David Suzuki & Global Warming

David Suzuki and uncomfortable warming
Monday, February 25, 2008 at 10:44 PM Comments: 15Previous Post Next Post

If you listen to David Suzuki, you'd hear about how human activity is causing the Earth to warm up. Specifically, how a mere 30 million Canadians are supposed to shoulder a large amount of the blame.

His rhetoric has become increasingly heated, ironically.

Well, it seems that the heat generated by his latest comments has caused David Suzuki to throttle it back.


David Suzuki was embroiled in controversy over the last two weeks following repeated comments made to university students in which he declared not believing in the theory of anthrogenic global warming to be a crime, and that politicians ought to be imprisoned who do not follow David Suzuki's formula to save the planet.

The apparent shift from scientific theory to a state-sponsored religious orthodoxy became a flashpoint for a slew of editorials across the country denouncing Suzuki's comments.

For many columnists, Suzuki's comments represented confirmation of what they had long suspected -- global warming was no longer a matter of science, but of faith. And a dark form of faith, with inquisitions and imprisonment for those who exhibited less-than-acceptable zeal for the Environmental Word.

Though nowhere does it say this, I wonder if David Suzuki was feeling progressively more uncomfortable with the increased temperature. Even as the initial furor died down, references to Suzuki and his demand for jail terms for the unbelievers continued to appear in the media -- sometimes in a serious way, sometimes in a mocking tones.

Unless something was done quickly, that image of David Suzuki demanding that prisons be emptied of killers and thieves to make room for skeptics who drive SUVs (not what he called for, exactly, but these things grow in the retelling) would become indelible.

And so the next major announcement from David Suzuki speaks of taxes. Not higher taxes to shut down the carbon dioxide spewing economy, but lower taxes for all of us:

David Suzuki is trying to speak Stephen Harper's language, releasing a report Monday that argues a strong climate change plan could produce deep income tax cuts.

The well-known environmentalist and Simon Fraser University economist Mark Jaccard released a report Monday morning on Parliament Hill that outlines various options for Ottawa to implement a carbon tax or other ways of forcing polluters to pay for their environmental impacts.

The report argues that making polluters pay a fee for every tonne of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere could raise between $50-billion and $100-billion in revenue annually by 2020.

The report argues that most of that revenue could be used to greatly reduce personal income taxes.

Rather than devoting all the revenue to tax cuts, the report suggests some of the money be put toward renewable energy projects such as wind and solar power.

Suggests that some of the money be put into windmills?

Who are you and what have you done with the real David Suzuki?!

I'll leave the question of whether this idea seems credible. I won't even delve into the question of whether David Suzuki is being sincere when he says money ought to be put back into the economy, or even if he really believes there is any likelihood of money being available to put back in.

But I find the timing interesting. David Suzuki's middle initial is "T". Perhaps he was worried if people would wonder if it stood for Torquemada, the Dominican most identified with the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition. So out comes a report in which David Suzuki bangs on the "lower taxes" drum.

Go green and we'll all be rich!

Right. Sure. And if I'm as skeptical of your wildly optimistic economic theories as I am of your shrill environmental prophecies of doom, then what? Is there a wing of your prison those people too?

It'll take more than promising money you don't have to make people forget that you told Canadian youth to put the previous generation in jail.



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