Raffi Cavoukian - The Environment Is Dead: Long Live Mother Nature
May 23, 2012 “Environmentalism has failed” is a statement that deserves attention. It comes from famed environmentalist David Suzuki marking 50 years since Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, helped spark the modern environmental movement.
Suzuki’s recent essay, Environmentalism Has Failed: On Adopting a Biocentric Viewpoint, on the fundamental failure of environmentalism is ominous. The world faces not only environmental calamities such as deforestation, coral reef depletion, and freshwater shortages, it is also mired in economic crises and harsh political realities. Despite the promise of “Arab Springs” and the global Occupy movement, we are increasingly in planetary peril. Throughout his life, David Suzuki has been a leading educator on planetary health; his conclusion about the environmental movement’s failure must be agonizing. Perhaps that’s why his blog offered no new way forward.
What now?
If decades of environmental campaigns produced significant gains but have lost the overall struggle to protect planetary life, that raises key questions:
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