Environmental broadcaster David Suzuki says his family’s displacement shaped his bond with Vancouver, and he is pressing the next mayor and council to prioritize cutting the city’s carbon footprint.
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David Suzuki, the long-time environmental advocate and host of The Nature of Things, says Vancouver is now his home in both an emotional and practical sense, despite having been forced to leave the city as a child during the wartime internment of Japanese Canadians.
Suzuki was born in Vancouver in 1936, shortly before the Second World War, and later faced the consequences of discriminatory wartime policy. The B.C. government forced Suzuki and his family into an internment camp along with thousands of other Japanese Canadians, and after the war he said his family had to leave British Columbia.
Suzuki said the family then travelled over the Rockies to London, Ontario, where he finished high school. He went to the United States for post-secondary education, completing a PhD and a post-doctoral program, before deciding to return to Canada rather than remain in the U.S.
In describing why he returned, Suzuki pointed to Canadian social and economic structures, including universal healthcare associated with Tommy Douglas and provincial equalization payments. He said he accepted a position at the University of Alberta, but ultimately took a job at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Suzuki said arriving in Vancouver made the city feel immediately familiar, in part because of stories passed down from his parents about local places such as Burrard Street and Granville Street. He said his grandparents moved to Vancouver in the early 1900s and that both his parents were born and raised there, leaving him with a sense of “roots” in the city.
As an environmentalist whose career has included decades of public education, Suzuki said he has learned that individuals and communities cannot simply “run away” from urban and regional problems. He argued that people should make a commitment to a place and work to ensure it is environmentally sound, rather than trying to distance themselves from nature’s impact on health, resources and daily life.
Suzuki linked his view of Vancouver directly to the municipal politics affecting climate policy. He said the city has had “ups and downs,” referencing what he described as strong years under Gregor Robertson, and he then pointed to the current approach under Mayor Ken Sim as especially contentious with environmentalists.
In Suzuki’s account, environmental groups have criticized decisions tied to affordability and climate policy, including cutting back climate bylaws for buildings, rejecting protected bike lanes on Broadway due to costs, and reducing funding to city departments involved in environmental initiatives. He framed the underlying issue as a political emphasis on the economy as the source of everything that matters, which he said contributes to treating nature as something separate from society.
Ahead of the municipal election scheduled for Oct. 17, Suzuki said he hopes the next mayor and council will prioritize reducing Vancouver’s carbon footprint. He said this goal is closely connected to how cities and governments place nature in legal, economic and political systems, arguing that current systems do not adequately reflect dependence on clean air, pure water, healthy soil and energy from the sun.
Suzuki’s remarks also expanded beyond local governance to address the broader climate crisis and the timeline for action. In 2025, he said he believes the world is “too late” to stop the impacts, a position he said reflects how long warnings have been available even as emissions and planetary risks continued.
To ground his assessment, Suzuki cited the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity published in 1992 ahead of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, followed by a second warning in 2017. He also referenced an official warning expected to be released next year, ten years after the second warning, and he pointed to findings including an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report in 2018 stating temperatures should not rise more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
Suzuki also pointed to a Sept. 2 report by the United Nations Environment Programme that, under current policies, widely assesses exceedance of 1.5°C as unavoidable. He said humanity has already passed most of the nine planetary boundaries, and he referenced how those boundaries include the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, ocean pH levels and forest clearing.
He further said that after decades of COP climate meetings, global emissions have not been capped or reduced, and he tied that to the urgency of the remaining window. In that context, he referenced remarks by Johan Rockström about the possibility of returning to a safer zone if global emissions drop sharply within five years, using that as part of his argument about limited time for change.
For Vancouver readers, Suzuki’s comments place municipal climate action in a wider scientific and political context. His message connects local policy choices—such as building emissions rules, cycling infrastructure and departmental funding—to the broader reality that climate risk is driven by cumulative planetary changes, while the Oct. 17 vote becomes a practical moment for deciding whether the city’s approach will shift toward more aggressive carbon reduction.
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