TORONTO - David Suzuki, Canada's best-known environmentalist, has spent a generation encouraging Canadians to look after the environment, but it seems they have not been listening.
Goateed, soft-spoken and avuncular, Suzuki has built a devout following from 28 years narrating "The Nature of Things," a popular television series on the science of the natural world.
Now aged 71, he notes Canada's environmental credentials are eroding just when he says it is more important than ever to move in the opposite direction.
While Canada ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, the current, Conservative government says the standards cannot be met, reopening a debate he thought had been won.
"We've already been here before, and that's the thing that breaks my heart," he told Reuters during one of his frequent trips to Toronto from his home in Vancouver.
"If we had taken it seriously and done something, we would be so far past the Kyoto target today, and the problems would be infinitely simpler and cheaper."
In the 1990s, "there was a sense that Canada was a good environmental citizen," he said. But data submitted to the United Nations shows that since 1990, the country's greenhouse gas emissions have risen more than in any other leading industrialized nation.
"Canada has coasted on a reputation far beyond its merits," Suzuki said.
Suzuki was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, as were his parents. His grandparents were Japanese. He studied zoology at the University of Chicago before returning to teach at the University of British Columbia.
He has written some 43 books. The latest, which he co-authored, is called "Tree: A Life Story."
