From: Special ? Our Changing Climate
Presenter: Trevor Cochrane

This period of time on earth in its history is probably the most calm period but are we changing the climate with what we have been doing in the past 100 years or the modern era of man kind?

The remarkable aspect of our existence is that we have been around as a species for a hundred and fifty thousand years. For 99% of that time the earth was huge and we were relatively insignificant. Suddenly in the past 100 or 200 hundred years we have just exploded in numbers, in technological muscle power and in the amount of energy we are using in fossil fuels.

The signature of cO2 has leapt above anything we have seen over the last 400,000 years and it is going up. The only possibility is that humans are responsible for that.

From a personal point of view, in terms of things that people at home can do in their own environment, what are your recommendations?

There are a number of simple steps that you can begin like leaving your car at home one day a week. Make your house 10% more energy efficient by plugging the holes and stopping the leaks and you will save money I that way.

Start buying home appliances that are much more energy efficient. Every bit of water in Australia could be heated by the sun and it doesn?t make any sense that in a country this gifted that the sun isn?t the major source of energy.

Adding a solar hot water system to your house will take 4 tonnes off your household emissions straight away.

These are little things that we might feel are insignificant but adding it all up can be quite significant.

What do you think of water sources for the future?

I certainly think that a marine city like Perth has to look to the ocean as a possible source for desalination. I saw that meaning it depends on the scale as I don?t know what the ecological effect would be from removing that much salt water and what happens to the salt.

I also think that if you have nature providing you with rainfall in a dry area like this, then you have to exploit every bit of it that falls and capture it. We have to start mixing taking water that is drinkable, taking human waste as each of these by itself is a potential resource, and we mix them and flush it down the toilet and create a problem.

We have to find ways to allow for composting toilets, waterless urinals for men, we shouldn?t be using drinkable water to flush toilets. We should be separating the streams and dealing with things in a way that makes more sense.

Dr David Suzuki?s new book David Suzuki The Autobiography is now available in bookstores.

Dr David Suzuki

David T. Suzuki PhD, Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster.

David has received consistently high acclaim for his 30 years of award-winning work in broadcasting, explaining the complexities of science in a compelling, easily understood way. He is well known to millions as the host of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's popular science television series, The Nature of Things.

His eight part series, A Planet for the Taking won an award from the United Nations. His eight-part PBS series The Secret of Life was praised internationally, as was his five-part series The Brain for the Discovery Channel. For CBC Radio he founded the long running radio series, Quirks and Quarks and has presented two influential documentary series on the environment, From Naked Ape to Superspecies and It's a Matter of Survival.

An internationally respected geneticist, David was a full Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver from 1969 until his retirement in 2001. He is professor emeritus with UBC's Sustainable Development Research Institute. From 1969 to 1972 he was the recipient of the prestigious E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship Award for the "Outstanding Canadian Research Scientist Under the Age of 35".

He has received numerous awards including the Roger Tory Peterson Award from Harvard University. He is a Companion of the Order of Canada, and a member of the Order of British Columbia. He has received 18 honorary doctorates - 12 from Canada, four from the United States and two from Australia. First Nations people have honoured him with six names, formal adoption by two tribes, and made him an honorary member of the Dehcho First Nations.

David was born in Vancouver, BC in 1936. During World War II, at the age of six, he was interned with his family in a camp in BC. After the war, he went to high school in London, Ontario. He graduated with Honours from Amherst College in 1958 and went on to earn his PhD in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961.

The author of 43 books, David Suzuki is recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology. He lives with his wife, Dr. Tara Cullis, and two daughters in Vancouver.

Reference - http://www.davidsuzuki.org/About_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/