“Whatever we do to the environment, we do to ourselves.”
This sentiment resonated throughout a packed H-110 Thursday evening as award-winning scientist David Suzuki and former Progressive Conservative Party member David Orchard spoke to Concordia students and community members about mankind’s relationship with, and effects on, the environment.
After a brief video featuring Environmental Minister Stephane Dion, in which he outlined the government’s plan to assist corporations in making “informed decisions” and give them incentives to develop “better practices”, David Orchard took the stage. He spoke about organic farming and the dangers of genetically modified foods.
“We don’t have to live like a nation on our knees,” Orchard said. He explained how, after the Second World War, biological chemicals developed for use in warfare were modified to kill plants and weeds in agriculture. “We’re being guinea pigs in a massive experiment without [knowing] the effects of these genetically modified ingredients on human health,” he said. He added that farmers and the people who deal with these substances would be healthier if we removed them from our farming practices, as many are known carcinogens. It would also be better for the environment, as animals, birds and trees are also negatively effected by herbicides and pesticides. Orchard encouraged students to take Canada’s future into their own hands.
“Superpowers don’t have friends. Superpowers have interests. And we should be looking after our interests,” Orchard said. He spoke about how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is “repressing” us, and urged students to write to Stephane Dion in support of health, “a human system”, and farmers. The NAFTA agreement can be amended, he told students, and Canadians should be buying meat from their own farmers rather than importing it from the United States.
He referred to the “frankenfoods” in our grocery stores and how the government is allowing scientists to take genes from one life form and put them into another, without testing their safety. “We have no labeling law in this country at all, and I want Mr. Stephane Dion to put that on as point twelve on his list,” Orchard said. He ended his lecture with suggestions for students on how to convince the government that Canada should strive to be as ecologically conscious and independent as the likes of Norway and Switzerland. These countries don’t involve themselves in “savage” trade agreements and ineffective environmental laws.
After Orchard, David Suzuki took the stage. Voted one of the top 10 Canadians in the CBC’s Greatest Canadian competition, he asked students to consider whether our surroundings are our home, or simply an opportunity for development.
“The way we learn to see the world shapes the way we behave towards it,” Suzuki said. He explained how everything is connected to everything else, how Native Canadians and their rituals embrace what nature really is and how it should be treated, and how other cultures tend to do the opposite. “In my mind, the problem is that human beings are taking too much stuff out of our surroundings and putting too much garbage and toxic waste back into it,” he said, adding that the solution lies in setting strict rules on the volume of natural resources being removed from the environment, and the volume of waste being returned to it.
Like Orchard, Suzuki touched on the subject of genetically modified organisms. “We’re going into areas where we know nothing about how genes interact with each other,” he said. He then went on to explain the concept of biomagnification, which occurs when the concentration of chemicals in organisms increases through the food chain.
“The earth is our mother,” Suzuki said, insisting this be understood in the least poetic and romantic way possible.
Suzuki used air, earth, fire, and water to exemplify how important these elements are in our lives. “What intelligent creature, knowing the role that air plays in our lives, would then proceed to use air as a toxic dump?” Suzuki asked. He concluded his lecture expressing his belief that life’s greatest necessity is love. He told of his visits to Bosnia and Rwanda, where he saw children who had never been hugged and loved.
“We need love in order to learn how to love back,” he said. He said that our focus should not lie solely in being ecologically conscious, but in the world’s social issues as well. “Everything is interconnected,” he said.
For those interested in improving the environment go to www.davidsuzuki.org
Information on David Orchard, go to
www.davidorchard.com
