David Suzuki: An Elder’s Vision for a Sustainable Future
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2b7SpLpN5A
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At 0:59: Name three of the ways in which Perth, Western Australia is NOT a sustainable city.
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(climate change readiness, household debt, ecological footprint, biodiversity)
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At 2:07: Name two of the ways the speaker mentions that Perth is getting its fresh water NOW.
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(desalination and ancient aquifers)
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At 4:55: Where did Dr. Suzuki teach for 39 years?
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(University of British Columbia)
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At 6:35: What is Dr. Suzuki’s take on what an elder’s (older person!) agenda can be, and why can that be? Do you agree with him on this point?
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At 7:38: What is the percentage of shared genes that he states for chimpanzees and humans? What does this say about how “alone” we are as a species on planet Earth?
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(99%; not so alone!)
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NOTE- At 8:46: He describes the first photosynthesizers as “plants”, but they were actually cyanobacteria. He is using the more archaic classification scheme here!
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At 10:06 – What is the ultimate source of energy of photosynthesizers and animals?
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(sunlight)
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At 11:14: Where did all humans originally live 150,000 years agao?
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(Africa)
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At 13:10: What is the physical feature that he points out is our “secret” to “success”?
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(our brain)
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At 13:38: What are the three characteristics he describes as humans’ three important characteristics that made us successful?
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(memory, curiosity and inventiveness)
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At 14:31: What characteristic of our cognitive abilities does he describe as pivotal in allowing us to become the “ruling species on Earth”?
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(foresight – being able to think ahead and pursue goals into the future)
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At 14:44: How many humans existed around 10,000 years ago (when we first developed agriculture)?
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(~ 10 million)
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At 14:58: around 2000 years ago, how many humans were around?
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(~ 100,000,000)
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At 15:05: When did we hit one billion humans on Earth?
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(early 1800s)
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At 15:17: This talk was made in 2012: What was the number of humans on Earth then?
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(6.9 billion)
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Note: We are now at 7.7 billion in December of 2020. Look at this web site (the population clock from the U.S. Census Bureau: https://www.census.gov/popclock/)
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A task for you: How many new people are added ON AVERAGE over a minute’s time, according to the clock? (Remember people are being born AND dying, and this clock shows the net increase). To do this, set a timer and note the last four digits on the “clock”. After one minute, note the last four digits and subtract the first number from the second. That is the number of NEW individuals entering the world in the past minute.
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(should be around 200)
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What is your gut feeling about whether this trend is sustainable in the long run? Can we feed, house and cloth all people, AND allow other species to exist on the planet, too, at this rate of increase?
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At 16:17: What is the most numerous mammalian species on Earth? What are two factors that he mentions that have allowed this to happen?
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(humans; trade and technology)
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At 17:38: Which species has the largest ecological footprint in the history of life on Earth?
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(humans)
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At 21:10: What do YOU think about naming the current time period the Anthropocene (= the “Age of Humans”)?
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At 24:47: Think about the two ways of looking at the British Columbia forest that he describes: 1) Name three human or non-human GROUPS of organisms that benefit from an intact forest. 2) Name or describe a group or groups of organisms that benefit from the logged forest (after the trees have been removed).
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At 26:00: What was the largest city in the world in 1900, and how many people lived in it? (By the way, my grandmother was born in 1902, at just about that time – so not so long ago!).
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(London, 6.5 million people)
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At 26:26: So where did most people live in 1990 then (and what were they doing)?
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(rural areas, farming)
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At 27:21: How many people lived in Tokyo in the year 2000?
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(26,000,000 people)
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At 29:16: What do you think about this “issue” of humans being animals, especially in the light of our class, where you have been learning taxonomy!?
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At 34:37: About how many argon atoms from a given person who exhaled a year before elsewhere on the Earth are breathed in by you?
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(15)
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At 37:49: This should sound familiar from our class. When he refers to “sunlight being released back into our bodies” he’s referring to the energy in the bonds of what molecule?
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(ATP)
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At 41:43: What are the basic necessities for survival as biological organisms that he lists here?
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(clean air, water, soil, energy and biodiversity)
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At 42:36: The idea that humans have created our economic rules and principles is not unique to David Suzuki – it’s a cultural fact. What do you think about the necessity for maintaining markets, for example, which is all about having lots of people buying lots of certain things? Which things do we NEED, and which do we just like to have?
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At 44:17: What is Einstein’s quote here. This is a commonly seen quote, and was prominently displayed in my anatomy classroom at Southwestern College by the way! What is the “thing” Suzuki is referring tom repeating here?
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(dot-com and housing boom/busts and propping them up when they fail us, etc.)
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At 47:48: If nature, which must follow its own laws, continually “gives” when our economic situation is not ideal, what eventually happens to the natural world?
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(it becomes degraded more and more)
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At 49:09: What do you think of the value statements here (this is similar to the ideas at 24:47)? Who or what organisms gain from the intact trees, and who benefits from the cut trees? And is there INTRINSIC value in the trees (value just because they exist)? You may change your answer here after reaching 50:24.
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At 53:30: How many cells do we have in our bodies?
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(100 trillion)
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At 54:01: WHAT kind of cell is this one cell that he is referring to?
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(a cancer cell)
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At 56:02: How many minutes does it take to fill his first bacterial test tube with bacteria?
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(60 minutes)
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What kind of growth do the bacteria exhibit?
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(exponential)
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At 56:12: At what point is the test tube half full?
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(59 minutes)
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Does this seem strange to you that it’s only half full at such a late “date”?
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At 57:22: What IS the doubling time in this example?
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(1 minute)
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By the way, the human doubling time is estimated to be about 63 years. We are just under 8 billion people now, so roughly when (in terms of a date) will we reach 16 billion, if the doubling time stays steady?
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(2083)
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If you had a child in the next year, your child would be “young” – only in their 60s when we hit 16 billion people on Earth. What do you think (briefly) the conditions on Earth may be like then?
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At 1:00:54: Do you remember hearing this headline about plant extinction (yes, it was several years ago)?
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At 1:01:56: What are three of the problems with the oceans that he mentions here, and which one is related directly to CO2 and atmospheric carbon pollution?
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(garbage, overfishing, ocean acidification – which is the climate-related one)
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At 1:02:10: When is it predicted that there may be no large, intact forests left (what year, approximately)?
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(2012 plus 20 = 2032)
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At 1:11:02: Name at least three of Suzuki’s “imaginings” that you think could be done to increase sustainable living on the planet.
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After 1:11:33 – You may stop watching here, but if you’re curious about the question/answer period, please watch on.
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Summary:
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Describe three parts of Suzuki’s talk that changed your view of the world and our place in it:
1.
2.
3.
