David Suzuki - Speech Excerpts from NSW University Lecture. Canadian environmentalist author, David Suzuki, is in Australia at the moment and he delivered a passionate lecture to the University of NSW last Saturday, entitled, “Imagining a sustainable future: foresight over hindsight”. Here are some highlights: Despite the enormous success of the environmental movement in the 60s and 70s we have fundamentally failed to use each of those battles to broaden the public understanding of why we were battling. Environmentalism is a way of seeing our place within the biosphere, but we have failed to shift the public or corporate perspective. Industry is still driven by a totally different set of values, by the drive for profit, for growth, and for power. Look at the largest corporations – they are bigger and richer than most governments, and, we treat them as if they are people. They are corporations, they’re not people. Why do we allow them to fund politicians, for God’s sake? What we find now is that governments are being driven by a corporate agenda, which is not about our wellbeing and our happiness and our future. Politicians today have very few tools with which to shape behaviour in society. One of the tools they do have is regulation, the other is taxation. Abbot is ignoring reality - That is what he is doing, by cancelling the Climate Commission. It is criminal negligence. How can we make truly informed decisions if the scientific community itself is shut down? I say to you, that in your society scientists better be up on the ramparts making sure you don’t fall on the path that Canada is on right now. When politicians are relieved of having to pay attention to real information – to science – they can base their decisions on what: the Koran? The Bible? So what can we do? How about starting by saying, we are all animals, and as animals our most fundamental need, before anything else, is clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and biodiversity. I believe we are doomed to failure unless we come together to agree on what our most basic needs are. And then we ask: how do we create an economy; how do we make a living; how do we keep viable strong communities? theguardian/commentisfree/2013/sep/24/david-suzuki-australia-environment
Posted on: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 01:25:02 +0000
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