Quotes from David Suzuki

For the sake of our health, our children and grandchildren and even our economic well-being, we must make protecting the planet our top priority.

Over and over, we hear politicians say they can't spend our tax dollars on environmental protection when the economy is so fragile.

Many scientists and economists also say putting a price on carbon through carbon taxes and/or cap-and-trade is necessary.

Some solutions are relatively simple and would provide economic benefits: implementing measures to conserve energy, putting a price on carbon through taxes and cap-and-trade and shifting from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy sources.

Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism.

If we want to move towards a low-polluting, sustainable society, we need to get consumers to think about their purchases.

The environment is so fundamental to our continued existence that it must transcend politics and become a central value of all members of society.

We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're going to sit.

Ultimately we need to recognize that while humans continue to build urban landscapes, we share these spaces with others species.

We can't blame children for occupying themselves with Facebook rather than playing in the mud. Our society doesn't put a priority on connecting with nature. In fact, too often we tell them it's dirty and dangerous.

You would have thought that our first priority would be to ask what the ecologists are finding out, because we have to live within the conditions and principles they define. Instead, we've elevated the economy above ecology.

Environmentalism has failed.

People don't even understand that every bit of our food was once alive. We take another creature, plant, animal, microorganism, tear it apart in our mouths. And incorporate those molecules into our own bodies. We are the Earth in the most profound way.

There are more humans than all of the rabbits on earth. There are more of us than all the wildebeests, than all the rats, than all the mice. We are the most numerous mammal on the planet. But because we're not like rabbits or rats or mice, we have technology, we have a consumptive appetite, we have a global economy.

Aboriginal people are key because they have a different sense of where we belong and how we interact with nature.

I fell in love with the elegance and precision of genetic analysis and experimentation to answer profound biological questions.

I always felt that if someone shot me, it would be great for the environmental movement, because they would make me a martyr. Our biggest fear was our children, because there was a tremendous amount of threat and intimidation, and my wife was terrified that the children might be grabbed or assaulted in some way. That was the real fear.

Exxon, one of the companies that has spent tens of millions of dollars denying climate change, denying any responsibility to deal with, taking government subsidies on a massive scale, now their ads are all about, 'Oh, we want a clean future. We're looking at clean energy and all that stuff.'

For the first time since life appeared on earth, one species- us- is single-handedly altering the physical, chemical and biological nature of earth. We have become a force of nature

Pearl Harbor was the defining event in my life. It shaped who I am, and all of my hang-ups and my drives, I think, stem from that.

Although it's difficult, if not impossible, to put a dollar value on the numerous services nature provides, leaving them out of economic calculations means they are often ignored.

Corporations are not people. They shouldn't be funding. They shouldn't be funding campaigns at all.

Planting native species in our gardens and communities is increasingly important, because indigenous insects, birds and wildlife rely on them. Over thousands, and sometimes millions, of years they have co-evolved to live in local climate and soil conditions.

I see a world in the future in which we understand that all life is related to us and we treat that life with great humility and respect.