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Page added on February 19, 2015
David Suzuki: ‘Young People Have the Power to Rally Others to Create Positive Change’
When she was just 12 years old, my daughter Severn gave a speech at the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. She spoke with such conviction that delegates were moved to tears. It was one of my proudest moments as a father. More than 20 years later, Severn is the mother of two young children, and the video of her speech is still making the rounds, inspiring people around the world. Its popularity speaks to the power the young have to affect the world’s most pressing issues.
More than half the world’s population is under 30, a demographic now at the forefront of international decision-making and some of Canada’s most powerful environmental changes. Across the nation, youth are thinking critically about how we can become better stewards of our vast landscapes and spectacular wildlife and protect the air, water, soil and diversity of nature that keep us healthy and alive. They’re standing up for strong environmental protection and a saner approach to resource management in their own communities.
Take Halifax resident Stephen Thomas, an engineer in his 20s. He’s been recognized as a driving force for our nation’s clean energy future. If You Build It, a project he co-founded, mobilizes volunteers to construct renewable energy projects, including wind turbines and solar-powered generators. He’s also catalyzed large-scale, community-owned wind projects in Nova Scotia and spearheaded Dalhousie University’s student campaign for fossil fuel divestment.
Vanessa Gray, a 22-year-old member of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, mobilized other young people to campaign against Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline proposal to transport oilsands bitumen through Sarnia, Ontario, to Montreal for export. She continues to speak out about refinery pollution and host “toxic tours” of Canada’s Chemical Valley, where 63 petrochemical plants surround her community.
Some young leaders are taking up the David Suzuki Foundation’s call to support the right to a healthy environment in their towns. In December, after attending a Foundation Blue Dot Tour event, 10-year-old Victoria resident Rupert Yakelashek led a successful charge to have his city adopt a declaration giving citizens the right to clean air, water and food, and to participate in decisions that affect their environment.
Ta’Kaiya Blaney, a 13-year-old from B.C.’s Tla’Amin First Nation, followed a path similar to my daughter’s, speaking at the UN Rio +20 conference in 2012 when she was just 11. She’s also gaining recognition as the visionary behind the Salish Sea Youth Foundation and for speaking, writing and singing in defense of a healthy future for animals, humans, plants and ecosystems. She incorporates environmental messages into her songs, as she did on the Blue Dot Tour. “In my culture it’s a fact, and an understanding of life, that everything is connected, and we were put on this earth to be stewards and caretakers of the environment,” she writes.
Young leaders are also at the forefront of Idle No More, one of the largest Indigenous mass movements in Canadian history. What began in 2012 as teach-ins in Saskatchewan to protest parliamentary bills that would erode Indigenous sovereignty and environmental protections has changed the social and political landscape of Canada.
These young environmental champions share a commitment to their communities and to the world. They know that young people have the power to rally others to create positive change. And when people gather around a common cause, magic happens.
Although many young leaders aren’t yet old enough to vote, they’ll be left to clean up messes from decisions made today. We owe it to them to think more carefully about the world we want to leave to their generation.
National non-profit The Starfish Canada, co-founded by David Suzuki Foundation public engagement specialist Kyle Empringham, celebrates young people with its Top 25 Environmentalists Under 25 program. Every year, 25 youth are recognized for their efforts to create environmental change. The group recognized is diverse, from community gardeners and outdoor recreationists to scientists and advocates. Thanks to them, the program continues to showcase positive change across the country.
If you know a young leader who deserves national recognition, nominate him or her for The Starfish Canada’s Top 25 Environmentalists Under 25. It could help inspire others to change the world.
14 Comments on "David Suzuki: ‘Young People Have the Power to Rally Others to Create Positive Change’"
Plantagenet on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 10:58 am
While there are some outstanding young leaders, the vast majority of young people are passive followers more interested in the latest episode of “Game of Thrones” then in questions involving politics, economics, and ecology.
Rodster on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 11:20 am
Things will only change when you have a collapse and people wake up. I agrre with Plant on this one that TPTB have made their respective populations passive either thru chemicals, sports and entertainment, coercion, spying or with threats of violence.
I’m reminded of a piece by the late, great George Carlin.
“The American Dream. It’s worth a watch. Warning NSFW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ
Apneaman on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 12:37 pm
Most of the young people mean well, but, like their parents, they do not understand that industrial civilization cannot be greened. It really is out of our hands at this point now that we have triggered dozens of unstoppable positive self reinforcing feedback loops. Inertia is a bitch. Assuming there was a chance, industrial civilization would have to be completely shut down and we all know that ain’t going to happen. So we will all go on pretending that somehow the worst will bypass us and our loved ones. It’s a normal human response, but unfortunately a deadly one for techno carbon man. The problem is our brains.
Your brain won’t allow you to believe the apocalypse could actually happen
http://io9.com/5848857/your-brain-wont-allow-you-to-believe-the-apocalypse-could-actually-happen
Plantagenet on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 1:16 pm
@Apneaman
Speak for yourself.
Maybe your brain won’t allow you to understand complex ideas like an apocalypse might happen, but for many people the idea of peak oil and its concomitant problems is pretty obvious. Even the Bible talks of apocalypse. It really isn’t a hard idea to grok.
J on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 1:46 pm
I do think it is hard to “grok” that I won’t be able to get food at QFC or Safeway.
But when that happens I’m probably out of a job anyway.
BTW, Isn’t collapse happening all the time? One family at the time. No media coverage.
sunweb on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 2:19 pm
I believe it lies with the young. They need to know that we need a sea change. This means to me not business as usual with solar and wind energy collecting devices. This means a new world of back to the future. They will need to learn new (old) skills and see their place in the web of life.
JuanP on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 7:01 pm
Rodster “Things will only change when you have a collapse and people wake up.”
I hope you are right, but I am afraid you are probably wrong. I have seen countries collapse and collapsed countries. The people in them didn’t learn shit, they were all fighting to get ahead, same as before. Go visit Haiti, Ukraine, or Argentina and tell me what people there have learned. I can tell you: NOTHING!
I am afraid people will let you down and you will be dissapointed by their learning incapacity. 😉
JuanP on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 7:04 pm
I envy the optimism, energy, and innocence of the young. I had the energy and the innocence once, but I can’t remember ever being an optimist. All I have now is confused memories.
Davy on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 7:11 pm
Juan, some people will learn everywhere in some locals everywhere. I will agree with you overall. Globally Most people will not know what hit them and they have no education on why what will happen to them happened. As the education levels plummet we will be back to superstition and myth.
Makati1 on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 7:40 pm
‘Young People Have the Power to Rally Others to Create Positive Change’ … until you tell them that they have to stop using all of their techie toys. Game over.
Apneaman on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 7:46 pm
Davy, back to superstition and myth?
Measles makes its mark all over again: One of humanity’s oldest foes is back on the increase
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/measles-makes-its-mark-all-over-again-one-of-humanitys-oldest-foes-is-back-on-the-increase-10054872.html
Perk Earl on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 7:57 pm
Let’s all hold hands and think positive thoughts. Maybe that’s enough to avert the energy predicament. Happy feelings and social connecting will overcome limits to growth.
OR, it will be each person for themselves battling for the right to say they made it through the bottleneck, worse for wear, thinner, meaner, tougher, ready to till the soil. All that hugging, loving, networking and twittering will be replaced by,
“All right people, you’ve got hoes, rakes, pick axes, digging bars, wheel barrows and shovels, so time to get to work. Remember you’re responsible for your tools, so if it breaks you fix it or don’t eat. Lolly gagging will reduce your rations, so work hard!”
dubya on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 11:02 pm
Severn’s 1992 speech is one of the most profound ever, and here we are pushing 25 years later and it has made not the tiniest impact on this societal trainwreck.
Davy on Fri, 20th Feb 2015 6:35 am
I am sitting here early morning in the cold MO Ozarks drinking excellent coffee with the warm glow of a woodstove thinking about this article and how to give it meaning within the context of the usual Davy doom. If I were a leader of a group of young people I would make it a prerequisite of our membership we would practice the double negative of denial of denial.
We are in an insane society with entropic meaning. There is so much available and thrown at us daily we are like a deck hand in the storm struggling to hold on in the gale. The denial of denial must be the foundation of our spirituality because as a starting point it wipes clean hopium and guilt. The hopium of a cornucopian future and the erasing of guilt from association. Everyone is to blame and no one for this catastrophic overshoot and the global destruction of nature.
We would accept Nature first and that man is not exceptional. We would accept that man is at the stage of bottleneck man. We rejoice in our return as a species to our home in Nature and a rejection of any hope of a Bautopian future. We know not whether the BAU end date is long or short nor our survival chances. We are in acceptance with Nature’s ways and her time frame. Nature is the only game in town and Nature caused the Anthropocene. We humans are a part of nature’s song of extinction and evolution. You are free to interject your higher power but you accept Nature as the provider of our sustenance.
We would have as part of our spiritual training the study of doom and prep. We would study doom to more accurately gauge when the end days are likely so we could prep, mitigate, and adapt accordingly. I say end days because if one accepts oil is finite and rapidly in POD & ETP conditions then we will be a population of 7BIL plus without our foundational commodity. Without our foundational commodity and no real substitutions then we are without the systematic foundations of BAU. It would be critical to monitor the BAU weather for the worst of this descent scenario.
We know the best studies tell us 200MIL people must die a year in excess of normal deaths and births. This must happen in a generation because without our foundational commodity of oil human carrying capacity is 1BIL or less. This is considering the massive environmental damage of the 7BIL over 200 years.
Having denied denial we would now begin the adaptation and mitigation process as best we could being in the hybrid state of using BAU to transition out of BAU. Our prep work would be towards local, family, tribe, and community restoration and strength. We would take preventative measures for the basics of food, water, shelter, warmth, and medicine.
Part of our denial of denial would be acceptance of death individually and as a community. We would accept that there are no guarantees of survival despite all our work. We understand our mortality is an ever present reality regardless of the situation BAU or no BAU. We acknowledge the dark side of man and the high probability of violence, conflict, and pirating of some or all of our preparations. We would take necessary step to secure ourselves but make sure we did not embrace the violence we intend to combat.
With our small localized community in place and spiritually enlightened with new attitudes and lifestyles we would enjoy life to its fullest in the here and now understanding there may be no tomorrow. We would rejoice in the coming end of BAU for Nature’s sake and all her beautiful critters. We will fully realizing that that the end of BAU may also be our end. We would make preparations physically and spiritually for the likelihood of many more deaths than anyone has experienced. We will accept this holocaust of man will be horrible and painful but that it can be given meaning and compassion if prepared for.
I am telling this story because it is likely a probability that our foundational commodity of oil will have diminished enough within a decade to collapse the systematic elements of BAU ensuring a volatile excess death rate of 200MIL a year will occur. Since the descent is likely not smooth some years excess deaths could be much higher than that. The above spirituality is nothing more than positive ideas for dealing with that. We are fully aware of BAU obsessions and infatuation with the views of mad max and Hollywood’s apocalypses. We would reject those as the only outcome by acknowledging nature is balanced with dark and light. You got any better ideas homie?