Fighting poverty and hopelessness is not only key to winning the war in Iraq and stopping terrorism - but it may lead to the survival of the human species, according to the face of Canada's environmental movement, Dr. David Suzuki.

Best known for his role as host of "The Nature of Things", one of the longest running shows on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Dr. Suzuki was on the Island for an Environmental Conference on Conservation.

Environment Minister Dennis Lister said his presence at the conference was a "major coup".

"I am sure you will be inspired by what he has to say," Mr. Lister told delegates.

Dr. Suzuki said he was as adamant as ever on environmental issues, adding that environmentalists have to be concerned with social inequity, he said at a press conference yesterday.

"The rich have been getting incredibly rich," while the number of poor people has grown, he said - using the poor of Iraq as one of his examples.

"If Bush thinks bombing the hell out of Iraq is going to solve these problems, he's got his head somewhere I don't want to tell you," he told the press.

"What 9/11 showed us is that there is a very tiny group of people who don't give a damn about dying or who they kill," and to fight against that kind of desperation is near impossible, he said.

The solution? "We have to fight absolute poverty and hopelessness." And not just for the sake of ending terrorism, but for our own basic survival.

After all, Dr. Suzuki said, if someone who is starving finds a plant they can eat, they do not stop to check if it is on the endangered lists - "they eat it".

It will be the same with the poor in Iraq, he continued - they have oil, they will burn it. He also talked about working with natives in Canada who sell acres of their land to lumber companies for "three or four crappy jobs". Fighting poverty, therefore, is a direct step towards saving the environment which is a matter of the earth's survival.

"We've got to deal with these very desperate social issues," he said. Human beings as a species have to change their way of thinking and remember that we are biological beings with an absolute dependence on clean air, water, soil and sunlight for our well-being and survival.

In addition to our sheer increase in numbers during the twentieth century, "we have acquired science and technology ... We have this enormous ability to attack the environment and take what we want".

However, whereas previously if people made an environmental mistake people could just pick up and move, human beings have finally run out of room, he said .

"Island countries know something a country like Canada doesn't know," Dr. Suzuki observed. As the country with the second largest land mass on earth but a relatively small population, Canada still possesses vast amounts of open space. However, said Dr. Suzuki: "You come to an Island an you know damn well there are limits ... And we're past the sustainable limit.

"Now we have to think collectively as a species ... only now are we becoming aware that we are undermining the very things that keep us alive ... We've got to redirect the way we think. We are biological creatures."

In spite of being encouraged by environmental action being taken worldwide, Dr. Suzuki said the dilemma was that the world was like a giant oil tanker that had built up momentum along one course. To suddenly change course, he said, "will be very tough" - as anyone who has seen the movie "Titanic" knows.

"(The) Kyoto (Accord) was a tiny, tiny step," Dr. Suzuki continued. However he said total greenhouse gases have to be reduced by 50 percent.

"It means we have to get off fossil fuels ... Hydrogen is the energy source of the future.

"If we start now in 30 years we can reduce greenhouse gases by 50 percent."

The problem with that idea, he said, was that 30 years is "politically off the radar screen".

"We're going the wrong way and it's very, very urgent," he said.

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More information on Dr. Suzuki and his work can be found at www.davidsuzuki.org.