Parting shot
At the 2016 AG Society Awards, environmentalist DR DAVID SUZUKI gave a rousing talk about how ordinary people can effect real environmental change. Here’s an edited excerpt of what he said.
Dr David Suzuki on how ordinary people can effect environmental change
WE CAN OFTEN feel totally powerless to act or make a difference in the face of huge environmental problems, such as climate change or the degradation of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. But you’d be surprised at the difference that grassroots movements can make and I want to give you an example.
One project I’m involved in, through the David Suzuki Foundation, is called the Blue Dot movement.The blue dot is Earth, based on the beautiful essay Carl Sagan wrote about the “pale blue dot”.We’re trying to get a constitutional amendment in Canada, because we want our constitution to say it’s every Canadian’s right to live in a healthy environment. Sounds like a difficult goal to achieve – and it is, but it’s not impossible.
What exactly is a healthy environment? It means an environment with clean air, water, soil and biodiversity. It’s exactly what indigenous people across Canada – and Australia – have been fighting for, for their entire existence.
In Canada we have two methods of getting a constitutional amendment. The first is to elect the right party that will go and actually enact the change if they get into power – and that’s the way most of our constitutional amendments have happened. But there is another way that has been tried a number of times, and only succeeded once. And that method involves getting grassroots support for an idea, which then manifests itself at the municipal level and then at the provincial level.
Eventually, if you can get seven provinces, with more than half the population of the country to support the idea, it then goes to the parliament in Ottawa and can then be passed into the legislation.
So, two years ago, we kicked off this campaign for a healthy environment. In a solar-panelled bus, we began on the east coast and then planned a sevenweek tour across Canada. And the indigenous communities were right there as full partners in every place we stopped. And in our big metaphorical campaign tent, this isn’t just a bunch of greens and indigenous people – this is about all the people who care about the kind of world we live in.
So those groups interested in hunger and poverty, they’re included in our tent. A starving person, for example, who comes across an edible plant or animal, is not going to think “oh I better check and see whether it’s endangered”.They’re going to kill it and eat it. I would if I was starving. So if you don’t deal with hunger and poverty, forget about the environment. These people are in our tent.
Similarly, if you don’t have social justice, than you have more important priorities then worrying about the environment. If you’re fighting genocide, or terror or war, you’ve got other priorities. So those are all our issues too, and we broadened our tent to include groups all across the spectrum to come on the bus tour with us.
Lots of musicians joined us at every place, including Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young.We had the eminent author Margaret Atwood, and the Canadian Royal Ballet composed a piece and danced for us in Winnipeg.
At first I said if we could get one community to pass local legislation for a healthy environment, then six months later our movement would have begun. Three weeks into the tour, we got the first city – Richmond, British Columbia, passed the right to a healthy environment. By the time we got to Vancouver, six communities had passed environment rights.When I left Vancouver, 143 municipalities had done so too. More than one in three Canadians now lives in a community with the right to a healthy environment. Vancouver,Toronto, Montreal, the three biggest cities, all passed them.
We are now working with the two biggest provinces, Quebec and Ontario, to enact the law at a provincial level, and I believe we’ve got a shot at actually having a constitutional amendment within the next couple of years.
It’s interesting that, while many countries have a right to a healthy environment in their constitutions, the English-speaking nations – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Britain – do not. More than 20 years ago, France passed a right to a healthy environment, with very great public support – and that was under the conservative president Jacques Chirac. So I’m urging you as Australians that you might try to emulate this idea as a way of beginning to shift the conversation and enact real environmental change. It’s fundamentally needed.The time to act is now.