The Bottom Line with David Suzuki

I remember a couple months ago when HBO's Big Love finished its fifth and final season, one of my friends posted as her Facebook status something along the lines of "I almost cried at the end of the final episode of Big Love because it was such a great show".  I'm not quite doing her justice, but you get the idea.  Now, I am also a huge Big Love fan, so completely sympathized with this sentiment.  It was a terrific show and I enjoyed every episode completely.  I am sad to see it go, but I think it had to end before it did what so many shows do when they've been around for too long and become a bit self-indulgent.  I was actually thinking there might be a Sopranos-style final season where everything goes wrong, most people are dead and the finale is ambiguous, but no dice.  No cliffhangers.  It's probably for the best since I still debate with Tim what happened at the end in the restaurant.

All of this actually does have a point, which is this: The Bottom Line with David Suzuki conjures up very similar feelings for me as Big Love did for my friend.  I listen to podcasts on my way to work every day, and this morning, I noticed that I was listening to my last downloaded episode of The Bottom Line.  At some point during the episode, Dr. Suzuki mentioned that this was, in fact, the final episode, and I got a bit choked up.  For those of you that know about Dr. Suzuki, he is a Japanese-Canadian academic, scientist and environmentalist.  He has been an outspoken critic of the Canadian government's and other governments' failure to take action to help the environment.  He cares more passionately and more publicly about the environment than any other Canadian I can think of. I genuinely adore Dr. Suzuki in ways I have never felt for any other stranger in my entire life.

Fossil fuels.

I was listening to a podcast by Dr. David Suzuki yesterday where he interviews Dr. M. Scott Taylor, the Canada Research Chair in International, Energy, and Environmental Economics at the University of Calgary.  Dr. Suzuki was interviewing Dr. Taylor about the burying of carbon dioxide emissions, referred to as "carbon capture and storage" or "CCS".  So, I guess this is where we've arrived: we've accepted that we are not wise enough collectively to change our exploitation and destruction of the part of the planet we already inhabit, so we're going to have to aggressively look for other parts to exploit.  There is already a fairly significant amount of space garbage.  I guess this is the opposite.  I would like to note for the record that although the podcast was Dr. Suzuki's podcast, The Bottom Line, which is adapted from his radio show on CBC, he did not appear to be in favour of CCS.  As a matter of fact, I would say he disagreed as strongly as I've ever seen a Canadian disagree with another Canadian (a little joke for the Americans reading this blog).  We are a polite and agreeable bunch North of the border.