THE MAJOR TASK AT HAND: A RESPONSE TO "SIERRA LIFE"

In your email of March 15/07 you state that “The Sierra Club is concerned that gains made in energy conservation might be wiped out by increased GHG emissions from the oil and gas sector.” Yet you apparently are not concerned that increased population growth driven by immigration will wipe out “gains made in energy conservation”.

The census report, released days ago, revealed that Canada grew by an alarming 5% since the last report—the highest of any G8 country. The impact this is having on biodiversity is manifest, yet all the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy of Canada can do is whine about habitat protection without mentioning the taboo of population growth, which will make any protected areas insecure.

Similarly, when Tony Blair introduced tough regulations on cars and factories in 1996 as part of his bold plan to reduce greenhouse emissions by 20% over 10 years, greenhouse emissions actually went up 3% over that same period. Why? While individual cars and factories spewed less noxious gases, the number of cars and factories increased thanks to economic growth, a function of growing population and per capita consumption rates.

In the tradition of Elizabeth May, The Great Pretender, you fail to acknowledge the Elephant-in-the-Room, because immigration and population policy is a no-no in the land of political correctness. Better to focus entirely on reducing consumption while ignoring the other half of the equation, and solicit funds to set aside a habitat for Rudolf the Rocky Mountain Cariboo while ignoring what it is that will ultimately will destroy his habitat.

You are a counterfeit environmentalist group, like so many others, chasing peripheral issues and decoying sincere people away from THE major task at hand: stabilizing our population.

“It does no good to preach that we should not destroy habitat or that we should reserve more open space. When push comes to shove, we are going to clear more land to build houses, plant more acres to crops, build roads to carry an increased traffic load, create more jobs as well as a host of other habitat-destroying activities in order to provide for an ever-increasing number of people. Each year we convert more wildlands and open space to human-dominated landscapes to provide for human needs. It can be no other way as long as our populations continue to grow. We continue to attack the symptoms, not the underlying cause.” (Steve Hoecker, “When More is Less” Hunting Magazine, Dec.1996)