Leading By Example

Two years ago, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) asked its viewers to nominate the top 10 "Greatest Canadians." Environmentalist David Suzuki, Ph.D., best known for his television programs on nature and the environment, made the list hands down. As the host of CBC's "The Nature of Things," and the author of more than 30 books, Suzuki has been called a "gladiatorial geneticist" who mixes education with entertainment. He has raised public consciousness about environmental issues, galvanizing efforts to preserve and protect the natural world. But, passionate as he is about preserving the planet, he is realistic in his views: Humanity remains chiefly preoccupied with itself.

"The media has overwhelmed us the last 15 years with an emphasis on the economy, politics, business, sports, celebrity. We look out at the world with very limited eyes," he said with the candor and passion that are his trademarks. "The environment is considered a ghetto subject for the 'greens' - people who hug trees and protect seals. It's seen as a minor subject. We have to start to realize the environment - the air, the water, the soil, the energy that we need in our bodies, all of that - is part of the world. It's gotta be a part of everything we look at.

" Unfortunately, Suzuki believes the meetings industry is one with "limited eyes." Many meetings and conventions wreak havoc on the environment, he said. "Quite frankly, there should be a lot fewer meetings," the bearded, bespectacled environmentalist told Convene. "Meetings leave a heavy footprint on the planet. [Planners] can either try to lighten each footprint or try to reduce the number of footprints. I'm amazed by how ecologically destructive these conventions are." The 70-year-old Japanese-Canadian said he hasn't been to one meeting, conference, or convention that has set the standard as an environmentally friendly gathering.

Unfortunately, there are many in the industry who don't practice what they preach. But Suzuki can never be accused of not walking the talk. His family lives in Vancouver and they only generate one bag of garbage per month, reusing or recycling everything else. The family does not consume a lot of pre-packaged foods and they use only cloth bags for shopping.

So as one who believes in walking the talk, he was extremely distressed by what he found when he attended the 54th Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)'s annual conference last year. About 1,176 delegates from 44 countries converged on Macau.

"The reason why I was invited is because they say the environment is important - and yet they don't live it when you look at the amount of stuff you get and the disposability of it all. Coffee, snacks, meals, were all served in disposable containers. They didn't put the convention together in a way that coincided with what they were saying. We have to be the change we want. There ought to be an initiative to really drive environmental issues into all conventions. This is a very ecologically expensive way of exchanging information."

Offering another illustrative tale, Suzuki related how he once served as a committee member for an environmental funding organization. His main responsibility was to assess grant applications.

"As a kind of reward we would meet every year in a very exotic location - in the Caribbean, in Hawaii, or in South America. Finally, I said, 'I'm resigning from this committee, I can't stand it. We're all trying to save the world, and yet every year we have this very, very expensive meeting in an exotic place that produces a huge amount of greenhouse gases.'

"It's just not tolerable to me. We can't say we are trying to protect the world at the same time we are contributing to the problems we are trying to fight."

Carbon Neutral Travel Will Make a Huge Difference
He argues that one of the first environmental concerns planners should address is travel. "People are flying all over the place. Air is a very energy-expensive way to travel."

In 1990, he founded the David Suzuki Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to finding innovative solutions to help conserve the natural world.

"At the foundation we all travel by car and plane, carbon neutral. For every mile we travel by plane or car, we buy a comparable amount of energy that is green and put it on the grid … we compensate for what we are putting out into the environment by putting green energy onto the grid."

Suzuki urges conventions to consider doing the same. "Meetings are very, very polluting because of the travel, so organizations should try to get carbon neutral," he said. "This will be a huge stimulus to green energy."

"Going carbon neutral" means you've made up for the greenhouse gases you've produced by investing in climate-friendly projects that reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon offsets are simply credits for emission reductions achieved by projects elsewhere, such as wind farms or solar installations. By using carbon offsets, you can achieve net zero emissions and reduce your climate impact.

There are different ways to become carbon neutral. One method is to pay an organization to plant trees that will offset your greenhouse gas emissions. But this approach is loaded with problems, according to Suzuki: Trees take years to mature to the point where they absorb significant amounts of carbon dioxide; planted trees may die before they reach full growth; and if there's a forest fire, the offsets may go up in smoke.

Wind farms and solar installations are other forms of carbon offsets. While the emphasis should always be on reducing emissions first, often the simple act of calculating one's emissions in order to buy offsets is the first step in becoming aware of one's climate impact, and can lead to reductions later on. Moreover, since it is impossible to reduce one's emissions to zero, purchasing carbon offsets is a practical and affordable way to compensate for emissions that otherwise wouldn't be addressed.

In addition, by voluntarily incorporating the cost of greenhouse gas emissions into day-to-day operations, a person or business can get a sense of the true cost of their activities, and prepare for the inevitability of an economy in which carbon is regulated. Purchasing high quality carbon offsets from projects such as wind farms also helps support the transition to a sustainable energy economy.

Heat by George Monbiot is a newly released book that Suzuki said is a brilliant and terrifying critique of the crisis of human-induced climate change. It deals with the issue of stabilizing temperatures before catastrophic runaway warming ensues, Suzuki explained.

"What he says is what all scientists are saying. We've already started global warming. We can't do anything about that. We must do everything we can to stop global warming from rising above two degrees in this century. That's a huge rise already. We have to limit how much we emit every year. An average person in the world is allowed to emit one ton of carbon dioxide per year. The most equitable way of doing this is to allow each one of the 6.5 billion of us one ton: That's what you're allowed to produce, that's your allotment. If you don't make a ton, you can let someone else buy the stuff you didn't put out … that allows some people to pollute more.

"What blows me away," Suzuki continued, "is that a round-trip flight from New York to London produces one ton of carbon dioxide per person. If we were to limit the temperature rise to two degrees that's how much we would be allowed to emit per year: one ton."

For the past three years, Suzuki has compensated for the carbon dioxide emitted from his air travel by buying an equal amount of energy made from wind or solar power. "I talk a line but I still travel by plane. In the long run, I'm just not going to be able to travel by plane. I'm now turning down invitations to speak just because I don't want to get into a plane and fly; it just doesn't make sense to me. There ought to be ways to use teleconferencing much more."

Gizmos and Gadgets Galore
Plastic nametags, stapled handouts, marketing materials, promotional products, and brochures may all serve a specific purpose but they are also expensive from a resource standpoint. "I can't go to a convention or a meeting without getting a huge bag of stuff with every bit of it saying, 'Look at me, buy me, think of me, read me.' The amount of paper! This is a real issue that has to be dealt with. If you're going to print on paper, use both sides. This immediately cuts the amount of paper you're going to use in half. Consider using post-consumer recycled paper, a huge plus," he said.

We live in a "throwaway" world. Disposability and convenience is what today's consumers expect, but they come at a huge cost. "All of the coffee cups, food items, and snacks, why does all of that have to be disposable?" asked Suzuki. "Sugar and salt and pepper, why does that all have to be packaged? There used to be a lot better ways. Ketchup came in bulk delivery. We had to spoon it or shake it or whatever. Styrofoam is a negative thing. Today's conventions should be Styrofoam- and disposable-free. I know there will be those who say this will be too expensive. I don't believe that for a minute. If it's cheaper to buy stuff, use it once, and throw it away, there is something fundamentally wrong with the economics."

We must reduce waste, he said. "All of that waste had energy that went into making it and then you're going to use it and throw it away."

Green Lodging
Planners, he said, should inquire about a hotel or resort's green policies during the planning process. Fortunately, an increasing number of hotels are making a concerted effort to become more eco-friendly. "People going to conventions should ask the hotels they stay at, 'Do you reuse the towels instead of exchanging them every single day, do you reuse the soap and shampoo? How do you heat your water? Is it heated partly by solar power? Only if you ask these questions will hotels begin to pay attention to them."

Many of today's lodging companies tout their environmentally friendly policies, but Suzuki questions their true intent. "Most hotels now have an environment committee. I think a lot of it is because it can save money."

The core of most of today's meetings and conventions is education. Suzuki recommends using the learning opportunity to address environmental issues with the group. "Companies can say we realized conventions are a major user of resources but we're trying to make ours as green as possible," he said.

"We've got to begin to change the way that we live and meetings are a part of that. We've got to start re-examining the way we are living. Many are driving SUVs. I ask why? If you live in the city, how can you justify driving a SUV? If you drive a gas electric hybrid, you can cut your emissions by a third or a quarter."

Suzuki has had a love of nature since childhood. His earliest memories are of camping trips taken with his father, an avid outdoorsman. "When you are in the outdoors, you can't help but fall in love with nature," he said enthusiastically.

He attended Amherst College in Massachusetts where he received his B.A. in 1958 and then went on to the University of Chicago to earn his Ph.D. in Zoology.

Originally intending to go on to medical school, a third-year genetics class altered his course after he learned of the "detective story" behind genetics research. He landed a teaching job as an assistant professor of genetics. But then he read a book that changed his life: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. "She started the whole environmental movement," he said. "Like millions of people around the world, Rachel Carson's book was what turned me on. It was like, 'Oh, my God, what we are doing in science and technology is affecting everybody around us.' I consider her my great inspiration."

Released in 1962, Silent Spring exposed the hazards of the pesticide DDT and eloquently questioned humanity's faith in technological progress. Recognized by many as one of the most influential books of the 20th century, it was met with condemnation in the press and heavy-handed attempts by the chemical industry to ban it. Carson meticulously described how DDT entered the food chain and accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals, including human beings, causing cancer and genetic damage. Ironically, she died two years after the book's release, a victim of cancer, which she attributed to environmental factors.

"One of my greatest regrets is that I didn't get to meet her," said Suzuki.

"When her book came out, there wasn't a single minister or department of the environment in any government on the planet. The environment just didn't exist," he said. "She was one of the most gutsy ladies. When she brought Silent Spring out, it was excerpted in The New Yorker, in a series of three or four articles. She was attacked by the chemical industry in the most brutal and disgusting ways. She was attacked for being a woman, for not having a Ph.D., for not being a scientist. She was called an old maid because she wasn't married. She was called hysterical. To me, she is one of the great heroes of all time. She got me going."

Today, Suzuki is a hero to many. He has many victories to his credit. "There are literally dozens of places we have stopped logging, mines, or dams," he said. One of his favorite triumphs was his foundation's success in stopping logging on the Queen Charlotte Islands. "We got a 144,000-acre national park out of that. That was a great victory," he said.

He has joined forces with Indians who live in the Amazon in South America to battle the building of dams in Brazil. The World Bank was offering $500 million to fund these dams. "I worked with the Indians down there and we stopped it, we stopped the World Bank loan, and to this day not a single dam has been built. They would have flooded huge parts of the Amazon forest," Suzuki said.

But for every victory, Suzuki said, there are many defeats. He realizes his war on global warming and pillaging the environment is not one he can fight alone. He has many people he turns to for inspiration. One is Ray Anderson, the chief executive officer of Interface Carpet. He founded the company in 1973 and built it into a billion-dollar-a-year company. But every year his factories produced hundreds of gallons of wastewater and nearly 900 pollutants. Paul Hawken's book, The Ecology of Commerce, gave Anderson an entirely new perspective and motivated him to turn Interface into an environmentally friendly enterprise.

"What he has done is absolutely heroic. He had the vision and has taken a leadership role to get his fellow CEOs and presidents to incorporate the environment into their bottom line," Suzuki said.

He said a successful leader has the foresight to look ahead and think about future generations. "Leadership means having a vision that rises above just the immediate priorities of the next election or quarterly report. It's looking ahead to future generations and then working to meet the vision you have in your own head for what you want in the future."

For Suzuki, leadership means the courage to stand by that vision. Leaders also need to look at the big picture. "We tend to look at the world through tunnel vision without regard to what the repercussions are out in the bigger world."

He gives forestry as an example. "Foresters think their job is to cut down trees, and they don't look at what the impact is on the whole water cycle, in terms of erosion, in terms of the salmon populations that are going to spawn in streams whose river banks have been clear cut. Foresters look at the forests, they don't look at the bigger picture. There are huge implications to cutting down those trees."

Suzuki has inspired millions to recognize the importance of the natural world. He is one of Canada's - and the world's - most effective ambassadors of science and our future. For more information on Suzuki and his foundation, go to www.davidsuzuki.org where you can take his "Nature Challenge." He has researched what he feels are the 10 most effective ways to help conserve nature and improve our quality of life.

° Andrea Doyle is Convene's senior writer. The Leading by Example series is sponsored by the Canadian Tourism Commission. Visit its Web site at www.CanadaMeetings.com.