The British Columbia hamlet of New Denver sits in the shadow of the Selkirks, alongside beautiful Slocan Lake. Its heritage is that this is where Canadians of Japanese ancestry were interned during World War II. Among them was a little boy who grew up to be a notable geneticist and his country’s leading environmental activist.
David Suzuki is now 90 years old. The renowned geneticist, who studied the fruit fly, has grown increasingly pessimistic about the fate of the earth. He speaks to the climate extremes afflicting his country, and ours, and we need to hear him out.
On global warming, the climate consequences of carbon emissions, Suzuki is the ultimate pessimist. He subscribes to the notion of a “tipping point,” from which we have damaged the planet beyond repair. “It is true that we are now headed in a catastrophic way, and it’s unavoidable,” Suzuki lamented on CBC this past weekend. The founder of a namesake foundation confessed to not doing enough to rescue Mother Earth.
Were Suzuki to have looked up when I ran into him on a hiking trip, he would have seen that the New Denver Glacier was rapidly melting, that the Athabasca Glacier in the Canadian Rockies has pulled back rapidly. The dawn of Canadian mountaineering, late in the 19th century, took place in the Selkirks. Pictures show the sprawling size of the Illecilleway Glacier. Now, a Revelstoke-based friend, in his mid-20s, wonders it the glacier will melt in his lifetime.
And in Antarctica, the mammoth Theaites Glacier threatens to calve into the Southern Ocean. If that happens, the Earth’s sea level will rise, inundating coastal cities. The increase of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere, now running 427-429 parts per million, is higher than any point in 2,000 years. It has reached levels once predicted for the end of this century.
Who could deny the mountain of evidence? Donald Trump, that’s who, even as his coastal golf courses take measures to hold back rising sea levels. He has described climate change, in Trumpian terms , as “a hoax, as fake news, a sham.” Trump has acted to revive the coal industry, including his order that the Centralia Coal Plant remain in operation.
David Suzuki has remained deeply engaged and is penning a memoir entitled Lessons from a Lifetime. He is still full of fight, telling CBC: “If you want to be liked by everybody, you’re not going to stand for a goddamned thing.”
This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.
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