Doom, gloom and hope David Suzuki ends his 'Nature of Things' career on both low and high notes By: Alan Small Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Apr. 5, 2023

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This article was published 05/04/2023 (890 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

David Suzuki has spent the past 44 years trying to explain the importance of science through a medium known as the idiot box.

The 87-year-old geneticist, who has hosted CBC’s The Nature of Things since 1979, has shown technological and scientific breakthroughs, tackled contentious subjects such as climate change and deforestation and studied the worlds of countless species of plants and animals, from polar bears to household pets.

It’s a show for the curious hosted by someone innately curious, and in his final episode of The Nature of Things, which airs Friday night, it ventures into the fascinating habitat of a uniquely Canadian species: Suzuki himself.

He resembles a hippie in footage in his early appearances on the show, wearing a headband to hold back unruly black hair while studying fruitflies in a lab at the University of British Columbia, where he headed its genetics department prior to becoming Canada’s most well-known scientific personality.

Suzuki’s hair is grey, yet still a bit unruly, in 2023, and he’s become an old dog struggling to learn new tricks, such as vlogging.

His shaky video, and the cameras operated by The Nature of Things crew, follow the subject to his longtime home on Vancouver’s seashore, where the apple trees and hedges in his backyard remind him of his father, and Suzuki’s two daughters, one of whom is Sarika Cullis-Suzuki, who will co-host The Nature of Things with Anthony Morgan next season.

Vancouver’s English Bay is also part of Suzuki’s ecosystem, and it’s where he interacts with friends and fans with one topic on his mind — climate change.

Suzuki and The Nature of Things have discussed changes in the earth’s atmosphere and their effects on nature for decades. In this swansong, Suzuki enlists singer-songwriter Neil Young, another warhorse of environmental activism, to help amplify how floods, forest fires and tornadoes are nature’s clarion call for humanity to act.

He applauds a new tune, Love Earth, which Young and his band Crazy Horse released in 2022, and Young’s touring plans that the rocker says will use no fossil fuels and will have a net-zero carbon footprint, including the food and beverages served at where he performs.

”The venues have these concessions and the concessions serve crap, and the crap comes from the factory farms,” Young tells Suzuki. “I will not play a note unless the place is ready.”

The Nature of Things has shown us the science of climate change in many of its past episodes, but in Friday’s finale, Suzuki investigates the Indigenous perspective of nature, where a First Nation’s culture that traces back centuries is jeopardized by colonial intrusion on animals, plants and water they’ve lived with all that time.

He admits it’s a subject he has lots to learn about.

“We know that science is powerful, yet Indigenous knowledge has to be paid attention to,” he says. “How do we bring them together?”

In this way, Suzuki looks at climate change through the lens of social sciences and the humanities, subjects some post-secondary institutions are trying to jettison, owing to the purported lack of value they offer students.

“We know that science is powerful, yet Indigenous knowledge has to be paid attention to… How do we bring them together?”–David Suzuki

During a conversation with Miles Richardson, an elder from Haida Gwaii who was president of the Council of Haida Nation, Suzuki describes humanity’s relationship with Mother Earth as a web, rather than a pyramid with people at the top with plants and animals below us to use as we wish.

Pull one strand and the web of interdependence falls apart, and we are noticing the repercussions of our interference.

“For me, it’s embodied in Mother Earth. If you think that the Earth is truly your mother, then you sure as hell wouldn’t treat it the way we’re treating it,” Suzuki says.

The first half of the episode focuses on the doom and gloom of climate change and its effects, such as the rising shorelines around the world caused by the melting of polar ice caps or droughts that threaten the water supply of cities such as Suzuki’s Vancouver.

The second half of the show looks at the climate-change macro problem through a micro lens and reveals people can make nature a better place.

Suzuki visits the Musqueam First Nation in Vancouver where scientists from the David Suzuki Foundation teamed with the band’s members and elders to reclaim creeks that once were home to thousands of salmon.

“If you think that the Earth is truly your mother, then you sure as hell wouldn’t treat it the way we’re treating it.”–David Suzuki

The work offers hope that people can turn the climate-change tide.

Whether that effort can grow across Canada, where greenhouse gases have long been a political hot potato, and without Suzuki’s weekly appearances on The Nature of Things, remains an unfinished experiment.

Alan.Small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @AlanDSmall

Alan Small
Reporter

Alan Small was a journalist at the Free Press for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, the last being a reporter in the Arts and Life section.

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