David Suzuki was in Calgary last Friday dispensing toxic waste. I have to offset his emissions, even though I was hoping to give Kyoto a rest this week.

In the same way that I feel a kind of pity for CEOs who promise more than they can deliver, so do I feel sorry for David Suzuki.

Suzuki is an environmentalist full of sentiments with which I agree and intentions I respect. Humans are exploiting natural resources beyond the point of renewal. Businesses can be more energy-efficient. Consumers have to be more conscious of the waste they leave in their wake. Nature is beautiful and should be sustainable for future generations to enjoy.

But just as I refuse to buy shares proffered by unrealistically optimistic CEOs, so do I ignore the advice offered by David Suzuki. He is asking society to make sacrifices to which he, by his own admission to Dave Taylor on QR77 radio (Calgary) last week, does not adhere.

He told Taylor that he “leaves a footprint” in nature bigger than is sustainable. Most especially, he pointed out how much he travels by airplane, an inefficient (though fast) form of transportation.

Suzuki is asking Canadians to make giant lifestyle sacrifices to meet the Kyoto Protocol. But he finds these choices unacceptable in his own life? Shame on him.

He completely negates his own message by not living it out. Also on Dave Taylor’s radio show, Suzuki started the conversation by suggesting that toxic waste and the increased incidence of asthma may be related. Most asthma is triggered by allergens, and a rise in asthma is associated with a rise in allergies. Medical science does not know why allergies rose by 75 per cent between 1980 and 1994 in the U.S. (and by 160 per cent for those underage, according to the U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

One of the most popular theories, however, is called the hygiene hypothesis. It is not based on the fact that we live in a “more toxic” world than we did in 1980, as Suzuki suggests. It posits that cleanliness, smaller families and maybe even inoculations are protecting kids so effectively from pathogens that when they are finally struck by something their bodies sense may be an intruder, they overreact.

David Suzuki

This might also explain why there are low incidences of allergies and autoimmune disorders in dirty, disease-ridden developing nations.

The point of my rant is that Suzuki often speculates wildly. He may be a scientist, but that’s no guarantee of the certainty of his positions. This is especially true when it comes to economics. He pretends that Kyoto will not put Canada at a serious disadvantage with the United States and Australia and China, which is folly.

He may have a hidden agenda to pitch our country into poverty, but I doubt that. I think Suzuki suffers from well-intentioned ignorance, just as former PM Pierre Trudeau did with the National Energy Program. Suzuki had better do more research before spouting off on what he does not understand.

On the Taylor show, Suzuki did not once refer to “global warming.” In fact, he made a point of saying that we cannot know what effect the massive amounts of CO2 that we are spewing into the atmosphere will have, and concluded that it cannot be good.

By his frightened tone, I got the feeling that all the atmospheric CO2 is eventually going to push oxygen out of the atmosphere, and eventually we are all going to asphyxiate.

But it was refreshing that he did not pretend human-induced global warming is a foregone conclusion.

His notion that saving money creates wealth also must be set straight. The Suzuki Foundation last week trumpeted the success of Ray Anderson, the owner of Interface Inc., a carpet manufacturer that has cut worldwide plant emissions 33 per cent over six years while increasing production and employment. By 2020, he aims to reduce emissions to zero.

This is great. All businesses should take similar action. When businesses save money but still produce as much product, they, of course, make more money, and we are all better off. Business managers have known this for millennia.

But it’s different for consumers. To equate consumers saving money (as they could certainly do if they drove no cars or lived in apartment buildings only) with being “better off” is nonsense. By this logic, people starving in Iraq are the wealthiest people in the world. They have no expenses!

Here’s another one of my troubles with Suzuki’s understanding of economics: If all businesses took the pro-Kyoto measures that Anderson (above) did, two major things would work against them.

For one, prices for construction crews and engineers capable of retrofitting or constructing efficient plants would skyrocket. As a result, prices would climb, in turn discouraging many businesses from even undertaking the improvements until more workers could be trained. Economically, it will take decades to put the new manpower and expertise in place to meet Kyoto, not the six-10 years that are left before the first Kyoto deadline. Even Anderson is working on a 25-year plan.

Two, if history is anything to go by, bureaucratic regulations often penalize and reward the wrong people. Kyoto is going to be a monumental regulatory headache.

I hate to think about the small business struggling with those regulations.

Or the entrepreneur with the great environmentally friendly idea who gets lost in the shuffle of endless lawyers, accountants and forms . . .