David Takayoshi Suzuki
DAVID TAKAYOSHI SUZUKI  Macroknow Library
     


The David Suzuki Reader.

INTERCONNECTIONS

"We are on the edge of a global catastrophe, and it's time politicians took the warnings of scientists to heart. We need vision and leadership -- for the sake of our children."1a

ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

"Global economics must be exposed for what it is -- a complete perversion. To begin with, economics is a chauvinistic invention, a human creation based on a definition of value solely by the criterion of utility to our species. As long as we can see a use for something and hence can realize a profit from it, it has economic worth. Yet it is the ecosystem that is the fundamental "capital" on which all life depends. Financial leaders manipulate the monetary system for immediate profit with little regard for environmental or human consequences."1b MILL

"Global economics is perverted because it impoverishes much of the Third World by seducing its people with the blandishments of technological "progress." . . . To pay, Third World countries mortgage their future by selling off irreplaceable capital -- their natural resources. Brazil, for example, has teetered on the brink of economic collapse for years. . . It is criminal to destroy . . . forests merely to service the interest on international debt, for when they are gone, Brazil will still be mired in debt."1c

" . . . [T]he rich countries, which have only 20 percent of the planet's population, consume 80 percent of its resources."1d

" . . . [C]urrency speculators are now more powerful than governments. . . Few governments can stand up against more than U.S. $600 billion in daily currency speculation on stock markets around the world.
"It is an insane game in which money can be bought and sold to make more money. In this kind of game, money can be created faster than things in the real world like food, fish, or trees, and the players don't have to worry about long-term sustainability."
1e
DIOGENES MARX HERZL SPENGLER

SCIENCE AND ETHICS

"It is ironic that most scientists today receive a doctorate in philosophy without ever having taken a course in the discipline."1f

"During my education in graduate school, I was never taught that being a scientist entailed enormous social responsibilities. . . . No one told us that there are limits to science . . . There is no code of ethics governing our activity . . .
"We don't learn that geneticists were the prime movers behind the Nazi Race Purification program and that the voices of opposition to Hitler from scientists and doctors were silent."1g
EINSTEIN

"The explosion of the atomic bomb smashed the romantic notion of scientific innocence."1h


     
   
   
 
 
Interesting Link   

* Italics in the original.

1 David T. Suzuki (1936- ). The David Suzuki Reader: A lifetime of Ideas from a Leading Activist and Thinker. With a Foreword by Bill McKibben. David Suzuki, 2003. Vancouver, BC: Greystone Books, a division of Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
INTERCONNECTIONS

a Global Warming, at 65.
ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

b The Ecosystem as Capital, at 95.
c Ibid., at 96.
d Endless Growth -- an Impossible Dream, at 108.
e The Wall Street Journal's Insane Criteria, at 134.
SCIENCE AND ETHICS
f Science and Ethics, at 239.
g Genetics after Auschwitz, at 242.
h Ibid., at 243.

MK-BOOKS-SUZUKI-20090325.