From 'Canada is full' to 'economists are brain damaged': David Suzuki's greatest hits
Despite his reputation as Canada’s leading environmental sage, it’s not all that unusual for Suzuki to say or do things that are insulting, hypocritical or straight-up incorrect
Defenders of the oil sector are morally equivalent to slave traders
In a 2015 radio interview, Suzuki said that the mere act of considering the economic impacts of climate change policy was equivalent to defending slavery. So, if you’re worried about how higher-priced heating oil will affect low-income families or just wondering how humanity could run global food systems without fossil fuels, you’re basically a cheerleader for human bondage. “It’s a moral issue. The issue of climate change is not an economic issue,” Suzuki said.
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At the time, then-Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall was warning that green policies designed to limit oil production would incur a cost in terms of jobs and missed government revenue. To which Suzuki
replied , “It sounds very much to me like the Southern states argued in the 19th century, that to eliminate slavery would destroy their economy.”
Fukushima would require the “evacuation” of the North American West Coast
Despite being the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was ultimately contained before it could cause more than a handful of deaths and injuries. But in a worst case scenario there were briefly fears that a significant release of radioactive material would require the evacuation of more than 10 million Japanese living in the urban areas surrounding the plant.
Given the above, Suzuki wasn’t even close to the truth when he claimed at a 2015 event that a full-scale meltdown at Fukushima would have wiped Japan from the map and
required the evacuation of the “West Coast of North America.” What’s more, Suzuki claimed he read this doomsday scenario in “a paper” (no such paper exists).
In the words of an actual nuclear physicist contacted at the time about the claim, “I’m sorry, but that is ridiculous.”
Economists are brain damaged
A favourite Suzuki anecdote — repeated often in his speeches and documentary appearances — is that one of the core tenets of economics is that environmental damage is irrelevant. “The economists say if you clearcut the forest, take the money and put it in the bank you can make six or seven per cent … so who cares whether you keep the forest?” Suzuki said in a 2011 documentary entitled Surviving Progress. He also called economics a “form of brain damage.”
In truth, economists are at the centre of many of the most well-known environmental public policy tools, including carbon taxes. It was an English economist — Arthur Pigou — who first pioneered the idea that polluters should be held financially responsible for profiting off activities that impose pollution, or a degraded environment, on others.
Plenty of actual economists have tried to enlighten Suzuki to this fact, including Andrew Leach, the University of Alberta economist who helped devise the province’s NDP-introduced carbon tax. Suzuki
ignored him.
Telling people to ‘f— off’
Suzuki is usually quick with a “f— off” when encountering a political opponent (such as when
he met Vivian Krause , a noted critic of environmental non-profits). But it’s a not-uncommon experience for flight attendants, camera crews, photographers and others to be on the receiving end of a similarly surly encounter.
Postmedia reporter (and frequent Suzuki critic) Licia Corbella has made it as a point to
compile a few of the best examples that readers have sent her over the years, including a member of a TV crew that said Suzuki opted to take a limousine to a shoot rather than ride in the crew van with them. (Corbella herself was hit with a “f— off” in the late 1980s after approaching Suzuki for an interview at a music festival.)
Owning a multi-million dollar international real estate portfolio
Owning multiple properties is not unusual for a Canadian public figure whose speeches typically pull in between $30,000 and $50,000 a pop. So it’s only notable for Suzuki because he often preaches the virtues of minimalism. At the same event where he said pipelines would be “blown up,” in fact, Suzuki said Canadians should shed imported food from their diets. “We’re a northern country, why the hell are we able to buy fresh tomatoes and lettuce and fresh fruit 12 months a year?” he said.
As of the last count of his Canadian properties , Suzuki has two homes in Vancouver’s tony West End, as well as property on two Strait of Georgia islands accessible only via float plane or diesel-burning ferries. Of his main home in Kitsilano, Suzuki has reported the “ gas stove ” (which is of course fuelled by natural gas pipelines) as his favourite appliance. And in 2017, an article in The Guardian revealed that Suzuki owns a home in Port Douglas, Australia , roughly a 21-hour one-way flight from Vancouver.
Despite his reputation as Canada’s leading environmental sage, it’s not all that unusual for Suzuki to say or do things that are insulting, hypocritical or…
nationalpost.com
Now I am not the biggest Ezra Levant fan, nor do I subscribe to Sun TV but I stumbled upon a very interesting segment on Ezra Levant's program. Levant features an interview that David Suzuki participated in while he was visiting Australia. It is very interesting to hear David Suzuki discuss...
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