If David Suzuki Were Prime Minister

Global Warming Issues Across Canada

David Suzuki says there are all sorts of solutions to the growing environmental crisis, but politicians aren't taking action. That's why, on February 1, Suzuki put the bus in motion, setting off on a 28-day, 50-stop cross-Canada tour to challenge Canadians to pressure governments to drastically curb big-industry emissions. The If YOU Were Prime Minister Tour has received standing ovations, from Newfoundland to Saskatchewan. After delivering speeches at sold out events, Suzuki asks the audience, "What would you do if YOU were Prime Minister?" The audience lines up to videotape its ideas, all of which are being uploaded to the tour's YouTube group.

Suzuki, host of CBC's long-running and award-winning The Nature of Things, has spent over 40 years educating the public and committed to environmental activism, says Canadians are tired of politicians paying lip service to the environment. Years ago, he came up with the idea for a 'Chautauqua', or traveling educational assembly. The David Suzuki Foundation spent the last year planning and organizing the tour. At the time Dr. Suzuki sat down to talk to Orato, he was on the bus somewhere between Winnipeg and Regina. He told us if HE were Prime Minister, he'd stop spending taxpayer money to subsidize the worst industry polluters.

The "If YOU Were Prime Minister" tour has been great so far. The reception in every town has been incredible - completely sold out, standing ovations and tremendous enthusiasm.

The elephant in the room is climate change and what we're going to do about it. We talked with British economist Nicholas Stern, who was in Toronto to discuss the economics of climate change, and he told us the cost of doing something serious about global warming would be about one per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. So, that's billions and billions of dollars in Canada spent every year, but the important question is, what will it cost if we don’t do anything about global warming? What it will do is totally destroy the economy. It's either total destruction of the economy, or spend one per cent of the GDP to bring our emissions down, and that's what we've got to do.

There's evidence that environmental momentum is building. The polls put it at the top of the list. People know that something freaky has happened with the weather. The destruction of 3,000 trees in British Columbia's Stanley Park was quite a wake-up call for Vancouverites. The fact that B.C.'s Northern forest has turned bright red rather than green because of pine beetles, the hazards of salmon runs because the waters have been getting warmer, Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth – all these things have added up and people are now very concerned.

I'm very confident our American neighbours will pick up the cause. Just look at what's happening with Arnold Schwarzenegger in California – he's set a very hard target for reductions. Mayors in over 300 cities in the United States have committed to meeting or passing the Kyoto targets. The fact is, the country is getting on with it.

Creating the "If YOU Were Prime Minister" Tour

About 10 years ago, I started thinking Canadians are fed up with all the bullsh*t the politicians are saying and want to get down to substantive issues. About a year ago, we started talking seriously about doing a bus tour, and about six months ago, we really sat down and started to plan it.

Flying is the most carbon expensive way to travel. We're travelling in a bus with diesel fuel. All the carbon dioxide emissions we release as a result of burning fuel on this trip are being compensated for by an equivalent amount of green energy put on the grid. While we were going through Toronto, all the electricity we used when we were setting up lights at events was put up by Bullfrog, which is a company that only puts green energy onto the grid.

Once we knew the route, we began to call environmental groups in each of the potential cities and asked if they'd be willing to organize our visit. We wanted to empower the local groups. They would charge money to attend the events, and all the money would go to the local groups, not to us. And they are the groups that we expect to carry on the conversation after we leave.

The theme is of course "If YOU Were Prime Minister." After I give a speech, people line up to share their ideas and our videographer records them all. We've got literally hundreds and hundreds of them. Canadians have good ideas.

If David Suzuki Were Prime Minister

If I were Prime Minister, I'd stop subsidizing the fossil fuel and auto industries. It doesn't make any sense to me that taxpayer money is supporting the fossil fuel industry, which is making windfall profits. If we take back those subsidies, we've got a lot of money to start supporting things like public transit. I would also set hard targets in the reduction of emissions and guidelines to achieve them and set in place regulations or legislation to enforce those across the board.

The giant leap the world needs to take is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, big time. We need to aim for a 90 per cent reduction, ideally by 2030. That's a pretty big demand for the industrialized countries. But we don't have a choice.