by David Suzuki
I know that for all of you this is redundant, but when you find partners, and if you have children, please spend as much time as possible outside, unplugged, so that you can hear, see, and smell the world around you. Why do you need to go outside? For one thing, to appreciate what it is that keeps you alive. And the more time you spend outside, the more you are able to sense change in that world. If you can smell something, chances are that unless it’s flow-ers or food, it doesn’t belong there and is not good for us. But even more profound, we have to get outside and seek nature because we need that connection for our physical and mental health.
I hope you can find ways to acknowledge, be grateful for, and celebrate the things that matter most to us. By these things I mean our ultimate mother—Earth—for her generosity in providing all we need to survive and enjoy health and well-being. We have to develop little ways of reminding ourselves how important air, water, photosynthesis, soil, food, and other species are. Just get outside and revel in the sun’s warmth on our skin or the snowflakes that tickle our faces, take swims in freshwater rivers or lakes, and watch the rain create puddles for children to play in. These are joyous acknowledgments we can make right through the year, not the orgy of consumerism that over-takes us in December.
Finally, each of you might think about your life, what you hope to do with it, what your goals are, or what your vision of the future might be, and then what you might be proudest of when you become an elder like me. I can tell you, you are my legacy, for which I am most proud and happy. I can’t take much credit for who you are and what values you hold, but I do take pride and joy in your mothers and the partners they chose, in whose lives I had a much bigger hand. I hope my love will remain with you throughout your long and happy lives.
With all my love,
Your Grandpa
NOTES
CHAPTER 3
1. Victor Lebow, “Price competition in 1955,” Journal of Retailing (Spring 1955).
2. Pablo Ruiz Nápoles, “Consumption, economic theory and the American way of life,” Voices of Mexico, vol. 69 (2004): 30–33.
3. Frank Pellegrini, “The Bush speech: How to rally a nation,” Time, September 21, 2001.
4. John Maynard Keynes, “National self-sufficiency,” The Yale Review, vol. 22, no. 4 (June 1933): 755–769.
CHAPTER 9
1. Will Steffen et al., “Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet,” Science, January 15, 2015.
2. Terry Erwin, “Tropical forests: Their richness in Coleoptera and other arthropod species,” Coleopterists Bulletin, 36 (1983): 74–75.
3. A.D. Chapman, Number of living species in Australia and the world, 2nd ed. (Canberra: Australian Biological Resources, 2009).
4. Christine Del’Amore, “Species extinction happening 1000 times faster because of humans?” National Geographic, May 29, 2014.
5. George Monbiot, “It’s time to shout stop on this war on the living world,” The Guardian, October 1, 2014, at http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/oct/01/george-monbiot-war-on-the-living-world-wildlife.
CHAPTER 11
1. The paper is available online at www.thebreakthrough.org/images/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf.
2. Carl Sagan, Pale blue dot: A vision of the human future in space (New York: Random House, 1994).
3. David Boyd, The right to a healthy environment: Revitalizing Canada’s constitution (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012).
DAVID SUZUKI FOUNDATION
The David Suzuki Foundation works through science and education to protect the diversity of nature and our quality of life, now and for the future.
Our vision is that within a generation, Canadians act on the understanding that we are all interconnected and interdependent with nature. We collaborate with scientists, communities, businesses, academia, government, and non- governmental organizations to find solutions for living within the limits of nature.
The Foundation’s work is made possible by individual donors across Canada and around the world. We invite you to join us.
For more information, please contact us:
The David Suzuki Foundation
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Cheques can be made payable to the David Suzuki Foundation.
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DAVID SUZUKI is an internationally renowned geneticist and environmentalist and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. He is the author of more than forty books and is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award. He has been named a Companion of the Order of Canada and has been honoured with seven names from indigenous people. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.