David Suzuki

Academic career

Suzuki received his Bachelor of Arts degree in biology in 1958 from Amherst College in Massachusetts, where he first developed an interest in genetics, and his Doctor of Philosophy degree in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961. From 1961 to 1962, he worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. From 1962 to 1963, he was an assistant professor at the University of Alberta. He was a professor in the genetics department at the University of British Columbia from 1963 until his retirement in 2001, and has since been professor emeritus at a university research institute.

Early in his research career he studied genetics using the popular model organism Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies). To be able to use his initials in naming any new genes he found, he studied dominant temperature-sensitive (DTS) phenotypes. He jokingly noted at a lecture at Johns Hopkins University that the only alternative subject was "(damn) tough skin."

Broadcasting career

Suzuki began in television on January 10, 1971, with the weekly children's show Suzuki on Science. In 1974, he founded the radio program Quirks & Quarks, which he also hosted on CBC AM radio (the forerunner of CBC Radio One) from 1975 to 1979. Throughout the 1970s, he also hosted Science Magazine, a weekly program geared towards an adult audience.

From 1979 to 2023, Suzuki hosted The Nature of Things, a CBC television series that has aired in nearly 50 countries. In this program, Suzuki aims to stimulate interest in the natural world, point out threats to human well-being and wildlife habitat, and present alternatives to humanity for achieving a more sustainable society. He has been a prominent proponent of renewable energy sources and the soft energy path.

Suzuki was the host of the critically acclaimed 1993 PBS series The Secret of Life. His 1985 series A Planet for the Taking averaged more than 1.8 million viewers per episode and earned him a United Nations Environment Programme Medal. His perspective in this series is summed up in his statement: "We have both a sense of the importance of the wilderness and space in our culture and an attitude that it is limitless and therefore we needn't worry." He concludes with a call for a major "perceptual shift" in our relationship with nature and the wild.

Suzuki's The Sacred Balance, a book first published in 1997 and later made into a five-hour mini-series on Canadian public television, was broadcast in 2002. Suzuki is now taking part in an advertisement campaign with the tagline "You have the power", promoting energy conservation through various household alternatives, such as the use of compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

For the Discovery Channel, Suzuki also produced "Yellowstone to Yukon: The Wildlands Project" in 1997. The conservation-biology based documentary focused on Dave Foreman's Wildlands Project, which considers how to create corridors between and buffer zones around large wilderness reserves as a means to preserve biological diversity. Foreman developed this project after leaving Earth First! (which he co-founded) in 1990. The conservation biologists Michael Soulé and Reed Noss were also directly involved.

In October 2022, Suzuki announced his retirement from The Nature of Things series in spring 2023, to be replaced as host by Sarika Cullis-Suzuki, his daughter, and Anthony Morgan.

Climate change activism

In February 2008, Suzuki urged McGill University students to speak out against politicians who fail to act on climate change, saying, "What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act."

Suzuki is unequivocal that climate change is a very real and pressing problem and that an "overwhelming majority of scientists" now agree that human activity is responsible. The David Suzuki Foundation website has a clear statement of this:

The debate is over about whether or not climate change is real. Irrefutable evidence from around the world—including extreme weather events, record temperatures, retreating glaciers, and rising sea levels—all point to the fact climate change is happening now and at rates much faster than previously thought.

The overwhelming majority of scientists who study climate change agree that human activity is responsible for changing the climate. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of the largest bodies of international scientists ever assembled to study a scientific issue, involving more than 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries. The IPCC has concluded that most of the warming observed during the past 50 years is attributable to human activities. Its findings have been publicly endorsed by the National Academies of Science of all G8 nations, as well as those of China, India and Brazil.

Suzuki says that despite this growing consensus, many in the public and the media seemed doubtful about the science for many years. The reason for the confusion about climate change, in Suzuki's view, was an organized campaign of disinformation about the science involved. "A very small number of critics" denies that climate change exists and that humans are the cause. These climate change deniers, Suzuki says, tend not to be climate scientists and do not publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals but rather target the media, the general public, and policy makers. Their goal: "delaying action on climate change." According to Suzuki, deniers have received significant funding from coal and oil companies, including ExxonMobil. They are linked to "industry-funded lobby groups", such as the Information Council on the Environment (ICE), whose aim is to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)."

Suzuki is a "messenger" / ambassador for the environmental organization 350.org advocating for cutting CO₂ emissions and creating climate solutions.

Suzuki has supported ecocide becoming a crime at the International Criminal Court, saying, "Ecocide is not only a crime against life, it is suicidal for us because we are the apex predator that is utterly dependent on nature's services."

Suzuki has attracted criticism for maintaining a lifestyle with a substantial carbon footprint while proselytizing against carbon emissions. Suzuki himself laments that in travelling constantly to spread his message of climate responsibility, he has ended up "over his [carbon] limit by hundreds of tonnes." He says he has stopped vacationing overseas, and aims to "cluster" his speaking engagements together to reduce his carbon footprint. He would prefer, he says, to appear solely by video conference.

Suzuki has engaged in a critique of political economy claiming that the contemporary discipline of economics entirely fails to account for the environment, hyperbolically saying, "conventional economics is a form of brain damage". In 2021, he said that pipelines would be "blown up" if climate action was not taken; he later apologized.

During a media interview in July 2025, Suzuki said it was "too late" to solve the climate crisis:

I've never said this before to the media, but it's too late. I say that because I go by science and Johan Rockström, the Swedish scientist who heads the Potsdam Institute, has defined nine planetary boundaries. These are constraints on how we live.

Suzuki went on to explain that humanity had crossed the seventh boundary earlier in 2025, leaving no options to avert catastrophe. He added that humankind should begin preparing for more severe and destructive natural disasters.

Social commentary

Genetically modified crops

Suzuki has been criticized for his statements about the safety of genetically modified crops. Suzuki has written that "products of biotechnology are being rammed into our food, onto our fields and into our medicines, without any public participation in discussions and with the complicity, indeed, the active support and funding of governments. But there are profound health, ecological and economic ramifications of this activity." In a 1999 CP Wire article, Suzuki is quoted as saying: "Any politician or scientist who tells you these products are safe is either very stupid or lying." In an interview with CBC TV, Suzuki argues that the science showing GMOs are safe is "very, very bad science" and that the commercialization of GMOs is "driven by money." In 2012, his foundation's website included an "Understanding GMO" page that said, "the safety of GMO foods is unproven and a growing body of research connects these foods with health concerns."

Fukushima

In a 2013 speech on water policy at the University of Alberta, Suzuki claimed that a second emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant would require the evacuation of the North American west coast. Three months later, he admitted that his comment was "off-the-cuff." But he still speculates that another earthquake could trigger a new nuclear disaster in Fukushima, as the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission paper he cited in his speech states that such a disaster could call for the evacuation of over 10 million Japanese residents.

Immigration

In 2013, in the French news magazine L'Express, Suzuki called Canada's immigration policy "disgusting" (We "plunder southern countries to deprive them of their future leaders, and wish to increase our population to support economic growth") and insisted that "Canada is full" ("Our useful area is reduced").

Canadian justice system

While being interviewed by Tony Jones on Australia's ABC TV network in September 2013, Suzuki repeated the claim from Canadian media that the Harper government was building prisons even though crime rates were declining in Canada. He suggested that the prisons might be being built so that Stephen Harper could incarcerate environmental activists. Jean-Christophe De Le Rue, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, denied the claims, emphasizing that the Canadian government was not building prisons and had no plans to do so. But in 2011, the Harper government announced a five-year, "$2-billion federal prison-building boom" to add "over 2,700 beds to men's and women's prisons across Canada", with $517 million already "spent on prison construction" in 2010–2011.

Politics

Over the years, Suzuki has endorsed Green Party and New Democratic Party candidates in various federal and provincial elections.

According to Suzuki, Justin Trudeau called him in 2015 to ask for his endorsement of the Liberal platform on climate change. Upon pointed questioning by Suzuki, the conversation turned "nasty", with Trudeau saying, "I don't have to listen to this sanctimonious crap", at which time Suzuki "proceeded to call him a twerp".

In 2026, Suzuki endorsed Avi Lewis in that year's federal NDP leadership race.

Personal life

Suzuki was married to Setsuko Joane Sunahara from 1958 to 1965; the couple had three children. In 1973, Suzuki married Tara Elizabeth Cullis, with whom he had two daughters, one of whom is Severn Cullis-Suzuki. As of 2022, he has ten grandchildren, including snowboarder and filmmaker Tamo Campos. His cousin's grandchildren are Montreal Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki, and Carolina Hurricanes player Ryan Suzuki. Suzuki is an atheist.