Suzuk'l addresses challenge 
     
    
   
   
    
     Author's note: Dr. David Suzuki was selected as the keynote speaker at the 
     
     Tourism Industry Association of Prince Edward Island's luncheon on Thursday, 
     
     March 24th as part of P.E.I.'s Touch Nature tourism theme for 1988. The 
     
     following article is meant for those who were not fortunate enough to attend 
     
     that luncheon. It attempts to cover some of the major points made by Dr. Suzuki 
     
     during that address. J.D.M. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Dr. Suzuki opened his address with complimentary remarks ab0ut the Island 
     
     and Islanders closeness with the land. He noted that P.E.I. was light years 
     
     ahead of the rest of Canada, in part because the long history of development 
     
     had eradicated all wilderness and focused attention on the need to work with 
     
     the balance to ensure its conservation. He commended the Government for 
     
     developing Canada's first Conservation Strategy and he thanked the tourism 
     
     industry for their support of the concept. He then addressed "the challenge of 
     
     how much further we have to go". 
     
    

    
     The address itself started with a story of a trip Dr. Suzuki took to the 
     
     Toronto Metropolitan Zoo with his children during the recent teachers strike. 
     
     The trip reminded him of the fundamental role his first trip to a zoo made in 
     
     his life and how he dreamed afterwards of trips to the Serengeti Plain or to 
     
     tropical jungles. The questions of his 8 year old daughter on how close each 
     
     animal they seen was to extinction were a chilling reminder of how far we have 
     
     gone towards eradicating many animals from the face of the earth. l'Did you 
     
     realize that there are more rhinoceros in the Cincinnati Zoo than on the 
     
     Serengeti Plain today? Why is it that everything in the world is disappearing?" 
     
     In less than 15 years there will be no wilderness areas in Coastal British 
     
     Columbia. In 30 years there will be no wilderness. Ecologists for years have 
     
     known that Islands of wilderness are not stable, that these Islands must be 
     
     interconnected. The situation has now reached the stage where biologists place 
     
     extinction second only to_nuclear war in its threat and they predict that 60 to 
     
     80 percent of the species alive today will be extinct in 100 years. 
     
    

    
     With statements that "Man is the major problem on the face of the earth; 
     
     Prince Edward Island is so.progressive because you've been where we're going“; 
     
     and an analogy of people to fruit flies, Dr. Suzuki introduced the concept of 
     
     choices. He noted that while human beings are the only creatures that realize 
     
     there is a future and that individual choices affect this future we seem to 
     
     have lost the ability to deal with issues that affect us. Dr. Suzuki then 
     
     listed and expanded on "the most pernicious sacred truths“. 
     
    

    
     The first is "the need to maintain steady growth“. For anyone who has 
     
     looked at exponential growth they know this is not possible. Using the analogy 
     
     of a population living in a test tube filled with enough food to last a 
     
     population doubling in size every minute for 60 minutes he noted that at 59 
     
     minutes it was half full and that at 55 minutes only 3 % of the space was _ 
     
     occupied. If when it was near being full three more test tubes were available 
     
     they would only last the population 2 more minutes despite the quadrupling of 
     
     the food supply. How can politicians argue that there is a glut of oil on the 
     
     market when many biologists including Dr. Suzuki believe the human population 
     
     has passed its 55 minute mark! The arguments of politicians on free trade are a 
     
     denial of the reality of human foresight. People must talk about negative 
     
     growth, not zero growth. Canadians use 100 times the resources of India and one 
     
     fifth of the world's population uses four fifths of its resources. The 
     
     Maritimes must realize that they are in the vanguard of this reality in Canada. 
     
    

    
     The second pernicious truth is the "belief that science can understand and 
     
    
   
   
    
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