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Junting (Tony) Liang

CWR1A Sect. 23
May 8, 2019
Reshaping People’s Thoughts about Air

Air serves as the most loyal supporter of our lives. It covers every corner of this planet to

guarantee the basic right to live for every organism. However, air is often overlooked by

people only because they can neither see nor touch it. In his book The Sacred Balance:

Rediscovering Our Place in Nature, David Suzuki, the well–known environmental activist,

titles the chapter about air “The Breath of All Green Things”—a poetic interpretation which

depicts the tight relation between life and air. In this chapter, he effectively conveys the

significance of air in order to reshape people’s thinking and convey urgency to deal with air

problems in the environment. Suzuki distinctively interprets air from both literary and

scientific angles to strengthen his ideas throughout the chapter.

Suzuki starts by introducing a significant idea rarely realized by people—air is a sacred

element. He demonstrates it from an etymological perspective, a discussion of meanings of

the word “spirit” as it relates to air:

Look at how the word ‘spirit’ expands from its Latin source, spiritus,
meaning ‘breath,’ ‘air,’ into so many other lively meanings—the soul, the
animating principle, intelligence, emotional vigor, liveliness, essence or
distilled extract—each one in opposition to deadness or dullness. From the
same root comes ‘inspiration,’ which gives birth to a new idea, and ‘expiration,’
which signals the end of life. (50–51)
Through presenting these meanings, Suzuki connects air and life in an animating sense. The

Latin origin of the “spirit” tells of the ancient people’s profound understanding of the sacred

nature of air in their culture. By setting the “lively” meanings in strong contrast to

“deadness,” Suzuki implies that they distinguish the beautiful aspects in the universe from

those dark ones. Also, he connects the evoking of fresh thoughts and terminus of life to
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extend the context of air to an even broader scale into human’s mind and life span. He writes

a calm tone filled with ancient wisdom to let readers feel the sacredness of air.

Breathing—the fundamental biological mechanism tightly related to air—is described by

Suzuki to strengthen his idea of air as sacredness. He reminds the readers again of the

vulnerability of life by introducing the specific data about what happens when breathing is

stopped: “Most people suffer irreversible brain damage after two or three minutes without air

and the finality of death within four or five minutes” (54). Though everyone knows that no

organism can live without air, the numbers can still make people tremble for an instant

because of humans’ instinctive fear of the end of life. Besides this universal rule, Suzuki

states that breathing was the function of the oldest portion of the brain, even before

consciousness (54). Before a person realizes that he is breathing, he is already doing so.

Suzuki compares the emerging order of breath and consciousness to trigger the readers to

reconsider the “hierarchy” of their body functions. It was breathing that lays the foundation

for a more complex brain; and it was air that acts as the key substance of breathing to sustain

our life.

Suzuki puts air at the holy and respectful position of a god by identifying air as “the

creator and creation of life itself” (63). He gets his reader immersed in a sacred sense and

then presents the grand creation story of air in scientific terms. Suzuki starts from the birth of

the universe in the Big Bang, to 4.6 billion years ago when a lifeless Earth emerged from the

“aggregation of dust and meteorites” (63); then there came the repeating volcano eruption

with enormous gases, like “water vapor, carbon dioxide and the compounds of sulfur,

nitrogen, and chlorine” constantly being released and deposited (64); and finally to an
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elementary atmosphere filled mostly by greenhouse gases but no pure oxygen (65). It is

interesting to compare this deserted stage of Earth’s history with its flourishing life today.

The formation process depicts a stately picture which could make readers marvel at the

extraordinarily huge time scale of this process. Isn’t it amazing to imagine that everything we

know today comes from almost nothingness?

After the lifeless Earth is depicted, Suzuki leads the readers to see the origin of life under

atmosphere “the creator.” He describes how, from “simple atoms and molecules” (65) in

atmosphere, one final cell stood out among countless failures to develop appropriate features

for survival and became the ancestor of every lifeform that ever existed (65). Not only does

he vividly show the tenacious struggle of lives, but also triggers the readers to imagine a

grand family tree, where from a tiny simple cell, billions of branches extend out, and the

atmosphere was the ultimate origin of all these descendants. Next, Suzuki explains the

process during which, beginning from 2.5 billion years ago, through performing

photosynthesis in their chlorophyll, the tiny cyanobacteria transformed the huge atmosphere

into the one we are familiar today by releasing enormous amount of oxygen into it (66). This

process demonstrates how the “Green Things” can modify the environment in a macro sense,

illustrating why Suzuki considers of air also as the “creation of life.” The readers may be

surprised by the strong capability of life. It is already amazing that humans have changed the

planet for so much, but think those tiny cyanobacteria transforming the atmosphere of the

whole world. Suzuki’s “creators and creation” interpretation of air, combined with the

marvelous history of air and life, helps explain his idea of the sacred role of air on Earth.

Suzuki now moves to the analysis of the atmosphere we live in, portraying the
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atmosphere as a guardian of all lifeforms. To demonstrate this argument, he introduces the

major indispensable functions of the atmosphere: driving the global circulation of air currents

and regulating climate around the world (76). The atmosphere also “shine[s], reflect[s],

protect[s], warm[s] and cool[s]” (73) to maintain a healthy and stable environment and shelter

all living organisms from the cold empty universe. All these functions result in the precise

conditions on Earth that allow life to exist and thrive. Earlier in this section, Suzuki contrasts

some environmental indexes like temperature and pressure on two brother planets of Earth,

Venus and Mars. The two planets have very different structure of atmospheres from the Earth.

They are either too thick or too thin to maintain favorable conditions like temperature for life

(69–70). This comparison also shows that Earth’s current atmosphere is a unique and a

valuable protector of our home planet. In my eyes, it is like a large tent which covers life in

warmth and serene from the darkness outside. Lifelessness on those two planets reflects that

the universe would not necessarily favor the existence of life. It is a unique atmosphere

encircling the life on Earth, making it a habitable zone.

Suzuki again stresses the atmosphere’s role as a protector from the perspective of the

vulnerability of life. He reminds the readers of their personal experience of discomfort when

they go hiking on some high mountains: “We know it doesn’t take too much altitude before

we are out of our comfort zone when it comes to atmospheric pressure and availability of

oxygen” (71). Almost everyone knows how uncomfortable it is when encountering altitude

illness. Here, Suzuki highlights our weakness under abrupt changes. Even such small change

in environment causes many people to feel awful, not to mention any dramatic difference in

atmospheric conditions. Through demonstrating how life is vulnerable when it faces

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environmental change, Suzuki emphasizes the reliance of life on the valuable atmosphere. We

should consider healthy living conditions as a precious gift from our great guardian. Now, the

readers may start reevaluating the atmosphere in their mind. How fortunate it is to be able to

enjoy life in such a sanctuary!

Suzuki concludes this section about the protective atmosphere with a quote from

Vladimir Shatalov’s ‘The Home Planet’ to present the dreadful lifeless scene outside of it:

“Beyond the air there is only emptiness, coldness, darkness. . .How dangerous it is to threaten

even the smallest part of this gossamer covering, this conserver of life” (78). Here, we are

directly presented the horrible scene if we were without the warm protection all around us.

By the strong opposition between the deserted outside and secure inside of the atmosphere,

we are more likely to appreciate the presence of such a layer of shelter and better accept the

protective atmosphere idea.

Shatalov’s quote also serves a transition to Suzuki’s call for protection of air. The

atmosphere has provided such favorable conditions for life, but it itself is just a thin layer of

gases, too. People frequently forget how air has supported them because of its invisibility and

intangibility. They do not truly realize the value of air until air pollution is knocking at their

front door. Even them, many of them express concern about air quality just because it

threatens their health rather than the problem of pollution issue from a more ecological

perspective. Throughout the chapter, Suzuki’s interpretation of air as a sacred shelter of our

warm home demonstrates why air itself deserves more attention and respect from the public

than just “air quality”. His effort all serves his ultimate goal—to raise people’s awareness of

the urgency to restore clean air.

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In the present age of climate change, Suzuki argues that air quality problem in its largest

sense should be the first one to deal with. He states that “once we have restored the breath of

life to its rightful primacy—the first above all other human rights and responsibilities, the

reference point from which all decisions flow—we can start to work in the long term to

revive an ancient equilibrium” (80). Here, Suzuki identifies air as the foundation of all other

systems. The logic behind his statement is clear—whenever there is fresh air, we can live to

consider other issues; without clean air for breathing, we will all vanish before concerning

about anything. The straight and strong argument may dispel any doubt and hesitation in

readers’ mind about where humans should begin to restore a healthy environment. In

addition, among the chapters that address air, water, soil, fire(energy), animals, and love,

Suzuki makes this chapter the first to address these essential elements of our Earth. He makes

air and the atmosphere our first priority when considering environmental issues.

Throughout the chapter, David Suzuki analyzes the importance of air from both spiritual

and scientific perspectives. Conveying sacredness and the protective nature of air may raise

people’s attention and present a new approach for them to understand air. He alerts the entire

human civilization to deal with air issues immediately. Suzuki’s wonderful combination of

interesting views and science has effectively accomplished these goals.

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Work Cited

Suzuki, David. "The Breath of All Green Things." Suzuki, David. The Sacred Balance:

Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2007. 50-80. 2

March 2019.