The Big Picture

David Suzuki and Dave Robert Taylor look beyond our environmental problems to examine the forces that are preventing real change. Whether they're discussing how to reconcile economy with ecology or why we may need to start eating jellyfish for dinner, they point in the direction we must go if we hope to meet the environmental challenges we face in the twenty-first century.

Covering suburban sprawl, sustainable transportation, food shortages, biodiversity, technology, public policy, and more, The Big Picture identifies the problems facing our world and proposes solid, science-based solutions.

Published in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation.

David Suzuki is an internationally renowned geneticist and environmentalist and a recipient of UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science and the 2009 Right Livelihood Award. Host of the longrunning CBC television program The Nature of Things, he is also the author of more than fifty books.

Dave Robert Taylor is a journalist, writer, and former Director of Communications with the David Suzuki Foundation. His work has appeared in the Globe & Mail, the Toronto Star, and other newspapers and magazines across Canada. He has also written for television and film and is a past winner of the CBC's Signature Shorts screen writing competition. Taylor graduated with honours from the University of Victoria, where he also completed the post-graduate Harvey Southam professional writing program and was the first person to receive the Harvey Southam Award for his thesis on journalism ethics. Taylor lives with his family in New Westminster, British Columbia.

"The Big Picture constructs an environmentalism that celebrates and would protect life on earth. For British Columbia, Suzuki not only puts us 'on the map' but also reconceptualises this place we call home." -BC Studies

"The Big Picture covers issues from suburban sprawl to food shortages and everything in between, seeing science based solutions to today's most pressing challenges." -Granville Magazine

"Covering suburban sprawl, sustainable transportation, food shortages, biodiversity, technology, public policy and other issues, The Big Picture not only identifies the problems we face but proposes science-based solutions." -Toronto Star

"Few have the vision to see the 'Big Picture'. Fortunately, David Suzuki does. As well as the ability to fit us with a prescription that enables us all to see it as clearly as he does. If you care for the environment, or simply want to gain more understanding of the natural world, you must read this book!" -Ed Begley, Jr.

"One reason for David Suzuki's status as most popular living Canadian is obvious: He is able to see The Big Picture and to communicate that vision to a broad audience . . . These essays offer thoughtful analysis of some of the serious problems we humans have created . . . And they also celebrate some of the things we are getting right. With a mix of humour, righteous anger, and suggested solutions to our problems, the essays in this book are provocative, entertaining, and enlightening." -Finding Solutions

"We've got lots of nuts-and-bolts accounts of our environmental predicament; leave it to David Suzuki and Dave Robert Taylor to back up and give us the big view that puts things in perspective. A necessary book!" -Bill McKibben