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24 March 1936—

Maintaining the Sacred Balance

The Canadian-born geneticist David Suzuki knows something about disruption. During World War II, he and his family, despite having lived in British Columbia for three generations, were interned and then forcibly relocated east of the Rockies. The memory of this break in equilibrium, as well as the beauty of the Canadian Rockies through which he and his family were transported, inspired Suzuki’s later dedication to preserving environmental stability.

Although he spent close to forty years as a university professor, Suzuki is at heart a public intellectual. He’s a pioneer in popularizing science who began hosting a string of television shows as early as 1970. Since then he has written and hosted several immensely popular series that focus on issues of environmental sustainability and climate change. In recent years, he has become one of the world’s most eloquent and informed defenders of the claim that human activity is dangerously accelerating the temperature of the planet. In lectures, books, and articles—and through the work of the David Suzuki Foundation, whose mission is to “protect the diversity of nature and our quality of life, now and for the future”—he advocates for an interdependent perspective on the planet and encourages humans to reduce their carbon footprints. The recipient of dozens of honorary degrees honoring his environmentalism, Suzuki was presented with a Right Livelihood Award in 2009 for his “advocacy of the socially responsible use of science, and for his massive contribution to raising awareness about the perils of climate change and building public support for policies to address it.”

Perhaps Suzuki’s trademark claim is that the earth’s ecosystem is a “sacred balance” that humans are both morally and prudentially obliged to honor. The “sacredness” of nature is revealed whenever we’re “spiritually uplifted by the beauty of a forested valley or an ice-coated Arctic mountain, overwhelmed with awe at the sight of the star-filled heavens, and filled with reverence when we enter a sacred place. In the beauty, mystery and wonder that our brain perceives and expresses, we add a special gift to the planet.” But our flexing of “technological muscle power” has seriously jeopardized the balance that creates such beauty. It is no mark of shame, says Suzuki, to “acknowledge our dependence on the same biophysical factors that support all other life-forms” and resolve to change our individual and social behaviors in order to live in harmony with those factors. But in our drive to control the environment, we “seem to have forgotten the real things that matter”—the majestic beauty of the natural order that awakens awe in us—for the sake of a merely utilitarian relationship with nature. Suzuki’s hope is to recall us to our proper relationship with the ecosphere so that the “sacred balance” can be restored.