environment over the economy and politics?
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That seems to have changed what we used to do compared to what we do now and not for
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the better and not to help climate change.
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There was a recent interview.
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That was done by David Suzuki.
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If you don't know who David Suzuki is, David Suzuki is a renowned
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Canadian geneticist, environmentalist, author and science broadcaster,
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best known for his lifelong dedication to promoting environmental
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awareness and climate action.
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Born in 1936 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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He began his career as a geneticist, earning a PhD in zoology from
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the University of Chicago, and later became a professor at the
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University of British Columbia.
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Suzuki rose to prominence as the longtime host of the nature of things, a CBC
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television program that brought science and environmental issues into Canadian
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households for over four decades.
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Think about David Attenborough.
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That was Canadian.
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He authored more than 50 books, including The Sacred Balance and
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a co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation, a nonprofit focused.
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On the environmental research, education, and advocacy over the
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years, David Suzuki has become one of the most influential voices in the
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global environmental movement, known for speaking out on climate change,
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biodiversity loss, indigenous rights, and the failures of modern political
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and economic systems to protect.
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The natural world.
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His work has earned him numerous awards, including the Order of Canada, the UNESCO
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Coalinga Prize for science communication, and multiple honorary degrees.
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Despite controversy and criticism from some political and industrial
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groups, Suzuki remains a fearless advocate for urgent climate action,
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social justice, and to the protection of Earth's life support systems.
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That is the basis of it.
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I grew up watching David Suzuki on the nature of things, a CBC classic, and I
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don't know if it still continues today, but David Suzuki has been that voice.
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When I first came out with Speak Up for Blue, I had this list of ocean leaders
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that I wanted to discuss and I would contact each one of them and say, Hey.
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Can I put your name down on my website as an ocean leader where
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if they click on your name, it'll go to the website and give a bio.
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So that one was gonna lead to the David Suzuki Foundation or
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others that I really admired, and I had a whole list on the website.
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I don't have that now, but I have to admit, when I contacted David
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Suzuki Foundation and David Suzuki.
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This was during a very controversial time in Canada.
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Anyway, the Prime Minister was Prime Minister Harper.
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Uh, he was a staunch conservative, very right wing, very pro oil and gas
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and natural resource exploitation.
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And David Suzuki and him had a back and forth over the airwaves and
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not like face to face, but they definitely were critical of each other.
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In fact, prime Minister Harper wanted almost at one point called them an
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eco-terrorist, which was incredibly irresponsible of a politician when
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they don't hear what they want.
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We probably heard that before recently.
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If they don't hear what they like, they start to criticize and they
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start to call people terrorists, especially on the ecological level.
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So it was a very tense time in environmental and political and economical
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sort of time period, if you really think about it back in the early 2010s to about
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2015 until the trio government got in.
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Now, since then.
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It's been very interesting to see the progression that we've made
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towards climate change and changing and reducing climate change, as
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well as kind of going away from it at the same time here in Canada.
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Our economy is based on natural resources.
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Our major natural resource that we export is oil and gas.
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There are a lot of battles within on the East coast and on the west coast,
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especially on the East coast for, you know, extracting oil and gas, and of
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course in Alberta and even Northern Saskatchewan, to be able to take out
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the natural gas as well as oil, the tar sands, to export more oil and give
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more profits, not only the province, but also to Canada in general.
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And so when oil prices dip down, our economy dips down.
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When they go up, we go.
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And sometimes you can't make two sense of it.
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I can't make two sense of it a lot of the times, and that just happens every once
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in a while and we have to deal with it.
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Unfortunately, as we progress and we continue to see decisions being made
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for politics and economical reasons and not protection of environment seems
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to be always third place or even less.
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We start to see more climate change consequences happening.
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There was an interview that was done on CBC news that I'm gonna
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be reacting to in just a moment.
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I wanna set it up a little bit.
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David Suzuki is speaking to a CBC host.
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It's almost looks like CBC radio, but now they're putting all on tv.
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Of course, YouTube, I'm putting this on YouTube.
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Everything.
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A talk show can always be in video as well.
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And you can see throughout the interview that David Suzuki is not happy.
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He is frustrated.
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He is just seeing the reality of climate change and the decisions
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we've made towards reducing climate change or lack thereof.
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And so he talks about that.
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You're gonna see a very frustrated person.
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I want you to remember this guy is a scientist, a world-renowned scientist.
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He's taught many years.
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He lives what he preaches and he's a very good science communicator.
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But you can tell he's older now.
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He's in his eighties and he's fed up.
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He's fed up with the decisions and he is been like that since the
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Harper Administration has been in.
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And it's just been people started to criticize 'cause he is always negative.
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But to be honest, he's been a realist for a long time and if they don't like what
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he hears, then they just don't like him.
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So we're gonna talk a couple of themes that we're gonna do.
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I don't know if I'll go through the entire video, but we are
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definitely gonna react to some of it.
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So let's get into that and let's start reacting to some of it.
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I'm just gonna play it from the beginning.
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This is from CBC News.
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I'll put the link in the show notes so that you can access it, so that you can
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watch it from YouTube or from wherever.
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I found this on YouTube.
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So here, let's just listen in and see what is happening.
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I think the science has been in now for decades, and yet, uh, look at us.
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Um, you know, uh, when we had the best environment minister we've ever
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had in Canada, in Steven Guilbeault.
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Um, you know, I, I told him you can't even tell us the truth how bad it is.
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There's, uh, we, we haven't taken this as the opportunity to, to
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really change the way that we behave, get onto a new, uh, energy future.
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Uh, we've got now a prime Minister who thanks to Mr. Trump, uh, got
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elected to everyone's surprise.
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Now I wanna talk a little bit about this part here.
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As I said, I'm gonna be stopping a couple of times.
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You know, before this last election where Prime Minister Carney became
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the official Prime Minister, he was appointed Prime Minister.
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Once Prime Minister Trudeau resigned, and then he came in, but then he
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had an election pretty much within like three months after he was
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appointed because he wanted to make sure that the people wanted him in.
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It was a surprise win for sure, and it was very interesting.
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The reason why he got in was because, you know, Trump was in power since
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January of 2025, depending on when you're watching this, and he decided
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that he was going to attack Canada and the world apparently through terrorists.
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But he kept talking about how not only was Canada, you know, quote unquote unfair in
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terms of the trade that we were doing with the United States, which was interesting
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because, you know, Trump did negotiate the last, you know, north American free trade
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agreement between Mexico, Canada, and the United States and he's basically saying
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it was the worst trade deal of all time.
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Even though he's the one who negotiated, came out of that time, like in his
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first term and said, Hey, this was the best negotiated trade deal ever.
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You know, it is what it is.
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This is what Trump does, and I don't want to go into that aspect of it, but
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it really shaped the election for Canada.
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We had somebody that was running for Prime Minister, for the liberals who,
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and for you guys in the United States.
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It's like the Democrats for Canada, who was a banker.
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He had a lot of international experience.
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He had worked with the Great Britain during the Brexit that time.
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And that transfer over, and they loved him there for the most part,
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except for one Prime Minister who was a Prime Minister for about 45 days.
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She didn't like him, but everybody else seemed to like him.
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He has a pretty good rapport there and reputation.
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He was the chair of the Bank of Canada at one point, and
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now he's the Prime Minister.
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He became the Prime Minister because of the pressure from Trump, because of
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his international economic experience.
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And that was a confidence vote.
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For us, the person he was running against, pure poly F did not have that
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international economic experience.
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He wasn't a banker.
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He was more of a lifelong politician.
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So people are like, Hey, you know what?
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Even though liberals weren't projected to win before this started, they became the
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fan favorite because of this type of deal.
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Now, with that said, Mark Carney as a prime minister is pretty much center left.
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You know, some can argue center right at times.
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He's a banker, so he is very conservative in what he moves.
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He wants to equate everything.
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He likes to be socially and fiscally responsible, so that's most conservative
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as well as liberal, even, you know, NDPs type of work and new democratic party.
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So a little bit more to the left, depending on what he's
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looking at, which seems fair.
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Canada, well.
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Apart from the last like 10, 15 years or so, has been usually
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center left or center right.
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We don't really fare that far off from the center, but the problem is, is
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now because of the pressure of Trump, Trump 1.1 Canada to be the 51st state,
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obviously that got rejected right away.
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I think what became a joke became kind of serious and the Trump sort of rhetoric of
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the people were refuting that right away.
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But it definitely united Canada during this election in making
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sure that the right people got voted in or what Canada thought was
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the right people to get voted in.
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Sure, there's some people who will disagree with that, but
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regardless, that's what happened.
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But because of that pressure from the South that Davis Suzuki's talking
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about here is we had to start to look elsewhere for a oil and gas partner,
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because the US was going to put 10% tariffs on us that wasn't gonna do so.
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We had finished a pipeline under the Trudeau government that started when
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he first started, where the pipeline went out to the eastern market.
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So China and other Asian countries, Japan, and so forth.
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So that was good for us.
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And then now there's talk that what was shut down earlier was an Eastern
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pipeline to go from Alberta all the way out to the east coast across Canada,
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which is a big place if you don't know.
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And that would go towards European markets.
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So the start of talking about building that is happening.
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And so now we are promoting more fossil fuel extraction, which we were hoping to
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get away from under the last government.
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Here's the problem is that we start talking about the economy, and this
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is where Davis Suzuki starts talking about the economy and politics.
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And he's got a point here, and there's no one that I've met who's,
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uh, who knows more, uh, about the climate crisis than Mark Carney.
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I mean, he's written about it, um, before he became a politician.
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Um, but he's still talking about pipelines.
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You know, the Secretary General of the United Nations.
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Antonio Gutierrez said years ago, any further investment
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in fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.
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What have we been doing?
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You know, how many billions have we spent on the, uh, the pipeline?
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The Southern pipeline, the Transmountain pipeline?
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Yeah.
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We're talking about more, you know, like.
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One of the things that Antonio Gutierrez is one of the few people up there
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with prominence saying it like it is.
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You know, we're digging our own grave.
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And when you're doing that, the first thing to do is stop digging.
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Now here's, I wanna talk another point that he makes, which I, I agree.
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Not only has Canada come out with prioritizing these types of energy
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projects, so, you know, even though Canada's trying to balance the energy
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projects with fossil fuels as well as renewables, or they're saying they
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are, there's definitely more investment right now or some investment into.
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Oil and gas more than what we anticipated before this election.
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Not surprising because of the pressure from the south and the
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fact that they're putting tariffs and we need to start relying on
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other countries and not just US.
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I think it's like 90 to 95% of our oil is exported to the US so there
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are main client in that respect.
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They get a lot of their oil and gas from us, so we wanna make sure that
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we're not just stuck with that.
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Our prices are low because of that and because our economy is
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tied so much to the oil and gas.
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That makes a big deal.
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So when we're talking about the future, so now you know, you're starting to
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see the pressure of more oil and gas talk happening, and again, it comes
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down to, even though Mark Carney and others are wanting to lower and reduce
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climate change, how much can we do it?
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How much can we do?
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We continue to develop oil and gas and not reduce it as that we were told a
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while ago and under the Paris Agreement, that's what we should be doing.
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But we continue to do that and there's a lot, this is not an easy thing.
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It's not just a matter of like, let's cut oil and gas down to like 30% of
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our energy use because it's easy.
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You know, it's not easy.
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There are a lot of jobs that are tied to it.
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There's a lot of politics tied to it.
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There's a lot of lobby groups tied to this.
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And on the other side, there's a lot of environmentalists and conservationists
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who are trying to reduce that amount because we care about the planet.
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And you know, others care more about profit.
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Some people care about their jobs and their livelihoods,
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and that's where it gets really contested when it comes into this.
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So it's never an easy decision.
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And for those of you who are gonna comment, this is an easy decision.
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Either way.
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It's not an easy decision.
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It's a very complex problem that Canada's in.
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It's put themselves in for a long time.
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Even though a lot of our energy, about 80% of our energy is renewable, we still
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use and export a lot of fossil fuels, and if we're continuing to develop that
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to export them more, we're gonna be contributing more towards climate change
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worldwide because we're exporting and we're developing our market so that we're
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gonna be producing more oil and gas.
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That's my understanding of it.
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If it's a different understanding, please let me know.
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Love to have you on the show to discuss that.
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That's what he's talking about here.
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We're digging our own grave and continuing to do that.
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So let's continue on with what he had to say.
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We're still arguing about fossil fuels and the future in our economy and,
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and tell me about that because here we are, of course, we have this threat
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of terrorists from the United States.
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We have everyone agreeing that Canada needs to be more self-sufficient,
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more independent, and and more clear of the United States when it comes to
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trading and to find better partners.
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Part of that is we need to exploit the resources that we have in this country.
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Whether those are mineral resources, whether it's natural gas, or whether
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it's bitumen, buried in the dirt.
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Um, and when people, you can see David Suzuki starting to get
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frustrated by this because this has been the rhetoric for a long time.
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You know, we have these natural resources.
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We need to get them out of the ground for our economy to stabilize.
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So this is gonna be an interesting answer while we're having these conversations.
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Now it's as though climate change doesn't exist.
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I agree.
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I agree.
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And you know, when, uh, um, when this whole 51st State issue came
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up and, uh, you know, people began to say, buy Canadian.
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And I said to my wife, okay, you're going shopping for groceries this week.
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Only get food that is grown and, and, uh, made in Canada.
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We'll starve then.
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You know, you look at, we are one of the bread baskets of the world, and
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we can't even feed our own people with food grown in, in our own country.
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Why?
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Because of globalization.
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Globalization is, is, uh, is a problem now.
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And, uh, you know, the most powerful, the richest country in the world is
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elected a man who is a climate denier.
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And, um, you know, we're at this critical point.
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This happens a lot too.
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It's not just down south where you know Donald Trump is a climate change denier.
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This happens in a lot of cases where one party over the other thinks
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that climate change is not real.
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The other party thinks it's real, not just in the US, not just in
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Canada, but you have a lot of other countries who do the same thing.
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And there governments flip flops every so often, whether it's four years, five
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years, 10 years, whatever that might be.
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They flip flop every so often.
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And the changes in policies you can see are either done or undone.
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And we saw that with Trump.
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Every time he comes in, he takes the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
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He reduces a lot of the regulations for the EPA, for NOAA and a
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number of different environmental organizations within the government.
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Does whatever he can to deregulate.
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And to make sure that oil and gas and fossil fuel companies can do
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better and can develop more because they think that's the way to go.
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That's the old school way of thinking.
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You know, develop fossil fuels and exploit natural resources and
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we will be able to do it so well.
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Now in Canada, we had the federal and Ontario provincial governments both
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put in policies that actually allow the deregulation of species at risk act for
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both federal and the Ontario province and allows more development to happen.
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So in the federal government, it'll be oil and gas projects and pipeline projects.
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'cause there's a lot of environmental regulations that you have to go
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through to make sure that you are not destroying the environment as you're
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putting in these pipelines every time you cross a water, a river, or a
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stream or a lake, you have to make sure that you go under the proper process.
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If they're in a species at risk, it slows down the process.
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And every time it's slow.
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It's slow.
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It's slow for a reason to make sure that we're not destroying the habitat
19:27
of these species, but also to making sure that we're not destroying the
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environment for our general health.
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And so a lot of people just see that from the business side, Hey, we're
19:35
just gonna forget the environment.
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We want to move faster on this.
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It's better for the economy, and that's the excuse that they use
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over and over and over again.
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And even there's, I think they're both Bill C-5s for the federal government
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and the Ontario government where they're actually stomping on indigenous rights
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to take away the decision making for indigenous peoples and to be able
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to, you know, put that together.
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So it's a really interesting situation that we're in where we're seeing
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a lot of environmental regulations get deregulated to allow for this
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push of fossil fuel industries.
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And you know, David Suzuki's tired of it.
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A lot of us are tired of it and we kind of saw this coming.
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I kind of agree that we have to do this, but I hate it.
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I hate the fact that we have to do this because it's gonna
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ruin our environment even more.
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The science has been in for decades in 1988 at a major international conference
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in Toronto, the delegate, uh, opened by newly elected, uh, prime Minister Brian
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Mulroney keynote address by the Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland,
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Steven Lewis chaired the sessions.
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At the end of that, in 1988, they said global warming, we called
20:47
it global warming, back then represents a threat second only
20:51
to an all out global nuclear war.
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And that was it.
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They made a call for a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 15 years.
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If we had done it, we would've saved billions of dollars and
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many, many countless lives, and we didn't do anything, you know.
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That really hit me.
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I forgot about that because I was a kid when that happened.
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And if we had been able to, you know, reduce our emissions back then by 20%,
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maybe we could have been on a better path.
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But what happened during that time was where the misinformation level
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increased by fossil fuel companies.
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That's where you started to see companies like Imperial Oil and others start to
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shell out these reports that climate change wasn't actually happening.
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Really getting into the political parties and you know, having one
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political party just deny it.
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Other political parties are for reducing climate change and to really put a
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divide politically in how you voted.
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So if you are a Democrat or a liberal here in Canada, if you weren't gonna
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vote for conservatives because they were anti-climate, if environment
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was an anti-climate action.
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if the environment was important to you, if the economy was important
22:04
to you, that was going against the environment 'cause that's how
22:06
the fossil fuel economists saw it.
22:08
It's like, hey, you're impeding job creation, you're
22:11
impeding money for Canada.
22:13
You're impeding money for your country, wherever country you do.
22:16
This happens all the time.
22:17
And they were shown to say, yeah, we lied.
22:19
Like we allowed this misinformation to get through.
22:22
And some of them are paying the price in courts right now as they're
22:24
getting sued for that misinformation.
22:27
But they did it for decades and it worked instead of taking those 15 years
22:30
from 1988 and onwards and reducing our emissions by 20% therein, right?
22:35
Just solving the problem at that point or getting closer to solving the problem.
22:40
We would've been in a much better situation than we are now.
22:42
Now we are seeing the consequences.
22:44
Now we are seeing the consequences of our lack of action over the last 40,
22:49
50, 60 years when climate change was first sort of discovered and ignored
22:54
throughout that entire time, and now we're starting to see the consequences in.
22:58
More earthquakes, more volcanoes, tsunami warnings, especially since recent, we're
23:03
starting to see increased sea surface temperature, coral reef bleaching.
23:08
We're starting to see storm surges are increasing.
23:11
Sea level rises increasing.
23:12
Storms are increasing in intensity, and there are happening more frequently.
23:17
So a thousand year, 100 year, 10 year storms are no longer, you
23:20
know, relevant at this point.
23:22
That was how we used it in the past.
23:24
We are seeing those more than a hundred years since the last a
23:27
hundred year storm or 10 years.
23:29
We're seeing those every like 2, 3, 4 or five years, and they're
23:32
happening more and more often, and they're creating more in damage,
23:35
which we have to pay the money for.
23:36
We never really talk about how much money is paid for that and wasted
23:39
on paying for, you know, cleaning up something that we could have cleaned
23:42
up before is clean up the consequences of stuff we cleaned up where we
23:45
wouldn't have seen those consequences.
23:46
We rarely talk about those.
23:48
Now, I'm not gonna continue on because this is gonna be a longer
23:52
video, but David Suzuki does go on and say, Hey, you know what?
23:55
We continue to prioritize politics and economy over the environment.
23:59
That seems to be what he's saying here.
24:01
Until we stop doing that, we're not gonna see a change in climate change.
24:06
We're not gonna be able to go back and be okay.
24:09
We're in a time now.
24:10
If we continue on this path, we're just gonna have to adapt.
24:14
Just suffer the consequences until we can't do anything after that.
24:18
You know?
24:18
Only one thing we can do is just accept the consequences after a certain
24:21
time, because at some point there's a tipping point where we just can't
24:24
go back and we're getting closer and closer to that tipping point,
24:27
whether you agree with me or not.
24:29
That's just the fact is happening and we're seeing it now.
24:31
We're starting to see all these different consequences that are coming
24:35
up and coming up, and we're seeing larger and larger scale consequences.
24:39
Case in point, the tsunami that we had recently because of an 8.8
24:42
magnitude earthquake, which is pretty rare in the sea at this point.
24:46
You know, last time it happened was in 2011 where we had a tsunami in Japan that
24:51
killed hundreds of thousands of people, plus almost caused a nuclear power plant
24:54
to go on the fritz, which I'm saying that lightly because that's not what we want.
24:59
Regardless, this is what he continues to say.
25:00
Now he hid a lot of criticism because of it.
25:03
You know, people are saying, Hey, you know what?
25:05
He got a lot of flack for it.
25:07
Why is he talking about this?
25:08
He's just an old man.
25:09
You know, he is just grumpy and this and that.
25:10
It's because he is been fighting all this time.
25:13
But because of that flack, there was another video done on CBC, and this
25:18
is where I find it really interesting, where you see conservationists,
25:23
activists, and environmentalists start to really go back and forth between
25:27
reality and pessimism and optimism.
25:30
And it depends on some of these reasons and the personal reasons.
25:33
So I'm gonna show you another clip.
25:34
This is on TikTok that I found this.
25:36
It's with CBC again.
25:37
It's actually David Suzuki speaking with his daughter, Sarika Cullis-Suzuki,
25:42
about the comments that he made and him just being like, did I say that?
25:46
Is that something I said?
25:47
Oh wow, you have kids.
25:49
I want their grandkids not to have to go through this.
25:51
And it scares me every time that I hear about this type of news,
25:55
so I want you to just kind of see this happening and we're just gonna
25:58
kinda listen to it as we go through.
26:00
So here it is.
26:01
Sometimes I hear you say, what's the point?
26:04
And then, um, your actions speaks so much louder than your words.
26:07
You're always on the front lines, you're always saying something.
26:10
You're always making these shows talk about important issues
26:13
like you haven't given up.
26:15
No, of course not.
26:16
Because when you have children and grandchildren, you have no choice.
26:21
My agony now is that I know there's gonna be a turbulent life ahead for
26:27
your your children, and I'm not gonna be there to help fight for them.
26:31
I remember when I told you I was pregnant for the first time and
26:36
you couldn't even look at me.
26:38
You were so upset.
26:40
Is that true?
26:40
Yes.
26:41
For the whole, so you, I'm sorry you were, the next day I said to you, I
26:45
mean, I know you're not gonna be happy about it, but why are you so mad at me?
26:48
And you said.
26:49
Sarika, if you believe everything that I have told you during your life, why would
26:55
you bring another person into this world?
26:57
Wow.
26:59
Really?
26:59
Did I say that?
27:00
Yes.
27:01
You said that.
27:01
Oh my God.
27:02
And I, I understand what you meant because you've devoted your whole life to this
27:09
fight, and that's why it destroyed me when the twins were born and you we're
27:17
holding them and you started crying and said, I just realized that these children
27:23
will not be able to live out their lives.
27:25
And then I realized that I don't have to think that way, that I
27:31
can envision a different future.
27:32
And if I devote my life to fighting for that future,
27:39
that maybe.
27:41
Maybe there will be a different future for them.
27:43
Yeah, yeah.
27:43
Yeah.
27:44
I still have hope.
27:46
I believe that hope is action.
27:48
We're affirming hope by doing.
27:51
If you don't do and you say, well, it's too late.
27:54
There's nothing I can, you've given up.
27:56
Mm. Basically.
27:56
Mm-hmm.
27:57
Nope, I haven't given up.
27:58
You can't, I can't.
27:59
You cannot.
28:00
You can't give up.
28:01
That's the crux of it, right, is how do we balance the realism that we see
28:07
as scientists and as conservationists?
28:10
And we see these reports come in from the IPCC, from different government
28:14
organizations, like different government departments all over the
28:17
world and other nonprofit organizations and think tanks and so forth.
28:20
That's continue to talk about the consequences of climate change and
28:24
the inaction that we've taken or the the steps back that we've taken.
28:27
If we've progressed a little bit, there've been some step backs
28:29
depending on who's in power.
28:31
We're at a point right now in the world where there are a lot of conservative
28:34
governments that are in power.
28:36
They have taken a number of steps back from a lot of different things
28:40
that are surround climate change.
28:42
You know, there's eco justice, there's a diversity, equity and inclusion
28:47
initiatives that help with climate change action and voicing up those actions
28:51
and listening to different people.
28:53
There's actually just the defunding of science, the defunding of monitoring
28:57
systems that will help adapt to these consequences such as tsunamis and
29:02
storm surges and increased storms in detecting those storms to make sure
29:06
that we are in a position where we can help and the government as well
29:10
as other entities can help inform people of when to evacuate, when not to
29:13
evacuate, and how to prepare for storms.
29:15
These are all at risk.
29:17
And so when you have people like myself, like David Suzuki, like anybody
29:22
who is working in this world, even though you have hope and you have to
29:27
continue to fight, and we all have to continue to fight, there are times
29:31
where we're just like, what the hell?
29:33
What is wrong with us?
29:34
Why do we continue to do this?
29:36
We are going after short-term gains with long-term consequences
29:39
coming down the road when the people in power are not gonna pay
29:42
for those long-term consequences.
29:44
They are going to put in the people that they want, they are going to
29:49
make a mockery of climate change.
29:50
You know, scientists and people who want climate change
29:53
action, they're gonna deny it.
29:54
They're gonna pay for misinformation to be put on social media.
29:58
Bots to be put in comments will probably be in my comments here.
30:01
Or people who are a product of that misinformation who are gonna
30:05
be in these comments saying that Andrew, you know, like all this is
30:08
bias and all that kind of stuff.
30:10
That's what's gonna happen, and we're gonna see that and we're
30:12
gonna continue to see that.
30:13
But we have to continue to fight.
30:14
And at some point there's gonna be times where we're gonna have low
30:17
points and we're gonna be like, Jesus, what the hell are people thinking?
30:21
What are we thinking here?
30:23
You have, you know, people in my province that are in charge, the premier who
30:26
is helping his billion dollar friends make more billions by encroaching on
30:31
a green zone area that is not supposed to be touched because it is absolutely
30:37
crucial to our systems here, just north of Toronto, to put another highway so
30:41
that they can put in homes in that area to benefit his billionaire friends.
30:45
He doesn't have to put it in this green zone.
30:47
He doesn't have to.
30:48
He could put it somewhere else, but they don't own land there,
30:51
so why would you do that?
30:53
Right?
30:53
Because they're benefiting scandals and they're out in the
30:55
open and nobody's paying for it.
30:57
Nobody's being held accountable for these decisions, and they're
31:00
not gonna be held accountable in 10, 15, 20 years down the road.
31:03
And nobody's gonna remember who they are.
31:05
They're just gonna be remember how they are dealing with this crap, how they
31:08
are dealing with the consequences of climate change because of bad political
31:12
decisions all the way stemming that back to 1988, and even, you can argue further
31:17
when governments continue to ignore the science that has always been there.
31:20
You heard David say.
31:22
It's always been there.
31:23
It's been right for a long time.
31:25
It's been there for a long time and refuse to do it.
31:28
So when you get scientists like myself, like David Suzuki,
31:31
obviously I'm not comparing.
31:32
We are definitely not the same type of scientist.
31:34
He is way above my intellect as well as experience.
31:38
But when you start to see people like himself, David Attenborough, others
31:42
start to speak out and be like, we are actually very frustrated.
31:45
We are looking back at our lives and we are seeing how many times governments made
31:50
the wrong decisions and wrong decisions against the environment to prioritize
31:54
political power and economic growth.
31:57
Unlimited economic growth.
31:59
And this is the frustration that we have, and this is why I'm taking so long to put
32:03
this video together because it is a pain in the ass to deal with all this time.
32:08
And then, you know, somebody like David Suzuki gets flacked for
32:10
coming out and saying real stuff.
32:13
Like he says all the time.
32:15
You know, he's been labeled an eco terrorist.
32:17
He's been enabling an enemy of Canada by different political parties and different
32:21
organizations like in companies who don't like what he says, but to be honest,
32:25
he's just saying what the science says.
32:27
And he is trying to navigate ways that we can do better, right?
32:32
That's really what it comes down to, and he is getting punished for it.
32:35
And you can even see at times he struggles with hope because hope turns into action.
32:41
And also the realism that we see based on the decisions that we continue to make.
32:46
And sometimes they're not easy decisions that these governments are making.
32:49
But we continue to see that the economy and that political power is
32:54
prioritized over the environmental protection of just our planet.
32:57
And it's extremely frustrating.
32:58
So I can understand what David Suzuki is going through.
33:02
I can understand the controversy, like, you know, when my daughters at
33:06
some point, they will have, you know, maybe daughters or sons, and I'll
33:09
have grandchildren and they'll have children and they'll have grandchildren.
33:12
I want them to enjoy their life.
33:14
I don't want them to have to worry about floods.
33:16
I don't want them to have to worry about droughts.
33:17
I don't want 'em to have to worry about anything that's climate change related.
33:21
Any natural disasters that are exacerbated by climate change,
33:25
I don't wanna see that happen.
33:26
I don't wanna even know that's gonna happen.
33:28
That doesn't give me hope.
33:29
That gives me a lot of pessimism.
33:31
You're starting to see people who do not want to have kids because
33:34
of climate change and the effect that it's gonna have on our planet
33:37
in the next couple of decades.
33:39
So that's the reason.
33:39
So I'd love to hear your thoughts on all this.
33:41
If you're a scientist or a conservationist or environmentalist
33:44
in any type of field, do you have this same type of battle between the
33:48
realism and the optimism as well?
33:51
I would love to hear from people who are not in the conservation
33:55
industry or science industry or field.
33:57
I would love to hear what you think.
33:58
Do you think all like what David Suzuki is going through is legitimate?
34:02
Are you go through the same thing?
34:03
I would love to hear, you know, your thoughts on putting the comments
34:06
in the YouTube comments down below.
34:07
Or if you're listening to this on audio, just hit me up on Instagram
34:11
at How to Protect the Ocean.
34:13
Or you can go to speak up for blue.com/contact and
34:18
you can contact me there.
34:19
Just fill out the form.
34:20
It goes right to my personal email and you wanna take action?
34:23
Join the Undertow.
34:24
It's an online community that we are creating.
34:26
The app is coming, but we are creating this online community to
34:29
help guide you to do better action, to protect the ocean and the planet.
34:33
All you have to do is go to speakupforblue.com/jointheundertow.
34:37
I wanna thank you so much for having the patience to listen to me rant and raving,
34:41
and go through this video, and just the love that you're giving me on YouTube,
34:45
as well as on audio, and the fact that you listen to these podcast episodes.
34:50
You know, whether it's this one, How to Protect the Ocean or Beyond Jaws.
34:53
I really appreciate the fact that you listen all the way through
34:57
'cause you have to listen all the way through to hear this.
34:58
But I really do appreciate you and I'd love to hear from you and engage with you.
35:02
'cause that's what forms this community.
35:03
That's what makes it really great.
35:04
So I wanna thank you again and this has been another episode of the
35:08
How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
35:09
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True North Strong and Free.
35:11
Have a great day.
35:12
We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.