David Takayoshi Suzuki (Vancouver, March 24, 1936) is an activist, science popularizer, professor of Zoology at the University of British Columbia. An internationally renowned geneticist who has managed to make science understandable and exciting through his lectures and radio and television programs. His best known program was broadcast by CBC Television (a Canadian television network) and was entitled, like Lucretius‘ work, The Nature of Things (the nature of things – De rerum natura); this program has been broadcast in over 40 countries.

„Economists say: If you clear the forests, take the money and put it in the bank, you could do 6%, 7%, if you clear the forests and invest in Malaysia and New Guinea you can do 30%, 40% So who cares about the forest, put it down and invest the money elsewhere. When they are gone invest in fish, finished the fish invest in computers. Money has no real meaning and now it grows faster than the real world, the economy conventional is a form of brain damage.

The economy is so disconnected from the real world, it is destructive. At an introductory economics course the professor will show you slides on economics during the first lesson and it is impressive you know, raw materials, extraction processes, wholesale, retail, these arrows that go back and forth, try to impress because they know that economics is not a science, they try to rip us off and make us believe that it is, but it is not. Economics is a set of values which they then try to use with mathematical equations by pretending that it is a science.

But if you ask the economist: “In that equation where do you put the ozone layer? Where do you put aquifers as deep as fossil water? Where do you put the soil and biodiversity? „their answer is“ oh those are externalities „. Well then you could also be on Mars, that economy is not based on something similar to the real world; it is life, the web of life that filters water in the hydrological cycle, it is the micro – organisms of the soil that create the soil on which we grow our food. Nature provides every type of service, insects fertilize all flowering plants, these services are vital for the health of the planet, the economy calls all this externality, it is madness. „

Suzuki, the third generation of Japanese immigrants, studied zoology and was a professor of genetics at the University of British Columbia from 1963 to 2001. Since the 1970s, he has hosted science magazines on radio and television, including the popular CBC-themed magazine The Nature of Things, which he took over in 1979. From 1982 to 1987 he was director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Suzuki is the author of numerous books on science and the environment.
As a long-time activist to prevent global warming, Suzuki was in 1990 co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, which has made sustainability, climate protection and renewable energies an issue and appeals to citizens to make simple changes to their lifestyles to help protect the environment and improve their quality of life. Suzuki is also one of 350 ambassadors for the climate protection organization.

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