Suzuki Says Citizens Can Spark Environmental Change
Posted February 15, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
While Canadians look to their leaders to take action on global warming and the destruction of the planet, environmental icon David Suzuki said the power of change lay in the hands of everyday people.
Suzuki was in Toronto Thursday to talk with Mayor David Miller about the city’s plan to clear the air of smog and he addressed the race among federal politicians to prove that they’re the greenest.
“I don’t believe that Mr. Mulroney had a green bone in his body, but he was just voted the greenest prime minister we’ve had, because the public had put the environment at the top of the agenda,” he said.
“And this is what’s happened now. Despite whatever he may feel about the environment, believe me, Mr. Harper is going to sing green when the election comes. You can bet on it.”
Suzuki’s statements come a day after the three opposition parties teamed up to pass a Liberal-led bill forcing the government to respect Canada’s commitment to reaching emissions targets laid out in the Kyoto Protocol.
On the local level, the renowned environmentalist has given his stamp of approval to a plan put forward by the Toronto Environmental Alliance for a bylaw that would require industries in the city to report their use and release of chemicals that cause air pollutions.
Suzuki’s stop in Toronto is part of his “If You Were Prime Minister Tour” (see link below). When asked what he’d do if he was in the hot seat he replied: “There are a lot of things I would do but the first thing I would do is stop subsidizing, with our tax dollars, the fossil fuel industry,” he said on CityOnline Thursday.
“I’d stop giving tax money to the automotive industry and then we’d suddenly have a pot of money, several billion dollars, which we could then use for the good things like public transit and getting houses retrofitted for greater energy efficiency. So let’s not subsidize the industries. Let’s use that for the public good.”
On his website, Suzuki outlines a number of things you can do to reduce the negative effect your lifestyle may have on the environment and he told CityOnline’s Ann Rohmer about the incredible benefits green roofs could have in Toronto.
“If our roofs absorb water and keep it and plants grow and so on, then it can distribute the water slowly and let it percolate through the soil,” he explained. “Eventually, if all the roofs in Toronto were green, it turns out the temperature in the city would drop by an average of two degrees.”
If You Were Prime Minister Tour
Toronto Environmental Alliance
For more on green roofs, click here.
