Life altering planetary experience...

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

Insurance companies, politicians, and businesspeople often use the expressions "natural disaster" or "act of God" to deflect responsibility for events beyond our control. Today, human activity and technology have become so powerful that we are contributing to what were once natural disasters.

Hurricanes, tornadoes, freak storms, floods, droughts, pest outbreaks, heat waves, and even earthquakes are occurring with greater frequency and intensity than ever. Some of this can be traced to human activity. Greenhouse gases, immense dams, and deep oil and water wells can all affect natural forces.

Since life first appeared on Earth some four billion years ago, it has played a critical role in altering the physical and chemical properties of the planet. For the first couple of billion years, it was a microbial world, yet those microscopic organisms acted with other forces to break down rock. Over time, this process reduced mountains and boulders to stones, gravel, and dust, releasing minerals and creating soils from the carcasses of organisms.

Life is thought to have evolved in oceans. Here, carbon from the atmosphere dissolved in the water to form carbonaceous shells that offered protection for some life forms. When these died, they sank to the ocean floor where eventually their accumulated shells were pressurized into limestone. Limestone is rock, created by life, which stores carbon in the ground.

As life forms evolved, they grew bigger, in part by incorporating and storing water. In doing so, they became a critical part of the hydrologic cycle, the process whereby water evaporates, forms clouds, and rains back on the Earth in an endless cycle. Organisms could take up dissolved minerals and trace chemicals from the water and release them with their own wastes. After plants evolved into trees on land, they became efficient at sucking water from soil and transpiring most of it into the air to affect weather and climate.

The evolution of photosynthesis was a huge biological breakthrough, enabling Earth's life to capture vast amounts of energy in the form of sunlight. During photosynthesis, plants release oxygen. Over millions of years, this process reduced the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere while creating oxygen-rich air that animals like us depend on.

So for billions of years, the web of life has played a crucial role in changing the physical, chemical, and biological features of the planet. Life was not just opportunistic in exploiting physical and chemical opportunities; living organisms interacted with and changed the planet's earth, water, and air, or biosphere. But it took vast periods of time and millions of diverse species. In all that time, no single species was able to rapidly alter the properties of Earth on a geological scale - until now.

Humans appeared during the last moment of evolutionary time, perhaps 150,000 years ago. For most of our brief existence, we were tribal animals who didn't even know whether other humans lived on the other side of an ocean, desert, or mountain. We only had to worry about our own territory and tribe.

Suddenly, we have become a geological force, the most prolific mammal on the planet, endowed with powerful technologies, impelled by an insatiable appetite for stuff, and supplied by a global economy. Taken together, our numbers, technology, consumption, and global economy have made us a new kind of force on the planet. For the first time, we must ask, "What is the collective impact of 6.8 billion human beings?" As we begin to answer that question, we are left with the extreme difficulty of responding to global threats that our own activity has caused.

Many people harbour an understandable tendency to deny the reality of the crisis in the biosphere. After all, how can puny humans have such a massive impact on this large planet? Some also maintain a conceit that we can manage our way out of the mess, increasingly with heroic interventions of technology. But we've learned from past technologies - nuclear power, DDT, CFCs - that we don't know enough about how the world works to anticipate and minimize unexpected consequences.

The truth is that the only factor or species we can manage on Earth is us. We have no choice but to address the challenge of bringing our cities, energy needs, agriculture, fishing fleets, mines, and so on into balance with the factors that support all life. This crisis can become an opportunity if we seize it and get on with finding solutions.

Countdown to Copenhagen...

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

It's amazing what world leaders can do when they come together for a common cause, as they did in Montreal in 1987 to ban CFCs to protect the ozone layer. In December, our leaders will have a tremendous opportunity in Copenhagen to take the world into a new era of innovation and prosperity.

But, as was the case in Montreal, this opportunity is born out of crisis. The threat of climate change is real and imminent. Scientists from around the world have confirmed this through continuous study and observation - despite what the increasingly desperate and nonsensical arguments from denier would have you believe.

This is no longer a political issue. It's an issue of utmost importance to all of us, no matter where on the political spectrum we feel most comfortable. And we're finally seeing some agreement about confronting this challenge among world leaders from the left, centre, and right. It's especially a conservative issue. After all, as Denmark's Minister of Climate and Energy, Connie Hedegaard, points out, a core conservative belief is "that what you inherit you should pass on to the next generation." And that doesn't mean passing on our mess!

Conservatives also believe that we should live within our means, save some of what we have for tomorrow, and act with care and caution. Conservatives with deep religious conviction know also that we are stewards of the Earth - and good stewardship means protecting the Earth, its resources, and its life.

The December climate summit in Copenhagen is a crossroads. We can continue to delay while the Earth's natural systems reach tipping points beyond which we may not be able to find our way back, or we can move forward in our efforts to slow global warming, reduce pollution, and create new opportunities for healthier lives and stronger economies.

Many world leaders are already committed to negotiating an agreement in Copenhagen that is ambitious, fair, and binding, and many have started implementing solutions in their own countries. Unfortunately, Canada is falling behind. Our national targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions have been called ineffective, and our performance at a number of recent climate meetings has been labelled 'obstructionist'.

Our inaction comes from fear. Because Canada is a major oil producer, politicians and some businesspeople are afraid that reducing our reliance on fossil fuels will harm the economy. But that's short-sighted. If we continue to rely on dwindling non-renewable energy supplies, we'll be left in the dust as the rest of the world moves forward to a green economy, with innovation, jobs, and money from new technologies such as renewable energy infrastructure.

If we were to use our fossil-fuel resources such as oil more wisely, we could make them last longer and derive more national economic benefits from them while we make the transition to a clean-energy economy. The side benefits would include less pollution and environmental damage, a more stable economy, and healthier citizens.

If we continue down the same road, however, we risk catastrophic consequences to our economy and to our very lives. Scientists agree that if average temperatures on Earth rise just another degree, global warming could reach a point of no return, with melting icecaps, rising sea levels, increasing waves of climate refugees, extinction of plants and animals, and floods, droughts, and other severe weather events.

As a northern nation, Canada is particularly vulnerable to climate change. The impact is magnified near the Earth's poles, largely because of the loss of ice and snow coverage. Canada also has the longest marine coastline in the world, so sea-level rise would have a dramatic effect with enormous economic consequences. Many Canadians are already feeling the sting of climate change, especially in the North and in other communities that depend on forestry, fisheries, and agriculture.

Change is never easy, and taking bold steps can come with costs in the short term. But refusing to change means we are condemning ourselves and our children and grandchildren to an uncertain and dangerous future. We can all take individual action to reduce our emissions, but ultimately, we must let our leaders know that we expect them to seize the opportunity in Copenhagen to create a secure and healthy future for our small blue planet and all the people who share it.

Copenhagen climate deal must be fair, ambitious, a...

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

Developed countries including Canada and the U.S. have benefited tremendously from fossil-fuel exploitation. Resources like oil, gas, and coal have allowed us to industrialize and to expand our economies, making life easier for citizens in so many ways.

Just as developing nations started to follow suit in raising their living standards, though, we began to realize that our current fuels and technologies come at great cost to the world. And even though developed countries have reaped most of the benefits of fossil fuels, developing countries, which have contributed least to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, are feeling the brunt of the consequences. Droughts, severe weather events, food shortages, and waves of refugees are just some of the burdens climate change is forcing on people who were already facing incredible challenges brought on by poverty and a lack of infrastructure for things we take for granted, such as clean air, water, and food. At the same time, these countries are being told that they can no longer rely on the fossil fuels we have used to bring about prosperity.

In other words, the countries that have been least responsible for global warming are being most affected by its impact. In Canada, our government believes that developing nations need to aim for the same targets we are expected to meet to fight global warming. Even though some of the larger developing nations, like China and India, have overall levels of greenhouse gas emissions that are higher than Canada's, their per capita emissions are a fraction of ours. It's not fair.

World leaders have a great opportunity to correct this imbalance when they meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, from December 7 to 18 to work out an agreement on how best to deal with climate change. Many organizations from around the world are calling on our leaders to sign a fair, ambitious, and binding deal.

A fair deal would put much of the onus for reducing emissions that contribute to global warming on the developed nations that are mainly responsible for the problem. Scientists agree that developed countries need to reduce their emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020. Developed countries must also help developing nations with financial and technological support so that they can adapt to the worst consequences of climate change, reduce their emissions, and benefit from emerging renewable-energy technologies. A fair deal would also compel rich nations to protect poor and marginalized people in developed and developing countries.

The call for an ambitious deal reflects the urgency of the situation. We have already dumped so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that it will take ambitious global efforts to stall the most severe consequences. That means ensuring that global greenhouse gas emissions peak no later than 2017 and then go down quickly after that so that concentrations in the atmosphere are reduced to less than 350 parts per million.

An ambitious agreement would also ensure that the world takes advantage of the numerous opportunities to create clean jobs and clean energy, which will strengthen global economies. We must also create conditions that will allow people, plants, and animals to survive in a sustainable manner.

For an agreement to be effective, it must be legally binding, with mechanisms in place to make sure that countries are meeting their obligations and to enforce those obligations.

This all may seem overly ambitious and overly expensive - but the alternative, doing little or nothing, could be catastrophic. Consider also the speed with which countries such as the U.S. were able to come up with trillions of dollars to bail out banking systems that were largely the authors of their own troubles.

The world is facing many challenges, of which climate change is just one symptom. The benefits of an agreement in Copenhagen that is fair, ambitious, and binding go beyond simply reducing the severity of global warming. Clean-energy technologies, more attention to the plight of the world's poor, and recognition of the true value of natural systems and the plants and animals that share this world all provide opportunities to create a sustainable and prosperous world.

There's little time to lose. We must tell our leaders that we expect them to support a fair, ambitious, and binding solution in Copenhagen in December. Everyone's future is at stake.

Forests count in our fight against climate change...

In 1992, I attended an event that filled me with hope. Canada and the rest of the world had just signed a climate change treaty at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. I remember being optimistic that the world could come together to fight the greatest threat to our planet and our own survival. We had done it before in overcoming other threats, like defeating Nazism in Europe and beating back horrific diseases like polio that once maimed and killed tens of thousands of people each year.

When Canada signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty, we had not yet begun to experience the full consequences of climate change. There were no news reports of starving polar bears in the Arctic, the mountain pine beetle had not yet turned B.C.'s forests crimson, and we weren't facing a rapid increase in infectious diseases, like Lyme disease, that are exacerbated by warming temperatures.

The effects of climate change are now affecting people and places all over the planet, from the most remote tropical rainforest to the urban parks where many of our kids play. And scientists tell us that some changes, like melting sea ice in the Arctic, are happening much faster than any computer model had predicted.

Though the 1992 UNFCCC treaty set no mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and contained no enforcement provisions (these would come later in the Kyoto Protocol and, we hope, in a forthcoming climate treaty that will replace it), it did set an ambitious science-based goal: to stabilize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent the effects of dangerous climate change.

Scientists say we can only achieve this goal if we radically reduce all major sources of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. While much of the debate and action has focused on curbing emissions from burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and gas, the destruction of our forests, wetlands, grasslands, and peatlands is responsible for about one quarter of all other emissions into the atmosphere. That's higher than emissions from cars, trucks, boats, and planes together.

In Canada and throughout the world, forests are being rapidly cleared for agriculture and oil and gas development and are being destructively mined and logged. When forest soils are disturbed and trees are burned or cut down for wood and paper products, much of the carbon stored in their biomass is released back into the atmosphere as heat-trapping carbon dioxide, although some carbon can remain stored in longer-lived forest products, like wood used to make furniture or homes.

Thus the destruction of forests and other ecosystems is not only a driver of extinction of species, such as boreal caribou, but is a driver of global warming as well.

We need to adopt a carbon stewardship approach to how we use our forests and the goods and services we take from them.

For some scientists, carbon stewardship means setting aside at least half of all remaining intact forests as protected areas, particularly carbon-rich forests like old-growth temperate rainforests in B.C. and the boreal in Canada's north, where wildlife like caribou feed, breed, and roam. Protecting intact forests also promotes ecological resiliency so that species and ecosystems can cope with and adapt to the effects of climate change.

That doesn't mean that the logging companies should be allowed to trash the other 50 per cent. Forests that we do manage for wood and paper production should be logged according to the highest standards of ecosystem-based management, without clear-cutting, and with adequate protection for wildlife habitat like caribou, as well as sensitive areas like wetlands.

In December, the world's nations will meet at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen to negotiate a new strong and fair climate change agreement that will continue and strengthen the Kyoto Protocol. Scientists tell us that to avoid dangerous climate change governments must agree to deep reductions in greenhouse gases, including carbon emissions from the destruction of our forests, wetlands, and other ecosystems. We can achieve this by agreeing to protect our intact forests, taking full responsibility for emissions from logging and other land-use activities, and helping developing nations reduce deforestation.

Let's use our forests in a truly sustainable way that is better for nature, better for the climate, and ultimately better for our own health and well-being.

Scientific information on how the destruction of forests and other ecosystems contributes to global warming

Campaign to curb greenhouse gas emissions from forest destruction in Canada

Campaign to curb greenhouse gas emissions from tropical deforestation

Facebook campaign to protect boreal caribou and their carbon-rich forests

Copenhagen climate summit is crucial...

The buzz around the December UN climate summit in Copenhagen is increasing. Some of you may be wondering what it's all about. Why is this one meeting so important? And does it really matter if it succeeds or fails?

The answer is that it matters a lot, especially if we want to tackle global warming rather than just talking and arguing about it.

Global warming is a global problem requiring global solutions. The atmosphere doesn't stay within federal or provincial boundaries. It is a global commons. Greenhouse gases emitted in Canadian provinces mix with those from every other part of the world and affect everyone. A molecule of carbon is a molecule of carbon. It has the same impact on the environment whether it came from a smokestack in Toronto or a taxi's tailpipe in Kuala Lumpur.

Every nation must do its part. And each country needs reassurance that others are also acting. We need a global agreement that is legally binding with rules clearly outlined.

The science of climate change is evolving rapidly. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's last report is now two years old, and the research in that report is more than four years old. Recent scientific information shows that the impacts of climate change are happening much more quickly than expected. The polar ice cap is melting at an astonishing rate. Ocean levels are rising more rapidly than predicted. And weather-related disasters are mounting.

Leading scientific institutions such as the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.K. Royal Society, and the Royal Society of Canada have declared that current scientific information points to a need for immediate action.

We have no time to waste. Copenhagen is our moment. In fact, two years ago the world agreed that the Copenhagen summit would be the deadline for forging the next global agreement to strengthen and build on the Kyoto Protocol.

Kyoto was always considered to be the first step by industrialized countries, whose fossil-fuel-powered growth created the problem. Establishing the legal framework was an important part of that first step, as were very modest emission reductions. But Copenhagen has to be more than just another small step. Science suggests the issue is urgent, so this step needs to be much bigger if we want our actions to keep pace with increasing climatic changes.

Industrialized countries need to accept binding commitments to reduce their global warming pollution much more dramatically in the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol, after 2012. But we also need to craft a companion treaty to Kyoto, one that lays out the kinds of actions that major developing countries, like India and Indonesia, will take to curb their emissions.

A recent study commissioned by Global Humanitarian Forum president and former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan indicates that 50 of the world's poorest countries collectively produce less than one per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Yet, these very same countries have been disproportionally affected by climate change. Thus, an essential part of any fair climate agreement must include support from industrialized countries to poorer nations - support in the form of financing and clean technologies so that poorer nations can wean themselves off fossil fuels and better adapt to the impacts of climate change.

This principle - that rich countries like ours have filled up the atmosphere with pollution in the course of our development, and that it's now our responsibility to assist less-developed countries to follow a clean path to prosperity - is one that goes back to 1992. It was enshrined in the Rio Convention and reiterated in Kyoto, and again two years ago in Bali. But we have yet to meet that promise, and it is time we did.

It is now up to our global leaders - presidents and prime ministers, ministers of finance and environment - to be visionary, to look beyond shorter-term political timelines and imagine a future world of security and prosperity, where our homes and workplaces are fed by clean energy. And it is up to global citizens to ensure that they do.

Visionary leadership requires active and engaged citizens to keep the politicians' feet to the fire. Your efforts have never been needed more to help make this happen.