Top 70 David Suzuki Quotes

Some solutions are relatively simple and would provide economic benefits: implementing measures to conserve energy, putting a price on carbon through taxes and cap-and-trade and shifting from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy sources.

Water is our most precious resource, but we waste it, just as we waste other resources, including oil and gas.

Ultimately we need to recognize that while humans continue to build urban landscapes, we share these spaces with others species.

Environmentalism is a way of seeing our place within the biosphere.

Thanks to evolution, our bodies have powerful ways to ward off illness and infection and enable us to live long and healthy lives. Why, then, do health costs continue to climb at unsustainable and frightening rates?

This is suicidal… our home is the biosphere. That’s a very thin layer of air, water and land where all life exists. It’s fixed, it can’t grow, and yet we cling to this idea that the economy can grow forever. And it must. Well, it can’t.

Birds are, especially canaries, are super sensitive to hydrogen sulfide and sour gas.

Over and over, we hear politicians say they can’t spend our tax dollars on environmental protection when the economy is so fragile.

People don’t even understand that every bit of our food was once alive. We take another creature, plant, animal, microorganism, tear it apart in our mouths. And incorporate those molecules into our own bodies. We are the Earth in the most profound way.

For the sake of our health, our children and grandchildren and even our economic well-being, we must make protecting the planet our top priority.

I fell in love with the elegance and precision of genetic analysis and experimentation to answer profound biological questions.

Scientists are being portrayed by much of the power structure in politics and business as having a vested interest – that they’re just out to get more grant money by exaggerating the threats.

Humans are distinguished from other species by a massive brain that enables us to imagine a future and influence it by what we do in the present. By using experience, knowledge and insight, our ancestors recognized they could anticipate dangers and opportunities and take steps to exploit advantages and avoid hazards.

My parents survived the Great Depression and brought me up to live within my means, save some for tomorrow, share and don’t be greedy, work hard for the necessities in life knowing that money does not make you better or more important than anyone else. So, extravagance has been bred out of my DNA.

My earliest memory from childhood is of fishing with my father. And I remember vividly we were in a store, and we were buying a pup tent to go on our first camping trip.

Pearl Harbor was the defining event in my life. It shaped who I am, and all of my hang-ups and my drives, I think, stem from that.

Too often, governments are quick to use excessive force and even pervert the course of justice to keep oil and gas flowing, forests logged, wild rivers dammed and minerals extracted. As the Global Witness study reveals, citizens are often killed, too – especially if they’re poor and indigenous.

What about our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren? Do we not want them to live healthy and happy lives?

The truth is, as most of us know, that global warming is real and humans are major contributors, mainly because we wastefully burn fossil fuels.

The human brain had a vast memory storage. It made us curious and very creative. Those were the characteristics that gave us an advantage – curiosity, creativity and memory. And that brain did something very special. It invented an idea called ‘the future.’

The true – the true economy has got to come back into balance with the very biosphere that sustains us. And I think a lot of people just see the green economy as a different way of allowing the corporate agenda to continue to flourish.

Feeding our energy appetite is top of mind for many people these days.

Although it’s difficult, if not impossible, to put a dollar value on the numerous services nature provides, leaving them out of economic calculations means they are often ignored.

We must pay greater attention to keeping our bodies and minds healthy and able to heal. Yet we are making it difficult for our defences to work. We allow things to be sold that should not be called food. Many have no nutritive value and lead to obesity, salt imbalance, and allergies.

If we have any hope of finding ways for seven billion people to live well on planet with finite resources, we have to learn to use our resources efficiently. Plastic bags are neither efficient nor environmentally friendly.

Our personal consumer choices have ecological, social, and spiritual consequences. It is time to re-examine some of our deeply held notions that underlie our lifestyles.

Scientists generally are really chicken about getting involved in some kind of dispute. As a broadcaster, I find it very difficult to urge them, if it is a controversial subject. They don’t want to have science being portrayed badly.

The voluntary approach to corporate social responsibility has failed in many cases.

Corporations are economic entities or structures, and yet they’re allowed to fund political candidates, and when those candidates are elected, guess who gets in the door first? It’s corporations.

With the world’s human population now at seven billion and growing, and the demand for technology and modern conveniences increasing, we can’t control all our negative impacts. But we have to find better ways to live within the limits nature and its cycles impose.

Most North Americans know that human-caused global warming is real, even if political leaders don’t always reflect or act on that knowledge.

Conserving energy and thus saving money, reducing consumption of unnecessary products and packaging and shifting to a clean-energy economy would likely hurt the bottom line of polluting industries, but would undoubtedly have positive effects for most of us.

More than a billion people lack adequate access to clean water.

Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism.

The whole sector of public dialogue has been totally contaminated, deliberately, by the corporate sector. The whole purpose is to sow confusion and doubt, and it’s worked.

One of the joys of being a grandparent is getting to see the world again through the eyes of a child.

Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we’ve not only survived, we’ve used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges.

Nature surrounds us, from parks and backyards to streets and alleyways. Next time you go out for a walk, tread gently and remember that we are both inhabitants and stewards of nature in our neighbourhoods.

Many countries – as well as cities, states and provinces – are taking global warming seriously and are working to reduce emissions and shift to cleaner energy sources.

Think about a seed. Once it lands, it’s stuck. It can’t move to find better soil, moisture or sunlight. It’s able to create every part of itself to grow and reproduce with the help of air, water and sun.

In the environmental movement, every time you lose a battle it’s for good, but our victories always seem to be temporary and we keep fighting them over and over again.

The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, droughts and floods is in line with what climate scientists have been predicting for decades – and evidence is mounting that what’s happening is more severe than predicted, and will get far worse still if we fail to act.

The future doesn’t exist. The only thing that exists is now and our memory of what happened in the past. But because we invented the idea of a future, we’re the only animal that realized we can affect the future by what we do today.

We pride ourselves on our democratic traditions, but in Canada, women couldn’t vote until 1918, Asians until 1948, and First Nations people living on reserves until 1960.

If America wants to retain its position as a global power, its president must listen to the people and show strong leadership at this turning point in human history.

Plastic bags are bad and for the most part unnecessary.

Just as fossil fuels from conventional sources are finite and are becoming depleted, those from difficult sources will also run out. If we put all our energy and resources into continued fossil fuel extraction, we will have lost an opportunity to have invested in renewable energy.

There are more humans than all of the rabbits on earth. There are more of us than all the wildebeests, than all the rats, than all the mice. We are the most numerous mammal on the planet. But because we’re not like rabbits or rats or mice, we have technology, we have a consumptive appetite, we have a global economy.

The failure of world leaders to act on the critical issue of global warming is often blamed on economic considerations.

Japan is a model already to the lie that economic growth is the key to our future. If they can really show an alternative to nukes and fossil fuels, then they will be the poster boy for the renewable energy for the future.