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The old men warn: Parents must be warriors too
March 19, 2026 · 0 Comments
By Constance Scrafield
Revered Canadian Scientist and staunch climate advocate David Suzuki will celebrate his 90th Birthday on March 24.
He warns parents not to presume that fighting to protect the planet is simply up to their teenage and young adult children. In a YouTube interview with two college students late last year, he declared that the adults running this planet are responsible for this emergency, and they must join their children in fighting for it.
David Attenborough, world-famous scientist and environmentalist, the only person to be twice knighted in the UK, cannot stress enough in a recent interview that “This is an emergency!”
Attenborough is famous for his many movies about the natural world.
His 100th birthday will be celebrated in many ways in the UK on May 8.
That anxious declaration of his is backed by the terrifying news that global emissions hit a record high in 2025.
This comes after 30 years of COP’s international meetings to discuss the dilemma of global warming, and with every meeting, countries promised to do better, to face the damage humanity has inflicted on this once-perfect world. The cause is clear and indisputable: our addiction to fossil fuels and our compliance in allowing our governments to endlessly support gas and oil companies – some of the richest corporations in the world – with massive tax breaks and large subsidies.
In 2025, the Canadian government spent close to $30 billion in various ways to support the fossil fuel industry, according to an April 2022 analysis by Environmental Defence.
In his wholly passionate way, Suzuki delivered, “This is an emergency!”
By the end of COP 30 in Nov. 2025, in Belém, Brazil, the state of emergency was barely reflected in the resulting agreements made, for money really took the day, as it does for any negotiation. There were concessions, some promises about supporting countries more vulnerable to floods and consequences that the planet’s warming has and will cause; there were ambitions displayed, but the big problems saw few guarantees from countries so dependent on the sale of their fossil fuels. Among the disappointments was Canada.
We are planning another pipe at exactly the very time we must begin to shut fossil fuels down.
Scientists like Suzuki and Attenborough are clenching their teeth the way one does while watching a frightening film. Yet, none of this is fiction, but without a seriously dedicated campaign to reduce our emissions, well, even scientists, knowing the likelihoods are paused to fully predict the future.
Floods, fires and extraordinary storms are already a huge part of what is becoming “normal” conditions, but why are we not in fact recycling every bit of garbage; why isn’t solar power the answer for electricity everywhere, especially in tropical and subtropical regions?
The issue is that what is needed to convert away from fossil fuel is already at hand and already in use, but still on too small a scale, worldwide.
The heartbreak comes when, in 1959, the evidence was clear that the use of gas and oil was harmful, but there was so much money to be made.
Then, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) tells us, “Some 1,700 of the world’s leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued this appeal in November 1992. The World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity was written and spearheaded by the late Henry Kendall, former chair of UCS’s board of directors.”
That is 34 years ago, and those scientists came from 81 countries, as Suzuki reported.
This link takes one to the very page, which the UCS has maintained and updated to make clear the sad story that is today’s.
The worst part about it all is that money, hence politics, is at the base. With the burgeoning gap of wealth disparity that is established now, the rampant corporations will have to understand that there must be an urgent shift in how we power our world. What alternatives are able to take on that task and can do the job are already being manufactured, no matter what is insisted otherwise.
One in five people on this increasingly crowded planet lives in poverty with all the deprivations that implies. The matter of global overpopulation could bring very difficult conversations. As a species, we must begin in earnest to change how we live, consume and handle our waste; the weight of numbers might be less of a factor than it is now.
It is now that we are all on the hook to protest and let our governments know that this collective of generations insists on a clean future for our children – what are we promising them for their futures? Will we simply sit back and hope Suzuki will live forever to speak out and keep saying this is an emergency?
We all know it is. Oil and gas know it is, but they continue to promote their dangerous fiction that gas is here to stay, at least for many decades.
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