Green Options

Population control is an issue that no-one wants to talk about - even the environmental leaders. Why has this become such a poisonous topic when it is so clear that it is needed to avoid catastrophic resource depletion?

When it comes to the environment, I’m all about doing. I try not to worry about the things I’m not doing yet or judge others for the things they’re not doing. My theory, since I started making changes has been A Little Greener Every Day. Start where you’re at, and grow greener daily.

David Suzuki’s Green Guide written by ecologist David Suzuki and environmental lawyer David R. Boyd is a book all about what individuals can do, starting right where they’re at, to be greener.

The blurb on the front cover of the book reads, “How to find fresher, tastier, healthier food, create an eco-friendly home, make sustainable transportation choices, reduce consumption, and be a green citizen.”

I would describe the book as “Greening Your Life 101 for Regular Folk.” Chapter 1 begins with the question “What Can I Do?” and the book goes on to discuss what people can do, what others already are doing, and lists lots of resources.

It starts out, as any book on changing environmental habits should, with explaining the environmental problems that are prevalent today. Focusing on America’s contributions to the problem, it calls for a reduction of North Americans’ ecological footprint by at least 75% if a sustainable future is to be obtained. That’s a tall order.

The guide is hopeful though, and says that “after a destructive period of human arrogance” we are now in a “time of transition between the industrial era and the sustainability era.” I like the sound of that. The authors believe that “people’s values are evolving rapidly” and provide a blueprint so that people’s actions can reflect their rapidly evolving values.

For someone to appreciate a book (or any expressive work for that matter), to “enter into” it fully the way William Blake described the process, there has to be some connection made between the work and the person. Even if the writer is as gifted a storyteller as Dickens, Dostoyevsky, or Stephen King, the work will never speak to you if it does not hook your interest somehow. If you are not open to what it has to say, you will never hear its message.

The same holds true for nature. If you are preoccupied or in a bad mood, a spectacular sunrise will not set you on fire, a wood thrush’s haunting song will go in one ear and out the other, and a vortex of wind-whipped winter snow will not set your spine a-tingling. If some place or thing does not “do it” for you, or if your “doors of perception” are not “cleansed” and open (Blake again), then you will remain blind to nature’s wonders.1

Now, this essential requirement of “mutual affinity” can either save or damn a book. And the best thing about a collection of nature essays like When the Wild Comes Leaping Up: Personal Encounters with Nature is that you have many different doorways to enter into the work and then connect with it. Or you will end up walking down a lot of dead-end hallways.

Editor David Suzuki brings together very personal pieces from some heavy hitters in the eco-literary world, including Diane Ackerman, Bill McKibben, Wade Davis, and Margaret Atwood. Each author explores some important way that he or she has connected with nature, leading to the reflective musing that is the stock in trade of nature writing. Sometimes these stories will draw you in and hold you breathless; other times they will leave you wondering why some people bother to share their ramblings with the world…and get paid for it!

When the Wild Comes Leaping Up, then, is as variegated and dappled as nature itself. Some pieces will strike you as arid deserts devoid of life while others will be like tropical rainforests teeming with more species than you can count.

When it was first published in 1997, David Suzuki’s The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature provided an insightful, heartfelt commentary on the dangers that humanity was facing and creating as a result of its disconnection from the natural world. And it seems that his pleas did not go unheard, for the book did quite well, selling over 100,000 copies in the age before “green” was trendy.

A decade later, Suzuki, with Amanda McConnell and Adrienne Mason, has updated and expanded his work in order to strengthen his case with the most recent scientific data and to tailor his argument to even more alarming conditions on Earth. Indeed, despite a growing focus on the environment, we are probably more out of balance now than when The Sacred Balance was first published. “More than ever,” Suzuki writes in the introduction, “we need agreement about what humankind’s real bottom line is, and achieving that agreement remains the primary goal of this book.”1

What do you love about nature? What place, animal, thing, or experience opened your eyes to the sacredness of the natural world? Who in your life provided a role model for stewardship, activism, or scholarship? Why on Earth do you give a hoot about this planet Earth?

In A Passion for This Earth, edited by Michelle Benjamin and published by Greystone Books and the David Suzuki Foundation, twenty of the biggest movers and shakers in the fields of writing, science, and social activism come together to explore these questions. At the same time, each writer seeks to continue the multifaceted approach to making positive change begun more than fifty years ago by David Suzuki, Canada’s foremost environmentalist.

The book is very reader-friendly and engaging, and the obligatory instances of fêting Suzuki that pop up are not gratuitous, awkward, or irrelevant. Instead, all of the individual pieces coalesce as the writers express their personal perspective on nature and environmentalism. The book’s title may have you suspecting a mélange of ooey gooey green effusions–you know, the sort of stuff I generally tend to write. But what the book delivers is a truly enlightening anthology addressing four different topics relevant to Suzuki’s legacy: “Falling in Love with the Wild,” “Rise Up and Reclaim,” “Uncompromising Dedication,” and “Travels with David Suzuki.”

David Suzuki FoundationDavid Suzuki, Canadian scientist and long time environmentalist is on the road trying to put the environment back on the political agenda in Canada.

The "If YOU were Prime Minister…" tour began February 1. Suzuki and his team are travelling from coast to coast asking fellow Canadians their thoughts on the current state of affairs.

ZNet recently interviewed Suzuki about his efforts. A few things Suzuki would do if he

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