https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...canada-is-full
Nice to see some honesty on Suzuki
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
Author of the article:Tristin Hopper
Publishing date:Nov 27, 2021 • 4 hours ago • 5 minute read • 74 Comments
David Suzuki has made some questionable claims over the years.
David Suzuki has made some questionable claims over the years. PHOTO BY CHRIS YOUNG/THE CANADIAN PRESS/FILE
Former The Nature of Things host David Suzuki has apologized for saying that Canada risked inviting the wrath of enviro-terrorists if it didn’t immediately shut down its oil and gas infrastructure. Although it’s not like he had any shortage of prodding: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the comments “potentially dangerous,” B.C.’s public safety minister said they were “not helpful” and even Suzuki’s own eponymous foundation ultimately distanced themselves from their founder’s remarks. It was the David Suzuki Foundation, in fact, that ultimately brokered the Thursday statement containing his apology.
But despite his reputation as Canada’s leading environmentalist sage, it’s not all that unusual for the 85-year-old 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.
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 .
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.)
‘Canada is full’
In a 2013 interview with France’s L’Express, Suzuki was asked about an anti-immigration bent among the Australian environmental movement. To which he replied , “Oh, I think that Canada is full too! Even if it’s the second biggest country in the world, our usable land is reduced.”
Although Suzuki conceded that Canada could still let in refugees, he expressed revulsion at the notion of people from the developing world immigrating here as economic migrants. “Our immigration policy is enough to make you sick: we pillage the countries of the south by depriving them of their future professionals and we want to increase our population to help our economy grow. It’s crazy!”
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.
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