Ideas - Suzuki’s Survival Guide | A Warning

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

In 1989 David Suzuki hosted a radio series called “It’s A Matter of Survival,” which addressed the climate crisis head-on. He and other scientists look ahead 50 years into the future to paint a picture of what the world could be like if nothing is done to curb the human impact on climate change. The series galvanized the environmental movement in Canada, with more than 14,000 listeners writing letters of support. Nearly 40 years later, it's clear how shockingly prescient it was.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goldthar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all, true crime podcasts. But sometimes, I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast, Crime Story comes in. Every week, I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teachers' Pet, Bone Valley. The list goes on. For the insider's scoop, find crime story in your podcast. podcast app. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed. In our day-to-day life, especially on a beautiful day, it's hard to believe there's anything wrong. Yet the signs are all around us.

That's David Suzuki back in 1989. The warnings are clear, and they exist right now, not 50 years down the road. But it is going to take a drastic change. in the way we live to even begin to tackle something like global warming. Nearly 40 years ago, he hosted a radio series called It's a Matter of Survival, which addressed the climate crisis head on. It struck a nerve across the country. CBC received more than 14,000 letters,

more than any radio or TV series to date, from listeners wanting to know what they could do to help curb climate change. The warnings are coming fast and furious, and we had better listen, because what is at stake is how we will survive and if we will survive on this Earth. And more important, we had better listen because we are the cause of the problem. There's no time left to debate about whether there is a crisis, or how bad it will be, or how long it will take. And in the next 10 to 15 years, the planet's temperature will have. have increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also predicts that the Arctic will become ice-free by the end of this century. In 2023, which happened to be the most devastating year for forest fires in recorded Canadian history, we curated a series of Suzuki's radio work. Here's the first episode from that series. So our listeners, of course, will mostly recognize you from your TV career, as I do with the nature of things. But over your career, you've had a soft spot for radio. Why is that?

Well, I love radio. For me, it's a much more natural way of communicating. The thing I love about radio is we don't have to worry about visuals. We use everybody, every listener's brain, and I can construct the most incredible scenario. and everybody creates it in their own brain. Well, welcome back to radio, at least for this summer. Thank you so much. At the start, at the very start of your 1989 series called It's a Matter of Survival,

you say that when it comes to climate change, the warnings are coming fast and furious, and that, quote, what is at stake is how we will survive and if we will survive on this earth? You also say there's no time left to debate about whether there is a crisis or how bad it will be or how long it will take. Wow. And we're hearing the same message now still in 2023.

What's it like for you looking back and recognizing that the message has been consistent and all the more urgent and yet persistent? I guess the thing that really bothers me, we've just published a book called The Petroleum Papers by Jeff Dembeki. And what blew me away is that Edward Teller, you know, the father of the hydrogen bomb, one of the really great physicists in the past, in 1959, Edward Teller told the American Petroleum Institute, which is the American counterpart of CAP, the Canadian Association of Petroleum producers, all the big fossil fuel companies belong to this.

And he told them in 1959, that burning fossil fuels is creating greenhouse gases that will warm the planet and if we continue on the trajectory in 1959, that by the year 2000, it could be catastrophic. So the fossil fuel industry has known. We've known about the impact of greenhouse gases since the 1800s, for heaven's sake. This is not a new area like genetics. This is an old area. And, you know, the science has been in all this time. But to me, the thing that makes me angry is that the fossil fuel industry knew the impact of their product. And they had ample warning to begin a transition to or a different way of using fossil fuels. But the name of profit trumped everything. That's the tragedy. And you know, as a biologist, I think of our species

in really the evolutionary context. And all of the indications now clearly show that that humans evolved in the great grasslands of Africa 150 to 200,000 years ago. And when you try to imagine what the great plains were like 150,000 years ago, they were filled with animals in abundance and diversity beyond anything you would see today on the Serengeti. And, you know, if we were transported back in a time machine

and looked down, we'd have to look really hard to find those clumps of three, four, or five of those two-legged, furless apes. And that was us. And you've got to admit, holy cow, we weren't very impressive. We weren't very big. There were many of us. We weren't fast or strong or we didn't have special senses. You know, I'm sure the other animals, when we walked by, didn't hug their children and say,

shh, don't get them angry. They're going to take over the planet. I mean, what the hell did we have going for us? And of course, the answer was that one and a half kilogram organ buried deep in our skulls. It was a human brain that was really the key to our enormous success. And foresight was our great advantage over all of the other animals on the planet. We have a sense of a future as no other creatures do. We have the capacity to affect the future by what we do in the present.

look ahead, see where the dangers lie, see where the opportunities are, and then act accordingly. That's been our great advantage that got us to where we are now. And for over 50 years, the leading scientists of the planet, armed with supercomputers, have been acting in the best tradition of our species, looking ahead, seeing where we are in great danger, seeing where huge opportunities lie by taking the right path. And for over 50 years, we've been turning our backs on the survival strategy of our species because profit, because of the, you know, we have people who are elected to lead us, and they can't even tell us the truth that we're in a crisis, that we have an emergency,

and that we have to pull out all stops. But is there, I'm just curious if, you know, if you think there's a fundamental, like you say we have the capacity, we have the foresight. Is there a fundamental flaw in the human species that makes us incapable of action on such a large scale? No, I think that it's got, well, the planet has been so abundant that we've been able to act without thought about the global consequences of what we're doing. We're still basically a tribal animal.

You know, we think locally. But I think the big problem now is we're too smart for our own good. We have created institutions and systems to manage the way we interact with each other and our transactions and so on. We have an economy. We have political structures. They're all based on the notion of our supremacy. we are now in charge of everything. And nature, the foundation of our lives, nature has no place in the systems we've constructed. You know, I tell people, politicians and economists, what is the most important thing every human being on the planet needs?

And very few of them will give you an answer that any child would give you in a minute. They go, oh, well, they're thinking jobs, money, the economy. I say, Mr. Economist, if you don't have air for four minutes, you're dead. If you breathe polluted air, you're sick. So sure, you know, and humans don't make clean air. We receive it as a sacred gift from nature. Don't we have a responsibility? And that's what's missing in all of this.

We think we can go out and do it, we want and oh, we've got a problem, we've got to clear that up later. But there's no sense of responsibility for receiving the air, the water that recycles over and over across the planet, the food that we eat from the soil. So let's talk about that sense of responsibility. Let's just harken back to your series in 1989, where you interviewed all kinds of people who were featured in that series. One of them was a, well, there were several political heavyweights, including Environment Minister Lucien Boucher back then,

who was Minister under Mel Rune's Conservative government. And at the time, he said, if we don't move away from fossil fuels, we're creating a disaster scenario for the survival of our species. That kind of language, as you say, seems pretty extreme now coming from a politician. How do you maintain any sense of hope, given the absence of that kind of messaging from our leadership?

Well, you know, Bouchard was, it is incredible to listen to him today. You go, oh, my God, is he ever radical? But he nailed it. And, you know, Brian Mulroney presided over the first big international meeting about the atmosphere in 1988 when he was reelected. He opened the conference. They had, they had cabinet members from over. Over 40 countries in the world, 300 delegates,

the climatologist Jim Anson was there, Stephen Lewis chaired the sessions, Gro Harlem Bruntland from the Prime Minister of Norway, gave the keynote address. The delegates were so alarmed at the threat of climate change that at the end of the conference, the press release said, we are performing an experiment with the planet, our home,

and called for a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and 15 years. If we had done it, if we had taken that morning seriously, as Bouchard was saying as well, we wouldn't have the problem we have today. We could have done it. And politics intervened. Where do you find any sense of hope today, given all of this? Well, my hope is, and I've been shocked at how generous the planet has been. I'm just amazed that Earth, Mother Earth, has been so generous. She has absorbed what is far beyond a caring capacity of the planet. My hope is, the change is coming. And it's being driven now by the reality that nobody pays attention to people like me, but Mother Earth is hammering you. You know,

whether Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, wants to or not, her Mother Earth is telling her her province is on fire. And if you want to deal with this, you're going to have to. And when you look at the local grassroots level, all kinds of things are happening. But we need leadership at the big level, at the provincial level, at the federal level, to make big decisions. And that's not happening. So looking back over your career, and in this retrospective, specifically of your radio work, We have a few episodes that the capture, you know, your longstanding delight in the natural world. How important is it for us to connect with that sense of wonder? Well, I think without that, one doesn't really understand how fundamentally connected we are.

And I'm glad you raised that. If we don't have a sense of wonder, we don't have that spiritual connection. and I think that that's what's needed. We need to elevate nature above us. We think we're so goddamn important. We're at the heart of everything. And when you have people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, you know, very successful in the economy.

But basically they've given up on the planet. They want to go to Mars or somewhere else. I mean, what? How ludicrous to think that we're so important. We've got to keep the species going by escaping our home. other earth. Without that sense of wonder, we don't have a sense of obligation or responsibility. This is why for the past 40 years I've been so indebted to indigenous people who have shown me so much who have taught me, you know, the seven generation perspective. You think not only on

seven generations of your ancestors, but ahead on seven generations of, to come, of your people, of the trees, seven generations of the trees, that's long-term thinking that is needed in our actions today. You know, and during the COVID lockdown, this is one of the great gifts that I got. I happened to be at my cabin, locked down with my youngest daughter and her husband and three young children,

for six months of total isolation. And every morning, I had the morning shift. I was up at six every morning. The kids came in like clockwork at quarter to seven, and I dressed them, fed them. And every morning, rain or shine, out we went. And, you know, an old timer like me, I look out and I go, oh, God, the oceans are a mess.

Look at where they've clear-cut that patch over there. The kids don't know that. Every time, you know, you wouldn't believe what happened when I found a salamander. You'd think I'd won a Nobel Prize. You know, when we caught fraud. and collected frogs eggs, the world still is wonderful. It's amazing.

And they gave me the great gift of seeing the world through the eyes of a child. And it is still wondrous. And it only made me more determined to continue to do what I've been doing and saying, look, we've got to change. We've got to protect something for our children and grandchildren. Well, what do you hope listeners will gain from this retrospective of your radio work? Well, I'm just astounded and I'm grateful to you

and Nicola Lixich for rerunning these programs. And what it shows, I think, is that the warnings have been there and we've run out of time. We've got no excuse now. And we need radical

change. And we need to simply call an emergency. This is now an emergency. Look what we did with COVID. You know, I've spent years and years going to Ottawa, begging for a few million dollars to support indigenous people, to support public transit. And every time we go, it's, oh, God, that's too expensive. We can't afford it. COVID comes, and suddenly not tens of millions, but tens of billions, start being spent without any calls

about, oh, my God, these irresponsible politicians, it was an emergency, and we had to respond to it as an emergency. Well, please, to the listeners, we are in a crisis now, and we have to act. David Suzuki, you're now retired from the nature of things at the age of 87. What are you doing with the rest of your life? I haven't retired. I've just changed jobs. I'm spending as much time as I can now with my grandchildren, who are the greatest gift I've ever received, and seeing the world through their eyes and being activated by the need to say things and try to get people to act to protect the future for our children and grandchildren. So they are my magic fuel that keeps me going and they are the joy of my life.

And we're just joyful you joined us. Thank you so much, David. Thank you. But thank you so much for rebroadcasting these shows. It's our pleasure, and I think our audience will agree. Thanks a lot. We're starting a retrospective of David Suzuki's Radio Archive with the first episode of his series, It's a Matter of Survival, from 1989.

Listen carefully, because this is the world our children may inherit. In New Zealand calling Canada. Auckland, New Zealand calling Canada. I have an emergency request on behalf of the New Zealand government Please, anyone listening? Desperately in need of antibiotics, desperately in need of antibiotics, millions are sick in refugee camps here. Camps bursting with refugees from flooded South Pacific Islands,

repeat millions sick in refugee camps. Please contact the Red Cross if you receive this message. Auckland, New Zealand, calling Canada. Auckland, New Zealand, calling Canada. I'm Jody Jacobson. I'm a senior researcher at World Watch Institute in Washington, D.C. In the 1980s and the 1990s, when I was quite young, I remember that the whole issue of global warming was quite controversial. And there was a great deal of debate between policymakers and scientists on how far we should go, given the relative scarcity of data and the uncertainties involved with global warming and sea level rise.

and the whole issue of how atmospheric gases were changing the Earth's temperature and its climate. And I realize now, sitting here, I'm looking back in 2039, that we were foolish not to act. We continued on the path that we had taken of burning fossil fuels. We didn't move quickly enough to renewable energy or really improve energy efficiency quick enough. And I think if we had known then what we knew now, which of course is never the case, we would have moved more quickly to try and prevent some of this global warming from taking effect. I'm David Suzuki. As far-fetched as it may seem now in 1989,

that may be the real world in only 50 years. In our day-to-day life, especially on a beautiful day, it's hard to believe there's anything wrong. Yet the signs are all around us, a mysterious hole that has appeared in the ozone layer, oil spills, thousands of seals dying in the North Sea, the burning Amazon rainforest, last summer's drought. NASA scientist James Hansen told the American Senate a year ago that global warming has already started. The warnings are coming fast and furious, and we had better listen, because what is at stake

is how we will survive and if we will survive on this earth. And more important, we had better listen because we are the cause of the problem. There's no time left to debate about whether there is a crisis or how bad it will be or how long it will take. Dr. Stephen Schneider is an expert on climate change. I just finished writing a book, and the title to this is global warming and the dedication was to my kids.

And I said, I only hope that they're more ingenious in figuring out how to adapt to the greenhouse century than we were in preventing it. Dr. Stephen Schneider believes that the so-called greenhouse effect is not only with us, but has been building since the Industrial Revolution. What we know in 1989

about heat trapping the property of gases, we already knew in 1889. We know that carbon dioxide and other gases can let sunlight through more easily and trap infrared heat near the surface, and this is not controversial. That's what led to the famous expression the greenhouse effect.

This, by the way, is not a scientifically controversial proposition, but as well validated by literally billions of observations from space and hundreds and thousands of aircraft measurements and so forth. So we know that the heat-trapping properties of the atmosphere keep our surface warm and, in fact, make this planet habitable. We also know that we've increased an important greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by 25 percent since the Industrial Revolution. another very important gas, methane, we've doubled since the Industrial Revolution, and then we've added chloroflorocarbons, which never existed before people came along. And if you take all of these gases plus some others together, it adds up to about one degree worth of warming that we should have had since the Industrial Revolution. Well, we know we've had about half that so far.

There's a big debate over whether that's an overestimate on the part of our science or whether there are other factors going on. And quite simply, that debate isn't going to be resolved for about 10 to 20 years, more data. Problem is to resolve that debate means performing the experiment on a certain laboratory named Earth with us and other living things in the cage. So we already know enough to know that heat-trapping properties of gases are there, that gases are increasing, and that we're going to heat the planet. How to translate that into how many degrees of temperature, 1 or 5 or 10,

whether it's 2039, 2089, or 2139, we don't know, whether it's wetter in the east coast of North America and drier in the interior or wetter in Asia and what that does to sea levels. These are areas that are much more debated than the idea of change. But the other thing that we know, and I think virtually for sure, is that there's much better than an even-bending odds chance that by 2039, the world will be in a climatic regime that's unprecedented. in the era of civilization. That means more than, say, two degrees Celsius warmer than it was during the average of the past several thousand years. And that rate of change is what has most of us concerned. It isn't just the magnitude. Nature changes the climate, you know, a degree in a millennium from time to time, five degrees over five to ten millennia, because the ice age is about five degrees colder than the present. And in about five to ten thousand years,

the ice age warmed us up by five degrees C. On average, it warmed up more like 10 or 20 in Canada, and the mile-high ice sheet disappeared. But the point is that the forests moved literally thousands of kilometers in response to this. The sea levels rose 100 meters. Species went extinct. Others evolved. It revamped the ecological face of the planet,

took 10,000 years to do it with 5 degrees. Now, what are we talking about? The low end of what humans are talking about is one degree warming over the next century, the high end is 5 to 10. So we're looking at changes that are degrees per century, whereas the natural rates are degrees at most per millennium. So we're at least 10 times faster. And the scary worst case scenarios such as our 2039 one, those rates are more like 100 times faster than nature. And it would be sheer arrogance for any scientists to tell you that they understand the distribution of effects that will occur, how diseases will change, the stresses

on ecosystems, sea levels, effects on crops, forest fires, all of these areas, water resources are going to be impacted. And the more rapidly the climate changes, the less easy it will be for us to adapt, because as adaptable as we are, we need time to know what's happening. And for nature, it's impossible. Simply things will go extinct in place unless we start becoming ecological engineers and transplanting them with who knows what consequences. This is the first episode of our series Suzuki's Survival Guide, a retrospective. We first broadcast it back in 2023. Find us on the CBC Listen app and wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Nala Ayyad. Personally, from CBC podcasts, allows you to get lost in someone else's life. From a mysterious childhood spent on the run, like mine in Runhydrub. to learning to laugh in the face of dementia in, let's not be kidding. Each season of personally invites you to explore the human experience in all its complexity, one story or season at a time. This is what it sounds like to be human. Find personally wherever you get your podcasts.

Back in 1989, David Suzuki hosted a radio series called It's a matter of survival. It's clear how shockingly prescient it was. This episode of ideas features excerpts from the very first episode of It's a Matter of Survival. I'm Jody Jacobson. I'm a senior researcher at World Watch Institute in Washington, D.C. One of the core factors in displacing people around the world has historically been and continues to be land degradation. And with global warming underway and things getting hotter and less, land drying out, we're seeing not only the displacement of people in once traditional areas of famine and desertification like Africa, but also on the Great Plains of the United States,

areas that we once considered the breadbasket of our world. We've also seen an increase in environmental refugees due to natural disasters because, as I mentioned with the increase in storm surges in the Miami area, the changing weather patterns has not only increased the likelihood of things like drought and storm surge, but also has increased their severity. I'm Joel B. Smith. I work at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of Policy Analysis. Fisheries have been significantly affected. Ocean fisheries have migrated northward due to the higher temperatures, and people are trying to make adjustments, either just traveling farther and fishing boats just to catch the fish they were used to catching or trying to change their dietary habits

to keep up with a rate of change. Inland fisheries have been, in some cases, more problematic because the fish can't migrate on their own, say from one lake to another, and people have been trying to respond with restocking fish and moving into northern areas, but they're, of course, running into problems in terms of what do you put where,

in the sense they're almost playing God and trying to figure what are the new ecosystems going to be like. The biggest problem here is that it's not that the climate that having warmed is now stopped warming. And then it's just a matter of us catching up and adapting. The problem is that it keeps warming. And because people did not take actions in the past to slow down emissions of greenhouse gases

and because we're continuing to burn fossil fuels and cut down whatever forests are remaining and using chloroflorocarbons, the rate of warming just keeps going, getting faster and faster. And it's hard enough for natural systems to keep up with a rate of warming of even one or two degrees of century. It's now becoming very difficult for man, which is one of the most adaptable, flexible creatures on the planet

to keep up with a rate of warming that we're seeing, and it's only going to become harder. The warnings are clear, and they exist right now, not 50 years down the road. But it is going to take a drastic change in the way we live to even begin to tackle something like global warming. The excess carbon dioxide that is causing the warming, comes from our cars and industry.

Last year's Global Atmosphere Conference in Toronto, aimed at a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2004. Yet some scientists claim that we would have to cut carbon dioxide emissions totally to prevent the nightmare world of 2039. Groups like the World Watch Institute say we have less than 10 years to turn things around. is it all too much for us? Dr. Steven Schneider. A lot of people say,

aren't there mechanisms in the system that could make you guys wrong? I mean, you're predicting three degrees warming in 50 years. How do you know it isn't going to be one? And indeed it might. In fact, I was talking to the U.S. State Department Undersecretary last year about the need for international taxes on fuels and so forth.

And he said, well, wait a minute, that's a pretty serious step. I mean, you guys could be wrong. I mean, couldn't there be a buffer? couldn't more water evaporate, make more clouds, more clouds are brighter, and that reflects away sun and so-called negative feedback. And I said, you're right. And he said, gee, you're pretty easy. I thought you're going to be a tough guy to debate with. I said, well, now, please tell me, what is the probability that this buffer is going to be out there? And he was a little unsure about that. I said, you think it's one chance in ten? Or how about one and three? He said, okay, I'll take one and three. I said, I'll do better than that. I'll give you one and two. I'll give you a 50% chance that we've overestimated it by a factor of two or three. It's about the most we could. And he said, okay, I said, good. Then you've got to give me a 50% chance that either we're right

or we've underestimated by a factor of two or three. Because clouds don't just get wider, which cools the planet. They can get taller, which warms the planet. Or if you warm the planet, there's organic matter in the soil, which through microbial action speeds up when it gets warmer. And then there's all this methane sitting under the tundra and off the continental shelves and off the slopes off Canada that can get dumped in. So we've got feedbacks both positive and negative unknown.

And the bottom line is that we're insulting the environment faster than we know what we're doing. So I said to the official, if you don't want to act, what you're really doing is taking a coin and writing one face on it, which says unprecedented climate change in the middle of the 21st century and flipping it, because that's the gamble that we're facing. Another example of the human tragedy involved here. My name is Randy Hayes. I'm the director of the Rainforest Action Network, which is an international environmental organization based in San Francisco, California. Back in 1989, we worked our tails off to alert people. Of course, if I were back there now, I would do it differently. But thinking back, we did virtually everything that we could, but it wasn't enough. We wanted more people to get involved. We called out to the governments. We called out to the corporations. we called out to citizens to rise up and take charge of the situation.

We told people that if we left the environment in the hands of environmental groups or in the hands of politicians, we were in trouble, that if we couldn't revitalize the sort of grassroots amateur, impassioned activist movement that began to surface even further back in the 60s and early 70s, then we probably wouldn't stand a chance. 50 years ago when I flew over the Amazon, you could see the front line of destruction. You could see where the commercial logging, the cattle ranching, the slash and burn agriculture,

was burning down the forest. But beyond that, you could still see a sea of green, that dense canopy, you know, with emerging flowers and all kinds of wildlife flittering through the canopy. And now you don't have that kind of canopy. You don't have a climax rainforest. You don't have a primeval, ancient, biologically diverse old-growth forest. what you have is a pine tree plantation. I'm David Suzuki.

It's really not surprising to hear people in 2039 talk about the loss of the rainforests. Right now, an area of tropical rainforests, the size of a football field, disappears every second. That's 100 acres a minute, an area the size of the Maritimes every year. And extinction goes hand in hand with rainforest destruction. Edward O. Wilson is a Harvard biologist who has spent a lifetime studying animals in tropical rainforests. By the most conservative estimates, we figure that they are disappearing at the rate somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times faster than occurred before humanity came along and started cutting the forest. and that is translatable into, I would say,

minimally 20,000 species a year going extinct. It seems to me that the great survival trait of our species has been the ability to think of a future and realize that we, by having a future, have options. We can determine the kind of future we go to by choosing among a number of options. The great ability of the brain, though, today in the 20th century, seems blind to the destructive path that we're on.

Why is it that on the one hand, you can say we can continue to extract essentially indefinitely if we go one way and we destroy forever if we go another way? Why can't we see that and do something about it? The short-sightedness and self-destructedness of our species, I think, is rooted in our basic human nature, which adapts us for short-term solutions. Human beings in most parts of the world

until historical times have been able to move on, either through Sweden agriculture in which they cut away a little bit of the forest, plant some crops, and then when that starts to wear down and nutrients move on to another part of the forest, or as an area becomes uninhabitable, like portions of the Middle East and Central America,

when the populations grow too dense and the resources are utilized too much, populations have always been able to move on. And that has been the general history of humanity, but we're up against the wall now. We really do have too many people. We've got 5.1 billion. We're heading for 11 billion. at equilibrium according to World Bank estimates.

And the world just can't take that number without our really producing the kinds of effects that are now becoming apparent, the global environmental changes in warming, in ozone depletion, toxic pollution, and finally in the destruction of the major habitats containing most of the biological wealth of the world. I think the reason

then that we are in trouble is that we are built to be short-term thinkers and short-term survivalist, and we'd better change that. If we could say that the world is going to get too warm to be comfortably sustainable, that the species are all going to become extinct in 10,000 years, then we wouldn't worry. I don't think I would worry. But we're talking now, not 10,000 or even 1,000, we're talking decades. And we're talking about a process, especially in species extinction, which is totally irreversible that's occurring right now and will cause immense damage during the next several decades. It's been said around in scientific circles that there are two aspects of global environmental change on which almost

everybody's agreed. One of them is the inevitability of global warming due to the greenhouse effect if we continue our present course. And the other is the ongoing process and inevitability of large magnitude of species extinctions if we go on destroying these environments.

So we have to start learning to think in somewhat longer timeframes if we care about our descendants and increasingly our own lives and we have to start thinking globally because what happens in the Amazon now, what happens on Madagascar, is increasingly going to have a direct effect

on what happens to us right here in North America. The imagery I like to use in describing what we are doing, particularly with the destruction of natural habitats, allowing it to occur, especially in the tropics, is that we are burning Renaissance, masterpieces in order to cook dinner. What we're doing is crazy. We're destroying this planet,

and we're not even thinking about our children in the process. You know, it's becoming more and more difficult to draw a line between the present and the almost unimaginable future we've been talking about. Everything in that future world of 2039 is beginning to happen now, yet we don't seem to recognize the signs. Are we hoping against hope that scientists are overestimating

or exaggerating what lies ahead for us? Dr. Stephen Schneider. There is a good, you know, even betting odds that we could be overestimating it. There's an equal odds that we could be underestimating it. And that, to me, is the scary part. So with that kind of prospect, we now ask what's worse, facing the future where we could have the possibility of unprecedented change without doing anything about it,

or making some investments now to slow it down with the possibility that those investments might very well not be as needed if it turns out that we've overestimated it. Given that there's lots of uncertainty, especially about the detailed distribution of where it's wetter and dryer and so forth, not so much over the magnitude and rate of change. That's what we know best, but about exactly how it manifests itself. That means that it's hard to know exactly how to adapt. So the message to that to me is do those things that slow down the rate. of change, thereby buying ourselves time to study, buying ourselves time to adapt, and buying

nature time to adapt more slowly. In other words, don't try to press it much faster than natural rates are. And do those things which not only buy time, but which help to solve other problems, should this whole heat-trapping business turn out to be, if you'll pardon me, an infrared herring, who cares? We won't have wasted our money. And the obvious set of candidates just jumps right up in front of us. Use energy more efficiently.

Don't lock in inefficient power plants in China, which is going to, A, cost them more money over 50 years, and B, pollute the world more, put in a 50% efficient power plant now instead of a 30% efficient power plant. Retool industrial machinery to be of the new modern variety, get the mileage standards and cars improved, cut out the fluorocarbons.

Every time we do those things, not only do we reduce the probability of catastrophic climate change, we reduce acid rain, which would help the relations between the U.S. and Canada or Scandinavia and Germany, or the Soviets and everybody else around the Arctic. It also reduces the health risks of air pollution in cities. It reduces the dependence on foreign supplies of energy. So there are four or five good reasons to invest in a strategic policy of energy efficiency, and of which climate change insurance is only one. So it seems to me those are the areas we concentrate on. And in my value

system, we know more than enough to state with full responsibility that there's a better than even money odds of unprecedented change that we can slow down. And that to me is what a prudent society does, especially when you can get lots of other dividends for your money. I'm John Last. As I look around this world of 2039 and look back to my youth in 1989, I am filled with sadness that the messages some of us tried to convey about the urgent need to change our ways went unheeded. And I guess we need to go back. We need to go back to 1989 and say all of this you take for granted will change. We'll change in your lifetimes, certainly your children's, in ways that will devastate

the dreams you had for your family and for your children. What might we have done? Because there was time in 1989, there was a strong environmental movement, but perhaps not strong enough, that was trying to raise the alarm. You know, what's happening, as you've said over and over again, is without precedent. What has happened, though, for 99.9% of human history, nothing seemed to happen. All of a sudden, now everything is happening, and it's happening within our lifetimes now. What's happened? I think the root cause of global change is.

three-fold. There are three things that work together. The first one is technology. We're using technologies that are cheap and abundant like coal or oil and gas, and we've had no price on the environmental degradation they cause. The second factor is affluence. Everybody wants more. Well, if you want more wealth, you use technology to get it. And if the technologies that you use are the cheapest ones that pollute and there's no charge for pollution, that's what people do. And the third factor is population. So what we have now, as this century comes to an end, is the confluence of an era of cheap fuels, a political system that doesn't charge the costs of environmental pollution because it's so-called externalized into the global commons, what the economists call it, and a world that's

very reluctant to want to say no to population growth because somehow that's cultural imperialism. Well, we can't have it both ways. We can't have unbridled wealth, unbridled use of cheap technology and lots and lots of people all using this stuff without feeding back on ourselves and putting a footprint on this planet so heavy that it's going to start making the very quality of life for which we use technology and affluence worse than it was. So the key then is how do we get smart? And to get smart in my value system is we become more efficient and we help provide resources to the populist countries so that they can get an increasing share of the pie But they don't use the cheapest, most polluting technologies, but the much more efficient and modern ones that are out there because those pollution effluence that they're going to put up there are going to not only affect them, but they're going to affect us.

So to me, there's good news in the greenhouse effect, and the good news is it's scary enough in at least 50% odds level that it might push us to do what we should have been doing all along, which is to make, development of the planet our number one priority. The new buzzword is sustainable development. I really believe that. And what that means is that we need to make the investments that are going to help bring down population growth rates in third world countries, help improve energy efficiency here and see to it that whatever kind of technology is locked in, say, the next 50 years in the developing countries, it's the least polluting and best kind of technology. And if that costs a little more capital up front, so be it. It's going to cost a lot of lot of money to raise the sea levels, move the grain belts around, and change disease vectors.

We're in an economic and an ethical issue right now. We've got time to avert substantial damage, but we can't do much if we don't move fast. I'm David Suzuki. There's an Indian saying, before making an important decision, reflect back on seven generations of our ancestors and ahead on seven generations of our children. We haven't been thinking at all, beyond immediate profit or convenience. We've got to stop this madness. Is it so difficult to realize

that we live in a finite world? That we can't continue to use our very life support systems, the air, the water, the soil, as our garbage can? What really terrifies me is the idea that we somehow as a species have a blind spot, that we can't recognize the potentially lethal warnings

all around us. Psychologist Robert Ornstein is author of the book New World, New Mind, a book that suggests we do have a fatal flaw. There's an old story among biologists. It's called the Boiled Frog

Syndrome. A frog will sit without complaining in a pot of water and in Fahrenheit it can be increased from a degrees to 150 to 160 to 170 to 180. Nothing happens. The frog doesn't do anything differently.

Nothing changes. Goes up to 190 to 200. But finally at 212, there's a state change. The water boils and the frog dies. The reason that this is, I think, an important example for our future is that we have been slowly, in some cases literally, with the greenhouse effect, in some cases figuratively, heating up the water around us.

Those people who have been sounding warnings about what we are doing are people who would be listened to, just as the frog would listen to someone as the temperature from the water increases from 160 to 175. If the frog could talk, he would say, there's no difference. It's slightly warmer in here, but I'm just as well off. If you say, if you keep increasing it at that rate, you will die. the frog will say we have been increasing it for a long time and I haven't died. So what? This is why our future is so unprecedented. This is why many of the warnings that many people,

even as recent as 20 years ago on Earth Day have made, are beginning to be recognized. It's basically that we do have a fairly sophisticated set of detection apparatuses all around the world to detect changes in CO2, changes that affect the greenhouse effect. We have many other ways to look at increasing population. We have many other ways to deal with the increasing effect of technology. But somebody has to say and to demonstrate that our situation is like the frog. It is time we stopped increasing the heat. And it's time we started to cool off in human terms.

in time we started to change. What is the flaw in the frog? The flaw in the frog is that he has never been in a situation where he was in boiled water. It doesn't happen in nature. So he has no built-in innate mechanism for getting out of it. So he doesn't need to avoid it, just as we don't need to, in our natural state, learn to deal with the consequences of a billion and a half people dying in 30 minutes. And yet many of the things we're talking about now are beyond inconceivable.

Whole cities poisoning their children as Mexico City is doing. Cities reaching a point of violence and despair is clearly something that humanity was never designed to deal with, but it is up to us to redo that design and to redo it very, very quickly. Next week on It's a Matter of Survival,

what will it take to prevent this future. Thanks to ham operators Bruce Roney, Roy Stokes, Roman Zarnik, Munir Nahas and Jack Kinch. Production assistant Steve Payne. Field producers

Lynn Glazier and Chris Groskirth of the program Sunday morning. Writers, Anita Gordon and David Suzuki. Technician Larry Mori. Producer Penny Park. Executive producer Anita Gordon.

Don't think in 1989. Foolish it seems now, that the great crisis that faced our world was nuclear warfare, bad as that is. That the great crisis that faced our world was possible annihilation by something as obvious as a bomb or a gun. What we've done to ourselves, we've done with in much less obvious ways. By the lifestyle we lived, we could have changed that. By the directions our political institutions took, we could have changed those. Today in 2039, we live in the world that we made. Back then in 1989, it was only scenarios.

It was only projections. If only people would have responded to believe the projections, to understand that these are not flights of science fiction or of fantasy. These are serious, sober-minded estimates that tell you how the world is going to change. I'm David Suzuki. Please join me next week, for it's a matter. of survival. This is the first episode of our series that we're calling Suzuki's survival guide a retrospective.

We first broadcast it back in 2023. In the next episode from the series, we'll hear from then-environment minister Lucien Bouchard. If you want to set up real solutions, you have to change our way of life. You have to think about energy, conservation, alternative form of energy. it's almost a revolution you have to do. And if we don't move now, there will be a disaster. We are dealing with the survival of the species. Special thanks to Kate Zeman of CBC Radio Archives.

Lisa Ayusa is the web producer for ideas. Technical production, Danielle Duval. Our senior producer is Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, And I'm Nala Ayyad.