David Suzuki, the famous Canadian environmentalist, just gave a pretty gloomy interview. According to Suzuki in respect of climate change, “it’s too late”. It led me to the question: Is now a good time to give up?
It Is Too Late?
I’ve never said this before to the media, but it’s too late.
David Suzuki quoted in Legree (2025)
There are nine planetary boundaries and we’ve only dealt with one of them — the ozone layer — and we think we’ve saved ourselves from that threat. But we passed the seventh boundary this year, and we’re in the extreme danger zone.
David Suzuki quoted in Legree (2025)
Humans, We Are The Problem
Suzuki is frustrated with politics. He was relatively generous about Mark Carney, the current Canadian prime minister, noting how Carney understands the problem of climate change. That said, Suzuki says he doesn’t think that Carney will achieve anything. Basically, according to Suzuki, there is nothing that we can do through politics and economics.
I absolutely disagree with Carney that the economy and market forces need to be used because the economy itself is driving us into the ditch.
David Suzuki quoted in Legree (2025)
Humans, We Are The Problem
I am hoping that we can make progress using economic incentives so it is interesting to hear Suzuki dismissing them. That said, I didn’t really understand his point.
….the focus on politics, economics, and law are all destined to fail because they are based around humans. They’re designed to guide humans….
David Suzuki quoted in Legree (2025)
The challenge I see is that climate change is being driven by humans and their economic choices. It seems logical to me to base the solutions around improving how humans act and their economic choices. We need to get humans to behave differently. Surely, we need to focus our policies that seek to deal with human-caused climate change on humans?
Old Man Is Gloomy
I must confess I didn’t really understand the overall message that Suzuki was trying to convey. It seemed a tad nihilistic. He is clearly frustrated but I can’t believe he didn’t think there was anything positive to be done. It wasn’t a rallying cry to action.
What is more he actually seems to have planned the “it’s too late” theme — it wasn’t just an unfortunate off-the-cuff line that the journalist exploited for a headline.
I was left thinking that an frustrated 89-year-old may not have the best perspective on how we can make a better future. Maybe some people think it makes sense. Who knows, maybe those people can persuade Joe Biden to run again in a few years’ time when he has a bit more experience.
Is Now A Good Time To Give Up?
So, is now a good time to give up?
Don’t be silly, of course it isn’t. Are we going to experience many negative events (e.g., premature deaths) that were unnecessary if we had done better. Yes, so in that sense we have failed. But failing is what humans do. We also have successes. How can we get more of the successes rather than just giving up?
Suzuki says that we are moving towards three degrees of warming with terrible consequences. Indeed, given how close we are to 1.5 degrees warming it does seem reasonable to conclude that we will miss that goal and many people will suffer because of that. But does that mean we should give us because it is too late? Even if we can’t hit the 1.5 degree target wouldn’t anything we can do be better than nothing. Wouldn’t a 2.9 degree temperature rise be a little less bad than 3 degrees? Would 2.8 degrees be better than 2.9? Everything we can do is surely better than giving up.
Clarifying, A Bit
To be fair to Suzuki he did try and clarify in a later interview. He said politics is a dead end so focus on supporting your community.
“Mother Nature is going to come down so hard that we’re going to have to face up to the big changes, but I’m saying to environmental groups now, ‘focus on the local community, get them to be as self-sufficient and self-reliant as you can possibly be,'” he said.
David Suzuki quoted in Stringer-Holden (2025)
Maybe this works if you are in a relatively rich country like Canada or the US. Perhaps, you can reduce the problems for your community. Still, I don’t hear how this helps other people in the world. David Suzuki clearly isn’t a Donald Trump fan but this view — let’s only support our own community — seems to have a lot of echoes of the populist politics that Suzuki says he doesn’t like. We can’t give up on helping those not in our communities just because we have made a bunch of mistakes (and will continue to make others).
Never, That Is The Right Time To Give Up
If someone says it is too late to do anything, they are wrong. Until we are all dead it is never too late to do better even if we are far from where we might want to be.
For more see on climate change see The Pope And The Climate Crisis, Measuring Impact On Climate and What To Do About Climate?
Read: Davis Legree, (2025), iPolitics, ‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost”, July 2nd
& Bridget Stringer-Holden (2025) CBC News, “No, David Suzuki hasn’t given up on the climate fight — but his battle plan is changing: Environmentalist says the movement now needs to focus on local community action“, July 11th
