David Suzuki: A voice of reason

David Suzuki, environmental activist. David Suzuki, force of nature. David Suzuki, one smart dude. Any of these descriptions would have worked as a headline on this post.

I had the distinct pleasure last night of listening to Suzuki, a 72-year-old award-winning scientist and human rights advocate from Vancouver, British Columbia, during a World Affairs Council of Oregon program. The third of four speakers in this year's International Speaker Series, Suzuki exuded an everyman vibe with his open-collar shirt, featuring an iconic salmon, khaki pants and black loafers; his wavy white hair, goatee and glasses; his humor, energy and arms-spread-wide passion for his topic: "The Climate Crisis."

From my second-row seat just to the speaker's right (thanks to The Oregonian for being a series sponsor), I had a great view of this remarkable man, a third-generation Japanese-Canadian who lived in an internment camp as a boy during WWII and yet went on to a distinguished career as a geneticist, author of 43 (43!) books, recipient of 20 honorary doctorates, and the host of several long-running and widely acclaimed series on science for PBS, The Discovery Channel, CBC Radio, among others.

While I respect where environmentalists are coming from, I'll admit that I often dismiss them as single-minded zealots who put trees and critters above the very real needs of people, especially in developing countries. Suzuki made me rethink my bias. During an hourlong speech, he eloquently made the case that: (1) we need to do a complete flip in putting the planet's health ahead of this "thing" we call the global economy; and (2) we need to seize the opportunity during this global economic crisis to make dramatic, lasting changes to lighten our carbon footprint, wean ourselves from fossil fuels, and create green jobs and green, renewable energy.

"When the economy is in trouble," he said, "we let nature pay the price." We let corporations off the hook by relaxing environmental regulations when we should instead be tightening them for the sake of cleaner air, water and soil for future generations. "This crisis," he said, "should be an enormous opportunity to get things right."

I can't do justice in this short space, but these were among his major points:

-- We've been living on our capital, not our interest, for too long. We need to ask: How much growth is enough? Are we happier with all this stuff? "We are altering the planet in ways never seen before in the planet's 3.9 billion years."
-- Humans evolved from their lowly status as naked apes not because of innate strength, speed or other physical attribute, but because our brain allowed us to develop foresight, the ability to imagine what the future would be like if we acted --or not.
-- As recently as 1900, most of humanity was engaged in farming, which meant people understood their dependence on the natural world. Now, most of us live in urban areas, disconnected from the places and processes that produce our food and oblivious to the environmental damage done to our forests, oceans and biosphere.
-- Mixing science and technology too often brings unintended consequences along with new insights into the laws of nature. DDT killed insects but it also decimated fish and birds (notably bald eagles) that ingested the deadly chemical, and taught scientists about "biomagnification," the process, in an ecosystem, in which a higher concentration of a substance in an organism is obtained higher up the food chain.
-- Life has flourished because of genetic and ecosystem diversity, yet we are trying to impose "a single monolithic structure called the global economy." Humans could stand to learn a thing or two by studying how nature has adapted to challenges over these past nearly 4 billion years.
-- To ensure our survival, we need to abandon the idea that growing the global economy takes precedence. It's taking care of nature that should be our bottom line. "We're animals, and we need clean air, clean water and clean food that comes from the earth."
-- As we seek to tranform our society through green jobs and green energy, we need to ask if development proposals move us toward or away from a shared vision of a locally sustainable economy and environment. "What do you want to see within a generation?"

Previous speakers, economist Paul Krugman and journalist Fareed Zakaria, evidently painted discouraging scenarios of the global economic crisis and international politics. Suzuki, at times, cited statistics that left the crowd seemingly stunned, pondering explosive population growth and the rate at which we have squandered our resources. Yet, he admonished us to keep working toward solutions and ignore the naysayers.

"I tell people to shut up and go away -- you've given up," he said, his voice rising. "We can't give up. The future I see for my grandchildren is what motivates me...I want to be able to say I did the best I could."

Read more about Suzuki on OregonLive.com.

The secrets of Sand Lake

Little over a month ago, my wife and I spent Valentine's Day weekend at the coast with our dear friends from college.

On Sunday morning they suggested a short hike at Whalen Island, near Pacific City. Within the hour, there we were, walking peacefully on a trail framed by Sitka spruce, Douglas fir and which led to a pristine estuary populated by no one by the four of us and a few shorebirds. As I took in the view -- imagine a flat expanse of sand remembling salt flats -- I could hardly believe that I was soaking up the sun in a T-shirt and shorts on the Oregon Coast in the middle of February, a place and time when you'd normally be pelted by windblown rain.

It was magical.

So imagine my surprise and pleasure when I saw that very same place splashed across the front page of this morning's newspaper. Reporter Abby Haight and photographer Torsten Kjellstrand did justice to the place, as you can tell from this excerpt, the photo above and a video you can see at www.oregonlive.com/environment.

SAND LAKE -- Sleet pelts the mud flats at Whalen Island as dawn gives way to gray morning.

A great egret, shimmering white, hunts the tidal channel at low tide. Goldeneyes in striking black and white paddle nearby. A belted kingfisher scouts for breakfast from a spruce branch.

Wild things rule Whalen Island in winter. But the small hump of sand south of Tillamook is an emblem to human intervention and governmental cooperation. It remains one of the most pristine tidelands in Oregon -- thanks to the human conviction that luck will pay out.

Thirty years of living in Oregon and I'd never even heard of Whalen Island and the Clay Myers State Natural Area (although, as a reporter, I did know Clay Myers as the state treasurer). Thanks to a voter-approved referendum 10 years ago, the state now uses lottery money for purchase and preserve parks.

Along with legalizing medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide, I'd say this is one of the smarter things Oregonians have done with their votes in the past decade. Go visit. You'll love it.

Majesty: Our national parks

America's best known and probably most accomplished maker of documentary films -- Ken Burns -- popped in to The Oregonian yesterday for a short visit that made me realize how long it's been since I camped or even hiked in a national park or forest.

Sure, I do some long weekend runs in a local state or city park. But running on a heavily used trail is far different than the totality of experience in a grander, larger setting -- the sweet smell of trees, the panorama of a meadow, the chirping of invisible songbirds, the utter silence and black darkness of a night sleeping beneath the stars.

Even speaking off the cuff, Burns displayed an intriguing mix of intelligence, eloquence and wit during his half-hour chat. Accompanied by his longtime colleague, Dayton Duncan, he spoke with great affection about the history of our country's 58 parks and "the emotional archaeology" they unearthed in making their film, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea." The six-part series will air this fall on PBS.

"Nearly everyone in our film, including historians explaining this stuff, had connections with a park that woke them up, that set them on the path where they're going," Burns said. For him, it was recalling the memory of being a first-grader when his dad woke him up at 4 a.m. -- the first time he'd ever awoken in the middle of the night -- to take him camping at Shenandoah National Park outside Baltimore. Filming at California's Yosemite National Park reminded him "I'd had this treasure, focused on being with my dad."

Duncan said the appeal of the national parks is that "they belong to everyone and that they are a legacy that gets built up over time to get passed down, to be used and enjoyed now but also preserved, unimpaired, for people who aren't yet here."

It's inspiring to realize there was no top-down master plan in Washington, D.C., that led to creation of the national park system. Instead, it was bottom-up; the parks came into being one by one, as locals became passionate about saving the places they loved so much so others could love them too.

"That's a repetitive theme (in the film)," Duncan said, "but with different characters."

The film begins in 1851, but the first national park -- Yellowstone -- wasn't created until 1872. The Grand Canyon would have become the second in 1882 but, amazingly, strong local resistance squelched that effort (and again in 1886 and 1887) on grounds that grazing, mining and logging activities should be maintained. Not even President Theodore Roosevelt -- our best-known environmental president -- could make it happen. It wasn't until 1919 that the Grand Canyon finally became a national park. The irony? Arizona now calls itself the Grand Canyon State.

Tensions remain today over conflicting uses, ranging from wilderness to snowmobiling, something that Burns traces to "those American impulses that are extractive and acquisitive."

For all the majestic scenery that the parks conjure up today, you wouldn't think they have played an important role in our economy. Yet, in the midst of our contemporary economic crisis, Burns reminded us that one of first successes of FDR'S New Deal was in the national parks with the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

"Within three months, a thousand camps were up and running and young men were sending money to their families," Burns said. "They were making $30 a month and sending $25 to their families." The dignity on the faces of these workers was palpable, he said, and a reminder that these men, while building all sorts of projects in our parks, were also building human happiness.

As a creature of the city who spends way too little time communing with nature, I can't wait to see the documentary.

Check out The Oregonian's Q&A with Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan here.