David Suzuki

Do you want to be happier, healthier and smarter? I have just the prescription for you: Add a daily dose of nature to your routine.

Over the past decade, researchers from fields as diverse as biology, psychiatry, engineering, horticulture, neuroscience and medicine have realized what most of us know intuitively:...

Bats are fascinating creatures, and they're more important than many people realize. A bat can eat more than 1,000 insects in an hour -- up to 6,000 a night. Some bats consume bugs that attack agricultural crops and some feast on pests like gnats and mosquitoes. The 25-million...

Canada would be a different place without our 80,000 registered charities dedicated to everything from health to economic policy to the environment. We'd be much poorer without the two-million employees, and millions of volunteers who devote their time to causes that strengthen our nation.

Recent efforts by the federal government,...

Environmentalism has failed. Over the past 50 years, environmentalists have succeeded in raising awareness, changing logging practices, stopping mega-dams and offshore drilling, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But we were so focused on battling opponents, and seeking public support that we failed to realize these battles reflect fundamentally different ways...

Few people would argue against making environmental review processes and regulations more efficient -- as long as they're effective. But changes announced in the recent federal budget don't do that. Instead, they make it easier for the federal government and industry to push through projects that could harm the environment...

A colleague told me that his toddler was wandering through a neighbourhood park picking up twigs and sticks, brandishing them as tools for digging, poking, and tapping. Suddenly the boy stopped and pointed excitedly to the canopy of branches above. "Look papa! Sticks come from trees!"

Mentally reconnecting fallen...

We Canadians love the wilderness. Whether we're talking to visitors here or people we meet in our travels, our conversations almost always end up about our great outdoors and pristine natural spaces. Caring about the environment is one of the ways we define ourselves.

But how good are we at...

Bottom-trawl fisheries --
which involves dragging large nets along the ocean floor, disrupting everything in their path, including corals and other marine habitats -- are often criticized for their environmental impact. I've been among the vocal critics. But now, thanks to growing consumer demand for sustainable seafood...

Is the world getting nuttier? Looking at recent events in North America, it's hard not to conclude that humanity is taking a crazy step backwards. I recall a time when science and scientists were taken seriously, but lately they've been getting knocked around, especially in Canada and the U.S.

More than anything else, coal fueled the Industrial Revolution. It was, and still is, plentiful and cheap. It's also always been relatively easy to get at, especially if you don't mind sending kids into mines, endangering the lives of miners, or blasting the tops off mountains.

Coal is an 18th-century...

Cities cover just two per cent of the world's land area, yet they account for about 70 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. According to the United Nations, 59 per cent of us now live in cities; in developing countries, 81 per cent of people are urbanites. And...

Let's suppose the world's legitimate scientific institutions, academies, climate scientists, and most of the world's governments are wrong.

Maybe, as some people have argued, they're involved in a massive conspiracy to impose a socialist world order. Maybe the money's just too damn good. It doesn't matter. Let's...

When hackers broke into an Internet server at East Anglia University in the U.K. in November and selectively released massive amounts of correspondence from the world's leading climate scientists, folks at the Chicago-based Heartland Institute were quick to exploit it.

Heartland president Joseph Bast wrote:...

We're not about to quit oil cold turkey. Does that mean we should continue with business as usual?

In Canada, "business as usual" means rapidly increasing oil sands exploitation and selling the bitumen as quickly as possible to anyone who wants it. It means continuing to import...

It's been 20 years since Canada's East Coast cod fishery collapsed, and we still have no recovery target or timeline for rebuilding populations. That's just one finding in a damning report from a panel of eminent Royal Society of Canada marine scientists.

Sustaining Canada's Marine...

Kids ask questions. Sometimes adults feel inadequate if they don't have ready answers. But when I became a teacher, I learned quickly that there's nothing wrong with saying, "I don't know." Teaching children how to learn is more useful than feeding them facts.

Many parents, though, believe they must appear...

It was inevitable that climate change deniers and some oil industry promoters would misinterpret a study by scientist Andrew Weaver before reading beyond the headlines. A letter in the Calgary Herald actually claimed that "Weaver's revelation ... raises even more skepticism about the entire...

The ongoing pipeline debates have become mired in conspiracy theories, distractions, and misinformation. Is there nothing we can all agree on?

To begin, who would deny that our most basic human needs are clean air and water, productive soils, and a diversity of species? It isn't controversial to argue that...

The battle lines are drawn, and Northern B.C.'s pristine wilderness is the latest front. With hearings underway into the proposed $5.5-billion, dual 1,172-kilometre Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project to transport bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat and imported condensate to dilute it from the coast back...

What purpose do governments serve? Some people think we could do without them, but that's absurd. Even libertarians agree that some kind of police force and legal system are necessary to ensure that individual freedoms and property are protected, especially when conflicts arise over competing freedoms and property rights.

Others...