Dementia is setting in for Skuzuki.
Suzuki's science inquisition
John GormleyThe StarPhoenix
Friday, February 08, 2008
If the last few centuries have taught us anything, there are instructive lessons to be learned on mob rule, intolerance in the name of religious belief and muzzling those who dare speak against the orthodoxy of the day.
David Suzuki is turning into the modern poster boy for some centuries-old practices we should avoid.
After earning a PhD in zoology in 1961, Suzuki has done little "hands-on" work in the lab since his TV show The Nature of Things took off in the late 1970s.
And he's used his celebrity to crusade on all things environmental. A committed and often alarmist campaigner, Suzuki aptly describes himself as "cantankerous, opinionated and narrow minded."
And evidently he is not an economist or even a trained environmental scientist either.
Lately, Suzuki's zeal may have bubbled up past the crazy line with his suggestion of jailing people who ignore science.
In the midst of regaling an obsequious student audience at McGill, Suzuki turned his bluster to economic growth, saying using gross domestic product to measure growth is "nutty."
And he turned his trademark hyperbole on biotechnology, claiming any scientist who says it's safe is either "ignorant or lying."
Then Suzuki unleashed his bombast on politics, urging students to look for a legal way to throw our political leaders in jail for "ignoring science" and saying "politicians, who never see beyond the next election, are committing a criminal act by ignoring science."
Look as hard as you might, kids: There is no legal way to throw people in jail for disagreeing with and ignoring the opinions of others.
Oddly, it seems lost on Suzuki that the marketplace of ideas, where people are free to agree and disagree, is one of those quaint and useful notions that make democracies work.
Presumably, Suzuki wouldn't spare jail for those who follow the science of climate change skeptics. So the issue is not "ignoring science." It's ignoring his science that will land you in the slammer.
And, what about those scientists -- real, peer-reviewed people with tenure -- who don't embrace Suzuki-science and the quasi-religious fervor of eco-faith? What should be done with them?
Surely, in Suzuki's world, they also must be "ignoring science." Jail them too, Dave -- political prisoners can never have enough company.
If anyone else in Canada advocated jailing people for the crime of disagreeing with them they'd rightly be called bigots, fascists or dismissed as kooks.
It's time that the high priests of the Church of the Environment, like Suzuki, started reading their history.
And for the rest of us, it's time that we started calling this stuff what it is.
