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humanity Can No Longer Tolerate Corporations That Exist Almost Entirely to Make Money

Society must make the necessary shift from a society that prioritizes wealth accumulation and economic growth to one that puts personal and societal well-being above profits.

DAVID SUZUKI

Feb 13, 2023Common Dreams

In most countries, it’s left up to business owners, CEOs and boards to decide what their purpose is, and all too often the choice is ultimately based on greed.

In many countries — most notably the U.S. — corporations are considered “persons” under law, enjoying many of the same legal rights and responsibilities as “natural” persons. Judging by the way some corporations operate, you might conclude they’re not very good people.

Defining corporations as “persons” simply means they have a legal identity separate from shareholders and owners. But what is the purpose of a business or corporation? If you look at sectors such as the fossil fuel industry, you might be led to believe the primary aim is to enrich shareholders and CEOs, and maybe create some employment, regardless of the costs to society.

Generating profits and jobs is important in an economic system that relies on those principles, but they shouldn’t be the ultimate goals. The British Academy — the U.K.’s national institution for the humanities and social sciences — concluded from its research on the future of the corporation “that the purpose of business is to solve the problems of people and planet profitably, and not profit from causing problems.”

Generating profits and jobs is important in an economic system that relies on those principles, but they shouldn’t be the ultimate goals.

In most countries, it’s left up to business owners, CEOs and boards to decide what their purpose is, and all too often the choice is ultimately based on greed. That’s why many countries, including France and the U.K., have started incorporating corporate purpose into legal frameworks.

France amended its Civil Code in 2019 to include, “The company is managed in its corporate interest, while taking into account the social and environmental issues related to its activity.” It also introduced a measure, albeit not mandatory, for companies to articulate their reason for being in their “articles of association.”

Although many Canadian companies have vision and mission statements, these often amount to little more than public relations and don’t spell out any legal duties or requirements. The Canada Business Corporations Act doesn’t require a statement of corporate purpose. It’s time to change that, for the good of society and the corporations themselves.

Research shows companies with stated purposes that take into account their impacts on people and the planet often do better than those without. They attract loyal customers willing to advocate for and promote them. And the companies enjoy better reputations and are able to attract good employees who stay longer.

Research shows companies with stated purposes that take into account their impacts on people and the planet often do better than those without

A U.S. study found 60 per cent of Americans would “choose, switch, avoid or boycott a company based on its stand on social issues.” Another found that 66 per cent of people would switch from a product they normally buy to one from a purpose-driven company.

The real bottom line, though, is that the world can no longer afford to support or sustain companies that exist almost entirely to make money. Humanity is reeling under numerous crises brought on by consumer-driven economics based on the fallacy of endless growth in a finite world — from biodiversity loss to gross inequality to climate disruption.

A new David Suzuki Foundation report offers a way for Canada to correct course. “Bringing Corporate Purpose into the Mainstream: Directions for Canadian Law” recommends major changes to the Canada Business Corporations Act to ensure that large companies prioritize people and planet over profit. It’s part of a global movement to shift the focus of economic systems from money-driven consumerism to well-being.

The real bottom line, though, is that the world can no longer afford to support or sustain companies that exist almost entirely to make money

Among its recommendations, the report — by academics from the Faculty of Law at McGill University — calls for the act to be reformed to require corporate boards to have a statement of purpose, to extend the fiduciary duty of directors and officers to pursuing the purpose of the corporation in good faith with a view to its best interests, and to broaden those best interests to include impacts on the community in which it operates.

“Part of transforming to a society that values our needs, relationships and the natural world is ensuring corporations are held accountable for their actions. Establishing a corporate purpose is one tool to help enable that shift,” said Tara Campbell, David Suzuki Foundation well-being economies specialist.

These reforms won’t transform society by themselves, and would only apply to large corporations that operate under the act, but they’re an important step in the necessary shift from a society that prioritizes wealth accumulation and economic growth to one that puts personal and societal well-being above the pursuit of profit.

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/08/11/heartland-deniers-deflated-climate-reality

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can west?

cda increasing importance: gag scientists, tar sands (koch) xl pipeline --> trudeau

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~ lithium bs

https://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy-suzuki-2514182227.html

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re  weaver , mann tim ball trials, john o tries to make suz combo of soros and al?

bs:

Dr. Tim Ball is widely recognized as one of Canada’s first qualified climate scientists and has long been one of the most prominent skeptics taking a stand on corruption and unethical practices. Two exponents of the global warming scare Ball has targeted, professors Michael Mann and Andrew Weaver, are now suing him for libel.

Many suspect the David Suzuki Foundation is funding Vancouver libel specialist, Roger D. McConchie who is representing both Weaver and Mann against Ball. Suzuki is reported as wanting skeptics like Ball :{“put in prison.”}:

Savvy skeptics suspect that Ball, a 72-year-old pensioner, was singled out as a target because he has no big corporate backers and will capitulate under the emotional and financial strain before the case even gets to trial as his legal fees spiral. Such a fate befell Ball in a prior libel suit in 2006.

But buoyed by the public sympathy Ball is now gaining he is confident an appeal for donors will make all the difference. He is adamant that this is the perfect opportunity skeptics have been waiting for to expose climate change fraud in a court of law and he won’t be bounced out of this most crucial contest.

Below Dr. Ball (TB) speaks frankly to John O’Sullivan (JOS).

INTERVIEW

JOS: Now that you’ve been hit with two very expensive libel suits in quick succession rumors are mounting that well-funded environmentalists are now intent on using the law to kill off free speech in the climate debate. Would you agree with this assessment?

TB: I am not aware of specific evidence of such a campaign or the financing. The practice of bringing lawsuits has been going on for some time but it was spasmodic. More recently, that is over the last year or so, it has increased, particularly with the charges by Weaver through McConchie against the National Post. One change was the addition of important people to the Suzuki Board back in 2009, such as John Lefebvre, but also included Westport Innovation CEO Elaine Wong, that brought additional money as Chris Horner pointed out. Another addition to the Board was equally disturbing, not because of the money but because of the compromise of integrity. :{George Stroumboulopolos}: is the host of a weekly program on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

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David T. Suzuki PhD, "co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster.

"David has received consistently high acclaim for his 30 years of award-winning work in broadcasting, explaining the complexities of science in a compelling, easily understood way. He is well known to millions as the host of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's popular science television series, The Nature of Things...

"An internationally respected geneticist, David was a full Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver from 1969 until his retirement in 2001. He is professor emeritus with UBC's Sustainable Development Research Institute. From 1969 to 1972 he was the recipient of the prestigious E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship Award for the "Outstanding Canadian Research Scientist Under the Age of 35".

"He has received numerous awards including the Roger Tory Peterson Award from Harvard University. He is a Companion of the Order of Canada, and a member of the Order of British Columbia. He has received 20 honorary doctorates - 13 from Canada, four from the United States and three from Australia. First Nations people have honoured him with six names, formal adoption by two tribes, and made him an honorary member of the Dehcho First Nations." [1] CV

His daughter is Severn Cullis Suzuki.

Contents

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Affiliations

SourceWatch resources

External links

References

  1. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ David T. Suzuki, David Suzuki Foundation, accessed December 28, 2007.
  2. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Advisory Board, Center for a New American Dream, accessed December 28, 2007.
  3. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Institute of Science in Society About, organizational web page, accessed October 13, 2013.
  4. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Home, International Society for Ecology and Culture, accessed August 26, 2008.
  5. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ International Advisory Board, Earth Restoration Corps, accessed August 25, 2008.
  6. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Science and Policy Advisory Council, Global Footprint Network, accessed April 24, 2008.
  7. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ World Pantheist Movement Home, organizational web page, accessed February 10, 2012.
  8. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Honorary Board, Green Cross International, accessed August 3, 2008.
  9. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Solutions Journal Editorial Board, organizational web page, accessed June 18, 2013.
  10. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Millennium Awards, Global Green, accessed August 3, 2008.
  11. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Messengers, 350.org, accessed December 12, 2011.
  12. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Lindbergh Award, Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation, accessed November 20, 2009.
  13. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ List of Laureates, Right LivelihoodAward, accessed December 9, 2011.

Articles

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/David_Suzuki

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4/15

Through their companies, the Kochs are the largest U.S. leaseholder in the Alberta oilsands. They’ve provided funding to Canada’s pro-oil Fraser Institute and are known to fuel the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory, which claims a 1992 UN non-binding sustainable development proposal is a plot to remove property rights and other freedoms.

Researchers reveal they’re also behind many anti-transit initiatives in the U.S., in cities and states including Nashville, Indianapolis, Boston, Virginia, Florida and Los Angeles. They spend large amounts of money on campaigns to discredit climate science and the need to reduce greenhouse gases, and they fund sympathetic politicians.

In late January, 50 U.S. anti-government and pro-oil groups—including some tied to the Kochs and the pro-oil, pro-tobacco Heartland Institute—sent Congress a letter opposing a gas tax increase that would help fund public transit, in part because “Washington continues to spend federal dollars on projects that have nothing to do with roads like bike paths and transit.”

The letter says “transportation infrastructure has a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” an argument similar to one used by opponents of the transportation plan Metro Vancouver residents are currently voting on. Vancouver’s anti-transit campaign is led by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation—a group that doesn’t reveal its funding sources and is on record as denying the existence of human-caused climate change—along with Hamish Marshall, a conservative strategist with ties to Ethical Oil.

American and Canadian transit opponents paint themselves as populist supporters of the common people, a tactic also used against carbon pricing. Marshall told Business in Vancouver, “I love the idea of working on a campaign where we can stand up for the little guy.” The U.S. letter claims the gas tax increase “would disproportionately hurt lower income Americans already hurt by trying times in our economy.” Both fail to note that poor and middle class families will benefit most from public transit and other sustainable transportation options.

Although many organizations that promote the fossil fuel industry and reject the need to address climate change—including the Heartland Institute, International Climate Science Coalition, Ethical Oil and Friends of Science—are secretive about their funding sources, a bit of digging often turns up oil, gas and coal money, often from the Kochs in the U.S. And most of their claims are easily debunked. In the case of the U.S. Heartland Institute, arguments stray into the absurd, like comparing climate researchers and those who accept the science to terrorists and murderers like the Unabomber and Charles Manson!

In some ways, it’s understandable why fossil fuel advocates would reject clean energy, conservation and sustainable transportation. Business people protect their interests—which isn’t necessarily bad. But anything that encourages people to drive less and conserve energy cuts into the fossil fuel industry’s massive profits. It’s unfortunate that greed trumps the ethical need to reduce pollution, limit climate change and conserve non-renewable resources.

It’s also poor economic strategy on a societal level. Besides contributing to pollution and global warming, fossil fuels are becoming increasingly difficult, dangerous and expensive to exploit as easily accessible sources are depleted—and markets are volatile, as we’ve recently seen. It’s crazy to go on wastefully burning these precious resources when they can be used more wisely, and when we have better options. Clean energy technology, transit improvements and conservation also create more jobs and economic activity and contribute to greater well-being and a more stable economy than fossil fuel industries.

To reduce pollution and address global warming, we must do everything we can, from conserving energy to shifting to cleaner energy sources. Improving transportation and transit infrastructure is one of the easiest ways to do so while providing more options for people to get around.

Those who profit from our continued reliance on fossil fuels will do what they can to convince us to stay on their expensive, destructive road. It’s up to all of us to help change course.

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Right wing media diverting attention from climate change

For the last week, the David Suzuki Foundation has been under vicious attack from right wing media including the National Post, Fox News, and prominent climate change deniers. This small but aggressive group is denouncing our "Where Will Santa Live" holiday fundraising campaign as fear mongering.

They want to distract Canadians from the truth: climate change threatens our future and Canada is doing nothing to contribute to solutions.

...

Some of our supporters have asked if recent claims made bySun Media host Ezra Levant are accurate. We think you deserve clear and truthful answers.

For starters, please note: David Suzuki is not the head of a corporation. The David Suzuki Foundation is a registered Canadian charity and David Suzuki has never been a paid staff member. In fact, he is one of our most generous donors and volunteers. He has lived in the same house for decades, a home he has shared with his in-laws and in which he has raised his daughters.

As for the claim that David owns land with an "oil company", we did what journalists are supposed to do before running a story. We checked with the company's owners, a couple living on the Sunshine Coast. They told us the husband's father ran the company in the 1950s and '60s to distribute oil to households and small businesses, mostly for furnaces. When the company folded, they used the assets to buy into co-owned land on remote Nelson Island, and it has not operated as anything other than a holding company since the late 1960s. David and a friend, who knew nothing about the company, bought into the property many years ago with the express purpose of protecting it from development. He has made other investments in real estate to provide for his retirement and family.

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Vancouver environmentalist and Canadian icon **David Suzuki** cited attacks from opponents and threats to the group’s charitable status as the reason why he left the foundation bearing his name. What some media reports fail to mention is that the press itself was often one of those opponents.

“In the last year, it’s clear that we have been subject to increasingly vicious attacks from our opponents in the media, most notably **Postmedia** (van sun) and **Sun Media**, and we have seen a growing number of what I would describe as sort of ‘smear tactics’ by our opponents in various governments,” saidDavid Suzuki Foundationcommunications director Jim Boothroyd.

“Those have often been very ad hominem and pointed at David Suzuki. So he felt that it would be best for him and best for the Foundation if he stepped down from our board, while continuing to do a whole lot of volunteering work for us.”

In an open letter released on Friday, the 76-year-old Suzuki describes feeling compelled to speak out against the type of “bullying” faced by charitable organizations across the country.In addition to targeted attacks by **:{Conservative senators}:** investigating environmental groups, the federal government has now committed $8 million in the budget to crack down on charities engaging in political activity.

“I want to speak freely without fear that my words will be deemed too political, and harm the organization of which I am so proud,” Suzuki wrote.

“I am keenly aware that some governments, industries and special interest groups are working hard to silence us. They use threats to the Foundation's charitable status in attempts to mute its powerful voice on issues that matter deeply to you and many other Canadians.”

In a CTV interview, Suzuki pointed a finger at Sun Media for calling his work and his foundation “too political”, and Sun Media’s **Ezra Levant** responded with a segment on his show The Sourcebacking up their claims about his “uncharitable behaviour”.

Levant and Sun Media editor Lorrie Goldstein said many of Suzuki’s actions could be considered overtly partisan, citing a Liberal party video featuring the famous environmental advocate. As the “public face” of the Suzuki Foundation, opponents say these types of actions are outside of the limits for political activity by charities, set by the **Canada Revenue Agency**.

But Boothroyd says it’s important to separate Suzuki’s personal statements and appearances from the work of the Foundation.

“In the last few years, in particular in the last year, his comments have attracted more intense criticism. And when they do, that criticism has been leveled at the Foundation,” he said.

“People do not see often a separation between the man and the foundation that he helped create.”

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context: grist

In part, Vancouver is just lucky. British Columbia is rich in hydroelectric power, so keeping the lights on in all those coffee bars pumps a lot less CO2 into the atmosphere than in cities where power comes from fossil fuels. It also helps that Vancouver has a relatively mild West Coast climate. Inland cities like Minneapolis and Denver, with more weather extremes, need more fuel for heat in the winter and electricity for air conditioning in summer.

But Vancouver has also made a lot of smart public policy choices. Even as the Canadian national government backslides on environmental protection, Canada’s more liberal localities are making progress. Ontario banned coal-fired electricity this year.

Vancouver has been committed to sustainability, and creating policies to advance that goal, for several decades. Mayor Gregor Robertson keeps raising the bar on his predecessor’s successes. He developed the comprehensive “Greenest City 2020 Action Plan,” which lays down benchmarks that each sector of the city’s government must achieve.

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The David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) is a charity, based in Canada, which "work[s] with government, business and individuals to conserve our environment by providing science-based education, advocacy and policy work, and acting as a catalyst for the social change that today's situation demands." [1]

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Goals

The foundation lists its top goals as:

Hiring Edelman

In June 2008 the PR firm Daniel J. Edelman, Inc. announced that the foundation had hired it to "provide strategic advice specific to the Quebec market. Edelman's Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability practice in Montreal will provide insights on Quebecer's perceptions of environmental issues and counsel DSF on how to engage them and other decision-makers. ... To demonstrate their leadership and commitment to being a true partner, Edelman Canada (Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver) has become carbon neutral."[2]

People

Board of Directors

Honorary Board Members

Contact

Web: http://www.davidsuzuki.org

SourceWatch resources

External links

References

  1. ↑ ^Jump ^up to:1.0 1.1 About Us. David Suzuki Foundation. Retrieved on August 8, 2010.
  2. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Edelman Retained by David Suzuki Foundation to Provide Strategic Counsel in Quebec. CNW Group (June 11, 2008). Retrieved on August 8, 2010.

Articles

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bs?

Suzuki — voted one of CBC’s greatest living Canadians, the man most Canadian women told a Maclean’s poll they’d choose to be with on a deserted island, and now the first guest editor of The Vancouver Sun — is feeling guilty.  It’s not that he hasn't been trying hard all these years to save the planet:  He earned his PhD in zoology and set up the first genetics lab at the University of B.C., went from the halls of academe to the forest floor to face down clearcut loggers, fought against offshore oil drilling and continues his battle today against global warming deniers.

For the past 28 years, the 71-year-old Suzuki has thrived in his Yoda-like role as host of The Nature Of Things, the internationally acclaimed CBC TV series where he straddles the hard logic of the scientific method and the more evangelical mission as guru of the green.

Of late, people have been calling him Canada’s Al Gore,the U.S. vice-president and star of An Inconvenient Truth, the film that has seared global warming into the minds of politicians and the public. On a recent cross-Canada tour, where his speeches sold out, Suzuki had so many standing ovations he said he’s stopped counting them.

Suzuki has been on a roll of late. Yet what has this Canadian icon — and love or hate him, that is what Suzuki now is — feeling guilty is he's come face to face with his own environmental sin. All that success, which he carefully charts in his 16-page curriculum vitae, has come with a jet-setting lifestyle that’s put him on the road four out of five days this year. And that, he laments, has made him part of the global warming disaster he hopes to save us from.

“The amount of greenhouse gas generated by flying is just intolerable to me,” sighs Suzuki, sitting in his cramped, book-filled office of the David Suzuki Foundation, set up in memory of his father.

Our planet can absorb each person creating one tonne of carbon emissions from fossil fuels a year, he figures. The average Canadian now accounts for more than 20 tonnes. Yet he’s far, far beyond even that excess. Each round trip between Toronto and London, he estimates, creates about one tonne of greenhouse gases per passenger. So, Suzuki guesses, he’s over his limit by hundreds of tonnes.

Yes, he’s being buying carbon offsets, he says. But he’s now decided that’s no longer enough: Starting out his eighth decade, he’s decided he needs to be more in sync with the planet’s ability to absorb all his greenhouse gases, so this frequent flyer’s long-haul flights must be drastically cut.

“Every year since 1988, I’ve been going to Australia once or twice a year, because I love Australia. This last year I was there for two months and I said to my friends there, ‘I’m probably never coming back.’ It’s kind of sad in a way.”

Suzuki will still be doing his speaking circuits in North America, but he’s now “clustering” appearances in geographic areas, to cut down travel miles. And a Suzuki sighting in the flesh may be harder to come by in the future because he hopes to go digital.

“I’m saying now I’ll consider any invitation to speak, but only by video conference,” said Suzuki, who hastened to add he’s the first Canadian to own a Prius, beating out then-environment minister David Anderson. “And that’s had a very interesting effect. Nine out of 10 people immediately say, ‘We’re not interested.’ ”

Of course — as the author of more than 40 books and still counting, 18 honorary degrees and counting, more than 80 awards and counting, and the recipient of hundreds of requests a year to speak — Suzuki will likely remain Canada’s busiest septuagenarian for some time to come, even if he doesn’t get on quite so many airplanes.

By Suzuki’s own admission, his celebrity is rooted in being “a Cassandra or Chicken Little, warning about imminent disaster.” But before he found himself in that role, before a life that entails hobnobbing with the likes of Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio (who recently dispatched a Prius limo to Palm Springs so Suzuki could travel to Los Angeles for the actor’s climate-change documentary for PBS), there was a more innocent Suzuki, immersed in a more upbeat time.

Picture a swamp, outside a suburb of London, Ont., and a little boy who could never get enough of the bog behind his house. There had already been upheaval in his life. The boy’s parents, both Japanese immigrants, were victims of the Second World War internment of Japanese Canadians.

Eventually, after losing almost everything in that era’s bigotry and xenophobia, the Suzuki family left Vancouver for Ontario to make a better life for their children. While they never forgot the racism behind internment and what it cost them, they poured everything into their family’s next generation.

“I think my father lost faith in Canada over that,” Suzuki said. “When we moved out east he said to me, ‘To succeed in white society you had to work 10 times harder as a Japanese man.’ ”

But he smiles at the thought of those childhood days spent exploring nature with a mason jar. “Oh, I loved that swamp behind our house,” Suzuki recalls. “I’d come home absolutely soaked, and covered with mud, with jars with frog eggs and stuff and my mother never said, ‘Don’t come in, don’t dirty the house.’ She’d just bring me in, take my dirty clothes off and everything I showed her she treated as if it were a Nobel Prize-winning discovery: ‘Salamander eggs! Isn't that wonderful!’ ”

His father would take him out fishing and for long walks in the country. It didn’t always sit well with the elder Suzuki’s parents, who thought their eldest son didn’t make enough money to provide for his son. But Suzuki said his father gave him something more precious: “I credit my father with giving me this bond with nature and curiosity. He would have made a great scientist.”

That was the destiny — at least part of it — for his son.

There was a chance proffered to enter medical school, to be a doctor, an immigrant mother’s dream. But her strong-willed and stubborn son had another idea. Suzuki would be a geneticist — which involved studying the DNA secrets of fruit flies, not unlike the insects he collected back in the swamp.

“My mother wept for months,” Suzuki said. “She couldn’t see a son giving up a chance to be a medical doctor to study fruit flies.”

But he did, going to study in the U.S.

Then life changed forever. He read a book in 1962 that shook his — in fact the era’s — faith in the infallibility of science: Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s expose on the pesticide DDT and how it was poisoning the ecosystem from the bottom to the top.

“For me, Rachel Carson’s book was really a shock,” Suzuki said. “As I read the book, it was as if she was saying to scientists, ‘Look, you guys are clever, you can make something like DDT, but you forget the lab is not the real world.’ ”

The real world would soon involve moving back to Vancouver, to take up a post at UBC. He eventually opened UBC’s first genetics laboratory. Away from the microscope, he started dabbling occasionally in TV shows, taking on a sort of Mr. Wizard role in explaining the wonders of science to the university community on Sunday mornings.

The move came at the same time Greenpeace was being founded. It was a movement Suzuki watched from a distance. He still sported the brush cut and horn-rimmed glasses of a respectable man in academe.

Then, in 1968, came an invitation to teach at Berkeley, near San Francisco. And another epiphany.

“I came back [less than a year later] looking like a hippie.” he said. “It was a transfromation.”

And TV producers liked the new look: A top-notch academic who looked like a flower child yet had the easy confidence and silken voice to do television. Soon there were offers from the CBC and a goldern gig: host of The Nature of Things. Eventually, there was another life-altering moment. Either stay in the lab or evolve into something else altogether.

“In then end, I said to myself, ‘Look, Suzuki, there are a lot of people out there way brighter than you, but there aren’t many scientists willing to make an effort in the media.’ ”

And so he headed for the limelight. National television. He discovered that TV could be as powerful as any electron microscope.

“I never had a television as a kid,” he says. “I was blown away by its power.”

Today, Suzuki adds a new entry to his varied resume: guest editor for a day, of The Vancouver Sun. It’s the journalism world’s equivalent of getting the key to the city for a day.

But it is also an ironic return for Suzuki. About 20 years ago he used to write a science column for this newspaper, but was given his walking papers after being accused of writing too much about saving the environment and not about science.

“They called me a Charlie one-note,” recalls Suzuki, laughing at the memory. “People began to think I was on this constant theme. Which I was.”

The Vancouver Sun wasn’t alone in its view. Other newspapers dropped his column around the same time. Partly it was that as the recession hit, the environment was falling out of fashion. And part of it was Suzuki’s admitted lack of journalistic diplomacy. He criticized fellow journalists in his columns, business giants. His excoriation of the logging practices of the forestry industry made him enemies, even in the university where he credits tenure with helping him survive.

Suzuki may have been ahead of his time. Certainly, he believes if people had listened, the world would have a two-decade advantage in fighting climate change.

He was one of the first scientist/journalists warning people the Earth was a fragile and complex organism, essentially putting forth the Gaia theory, which holds almost everything is interconnected and man’s actions have consequences. Suzuki was also one of the first offering the dire warning that, short of nuclear Armageddon, global warming was emerging as the biggest threat to human beings’ survival as a species.

He still blames “the mainstream media” for not getting it.

“The media do science in a very glossy way,” says Suzuki. “It’s either, ‘Oh God, it’s Frankenstein!’ Or it’s, ‘This is wonderful we’re going to save the world and cure cancer,’ and all that, and not really getting down to to looking at what is science, and what are the problems and dangers.”

The “mainstream media” — he uses the term often — largely missed the first warning at the start of the 1990s about global warming. Even though half of the world’s Nobel Prize winners warned catastrophic consequence would result if greenhouse gas emissions weren’t capped, Suzuki believes the media preferred the more simple and superficial celebrity news: the trial of O.J. Simpson, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

When it did deal with global warming, he says, the issue was muddied by editors giving those who disputed global warming, largely funded, he alleges by the fossil-fuel industry, far too great a voice.

“The media fell into a trap,” Suzuki said. “Most scientists were saying global warming is happening, we’ve got to do something. But in the name of balance [editors decided] we’ve got to put someone in from the other side. So we had to have balance by having a nay-sayer there.

“And so to the public, it was, ‘Well, the scientists haven’t made up their minds, they’re still arguing. So we don’t have to worry about it.” So why, given such a critique, is he being The Sun’s guest editor?

“Why would The Sun ask me?” muses Suzuki. “That’s just a radical thing. I guess if you get Bono doing The Independent, why not?

“But from my standpoint it’s the opportunity to shape, perhaps, the articles that come out, maybe get a couple of topics that are interesting to me. One day is nothing, this will come and go. But if there’s carry-through, you know, if someone says, ‘Remember that Suzuki said there’s a story here....’

“Just shifting that perspective a little bit will be really wonderful.”

And what of the planet’s fate he is asked, just as he heads of to The Vancouver Sun’s studio, for a photo shoot. “I never say I’m optimistic or pessimistic. I just say I’m hopeful.” mcernetig@png.canwest.com

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