THE BBC BETRAYED ITS MANDATE
So what else is new in state broadcasting?
According to those polled by an ICM survey conducted on October 23rd and 24th, following the grilling of British National Party leader Nick Griffin on a BBC television show the previous day, fully one third of the 504 respondents support the BNP policy that “UK-born ethnic minorities should lose all benefits to pay for them to leave.” And two-thirds felt that the mainstream parties had no credible policies on immigration. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8324455.stm
Yet the BBC engineered a panel and a packed London audience that excluded such sentiments in what may be termed as a premeditated verbal lynching of Griffin and his party. It is ironic that the BBC and the stacked deck they presented on stage are no doubt stridently supportive of preferential hiring practices that would secure employment in every institution for ethnic or racial minorities in the proportion to their numbers in the general population. For it is obvious that neither they nor the political elite favour proportional representation for politically incorrect views. It may be argued that they discharged their democratic duty merely by having Griffin appear on a television “interview”. But an interview should not consist of one man facing the vitriolic and unanimous hostility of a mob, including the presenter. Rather, it should consist of an impartial moderator who referees a balanced exchange of ideas. What Nick Griffin said or did not say in the past should not be the exclusive fixation of an interviewer or those ranged against him. What he or his party say about the future in a broad range of policies is at least of equivalent interest.
In the fine tradition of state broadcasters like the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), the BBC betrayed its mandate. According to its own guidelines as articulated in 2001: “Due impartiality lies at the heart of the BBC. All BBC programmes and services should be open-minded, fair and show a respect for the truth. No significant strand of thought should go unreflected or under represented on the BBC.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/editorial/prodgl/index.shtml And clearly, the poll results from IMC research and the recent election of two BNP politicians, including Nick Griffin indicates that Griffin’s views constitute a “significant strand of thought” in British society. Call them odious, disgusting, vile or deceitful if you may, but given the evidence, you cannot call them uncommon or un-British. In fact a poll reported by the Daily Telegraph revealed that support for the BNP rose after Griffin’s inquisition, and some 22% are actually prepared to vote for the BNP. So the question then is, on what basis can the Welsh secretary or any other politician or commentator demand that in a democratic society a citizen cannot give voice to opinions that reflect those of one to two-thirds of the electorate? Proscribing views that one judges “racist”, “hateful” or un-British presumes that objective criteria exist for those sins and that those who can identify them are qualified to make those judgments. And rigging a debate so that those views cannot be presented in coherent and comprehensive way is tantamount to censorship. More than that, it is a presumptuous violation of the rights of those who should have the opportunity to hear proscribed views. In an authentic democracy, the people have a right to hear or read reputedly “racist” remarks and make their own judgments. If they are not to be trusted with that right, then elections are of dubious merit.
Whether Griffin’s contribution is helpful or not is a matter of opinion. Some of those who oppose the BNP say that the broadcast was beneficial in that it allowed people to see Griffin’s true colours as, in the words of Lord Carey, “a squalid racist”. Other opponents, including Carey, lamented that the BBC made a mistake and that the interview was a gift to the BNP. In my view, Griffin is to be credited for putting immigration on the front burner. Without the threat of losing support to the BNP, what incentive exists for any of the main parties to satisfy the wishes of the majority of Briton in this area?
It is however, very unfortunate that Griffin, and Enoch Powell before him, have framed the issue in racial terms, giving growthists the home field advantage of tapping into public antipathy to racial discrimination. The most critically relevant debate should be fought on the more neutral battleground of population growth and its impact on sustainability. That is, first and foremost, the discussion should revolve around the optimum number of citizens rather than their pigmentation or composition, and then on culture, as distinct from race, as it may or may not affect social cohesion or fertility rates. Culture matters, but numbers matter more, and race shouldn’t matter at all. Try getting the BBC, the CBC or the ABS to understand that.
Tim Murray
October 25/09
Sunday, October 25, 2009
KIWI PROFESSORS DEAD WRONG--the carbon footprint of an SUV is 11 times greater than a dog
KIWI PROFESSORS DEAD WRONG
The Carbon Footprint of an SUV is more than 11 times that of a dog
Professors Brenda and Robert Vale argue that dogs have such a large carbon footprint that they are twice as damaging as driving an SUV. Their recommendation? Give up pet ownership for less environmentally impactful and more edible proteins like rabbits, hamsters and fish. According to this logic, eating dogs would be climate-friendly. http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/2987848/Save-the-planet-time-to-eat-dog
But according to Helmut Burkhardt, their calculations are dead wrong:
“I am afraid the numbers are out of wack. Here is a ‘Fermi Calculation’ , a rough estimate.
A car driven by 100 kW power for 100 h to cover 10 000 km would use 10 000 kWh/year.
A dog ‘driven’ by 100 W food power for 24 hours would use 2.4 kWh/day, or 876 kWh/year.”
In other words, an SUV costs more than eleven times as much energy as a dog. I personally think that if drivers traded their SUVs in for a rickshaw or sled led by a dog team, the EROI for dogs would be superior to the EROI for SUVs. And that is not factoring in the energy that dogs provide you in mental health benefits. In fact the EROI ratio for dogs is most probably better than for wives in that area. (Ask Mickey Rooney or Paul McCartney. Experiment: Lock your dog and your wife in the trunk (boot) of your car and walk away for an hour, then return and open it up. Which one is happier to see you?)
One option seldom considered is cannibalism, a proven instrument for those Polynesians who achieved a sustainable population for centuries. To test the market, I would suggest that Britain’s four million vegetarians be fed to the 57 million omnivores on that crowded island, who feeling as claustrophobic as they do, should be happy to digest and compact them. If butchered efficiently, British vegetarians could supply the protein needs of British meat-eaters for the best part of a year, and reduce carbon emissions in the bargain. Sir Paul McCartney could be served up on a buffet with baby seal meat just to kick off the campaign, and his estate could be seized by the government and its proceeds used to provide free condoms for every male on the planet --- a more cost-effective prophylactic against climate change than any budget for a transition to green technology. Perhaps Sir Bob Geldoff could be included in the menu too, thereby reducing the protein requirements of Africa that his philanthropy generates.
Tim Murray
October 25/09
The Carbon Footprint of an SUV is more than 11 times that of a dog
Professors Brenda and Robert Vale argue that dogs have such a large carbon footprint that they are twice as damaging as driving an SUV. Their recommendation? Give up pet ownership for less environmentally impactful and more edible proteins like rabbits, hamsters and fish. According to this logic, eating dogs would be climate-friendly. http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/2987848/Save-the-planet-time-to-eat-dog
But according to Helmut Burkhardt, their calculations are dead wrong:
“I am afraid the numbers are out of wack. Here is a ‘Fermi Calculation’ , a rough estimate.
A car driven by 100 kW power for 100 h to cover 10 000 km would use 10 000 kWh/year.
A dog ‘driven’ by 100 W food power for 24 hours would use 2.4 kWh/day, or 876 kWh/year.”
In other words, an SUV costs more than eleven times as much energy as a dog. I personally think that if drivers traded their SUVs in for a rickshaw or sled led by a dog team, the EROI for dogs would be superior to the EROI for SUVs. And that is not factoring in the energy that dogs provide you in mental health benefits. In fact the EROI ratio for dogs is most probably better than for wives in that area. (Ask Mickey Rooney or Paul McCartney. Experiment: Lock your dog and your wife in the trunk (boot) of your car and walk away for an hour, then return and open it up. Which one is happier to see you?)
One option seldom considered is cannibalism, a proven instrument for those Polynesians who achieved a sustainable population for centuries. To test the market, I would suggest that Britain’s four million vegetarians be fed to the 57 million omnivores on that crowded island, who feeling as claustrophobic as they do, should be happy to digest and compact them. If butchered efficiently, British vegetarians could supply the protein needs of British meat-eaters for the best part of a year, and reduce carbon emissions in the bargain. Sir Paul McCartney could be served up on a buffet with baby seal meat just to kick off the campaign, and his estate could be seized by the government and its proceeds used to provide free condoms for every male on the planet --- a more cost-effective prophylactic against climate change than any budget for a transition to green technology. Perhaps Sir Bob Geldoff could be included in the menu too, thereby reducing the protein requirements of Africa that his philanthropy generates.
Tim Murray
October 25/09
Saturday, October 24, 2009
DOG WALKS OUT ON CHURCH SERMON--Was he making a Malthusian statement?
DOG WALKS OUT ON CHURCH SERMON
Was he making a Malthusian statement?
On Sunday, October 18th, 2009, my yellow Labrador Retriever, “Barney”, turned his back on Jesus and took four steps toward Eternal Damnation. For it was on that day in my small island community that the United Church of Canada opened its doors to dogs so that they could receive a blessing on what they designated as “St. Francis of Assisi Day”.
St. Francis, as you probably know, was an early pioneer of “Green Living”, a man who gave up all his wealth to the poor, dedicating his life the virtues of simplicity and the love of all of God’s creatures, including our beloved pets. He lived simply so that others could simply live, and thus was obviously not a favourite of the financial planning industry.
The minister, “Mimi”, made note of the fact that the letters in the word “dog” were the same as the letters for the word for our Lord “God”. (For dyslexic Christian dog-lovers, a kind of Holy Duality I suppose). This, she maintained, was no accident, for dogs were sent here to be our divine role-models. Their unconditional love for us showcased the unconditional love that we should give to our Holy Father. Her dearly departed dog, a beautiful young Dutch Sheppard named “Sarah”, treated her daughter like a god, and it was this example of uninhibited love and loyalty that strengthened their faith. Sarah had served a purpose in her brief life, and that was as a teacher.
Mimi then read biblical passages in memory of St. Francis, and then called my lab forward for a blessing. (This was perhaps disappointing for Barney, for as a lab he might have preferred baptism.)Until this point Barney had been lying passively at my feet in the front row, just ten feet from the minister. All were impressed by his decorum and his quiet veneration of the sacred venue, a small church almost a century old with an inviting stain glass window that allowed the mid-morning sun to highlight the glistening dark lacquered wainscoting and pews, and a spotless bright blue carpet that Barney didn’t dare stain.
When he was beckoned Barney perked his ears and fixed his gaze on her outstretched hand, believing that it might hold a communion wafer, until he apparently realized that this minister was affiliated to the wrong Christian denomination and that wafers were not on offer. So he remained stationary and skeptical, no doubt in the hope that she might sweeten the pot of friendship with something more substantial than a mere blessing. Eventually I had to stand up and remand him to her custody by leash. He then dutifully sat down beside her as she laid her hand upon him and gave him the Lord’s blessing, followed by the Lord’s prayer, which was recited by all those present, saving the dogs that is.
It was at this moment that I thought that Barney was amenable to moral instruction, but as the sermon began, he rolled over and ignored her. It had been my forlorn hope that his homosexual fantasies might be cured by prayer and bible study, but it soon became apparent that the prospect of redemption was not a sufficient incentive to dissuade him from following his wicked course. Finally, he grew restive and broke from my grasp, running down the aisle in hot pursuit of a (male) black poodle, “Inka”. When I separated them, he made for the door and flopped down in front of it, obviously positioned for the earliest exit. He was content to remain in his default position—that of a semi-comatose Sphinx---until the minister began talking about what Christ demanded of us in response to the world’s problems.
Her theme was that instead of blaming institutions, we should, by our personal conduct, lead by example, and thereby inspire others to follow our path. If we love the environment, we should re-cycle, consume less and strive to live as St. Francis did----simply. It was a message fully in concert with the culture and religion of the island, a syncretistic blend of mushy New Age feel-goodism, soft green environmentalism, Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism, with David Suzuki and the Delai Lama as god-heads forming a duet of denial. In short, the very antithesis of my ethical orientation.
It was when Mimi spoke of the global food crisis and how sharing our bounty and our love would address it, that Barney whined to be let out. He couldn’t take it anymore either. Unlike the humans present, he knew that he was a pack animal, and that as such, when you are presented with a feeding opportunity, you wolf it down and then subsequently share it as vomit with the pack. Teenagers display this instinct on occasion too, I have observed, with their ritual of fast food followed by strong drink.
It seems that Barney had silently absorbed my “lifeboat ethics” and knew instinctively that when there is not enough to go around, its family first, and that reducing his paw-print would not compensate for the ever expanding number of paws. It was at that moment that I had an epiphany: it was in his gesture of defiance that Barney was acting as my teacher, showing the way. He turned his back on Jesus, and pulled me like a sled dog back to toward The Gospel of St. Garrett of Hardin, and together we walked for hours in the forest where shafts of sunlight pierced through tall conifers to fall on maples of golden leaves which illuminated our passage. Heathens both, it seemed upon reflection fitting that in the same fashion as my late brother Al, my ashes will one day be scattered on Barney’s grave, to symbolize the fact that our respective species have exactly the same cosmological significance.
On that point, both Darwin and St. Francis would be in probable agreement.
Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
October 18/09
Was he making a Malthusian statement?
On Sunday, October 18th, 2009, my yellow Labrador Retriever, “Barney”, turned his back on Jesus and took four steps toward Eternal Damnation. For it was on that day in my small island community that the United Church of Canada opened its doors to dogs so that they could receive a blessing on what they designated as “St. Francis of Assisi Day”.
St. Francis, as you probably know, was an early pioneer of “Green Living”, a man who gave up all his wealth to the poor, dedicating his life the virtues of simplicity and the love of all of God’s creatures, including our beloved pets. He lived simply so that others could simply live, and thus was obviously not a favourite of the financial planning industry.
The minister, “Mimi”, made note of the fact that the letters in the word “dog” were the same as the letters for the word for our Lord “God”. (For dyslexic Christian dog-lovers, a kind of Holy Duality I suppose). This, she maintained, was no accident, for dogs were sent here to be our divine role-models. Their unconditional love for us showcased the unconditional love that we should give to our Holy Father. Her dearly departed dog, a beautiful young Dutch Sheppard named “Sarah”, treated her daughter like a god, and it was this example of uninhibited love and loyalty that strengthened their faith. Sarah had served a purpose in her brief life, and that was as a teacher.
Mimi then read biblical passages in memory of St. Francis, and then called my lab forward for a blessing. (This was perhaps disappointing for Barney, for as a lab he might have preferred baptism.)Until this point Barney had been lying passively at my feet in the front row, just ten feet from the minister. All were impressed by his decorum and his quiet veneration of the sacred venue, a small church almost a century old with an inviting stain glass window that allowed the mid-morning sun to highlight the glistening dark lacquered wainscoting and pews, and a spotless bright blue carpet that Barney didn’t dare stain.
When he was beckoned Barney perked his ears and fixed his gaze on her outstretched hand, believing that it might hold a communion wafer, until he apparently realized that this minister was affiliated to the wrong Christian denomination and that wafers were not on offer. So he remained stationary and skeptical, no doubt in the hope that she might sweeten the pot of friendship with something more substantial than a mere blessing. Eventually I had to stand up and remand him to her custody by leash. He then dutifully sat down beside her as she laid her hand upon him and gave him the Lord’s blessing, followed by the Lord’s prayer, which was recited by all those present, saving the dogs that is.
It was at this moment that I thought that Barney was amenable to moral instruction, but as the sermon began, he rolled over and ignored her. It had been my forlorn hope that his homosexual fantasies might be cured by prayer and bible study, but it soon became apparent that the prospect of redemption was not a sufficient incentive to dissuade him from following his wicked course. Finally, he grew restive and broke from my grasp, running down the aisle in hot pursuit of a (male) black poodle, “Inka”. When I separated them, he made for the door and flopped down in front of it, obviously positioned for the earliest exit. He was content to remain in his default position—that of a semi-comatose Sphinx---until the minister began talking about what Christ demanded of us in response to the world’s problems.
Her theme was that instead of blaming institutions, we should, by our personal conduct, lead by example, and thereby inspire others to follow our path. If we love the environment, we should re-cycle, consume less and strive to live as St. Francis did----simply. It was a message fully in concert with the culture and religion of the island, a syncretistic blend of mushy New Age feel-goodism, soft green environmentalism, Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism, with David Suzuki and the Delai Lama as god-heads forming a duet of denial. In short, the very antithesis of my ethical orientation.
It was when Mimi spoke of the global food crisis and how sharing our bounty and our love would address it, that Barney whined to be let out. He couldn’t take it anymore either. Unlike the humans present, he knew that he was a pack animal, and that as such, when you are presented with a feeding opportunity, you wolf it down and then subsequently share it as vomit with the pack. Teenagers display this instinct on occasion too, I have observed, with their ritual of fast food followed by strong drink.
It seems that Barney had silently absorbed my “lifeboat ethics” and knew instinctively that when there is not enough to go around, its family first, and that reducing his paw-print would not compensate for the ever expanding number of paws. It was at that moment that I had an epiphany: it was in his gesture of defiance that Barney was acting as my teacher, showing the way. He turned his back on Jesus, and pulled me like a sled dog back to toward The Gospel of St. Garrett of Hardin, and together we walked for hours in the forest where shafts of sunlight pierced through tall conifers to fall on maples of golden leaves which illuminated our passage. Heathens both, it seemed upon reflection fitting that in the same fashion as my late brother Al, my ashes will one day be scattered on Barney’s grave, to symbolize the fact that our respective species have exactly the same cosmological significance.
On that point, both Darwin and St. Francis would be in probable agreement.
Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
October 18/09
The Good Shepherd Is Calling Me Home
The Good Shepherd is Calling me Home
I was a sheep who lost his way but now the Good Shepherd is calling me home.
At last, at long last, I have found it. After decades of aimless wandering, of searching for answers to unanswerable questions, I broke down, fell on my knees and begged for forgiveness. Then I invited Charles Darwin into my heart. It was at that moment that I surrendered my fate to His will. In return He has given me the strength I needed to roll over and surrender to my fate as an inconsequential member of a doomed species on a doomed planet in a universe that will implode and compress everything into an infinitesimally small hole. I think cosmologists are calling it “smart growth”. High density living—an environmentalist’s dream---will finally be realized.
My Lord Darwin made me realize that like the rest of humanity, I am at a crossroads. One road leads to my imminent extinction, while the other leads to total despair. I know that Charles Darwin will inspire me to make the right choice. I feel rejuvenated, born again. With a renewed sense of meaninglessness and lack of purpose, I feel impelled to go out in the world and share the Good News that there is no hope, no durable legacy. All of my good works and all the artifacts of civilization will be reduced to nothing. The pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Mona Lisa and everything I said to my Aunt Monica will be no more and no evidence will exist that they actually existed.. Ground to dust and incinerated by the supernova to come. That’s if a thermonuclear war, another K 2 event, climate change or peak everything doesn’t get to us first. We will take our place in the fossil record of failed prototypes, and then even those imprints will be wiped from memory by a cataclysmic event.
Yes, it is all beginning to make no sense to me now. Everything is as clear as mud. My life has served no good (or bad) purpose. And neither has yours either, you miserable and insignificant worm---- so relax and feel at one with an eventually collapsing universe beyond your pitifully feeble comprehension.
Hallelujah, peace at last, peace at last. Thank an imaginary God in heaven--- peace at last!
Tim Murray
October 23/09
PS Unfortunately my evangelism will need funding. I am not interested in your money, so don’t bother to forward any of it to Box 433, Hamilton, Bermuda. I will repeat that, don’t send your money to Box 433, Hamilton, Bermuda. But I should point out that Darwin takes Visa or Master Card, and He will be temporarily resident at the above address.
©copyright 2009 TM
I was a sheep who lost his way but now the Good Shepherd is calling me home.
At last, at long last, I have found it. After decades of aimless wandering, of searching for answers to unanswerable questions, I broke down, fell on my knees and begged for forgiveness. Then I invited Charles Darwin into my heart. It was at that moment that I surrendered my fate to His will. In return He has given me the strength I needed to roll over and surrender to my fate as an inconsequential member of a doomed species on a doomed planet in a universe that will implode and compress everything into an infinitesimally small hole. I think cosmologists are calling it “smart growth”. High density living—an environmentalist’s dream---will finally be realized.
My Lord Darwin made me realize that like the rest of humanity, I am at a crossroads. One road leads to my imminent extinction, while the other leads to total despair. I know that Charles Darwin will inspire me to make the right choice. I feel rejuvenated, born again. With a renewed sense of meaninglessness and lack of purpose, I feel impelled to go out in the world and share the Good News that there is no hope, no durable legacy. All of my good works and all the artifacts of civilization will be reduced to nothing. The pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Mona Lisa and everything I said to my Aunt Monica will be no more and no evidence will exist that they actually existed.. Ground to dust and incinerated by the supernova to come. That’s if a thermonuclear war, another K 2 event, climate change or peak everything doesn’t get to us first. We will take our place in the fossil record of failed prototypes, and then even those imprints will be wiped from memory by a cataclysmic event.
Yes, it is all beginning to make no sense to me now. Everything is as clear as mud. My life has served no good (or bad) purpose. And neither has yours either, you miserable and insignificant worm---- so relax and feel at one with an eventually collapsing universe beyond your pitifully feeble comprehension.
Hallelujah, peace at last, peace at last. Thank an imaginary God in heaven--- peace at last!
Tim Murray
October 23/09
PS Unfortunately my evangelism will need funding. I am not interested in your money, so don’t bother to forward any of it to Box 433, Hamilton, Bermuda. I will repeat that, don’t send your money to Box 433, Hamilton, Bermuda. But I should point out that Darwin takes Visa or Master Card, and He will be temporarily resident at the above address.
©copyright 2009 TM
Friday, October 23, 2009
HOW TO TELL CANADIANS FROM AMERICANS: A Guide Book for the Unwary
How To Tell Canadians From Americans
A Guide Book for the Unwary
Too many people in the Commonwealth, and outside of it as well, fail to differentiate between Canadians and Americans. Canadians find that very insulting. I know I do.
It must be conceded though that, from afar, the Canadian English dialect is not unalike many American dialects to the untrained ear, and to those not intimately acquainted with North American life our conduct and appearance would indeed seem indistinguishable from Americans. Sure, Americans drink watered-down beer, play boring 4-down football, don’t live for ice hockey, say “huh” instead of “eh” and don’t know what an adverb is. But other than that, we blend in. Especially when a Canadian becomes a movie star or a comedian. Then to Americans, he always was an American. Nevertheless, I would assert that there is a distinctive Canadian personality, and it can be evidenced by our respective attitudes to freedom and national pride. Attitudes that can be illustrated by contrasting the following statements:
American: “Give me liberty or give me death.” (Patrick Henry)
Canadian: “Give me an entitlement or I will vote you out of office.”
American: (Quoting Voltaire) “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Canadian: “I don’t agree with what you have to say so take me off your email list.”
American: “It’s a First Amendment issue”.
Canadian: “It’s a Human Rights issue.”
American: “I want to be free.”
Canadian: “I want to be safe.”
American: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Canadian: “Peace, Order and Good Government.”
American: “God helps those who help themselves.”
Canadian: “I need government funding for this.”
CNN (American): “We welcome your views,”
CBC (Canadian): “We welcome your views but we will make damn sure no one else will hear them.”
American: “Everyone has a right to their day in court.”
Canadian: “Send everyone to Kangaroo Court (The Human Rights Tribunal) and watch the defendants file for bankruptcy while the taxpayers pick up the complainants’ costs.”
American: “I can’t argue with you there man, I think you’ve made a good point”.
Canadian: “Racist!”
American: (Quoting Descartes) “I think, therefore I am.”
Canadian: “It must be true, I heard it on the CBC this morning.”
American (Quoting JFK) “A nation that is afraid to let its people judge truth and falsehood in an open market of ideas is a nation afraid of its people.”
Canadian: (Quoting any Canadian politician) “We can’t talk about immigration because there are too many bigots out there. “
American: (Quoting Thomas Jefferson): “The only school for liberty is liberty”
Canadian: “You can’t have freedom without responsibility. The people must be educated.” (by the CBC of course).
American: “Let’s put this question to a referendum” (ie. a proposition or initiative).
Canadian: (Quoting Edmund Burke) “A member of parliament owes his constituents not his opinion but his good judgment (ie. the good judgment of the party whip).” Modern translation: “Government knows best”.
American: “Let it all hang out”
Canadian: “This editor will not accept submissions that are racist, sexist, homophobic. ethnocentric, or disrespectful to transgendered dwarfs who are differently abled.”
American: “The Second Amendment guarantees the First Amendment.”
Canadian: “Guns kill people.” (Matches cause arson).
American: “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”.
Canadian: “If guns are outlawed, criminals won’t use them, because it would be against the law for them to do so.”
American postman: “Through rain, sleet or hail, the mail will always get through”
Canadian postman: “That’s not in the contract.”
American (firefighter): “Get the hell out of here NOW! MOVE IT!”
Canadian (firefighter): “ Uh, ahem….Excuse me sir, but could you possibly consider forgetting about saving your CD collection and leaving your house rather imminently, if that is at all possible? I am sorry if I am offending you but I do think you might be negligent in putting your possessions above the safety of your children. Unless your cultural values clash with mine, that is, then of course you are perfectly within your right to ignore my advice and practice your customs which I will celebrate at your funeral service as having enriched my life. I think we can negotiate a peaceful solution to our differences here, if we are sensitive to them. I am sorry to have to convey this information in English, but all 52 of our translators are presently preoccupied, and our fire brigade is not yet inclusive of the entire United Nations whose absence must be a result of systemic racism and not the fact that most foreign-born applicants are 90 pound weaklings who can’t navigate 5 steps up or down a ladder with anything heavier than a 5 kilogram bag of sugar on their backs.”
American: “Hello, this is customer service, can I help you?”
Canadian: “ Yeah, this is customer service but I’m on my coffee break right now…can you phone back in another half-hour maybe?”
Customer then demands, “Let me speak to your manager. Hello, are you the manager”?
Canadian manager replies: تعلم اللغة العربية
Canadian customer answers, “I am sorry sir, I didn’t mean to offend you by speaking to you in one of our official languages, or in a communication style that affronts your cultural sensibilities. May I offer an apology for all the historical wrongs that were committed by people with my skin pigmentation long before I was born but whose actions I am nevertheless responsible for? Would a generous compensation package to accompany my groveling English-Canadian apology heal the scars of the trauma that my phone call has put you through? I don’t understand Arabic yet, but I did make out the words “Human Rights Tribunal”. I must congratulate you sir, on your ambition and success in acquiring precisely those words in our language which will allow for your smooth integration into our society. You have met me halfway, so now it is up to me to bow down to your great prophet, Muhammad. Allah Akbar and have a nice day!” Then he hangs up the phone, and mutters bitterly, “That goddam camel-pumper!”, and then reflexively looks over his shoulder in panic that someone overheard him or the Thought Police had planted a bug in his room. Now that’s nation-building!
American customer’s response: “Look buddy, the language here is English, get it? You either serve me in English and to my satisfaction or I’m getting a refund and taking my business elsewhere. Do you hear me Bin Laden? And BTW, I want to see Christmas decorations up in your store this December. Those are our traditions and you knew that coming in.”
Tim Murray,
October 18/09
A Guide Book for the Unwary
Too many people in the Commonwealth, and outside of it as well, fail to differentiate between Canadians and Americans. Canadians find that very insulting. I know I do.
It must be conceded though that, from afar, the Canadian English dialect is not unalike many American dialects to the untrained ear, and to those not intimately acquainted with North American life our conduct and appearance would indeed seem indistinguishable from Americans. Sure, Americans drink watered-down beer, play boring 4-down football, don’t live for ice hockey, say “huh” instead of “eh” and don’t know what an adverb is. But other than that, we blend in. Especially when a Canadian becomes a movie star or a comedian. Then to Americans, he always was an American. Nevertheless, I would assert that there is a distinctive Canadian personality, and it can be evidenced by our respective attitudes to freedom and national pride. Attitudes that can be illustrated by contrasting the following statements:
American: “Give me liberty or give me death.” (Patrick Henry)
Canadian: “Give me an entitlement or I will vote you out of office.”
American: (Quoting Voltaire) “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Canadian: “I don’t agree with what you have to say so take me off your email list.”
American: “It’s a First Amendment issue”.
Canadian: “It’s a Human Rights issue.”
American: “I want to be free.”
Canadian: “I want to be safe.”
American: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Canadian: “Peace, Order and Good Government.”
American: “God helps those who help themselves.”
Canadian: “I need government funding for this.”
CNN (American): “We welcome your views,”
CBC (Canadian): “We welcome your views but we will make damn sure no one else will hear them.”
American: “Everyone has a right to their day in court.”
Canadian: “Send everyone to Kangaroo Court (The Human Rights Tribunal) and watch the defendants file for bankruptcy while the taxpayers pick up the complainants’ costs.”
American: “I can’t argue with you there man, I think you’ve made a good point”.
Canadian: “Racist!”
American: (Quoting Descartes) “I think, therefore I am.”
Canadian: “It must be true, I heard it on the CBC this morning.”
American (Quoting JFK) “A nation that is afraid to let its people judge truth and falsehood in an open market of ideas is a nation afraid of its people.”
Canadian: (Quoting any Canadian politician) “We can’t talk about immigration because there are too many bigots out there. “
American: (Quoting Thomas Jefferson): “The only school for liberty is liberty”
Canadian: “You can’t have freedom without responsibility. The people must be educated.” (by the CBC of course).
American: “Let’s put this question to a referendum” (ie. a proposition or initiative).
Canadian: (Quoting Edmund Burke) “A member of parliament owes his constituents not his opinion but his good judgment (ie. the good judgment of the party whip).” Modern translation: “Government knows best”.
American: “Let it all hang out”
Canadian: “This editor will not accept submissions that are racist, sexist, homophobic. ethnocentric, or disrespectful to transgendered dwarfs who are differently abled.”
American: “The Second Amendment guarantees the First Amendment.”
Canadian: “Guns kill people.” (Matches cause arson).
American: “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”.
Canadian: “If guns are outlawed, criminals won’t use them, because it would be against the law for them to do so.”
American postman: “Through rain, sleet or hail, the mail will always get through”
Canadian postman: “That’s not in the contract.”
American (firefighter): “Get the hell out of here NOW! MOVE IT!”
Canadian (firefighter): “ Uh, ahem….Excuse me sir, but could you possibly consider forgetting about saving your CD collection and leaving your house rather imminently, if that is at all possible? I am sorry if I am offending you but I do think you might be negligent in putting your possessions above the safety of your children. Unless your cultural values clash with mine, that is, then of course you are perfectly within your right to ignore my advice and practice your customs which I will celebrate at your funeral service as having enriched my life. I think we can negotiate a peaceful solution to our differences here, if we are sensitive to them. I am sorry to have to convey this information in English, but all 52 of our translators are presently preoccupied, and our fire brigade is not yet inclusive of the entire United Nations whose absence must be a result of systemic racism and not the fact that most foreign-born applicants are 90 pound weaklings who can’t navigate 5 steps up or down a ladder with anything heavier than a 5 kilogram bag of sugar on their backs.”
American: “Hello, this is customer service, can I help you?”
Canadian: “ Yeah, this is customer service but I’m on my coffee break right now…can you phone back in another half-hour maybe?”
Customer then demands, “Let me speak to your manager. Hello, are you the manager”?
Canadian manager replies: تعلم اللغة العربية
Canadian customer answers, “I am sorry sir, I didn’t mean to offend you by speaking to you in one of our official languages, or in a communication style that affronts your cultural sensibilities. May I offer an apology for all the historical wrongs that were committed by people with my skin pigmentation long before I was born but whose actions I am nevertheless responsible for? Would a generous compensation package to accompany my groveling English-Canadian apology heal the scars of the trauma that my phone call has put you through? I don’t understand Arabic yet, but I did make out the words “Human Rights Tribunal”. I must congratulate you sir, on your ambition and success in acquiring precisely those words in our language which will allow for your smooth integration into our society. You have met me halfway, so now it is up to me to bow down to your great prophet, Muhammad. Allah Akbar and have a nice day!” Then he hangs up the phone, and mutters bitterly, “That goddam camel-pumper!”, and then reflexively looks over his shoulder in panic that someone overheard him or the Thought Police had planted a bug in his room. Now that’s nation-building!
American customer’s response: “Look buddy, the language here is English, get it? You either serve me in English and to my satisfaction or I’m getting a refund and taking my business elsewhere. Do you hear me Bin Laden? And BTW, I want to see Christmas decorations up in your store this December. Those are our traditions and you knew that coming in.”
Tim Murray,
October 18/09
By Subsisting on Air, We can DOUBLE our populationh
By Subsisting on Air, We can DOUBLE our population
Proponents of 'green living" tell me that by adopting spartan habits and living like Ghandi, we could make room for many more billions of human beings. Makes a lot of sense. Squeeze together more tightly so that more people can fill in the gap. Then repeat the process ad infinitum. But how could we feed such a population? Vegan proselytizers argue that we could do that by abstaining from meat consumption, thereby freeing up more resources to feed more people, who of course, will breed more people who will in turn inflict even greater ecological damage than ever before. Gotta love those efficiency paradoxes! But why stop at veganism? Why not a permanent fast, modeled on the lifestyle of cultists who claim to be drawing nourishment exclusively from oxygen?
Perhaps we could become a race of 15 billion “breatharians” who simply subsist on air in a world where thirst is decoupled from water use and hunger is decoupled from food use. As our population grows, so grows the pool of our ideas. As Julian Simon hypothesized, the law of averages would dictate that twice the number of people would double our chance of finding a genius who could invented a technology that would resurrect extinct species and replenish the soil without fossil fuel fertilizers. Failing that, we could experience a decoupling of our temporal existence entirely from a new extemporal life as disembodied spirits. A thermonuclear war over the desperate competition for scarce resources, the collapse of biodiversity services or searing temperature rises would do that for us. Freed from our earthly moorings, we would then be free from all ecological constraints, a state of being which growthists have already attained---in their imagination. The sky is the limit!
Tim Murray
Proponents of 'green living" tell me that by adopting spartan habits and living like Ghandi, we could make room for many more billions of human beings. Makes a lot of sense. Squeeze together more tightly so that more people can fill in the gap. Then repeat the process ad infinitum. But how could we feed such a population? Vegan proselytizers argue that we could do that by abstaining from meat consumption, thereby freeing up more resources to feed more people, who of course, will breed more people who will in turn inflict even greater ecological damage than ever before. Gotta love those efficiency paradoxes! But why stop at veganism? Why not a permanent fast, modeled on the lifestyle of cultists who claim to be drawing nourishment exclusively from oxygen?
Perhaps we could become a race of 15 billion “breatharians” who simply subsist on air in a world where thirst is decoupled from water use and hunger is decoupled from food use. As our population grows, so grows the pool of our ideas. As Julian Simon hypothesized, the law of averages would dictate that twice the number of people would double our chance of finding a genius who could invented a technology that would resurrect extinct species and replenish the soil without fossil fuel fertilizers. Failing that, we could experience a decoupling of our temporal existence entirely from a new extemporal life as disembodied spirits. A thermonuclear war over the desperate competition for scarce resources, the collapse of biodiversity services or searing temperature rises would do that for us. Freed from our earthly moorings, we would then be free from all ecological constraints, a state of being which growthists have already attained---in their imagination. The sky is the limit!
Tim Murray
"SMART GROWTH" A TEMPORARY SOLUTION AT BEST
“SMART GROWTH” A TEMPORARY SOLUTION AT BEST
The prime cause of the affordable-housing shortage, long commutes and worsening traffic in the Bay area and elsewhere is the "incessant population growth," writes veteran of Earth Day 1971,B. Meredith Burke in the San Francisco Chronicle. Calling even the best "smart growth" planning a temporary solution, he says that the only way to stop sprawl and ensure sufficient affordable housing is to halt population growth. 8/1/1998
So how do we stop population growth. Birth control or border control? BOTH.
The prime cause of the affordable-housing shortage, long commutes and worsening traffic in the Bay area and elsewhere is the "incessant population growth," writes veteran of Earth Day 1971,B. Meredith Burke in the San Francisco Chronicle. Calling even the best "smart growth" planning a temporary solution, he says that the only way to stop sprawl and ensure sufficient affordable housing is to halt population growth. 8/1/1998
So how do we stop population growth. Birth control or border control? BOTH.
SMART GROWTH CANNOT BE AN EXCUSE FOR MASS IMMIGRATION
Script for the Frosty Wooldridge radio program of Sept. 30/09:
Frosty this will be a short program so I can’t afford to be too ambitious in covering too many facets of our immigration crisis. So I want to take 10 minutes here to focus on one fundamental assertion, that is, mass immigration threatens our food security.
Now this may come as a shock to some but most of Canada consists of permafrost tundra, mountains, wetlands and boreal forest hostile to human habitation. We have a large land capacity but not a large carrying capacity. Canada is what Mark O’Connor said of Australia, “a big little country”. Yet we have this false body image. To quote myself from O’Connor’s book, “Overloading Australia”, “Australia and Canada are like “two bulimics who look in the mirror and see Twiggy with lots of room to grow.” We see Canada as a big 5-star hotel when we are more like a cheap one-room flophouse. In fact, there is no room at our ecological Inn.
The critical limiting factor for us is that only about 5% of our land base is capable of the sustained production of field crops. And over half of this prime farmland lies in one province, Ontario.
What is alarming is that since the policy of hyper-immigration was implemented in late 1990, the loss of farmland to development in the following five years increased 33% in the Greater Toronto Area or GTA to 10,000 acres a year. And in the province as a whole between 1996 and 2006 the rate of farmland losses to development was 8 times higher than in recent decades previously -- an incredible 60,000 acres every year, according to Stats Canada data cited by Ontario Farmland Trust.
Of course, Green organizations and politicians blame bad planning rather than rampant population growth for urban sprawl. But they ignore American studies which document that population growth drives at least half of that sprawl and believe we can shoe-horn half the global population into the country as long as strict planning controls are in place.
But the problem is, those controls are not yet in place and never likely will be, given the distribution of power in Canadian society. In Canada, land-use planning is in the hands of local governments, and local governments are bought and paid for by developers. That shouldn’t be surprising because, after all, real estate development is the prime fixation of municipal politics and property taxes are the principal source of revenue.
Professor Robert MacDermid of York University recently studied 10 municipalities in the GTA and discovered that incumbents win civic elections 78% of the time and that they acquire 71% of their funding from corporations. One third of those incumbents reported that corporate campaign funds accounted for more than 75% of their war chest.
The problem for challengers is that many of them run against pro-development incumbents.
In Chilliwack, BC, for example growth control advocate Norm Smith faced a developer in his bid for the mayor’s chair and was outspent 10 to 1. Predictably, the fox was elected to guard the hen house. There are but two towns in Canada where a slate of growth-control candidates were able to win control of city council, but lately one of them, in Qualicum Beach, BC, was turfed out by well-financed pro-development candidates.
Just having a comment printed in the local community paper is a challenge for anti-growth activists. Such papers derive perhaps half their advertising revenue from realtors, and there is simply no money in editors printing anti-growth letters or articles that might bite the hand that feeds them. MacDermid’s study was just a case history in story that is universal to North American local jurisdictions. Developers are key constituents in Canada’s Growth Lobby and overpopulation, as Garrett Hardin declared, is like potholes, a local issue.
Given this political fact of life, those who argue that tight zoning laws can make mass immigration ecologically benign are intellectually dishonest. Smart growth doesn’t work.
It didn’t work in Portland, Oregon when rigorous controls could not stop the urbanization of rural land because the city absorbed 146,000 more people in one decade. Urban growth boundaries also failed to hold the fort in 241 other cities in Oregon.
Los Angeles, California, a showcase of smart growth, also could not contain the 3.1 million residents, mostly immigrants, who could not be confined within the prescribed boundaries and sprawled over some 394 acres beyond the line.
Now let’s take a look at North America’s greatest achievement in land-use planning, British Columbia’s Agricultural Land Reserve (the ALR) established in 1973 to protect farmland. Smart growth boosters boast that 30 years later, the ALR retains the same amount of acres in the bank as ever before. But they confuse quantity with quality. Prime farmland secured in the ALR that is close to the city is being traded for new acquisitons in northern lands with soil of poorer quality by an Agricultural Land Commission that has been decentralized to make it more vulnerable to local developer representation. Notwithstanding any flaw in the planning process, without the pressure of population growth, there would be no incentive to profit from farmland.
Still, environmentalists believe that growth can be “managed”. But we don’t manage growth, growth manages us.
They also believe that if we cram everyone into an urban feedlot, we’ll lessen their ecological impact. Wrong again.Consider this:
Vancouver and Toronto have an ecological footprint more than 200 times their size.
The food and energy requirements for dense urban developments and suburban subdivisions are virtually the same.
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, highrises square foot for square foot, consume more energy than single family homes. Ever see a clothes line coming out of the 10th storey? Or elevators with cables that were hauled up manually? David Suzuki once remarked that an apartment dweller in Shanghai uses 2 ½ times as more energy than he would have if had stayed in rural China.
Let me quote Brishen Hoff:
“How is it environmentally positive to concentrate people into highrise apartment complexes where it takes massive energy inputs to treat their drinking water and sewage, run their elevators, maintain their multi-storey parking garages, power their artificial indoor fitness club environment and bring food and resources from distances that grow in proportion to their population size, giving them no hope of growing their own food to survive the end of the cheap energy era?”
Here Brishen brings us to the question of what happens to our growing mega cities when fossil fuel becomes too expensive. James Kunstler has said that eventuality will bring our fantasies about immigration to a cruel end, and Canadian author Richard Embleton says that a post-carbon Canada could not likely support cities larger than 20-80,000 people.
Smart growth cannot be an excuse for mass immigration. It is not sustainable and there is no permanent sanctuary for farmland, wetlands or nature reserves in the face of runaway population growth. Brishen can elaborate on that.
Tim Murray
Frosty this will be a short program so I can’t afford to be too ambitious in covering too many facets of our immigration crisis. So I want to take 10 minutes here to focus on one fundamental assertion, that is, mass immigration threatens our food security.
Now this may come as a shock to some but most of Canada consists of permafrost tundra, mountains, wetlands and boreal forest hostile to human habitation. We have a large land capacity but not a large carrying capacity. Canada is what Mark O’Connor said of Australia, “a big little country”. Yet we have this false body image. To quote myself from O’Connor’s book, “Overloading Australia”, “Australia and Canada are like “two bulimics who look in the mirror and see Twiggy with lots of room to grow.” We see Canada as a big 5-star hotel when we are more like a cheap one-room flophouse. In fact, there is no room at our ecological Inn.
The critical limiting factor for us is that only about 5% of our land base is capable of the sustained production of field crops. And over half of this prime farmland lies in one province, Ontario.
What is alarming is that since the policy of hyper-immigration was implemented in late 1990, the loss of farmland to development in the following five years increased 33% in the Greater Toronto Area or GTA to 10,000 acres a year. And in the province as a whole between 1996 and 2006 the rate of farmland losses to development was 8 times higher than in recent decades previously -- an incredible 60,000 acres every year, according to Stats Canada data cited by Ontario Farmland Trust.
Of course, Green organizations and politicians blame bad planning rather than rampant population growth for urban sprawl. But they ignore American studies which document that population growth drives at least half of that sprawl and believe we can shoe-horn half the global population into the country as long as strict planning controls are in place.
But the problem is, those controls are not yet in place and never likely will be, given the distribution of power in Canadian society. In Canada, land-use planning is in the hands of local governments, and local governments are bought and paid for by developers. That shouldn’t be surprising because, after all, real estate development is the prime fixation of municipal politics and property taxes are the principal source of revenue.
Professor Robert MacDermid of York University recently studied 10 municipalities in the GTA and discovered that incumbents win civic elections 78% of the time and that they acquire 71% of their funding from corporations. One third of those incumbents reported that corporate campaign funds accounted for more than 75% of their war chest.
The problem for challengers is that many of them run against pro-development incumbents.
In Chilliwack, BC, for example growth control advocate Norm Smith faced a developer in his bid for the mayor’s chair and was outspent 10 to 1. Predictably, the fox was elected to guard the hen house. There are but two towns in Canada where a slate of growth-control candidates were able to win control of city council, but lately one of them, in Qualicum Beach, BC, was turfed out by well-financed pro-development candidates.
Just having a comment printed in the local community paper is a challenge for anti-growth activists. Such papers derive perhaps half their advertising revenue from realtors, and there is simply no money in editors printing anti-growth letters or articles that might bite the hand that feeds them. MacDermid’s study was just a case history in story that is universal to North American local jurisdictions. Developers are key constituents in Canada’s Growth Lobby and overpopulation, as Garrett Hardin declared, is like potholes, a local issue.
Given this political fact of life, those who argue that tight zoning laws can make mass immigration ecologically benign are intellectually dishonest. Smart growth doesn’t work.
It didn’t work in Portland, Oregon when rigorous controls could not stop the urbanization of rural land because the city absorbed 146,000 more people in one decade. Urban growth boundaries also failed to hold the fort in 241 other cities in Oregon.
Los Angeles, California, a showcase of smart growth, also could not contain the 3.1 million residents, mostly immigrants, who could not be confined within the prescribed boundaries and sprawled over some 394 acres beyond the line.
Now let’s take a look at North America’s greatest achievement in land-use planning, British Columbia’s Agricultural Land Reserve (the ALR) established in 1973 to protect farmland. Smart growth boosters boast that 30 years later, the ALR retains the same amount of acres in the bank as ever before. But they confuse quantity with quality. Prime farmland secured in the ALR that is close to the city is being traded for new acquisitons in northern lands with soil of poorer quality by an Agricultural Land Commission that has been decentralized to make it more vulnerable to local developer representation. Notwithstanding any flaw in the planning process, without the pressure of population growth, there would be no incentive to profit from farmland.
Still, environmentalists believe that growth can be “managed”. But we don’t manage growth, growth manages us.
They also believe that if we cram everyone into an urban feedlot, we’ll lessen their ecological impact. Wrong again.Consider this:
Vancouver and Toronto have an ecological footprint more than 200 times their size.
The food and energy requirements for dense urban developments and suburban subdivisions are virtually the same.
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, highrises square foot for square foot, consume more energy than single family homes. Ever see a clothes line coming out of the 10th storey? Or elevators with cables that were hauled up manually? David Suzuki once remarked that an apartment dweller in Shanghai uses 2 ½ times as more energy than he would have if had stayed in rural China.
Let me quote Brishen Hoff:
“How is it environmentally positive to concentrate people into highrise apartment complexes where it takes massive energy inputs to treat their drinking water and sewage, run their elevators, maintain their multi-storey parking garages, power their artificial indoor fitness club environment and bring food and resources from distances that grow in proportion to their population size, giving them no hope of growing their own food to survive the end of the cheap energy era?”
Here Brishen brings us to the question of what happens to our growing mega cities when fossil fuel becomes too expensive. James Kunstler has said that eventuality will bring our fantasies about immigration to a cruel end, and Canadian author Richard Embleton says that a post-carbon Canada could not likely support cities larger than 20-80,000 people.
Smart growth cannot be an excuse for mass immigration. It is not sustainable and there is no permanent sanctuary for farmland, wetlands or nature reserves in the face of runaway population growth. Brishen can elaborate on that.
Tim Murray
Canadians Should Be Embarrassed and Humiliated by David Suzuki
CANADIANS SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED AND HUMILIATED BY DAVID SUZUKI
So David Suzuki, after receiving the “Right Livelihood Award” by the Swedish parliament, says that he is “humiliated” that Canada has become a pariah for not dealing with climate change. And he is frustrated that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has failed to acknowledge the seriousness of the issue. Know the feeling.
I am embarrassed that Suzuki has not dealt with a key driver of climate change---immigrant-driven population growth. It is a major problem in Australia, the United States and Canada—the three worst offenders in terms of per capita green house gas emissions. According to a report authored by Leon Kolankiewicz and Bryan Griffith for the Centre for Immigration Studies released in August of 2008, on average, each immigrant quadruples his GHG emissions upon his arrival to the United States, thereby accelerating the timetable of our global demise, if anthropogenic climate theory is correct. In fact the total GHG emitted by immigrants is equivalent to the total GHG emissions of Great Britain and Sweden combined. http://www.cis.org/greenhousegasemissionsvideo And a study done in Australia by Clive Hamilton and Hal Turton of the Australia Institute concluded that if their country had adopted a “zero net migration” policy in 1999 instead of blindly following the current insane pace of immigration, the highest per capita rate in the world, GHG emissions would be 16% less by the year 2020. They also found that immigrants to Australia come from countries that emit, on average, just 42% of what Australia does. http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/media/documents/articles/An_Optimal_Population_for_Australia.pdf
In Canada the Green Party and the environmental establishment paint the Alberta Tar sands oil development as the bogeyman, claiming that immigration is a trivial agent of environmental degradation. They are dead wrong, and Suzuki knows it. John Meyer of Newform Research has calculated that immigrants who have come to Canada since the Kyoto Accord was signed in 1990 have contributed four times as much GHG emissions as the entire tar sands project to date, and through the urban sprawl, created by the need to house them, have despoiled an area four times greater than the area of boreal forest affected by the tar sands. Currently, 3-4 years of “business-as-usual” immigration results in as much GHG emissions as the tar sands operation. Clearly mass immigration is a serious issue, not only to Canada, but to the entire world.
Suzuki complains that he has “repeatedly tried to meet with Harper, but has been turned down each time”. Well, we have repeatedly tried to make the David Suzuki Foundation account for Suzuki’s failure to publicly address the importance of mass immigration as a factor in driving climate change, endangering species, and threatening Canada’s food security through the housing developments that sweep over precious farmlands. Still no reply. And why should Suzuki make Harper the scapegoat? Believe it or not, during the 2008 election, upon closer examination, Harper’s program was more environmentally friendly than the program of the four opposition parties, who only proposed to “freeze further development of the tar sands project, while advocating an immigration quota that was 38% higher than the Conservative government’s. That is, a policy which would cause environment losses 38 % times greater than the Harper government was causing. Yet Harper is everyone’s punching bag, rating a failing “F” grade on the Sierra Club report card. Let’s give them an “F” for poor research and politically correct omission.
Suzuki justifies his activism by saying that “When I’m dying, I want to be able to look at my grandchildren and say ‘I did the best I could’.” I rather think that when he is dying, he should want to be able to look at his many grandchildren and say that he was not a liar, at least by Mark Twain’s definition. He should not tell the “silent lie”, when someone knows the truth, but will not share it. Publicly that is. Privately David Suzuki has told people on at least two occasions that allowing immigration to Canada was “nuts” in that people from countries of very much lower ecological footprints were being injected into a “hyper-consumer” society. Industrialized countries, he also confided, are “way” overpopulated. And Suzuki has made a personal contribution to that too, siring 5 children from two marriages with a crop of grandchildren yet to be tallied. Each will come at an ecological price of 23 metric tons of GHG emissions a piece, if they follow the present Canadian average. Suzuki is not the green role model people believe him to be.
Why are we Canadians not humiliated by his conduct? Why aren’t the Swedes embarrassed by their government’s credulity? Why aren’t journalists reporting the truth about him? Will no one follow the money trail and ask why the Royal Bank of Canada, the most stridently public advocate for increased immigration, is a conspicuous benefactor of the David Suzuki Foundation? http://suzukiwatch.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/david-suzuki-caught-lying-about-corporate-donations Can no one see that the Emperor has no clothes? Or don’t they want to see?
Tim Murray,
Biodiversity First
October 14/09
© copyright
So David Suzuki, after receiving the “Right Livelihood Award” by the Swedish parliament, says that he is “humiliated” that Canada has become a pariah for not dealing with climate change. And he is frustrated that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has failed to acknowledge the seriousness of the issue. Know the feeling.
I am embarrassed that Suzuki has not dealt with a key driver of climate change---immigrant-driven population growth. It is a major problem in Australia, the United States and Canada—the three worst offenders in terms of per capita green house gas emissions. According to a report authored by Leon Kolankiewicz and Bryan Griffith for the Centre for Immigration Studies released in August of 2008, on average, each immigrant quadruples his GHG emissions upon his arrival to the United States, thereby accelerating the timetable of our global demise, if anthropogenic climate theory is correct. In fact the total GHG emitted by immigrants is equivalent to the total GHG emissions of Great Britain and Sweden combined. http://www.cis.org/greenhousegasemissionsvideo And a study done in Australia by Clive Hamilton and Hal Turton of the Australia Institute concluded that if their country had adopted a “zero net migration” policy in 1999 instead of blindly following the current insane pace of immigration, the highest per capita rate in the world, GHG emissions would be 16% less by the year 2020. They also found that immigrants to Australia come from countries that emit, on average, just 42% of what Australia does. http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/media/documents/articles/An_Optimal_Population_for_Australia.pdf
In Canada the Green Party and the environmental establishment paint the Alberta Tar sands oil development as the bogeyman, claiming that immigration is a trivial agent of environmental degradation. They are dead wrong, and Suzuki knows it. John Meyer of Newform Research has calculated that immigrants who have come to Canada since the Kyoto Accord was signed in 1990 have contributed four times as much GHG emissions as the entire tar sands project to date, and through the urban sprawl, created by the need to house them, have despoiled an area four times greater than the area of boreal forest affected by the tar sands. Currently, 3-4 years of “business-as-usual” immigration results in as much GHG emissions as the tar sands operation. Clearly mass immigration is a serious issue, not only to Canada, but to the entire world.
Suzuki complains that he has “repeatedly tried to meet with Harper, but has been turned down each time”. Well, we have repeatedly tried to make the David Suzuki Foundation account for Suzuki’s failure to publicly address the importance of mass immigration as a factor in driving climate change, endangering species, and threatening Canada’s food security through the housing developments that sweep over precious farmlands. Still no reply. And why should Suzuki make Harper the scapegoat? Believe it or not, during the 2008 election, upon closer examination, Harper’s program was more environmentally friendly than the program of the four opposition parties, who only proposed to “freeze further development of the tar sands project, while advocating an immigration quota that was 38% higher than the Conservative government’s. That is, a policy which would cause environment losses 38 % times greater than the Harper government was causing. Yet Harper is everyone’s punching bag, rating a failing “F” grade on the Sierra Club report card. Let’s give them an “F” for poor research and politically correct omission.
Suzuki justifies his activism by saying that “When I’m dying, I want to be able to look at my grandchildren and say ‘I did the best I could’.” I rather think that when he is dying, he should want to be able to look at his many grandchildren and say that he was not a liar, at least by Mark Twain’s definition. He should not tell the “silent lie”, when someone knows the truth, but will not share it. Publicly that is. Privately David Suzuki has told people on at least two occasions that allowing immigration to Canada was “nuts” in that people from countries of very much lower ecological footprints were being injected into a “hyper-consumer” society. Industrialized countries, he also confided, are “way” overpopulated. And Suzuki has made a personal contribution to that too, siring 5 children from two marriages with a crop of grandchildren yet to be tallied. Each will come at an ecological price of 23 metric tons of GHG emissions a piece, if they follow the present Canadian average. Suzuki is not the green role model people believe him to be.
Why are we Canadians not humiliated by his conduct? Why aren’t the Swedes embarrassed by their government’s credulity? Why aren’t journalists reporting the truth about him? Will no one follow the money trail and ask why the Royal Bank of Canada, the most stridently public advocate for increased immigration, is a conspicuous benefactor of the David Suzuki Foundation? http://suzukiwatch.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/david-suzuki-caught-lying-about-corporate-donations Can no one see that the Emperor has no clothes? Or don’t they want to see?
Tim Murray,
Biodiversity First
October 14/09
© copyright
QUESTIONS FOR NEW BRUNSWICK
Why does the government of New Brunswick:
Want to increase its population
Want to increase its franocophone population
Think that Africans who happen to speak a dialect of French will integrate well into a French Canadian community whose French is quite different from anything spoken in Africa and whose culture, not defined by language, is light years apart than the culture of native born francophones?
http://canadianimmigrant.ca/settlingincanada/newsitems/article/5211
Want to increase its population
Want to increase its franocophone population
Think that Africans who happen to speak a dialect of French will integrate well into a French Canadian community whose French is quite different from anything spoken in Africa and whose culture, not defined by language, is light years apart than the culture of native born francophones?
http://canadianimmigrant.ca/settlingincanada/newsitems/article/5211
SHOCKING DISCOVERY ON EASTER ISLAND
SHOCKING DISCOVERY ON EASTER ISLAND
Canadians among early settlers, archaelogists reveal
New archeological research commissioned by the Heritage Canada Foundation has revealed startling evidence that challenges conventional theories regarding the origin of settlers on Easter Island and the decline of its complex society. A society that once offered universal and free access to a two year waiting period at medical clinics overwhelmed by a growing population, and tight controls on bows, arrows and axes that still failed to thwart the outbreak of violence. And where forests were denuded to serve an inflated housing market generated by greedy developers and a burgeoning population of homebuyers created by generous child benefit tax credits and immigrant recruitment.
Among the finds of the research team from Dartmouth College was a “rosetta stone” in a kind of mutated rongorongo script this is punctuated by numerous ‘eh’ s. It was crucial in helping to explain the existence of a stone foundation of what was apparently a hockey arena, together with a replica of a zamboni and pebble shaped like a puck. The foundation is carbon dated around 1600 AD, when it was believed that Canadian colonists, mainly politicians from New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, attempted to revive a flagging economy with a rapidly declining population by trying to lure a major league hockey franchise to their Polynesia backwater.
Skeletons found near the site matched the same DNA now found in Sidney Crosby and Brad Richards, as well as New Brunswick Business Minister Greg Byrne. There were also the remains of a skeleton found buried underneath the stadium that tests show shares the same genetic markers as Jimmy Hoffa.
Thor Heyerdahl of course famously contended that the population was a composite of early colonists from the Americas, “the long ears”, and invaders from the west, “the short ears”. But now evidence suggest that those “Americans” were in fact Canadian politicians, “the no ears”, along with a dependent bureaucracy, some classical economists, hockey coaches and loggers who came to deforest the island, over-fish and over-govern as well foment interminable jurisdictional disputes between various levels of government. The discovery of the fossilized remains of a lumberjack wearing a toque, spiked boots, a plaid shirt and a hard hat imprinted with the logo of the Acadia Timber Company has lent credence to this hypothesis. It is obvious that he was a lumberjack who wasn’t alright, though he worked all day and he slept all night. Malnutrition was his apparent undoing as Alexander Keith India Pale Ale did not suffice to offset the caloric deprivation from crops that failed from the loss of soil nutrients washed away by logging.
In the wake of these revelations a more coherent narrative of the island’s demographic collapse is now emerging. The loss of timber led to a catastrophic unemployment rate in the forest sector, so 600 giant stone statues were erected facing the ocean as a public works project to beckon potential immigrants who would revitalize the economy by diminishing the per capita share of resources and per capita GDP.
A “Population Secretariat” was formed to develop an economic stimulus strategy that included an immigrant funding program and immigrant “welcoming centres” lavishly endowed with food forcibly extracted from residents struggling to survive on a subsistence diet. Starving protesters were told that they could always eat the “cultural diversity” that immigrants would bring to the island. In fact, creating more “cultural diversity” was the rationale for much of the strategy, for as Canadians the politicians didn’t believe they had a culture worthy of pride and protection.
The claim by skeptics that jobs could not be conjured up out of thin air when the island was bereft of wood, of rich soils swept away by rain falling on the newly barren landscape and accessible fish (whose absence the politicians blamed on Spanish trawlers) was dismissed as nativist pessimism by cornucopians who argued that human ingenuity would come to the rescue. They reasoned that the larger the pool of people the greater the chance that a genius would emerge with a technological breakthrough.
The result of this policy is manifest today. Except to the “no-ears” of course.
Tim Murray
September 19/09
Canadians among early settlers, archaelogists reveal
New archeological research commissioned by the Heritage Canada Foundation has revealed startling evidence that challenges conventional theories regarding the origin of settlers on Easter Island and the decline of its complex society. A society that once offered universal and free access to a two year waiting period at medical clinics overwhelmed by a growing population, and tight controls on bows, arrows and axes that still failed to thwart the outbreak of violence. And where forests were denuded to serve an inflated housing market generated by greedy developers and a burgeoning population of homebuyers created by generous child benefit tax credits and immigrant recruitment.
Among the finds of the research team from Dartmouth College was a “rosetta stone” in a kind of mutated rongorongo script this is punctuated by numerous ‘eh’ s. It was crucial in helping to explain the existence of a stone foundation of what was apparently a hockey arena, together with a replica of a zamboni and pebble shaped like a puck. The foundation is carbon dated around 1600 AD, when it was believed that Canadian colonists, mainly politicians from New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, attempted to revive a flagging economy with a rapidly declining population by trying to lure a major league hockey franchise to their Polynesia backwater.
Skeletons found near the site matched the same DNA now found in Sidney Crosby and Brad Richards, as well as New Brunswick Business Minister Greg Byrne. There were also the remains of a skeleton found buried underneath the stadium that tests show shares the same genetic markers as Jimmy Hoffa.
Thor Heyerdahl of course famously contended that the population was a composite of early colonists from the Americas, “the long ears”, and invaders from the west, “the short ears”. But now evidence suggest that those “Americans” were in fact Canadian politicians, “the no ears”, along with a dependent bureaucracy, some classical economists, hockey coaches and loggers who came to deforest the island, over-fish and over-govern as well foment interminable jurisdictional disputes between various levels of government. The discovery of the fossilized remains of a lumberjack wearing a toque, spiked boots, a plaid shirt and a hard hat imprinted with the logo of the Acadia Timber Company has lent credence to this hypothesis. It is obvious that he was a lumberjack who wasn’t alright, though he worked all day and he slept all night. Malnutrition was his apparent undoing as Alexander Keith India Pale Ale did not suffice to offset the caloric deprivation from crops that failed from the loss of soil nutrients washed away by logging.
In the wake of these revelations a more coherent narrative of the island’s demographic collapse is now emerging. The loss of timber led to a catastrophic unemployment rate in the forest sector, so 600 giant stone statues were erected facing the ocean as a public works project to beckon potential immigrants who would revitalize the economy by diminishing the per capita share of resources and per capita GDP.
A “Population Secretariat” was formed to develop an economic stimulus strategy that included an immigrant funding program and immigrant “welcoming centres” lavishly endowed with food forcibly extracted from residents struggling to survive on a subsistence diet. Starving protesters were told that they could always eat the “cultural diversity” that immigrants would bring to the island. In fact, creating more “cultural diversity” was the rationale for much of the strategy, for as Canadians the politicians didn’t believe they had a culture worthy of pride and protection.
The claim by skeptics that jobs could not be conjured up out of thin air when the island was bereft of wood, of rich soils swept away by rain falling on the newly barren landscape and accessible fish (whose absence the politicians blamed on Spanish trawlers) was dismissed as nativist pessimism by cornucopians who argued that human ingenuity would come to the rescue. They reasoned that the larger the pool of people the greater the chance that a genius would emerge with a technological breakthrough.
The result of this policy is manifest today. Except to the “no-ears” of course.
Tim Murray
September 19/09
THE POPULATION BOMB IS TICKING HERE TOO
The Population Bomb is Ticking Here Too
Editor, Simcoe Reformer,
Plaudits to Monte Sollenberg for giving readers the facts of life. (“Another Mouth to Feed” , Sept 24/09). Both climate change and the loss of biodiversity services---which is the more dangerously imminent but under-publicized threat to humanity---are driven by population growth. But it is the migration of people from nations of low ecological footprints to nations of high footprints that is most critical. One typical immigrant to the United States, for example, quadruples his green house gas emissions upon arrival, and thereby hastens the timetable of our collective demise.
Sermonizing about our excessive consumption does not address the reality that inhabitants of a cold country like Canada, cannot reduce their energy consumption ad infinitum. Reversing population growth in Canada--- dependent on fossil fuels to grow crops on less than 5% of its land base--- is even more urgent than pursuing that goal abroad. Only a sustainable Canada will be in a position to assist more unfortunate countries. And we can’t achieve sustainability by cutting our per capita consumption in half and then doubling our population.
Tim Murray
September 24/09
Editor, Simcoe Reformer,
Plaudits to Monte Sollenberg for giving readers the facts of life. (“Another Mouth to Feed” , Sept 24/09). Both climate change and the loss of biodiversity services---which is the more dangerously imminent but under-publicized threat to humanity---are driven by population growth. But it is the migration of people from nations of low ecological footprints to nations of high footprints that is most critical. One typical immigrant to the United States, for example, quadruples his green house gas emissions upon arrival, and thereby hastens the timetable of our collective demise.
Sermonizing about our excessive consumption does not address the reality that inhabitants of a cold country like Canada, cannot reduce their energy consumption ad infinitum. Reversing population growth in Canada--- dependent on fossil fuels to grow crops on less than 5% of its land base--- is even more urgent than pursuing that goal abroad. Only a sustainable Canada will be in a position to assist more unfortunate countries. And we can’t achieve sustainability by cutting our per capita consumption in half and then doubling our population.
Tim Murray
September 24/09
Why Population Control is NEVER going to be an environmental priority
Why Population Control Is NEVER going to be an environmental priority
I never said that population control ALONE was sufficient to solve our problems. The reason I got involved in this effort in December of 2006---other than the fact that I just learned how to use a computer----was to lobby the environmental movement to put the “P” back into the Ehrlich-Holdren “IPAT” formula. That is all. I never argued that the “P” should replace the “A” and the “T”. Just that leaving it out made nonsense of any comprehensive understanding of our crisis. Then I asked, “WHY have they left it out?” For a year I believed that it was just a matter of political correctness and cowardice. But by Januarry 2008, I realized that something even more compelling was at play. Environmental organizations have fallen prey to Michels “Iron Law of Oligarchy”, formulated at the turn of the century.
Roberto Michels was a European sociologist who observed that revolutionary socialist parties ineluctably evolved into moderate organizations who kept their radical rhetoric but in reality pursued timid and compromising agendas. More than that, they betrayed their democratic ideals by vesting power in a strong leader and his cronies. The best example of this phenomena was the German Social Democratic Party, whom Bismarck thought so subversive that he banned for decades. But by 1914, this “revolutionary” and internationalist party reached the point that it could vote for war credits for the German ruling class’s war effort. Following the vote, the Chancellor looked upon the socialists in the Reichstag, sitting across from their “opponents” and said, “I see only Germans”.
Michels said that when even a radical movement with revolutionary goals becomes an organization, the emphasis shifts to preserving the bureaucracy of that organization, even when the bureacracy’s interest runs contrary to the original aims of the movement. Civil Rights activist Saul Alinsky recognized the truth of Michels’ observations 50 years later. In his “Rules for Radicals”, Alinsky said that he would have to return to a town that he visited two years earlier so that he could set up an organization to fight the organization that he had set up previously. My belief is that all political parties and NGOs should carry an expiry date. After so many years, it would automatically be dissolved so that the cause could cleanse itself of vested interests. Environmental NGOs are obsessed with chasing donations and retaining their donor base. Their pressing need is to keep their staff in gainful employment. And as the money rolls in, the bureaucracy grows and more and more projects demand more and more money. Evangelical churches evidence the same cycle. No matter how much these preachers are funded, the donations only fuel a greater appetite for cash, and we are constantly witness to even more urgent appeals to empty our wallets just months after the last emergency bail-out. How many times does the Sierra Club, the DSF, Nature Conservancy or even the Sea Shepherd Society sound the alarm bell for the poster-species-of the-month? As soon as the Rocky Mountain Cariboo is “saved” by the announcement of a provincial park, another endangered species pops up for urgent salvation. I have seen this movie over and over again. But the root problem remains. Growth.
The question is, does the environmental movement have a sincere interest in solving it? More specifically, does their bureaucracies have a genuine interest in solving it? Next question: Why would they WANT to solve it? Would firefighters really like the prospect of never ever having fires occur again? Would the BC College of Physicians like the possibility of everyone finding the Fountain of Eternal Youth? Would environmental organizations really like sustainability to break out across the land? Sierra Club Directors react with outrage at such a suggestion. They speak of their legions of tireless “volunteers” who work with extreme dedication to fight for the environment. But what they won’t do is tell us how much their directors are paid, or make their financial reports easily accessible. If we demand that our political parties open their books, why is it illegitimate that environmental organizations be required to do the same thing.? The BC Sierra Club is infested with New Democrats and Greens. Many Sierran and NDP activists wear two hats. Is it not incongruous that as New Democratic members or supporters, these people stridently oppose the option of the NDP accepting corporate donations, but are completely tolerant of the Sierra Club accepting this kind of dirty money? If they are aware that corporate donations can and have corrupted political parties and twisted their programs to thwart the public interest, why can’t they see the same malevolent interest influencing environmental NGOs? Are they oblivious of these donations? Or willfully and deliberately ignorant? I find it most ironic that these kind of people typically express scorn at Christian congregations who are hoodwinked by corruption, but blind to their own complicity and acceptance of bribery. Why don’t Sierrans demand that their beloved club refuse donations from the TD Bank and the Van City mortgage empire, to name but two examples? Why don’t they ask WHY these corporations are wanting to buy their silence, and what things they want environmental organizations to be silent about??? Why are financial institutions paying the Green piper? What tune do they want played, or NOT played? The answer should be obvious. But apparently not to Sierrans, or the dupes of the Suzuki Cult. They don’t know or care to know about the involvement of the Royal Bank with the DSF, or that evil energy companies like Encana, the natural gas giant, donate to their favourite crusaders. They don’t see the hypocrisy of Dr. Suzuki demanding that climate change deniers in parliament be jailed but he himself denying that energy companies contribute to his efforts. Who is shilling for whom?
So while I began with a demand that environmental organizations put the “P” be put back into the IPAT formula, I ended with the realization that such organizations have an ineradicable interest in keeping it out. I came to the conclusion that in order to save the environment, environmental organizations must be swept away. They are cops on the corporate take, whose presence only gives the innocents a false sense of security. Better that we had to fend for ourselves, as we are in fact doing.
The behaviour of these organizations has led me to reject the label of “environmentalist”. I am not an “environmentalist”, but a “Malthusian”. What is the essential difference? An “environmentalist” attempts to control the environment to accommodate a growing human population. But a Malthusian attempts to control the human population to accommodate the environment. That does not mean that I ignore other variables, only that my objective is to serve the interests of the environment rather than the interests of this socio-economic system. A system which, as Christine MacDonald shows in her book, “Green Inc.”, the leading environmental organizations depend on to perpetuate themselves. They are not potential allies or friends who have lost their way, or who simply have an alternative view of achieving the same goal. They are my mortal enemies who must be defeated with even greater zeal than those in the boardrooms. A “friend” with a knife at my back is more to be feared than an enemy whom I face frontally. That is how I plot the ideological and political landscape. It is an ethical gulf that cannot be crossed. The gulf that exists between principle and compromise with corruption.
Tim Murray
October 4/09
I never said that population control ALONE was sufficient to solve our problems. The reason I got involved in this effort in December of 2006---other than the fact that I just learned how to use a computer----was to lobby the environmental movement to put the “P” back into the Ehrlich-Holdren “IPAT” formula. That is all. I never argued that the “P” should replace the “A” and the “T”. Just that leaving it out made nonsense of any comprehensive understanding of our crisis. Then I asked, “WHY have they left it out?” For a year I believed that it was just a matter of political correctness and cowardice. But by Januarry 2008, I realized that something even more compelling was at play. Environmental organizations have fallen prey to Michels “Iron Law of Oligarchy”, formulated at the turn of the century.
Roberto Michels was a European sociologist who observed that revolutionary socialist parties ineluctably evolved into moderate organizations who kept their radical rhetoric but in reality pursued timid and compromising agendas. More than that, they betrayed their democratic ideals by vesting power in a strong leader and his cronies. The best example of this phenomena was the German Social Democratic Party, whom Bismarck thought so subversive that he banned for decades. But by 1914, this “revolutionary” and internationalist party reached the point that it could vote for war credits for the German ruling class’s war effort. Following the vote, the Chancellor looked upon the socialists in the Reichstag, sitting across from their “opponents” and said, “I see only Germans”.
Michels said that when even a radical movement with revolutionary goals becomes an organization, the emphasis shifts to preserving the bureaucracy of that organization, even when the bureacracy’s interest runs contrary to the original aims of the movement. Civil Rights activist Saul Alinsky recognized the truth of Michels’ observations 50 years later. In his “Rules for Radicals”, Alinsky said that he would have to return to a town that he visited two years earlier so that he could set up an organization to fight the organization that he had set up previously. My belief is that all political parties and NGOs should carry an expiry date. After so many years, it would automatically be dissolved so that the cause could cleanse itself of vested interests. Environmental NGOs are obsessed with chasing donations and retaining their donor base. Their pressing need is to keep their staff in gainful employment. And as the money rolls in, the bureaucracy grows and more and more projects demand more and more money. Evangelical churches evidence the same cycle. No matter how much these preachers are funded, the donations only fuel a greater appetite for cash, and we are constantly witness to even more urgent appeals to empty our wallets just months after the last emergency bail-out. How many times does the Sierra Club, the DSF, Nature Conservancy or even the Sea Shepherd Society sound the alarm bell for the poster-species-of the-month? As soon as the Rocky Mountain Cariboo is “saved” by the announcement of a provincial park, another endangered species pops up for urgent salvation. I have seen this movie over and over again. But the root problem remains. Growth.
The question is, does the environmental movement have a sincere interest in solving it? More specifically, does their bureaucracies have a genuine interest in solving it? Next question: Why would they WANT to solve it? Would firefighters really like the prospect of never ever having fires occur again? Would the BC College of Physicians like the possibility of everyone finding the Fountain of Eternal Youth? Would environmental organizations really like sustainability to break out across the land? Sierra Club Directors react with outrage at such a suggestion. They speak of their legions of tireless “volunteers” who work with extreme dedication to fight for the environment. But what they won’t do is tell us how much their directors are paid, or make their financial reports easily accessible. If we demand that our political parties open their books, why is it illegitimate that environmental organizations be required to do the same thing.? The BC Sierra Club is infested with New Democrats and Greens. Many Sierran and NDP activists wear two hats. Is it not incongruous that as New Democratic members or supporters, these people stridently oppose the option of the NDP accepting corporate donations, but are completely tolerant of the Sierra Club accepting this kind of dirty money? If they are aware that corporate donations can and have corrupted political parties and twisted their programs to thwart the public interest, why can’t they see the same malevolent interest influencing environmental NGOs? Are they oblivious of these donations? Or willfully and deliberately ignorant? I find it most ironic that these kind of people typically express scorn at Christian congregations who are hoodwinked by corruption, but blind to their own complicity and acceptance of bribery. Why don’t Sierrans demand that their beloved club refuse donations from the TD Bank and the Van City mortgage empire, to name but two examples? Why don’t they ask WHY these corporations are wanting to buy their silence, and what things they want environmental organizations to be silent about??? Why are financial institutions paying the Green piper? What tune do they want played, or NOT played? The answer should be obvious. But apparently not to Sierrans, or the dupes of the Suzuki Cult. They don’t know or care to know about the involvement of the Royal Bank with the DSF, or that evil energy companies like Encana, the natural gas giant, donate to their favourite crusaders. They don’t see the hypocrisy of Dr. Suzuki demanding that climate change deniers in parliament be jailed but he himself denying that energy companies contribute to his efforts. Who is shilling for whom?
So while I began with a demand that environmental organizations put the “P” be put back into the IPAT formula, I ended with the realization that such organizations have an ineradicable interest in keeping it out. I came to the conclusion that in order to save the environment, environmental organizations must be swept away. They are cops on the corporate take, whose presence only gives the innocents a false sense of security. Better that we had to fend for ourselves, as we are in fact doing.
The behaviour of these organizations has led me to reject the label of “environmentalist”. I am not an “environmentalist”, but a “Malthusian”. What is the essential difference? An “environmentalist” attempts to control the environment to accommodate a growing human population. But a Malthusian attempts to control the human population to accommodate the environment. That does not mean that I ignore other variables, only that my objective is to serve the interests of the environment rather than the interests of this socio-economic system. A system which, as Christine MacDonald shows in her book, “Green Inc.”, the leading environmental organizations depend on to perpetuate themselves. They are not potential allies or friends who have lost their way, or who simply have an alternative view of achieving the same goal. They are my mortal enemies who must be defeated with even greater zeal than those in the boardrooms. A “friend” with a knife at my back is more to be feared than an enemy whom I face frontally. That is how I plot the ideological and political landscape. It is an ethical gulf that cannot be crossed. The gulf that exists between principle and compromise with corruption.
Tim Murray
October 4/09
GREEN ICONS MUST WALK THE TALK
GREEN ICONS MUST WALK THE TALK
In a letter dated April 29, 2009, Rob Dietz of the Centre for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy (CASSE) writes,
“The CASSE position, a document that can be signed by individuals and endorsed by organizations, recognizes the conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. It proposes the steady state economy, characterized by stable population and per capita consumption, as a desirable alternative to continued growth.
Many leading sustainability thinkers have signed this position, including David Suzuki, Vandana Shiva, David Orr, Bill McKibben, Herman Daly, Caroline Lucas, Gus Speth, and Wendell Berry. Dozens of organizations have endorsed the position, and it has been used as a model for professional scientific societies to adopt their own positions on economic growth….To find evidence that our leaders are mired in the old paradigm, we need look no further than the bank bailouts. Stimulus spending to get the economy growing is not the change we need…. Many policy changes can help us establish financial systems and an economy that are sustainable.” http://transitionnetworknews.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/jumpstarting-the-transition-to-a-better-economy/
Note the words that I have highlighted by bold lettering.
A stable population is a key element of a steady state economy. In the Anglophone countries of Canada, the United States, Australia and the UK at least, the main driver of population growth is immigration. That is right, the ugly “P” and “I” words that so many in our movement are terrified of mentioning. Unfortunately, our environmental crisis is of such severity that we haven’t the luxury of tip-toeing around politically incorrect facts. Yet so many of us do, including some of the signatories of the CASSE document. The presence of their names do nothing to strength the credibility of the declaration. A preacher found to be cruising the red light district does not bring respectability to his church or to his sermons. Environmental leaders must denounce growth in all its manifestations, not shroud it in the clothing of trendy green euphemisms or ignore it altogether.
Historically, economic power has been exceedingly concentrated in Canada, with five major banks playing a pivotal role in shaping the direction of the country. Leading the parade has been the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). Like all financial institutions, it makes its living from growth, for only growth can generate the income borrowers need to pay back the interest on loans that banks provide. Growth is what banks are all about, and the more growth, the merrier. RBC is arguably the most potent player in Canada’s Growth Lobby, as its Chairman Gordon Nixon has publicly and stridently advocated that the federal government of Canada increase its stratosphere immigration quota by 50% or 135-150 thousand “permanent” residents per year to a grand total of 400,000. In addition to this figure, at least another 100,000 would enter on a “temporary” Visa, and as the saying goes, “nothing is so permanent as a temporary immigrant.” As the latest census of March 2007 revealed, Canada already has the highest population growth rate in the G8 group. And a backlog of nearly a million approved applications for entry have yet to be processed.
The most confounding aspect of this development is that Canada’s environmental organizations have remained silent about this growth. They were mute about the Census report, mute about pro-natalist policies, and mute about a per capita immigration rate that ranks with Australia in its reckless irresponsibility. They spin out the same greenwash that politicians do that somehow population growth is not a critical component of economic growth, or that growth can be decoupled from GHG emissions and environmental degradation. Growth can be ecologically benign by being “managed” or steered out of harm’s way. It can be made “smart”. Smart growth? Smart clear-cuts, smart extinctions, smart pollution? What other oxymoronic concoctions are on the draft board? Growth is growth, and even a ‘green’ stimulus package exacts ecological costs. Is it that environmentalists don’t understand or are paid NOT to understand?
I think both. The Royal Bank of Canada has endowed the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) handsomely and bestowed an honour on David Suzuki, as well as to hold out a tin cup for the Nature of Conservancy Canada. Other financial institutions have made similar arrangements---the Toronto Dominion Bank, for example, is a benefactor of the Sierra Club of BC. It is a symbiotic relationship. The green NGOs are so hungry for cash that securing and expanding their donor base seems to be a greater fixation than their campaigns. At the same time, the banks gain much needed ecological dispensation in the same way as rich patrons bought indulgences from medieval popes. So while they underwrite the housing developments that sprawl across our precious farmland, the banks coat themselves with green paint by “greening” their offices according to the presciptions of the DSF, and the TD Bank organizes litter clean-ups on the beaches. In effect, the DSF, the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace and the rest of the green establishment act as Pied Pipers decoying concerned innocents away from root causes to chase one symptom after another. Environmental volunteers and subscribers are like a fire brigade run ragged by dashing around putting out one brush fire after another, but without dealing with the major conflagration---growth.
Private pronouncements are not enough. David Suzuki has confided on not just one occasion that Canada’s mass immigration policy is, to use his word, “nuts”. But to create that ‘critical mass’ that Rob Dietz talks about, we need green leaders to summon the same courage that famous wildlife artist and environmental activist Robert Bateman has. Bateman has publicly declared his opposition to population growth in Canada and has severed his support for the myopic, timid and corrupt environmental NGOs that I have alluded to. One can’t creditably assert, as Green Party leader Elizabeth May has, that, quoting Paul Ehrlich, “growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”, but then turn around and advocate a 25% increase in our immigration intake, as well as an open-door refugee policy. And signing the CASSE document while doing so is hypocrisy in the extreme.
Green icons must walk the talk.
Sincerely,
Tim Murray
Vice President,
Biodiversity First
In a letter dated April 29, 2009, Rob Dietz of the Centre for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy (CASSE) writes,
“The CASSE position, a document that can be signed by individuals and endorsed by organizations, recognizes the conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. It proposes the steady state economy, characterized by stable population and per capita consumption, as a desirable alternative to continued growth.
Many leading sustainability thinkers have signed this position, including David Suzuki, Vandana Shiva, David Orr, Bill McKibben, Herman Daly, Caroline Lucas, Gus Speth, and Wendell Berry. Dozens of organizations have endorsed the position, and it has been used as a model for professional scientific societies to adopt their own positions on economic growth….To find evidence that our leaders are mired in the old paradigm, we need look no further than the bank bailouts. Stimulus spending to get the economy growing is not the change we need…. Many policy changes can help us establish financial systems and an economy that are sustainable.” http://transitionnetworknews.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/jumpstarting-the-transition-to-a-better-economy/
Note the words that I have highlighted by bold lettering.
A stable population is a key element of a steady state economy. In the Anglophone countries of Canada, the United States, Australia and the UK at least, the main driver of population growth is immigration. That is right, the ugly “P” and “I” words that so many in our movement are terrified of mentioning. Unfortunately, our environmental crisis is of such severity that we haven’t the luxury of tip-toeing around politically incorrect facts. Yet so many of us do, including some of the signatories of the CASSE document. The presence of their names do nothing to strength the credibility of the declaration. A preacher found to be cruising the red light district does not bring respectability to his church or to his sermons. Environmental leaders must denounce growth in all its manifestations, not shroud it in the clothing of trendy green euphemisms or ignore it altogether.
Historically, economic power has been exceedingly concentrated in Canada, with five major banks playing a pivotal role in shaping the direction of the country. Leading the parade has been the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). Like all financial institutions, it makes its living from growth, for only growth can generate the income borrowers need to pay back the interest on loans that banks provide. Growth is what banks are all about, and the more growth, the merrier. RBC is arguably the most potent player in Canada’s Growth Lobby, as its Chairman Gordon Nixon has publicly and stridently advocated that the federal government of Canada increase its stratosphere immigration quota by 50% or 135-150 thousand “permanent” residents per year to a grand total of 400,000. In addition to this figure, at least another 100,000 would enter on a “temporary” Visa, and as the saying goes, “nothing is so permanent as a temporary immigrant.” As the latest census of March 2007 revealed, Canada already has the highest population growth rate in the G8 group. And a backlog of nearly a million approved applications for entry have yet to be processed.
The most confounding aspect of this development is that Canada’s environmental organizations have remained silent about this growth. They were mute about the Census report, mute about pro-natalist policies, and mute about a per capita immigration rate that ranks with Australia in its reckless irresponsibility. They spin out the same greenwash that politicians do that somehow population growth is not a critical component of economic growth, or that growth can be decoupled from GHG emissions and environmental degradation. Growth can be ecologically benign by being “managed” or steered out of harm’s way. It can be made “smart”. Smart growth? Smart clear-cuts, smart extinctions, smart pollution? What other oxymoronic concoctions are on the draft board? Growth is growth, and even a ‘green’ stimulus package exacts ecological costs. Is it that environmentalists don’t understand or are paid NOT to understand?
I think both. The Royal Bank of Canada has endowed the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) handsomely and bestowed an honour on David Suzuki, as well as to hold out a tin cup for the Nature of Conservancy Canada. Other financial institutions have made similar arrangements---the Toronto Dominion Bank, for example, is a benefactor of the Sierra Club of BC. It is a symbiotic relationship. The green NGOs are so hungry for cash that securing and expanding their donor base seems to be a greater fixation than their campaigns. At the same time, the banks gain much needed ecological dispensation in the same way as rich patrons bought indulgences from medieval popes. So while they underwrite the housing developments that sprawl across our precious farmland, the banks coat themselves with green paint by “greening” their offices according to the presciptions of the DSF, and the TD Bank organizes litter clean-ups on the beaches. In effect, the DSF, the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace and the rest of the green establishment act as Pied Pipers decoying concerned innocents away from root causes to chase one symptom after another. Environmental volunteers and subscribers are like a fire brigade run ragged by dashing around putting out one brush fire after another, but without dealing with the major conflagration---growth.
Private pronouncements are not enough. David Suzuki has confided on not just one occasion that Canada’s mass immigration policy is, to use his word, “nuts”. But to create that ‘critical mass’ that Rob Dietz talks about, we need green leaders to summon the same courage that famous wildlife artist and environmental activist Robert Bateman has. Bateman has publicly declared his opposition to population growth in Canada and has severed his support for the myopic, timid and corrupt environmental NGOs that I have alluded to. One can’t creditably assert, as Green Party leader Elizabeth May has, that, quoting Paul Ehrlich, “growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”, but then turn around and advocate a 25% increase in our immigration intake, as well as an open-door refugee policy. And signing the CASSE document while doing so is hypocrisy in the extreme.
Green icons must walk the talk.
Sincerely,
Tim Murray
Vice President,
Biodiversity First
HOW CAN WE DEFEND A COUNTRY WITH NO RECOGNIZED CULTURE, HERITAGE OR RIGHTS?
Dear Mr. Murray.
My name is Jose (name witheld) I am the son of a Spanish Immigrant. My father fled Spain in his youth from the tyranny of General Franco. I am at times sure that I`m losing my mind when I read articles such as yours about the CBC or as I prefer to call it Communist Bull Crap.
It gets me so angry listening to these twits talk about Canadian Culture. Having been to Spain I know without a doubt that I`m not a Spaniard like my father, I share some eating habits and maybe some cultural idiosyncrasies with the Spanish that my Canadian country men don`t have. But trust me I`m Canadian. I`ve travelled to Egypt, United Arab Emirates and to Holland as well as various US states. I have lived in Vancouver and well seen most of our Nation. If CBC and the ``liberal`` twits don`t know what Canadian culture is it`s for two reasons; they don`t want to or they are fools and don`t talk to the locals at home, or abroad.
Keep up the good work defending our shared history and pride.
HOW CAN WE DEFEND A COUNTRY WITH NO RECOGNIZED CULTURE, HERITAGE, OR RIGHTS ?
Letters from Canadians like Jose have come to me from across Canada, thanks to Peter Brimelow and Vdare. They echo the same sentiments that I heard from immigrants who wrote in support of my articles in Canada Free Press against Official Multiculturalism and the purpose it served (swelling corporate profits). Immigrants and the sons of immigrants once clearly acknowledged the existence of a uniquely “Canadian” culture. Until recent decades, their attitude has been to unreservedly embrace it---in the same fashion that my mother’s side of the family did. But third world immigrants have been told by governments, employers and the media that they need not adapt, integrate or assimilate, because our culture is only a mosaic of imported values. In fact, we as native Canadians have no right to “impose” any standards or requirements upon those who, one might have thought, tacitly accepted the rules of the game by willingly coming here. After all, post-1990 immigrants were not dragged here from slave ships.
More offensive than the arrogant attitudes of contemporary immigrant services advocates and multiculturalists though, is the attitude of politicians from whom they take their cue. The message of Official Multiculturalism is that people long resident in Canada have no right to determine the course of their country. In effect, we are not a sovereign nation, but “Home to the World”, where newcomers will not only be made to feel at home but set the house rules as well. And the media and the school curricula have been recruited in the propaganda effort to inculcate defeatism and acceptance among the younger generations. How then, in such a political climate, can we construct any policies that are designed to serve Canadian interests, when Canadians are indoctrinated to believe that there is no “Canada” or “Canadianism”? “What is a Canadian anyway?” is now a standard phrase in our national dictionary. How can we “stand on guard” for a country that is only a fiction, or lock the door on a house that, we are led to believe, belongs to the whole neighbourhood? How can we achieve sustainability when, according to the Ministry of Relative Truth---the CBC---we have no moral right to limit our numbers?
Tim Murray
My name is Jose (name witheld) I am the son of a Spanish Immigrant. My father fled Spain in his youth from the tyranny of General Franco. I am at times sure that I`m losing my mind when I read articles such as yours about the CBC or as I prefer to call it Communist Bull Crap.
It gets me so angry listening to these twits talk about Canadian Culture. Having been to Spain I know without a doubt that I`m not a Spaniard like my father, I share some eating habits and maybe some cultural idiosyncrasies with the Spanish that my Canadian country men don`t have. But trust me I`m Canadian. I`ve travelled to Egypt, United Arab Emirates and to Holland as well as various US states. I have lived in Vancouver and well seen most of our Nation. If CBC and the ``liberal`` twits don`t know what Canadian culture is it`s for two reasons; they don`t want to or they are fools and don`t talk to the locals at home, or abroad.
Keep up the good work defending our shared history and pride.
HOW CAN WE DEFEND A COUNTRY WITH NO RECOGNIZED CULTURE, HERITAGE, OR RIGHTS ?
Letters from Canadians like Jose have come to me from across Canada, thanks to Peter Brimelow and Vdare. They echo the same sentiments that I heard from immigrants who wrote in support of my articles in Canada Free Press against Official Multiculturalism and the purpose it served (swelling corporate profits). Immigrants and the sons of immigrants once clearly acknowledged the existence of a uniquely “Canadian” culture. Until recent decades, their attitude has been to unreservedly embrace it---in the same fashion that my mother’s side of the family did. But third world immigrants have been told by governments, employers and the media that they need not adapt, integrate or assimilate, because our culture is only a mosaic of imported values. In fact, we as native Canadians have no right to “impose” any standards or requirements upon those who, one might have thought, tacitly accepted the rules of the game by willingly coming here. After all, post-1990 immigrants were not dragged here from slave ships.
More offensive than the arrogant attitudes of contemporary immigrant services advocates and multiculturalists though, is the attitude of politicians from whom they take their cue. The message of Official Multiculturalism is that people long resident in Canada have no right to determine the course of their country. In effect, we are not a sovereign nation, but “Home to the World”, where newcomers will not only be made to feel at home but set the house rules as well. And the media and the school curricula have been recruited in the propaganda effort to inculcate defeatism and acceptance among the younger generations. How then, in such a political climate, can we construct any policies that are designed to serve Canadian interests, when Canadians are indoctrinated to believe that there is no “Canada” or “Canadianism”? “What is a Canadian anyway?” is now a standard phrase in our national dictionary. How can we “stand on guard” for a country that is only a fiction, or lock the door on a house that, we are led to believe, belongs to the whole neighbourhood? How can we achieve sustainability when, according to the Ministry of Relative Truth---the CBC---we have no moral right to limit our numbers?
Tim Murray
CANADA DIES HERE: How the CBC Has Become the Mouthpiece of Colonial Occupation
Canada Dies Here
How the CBC has become the mouthpiece of colonial occupation
In the annals of media bias, the Friday October 2/09 edition of CBC Radio’s “The Current” should be promoted to the Hall of Shame. The lead-off topic revolved around an incident where Canadian officials in Kenya confiscated the passport of a Canadian citizen whom they suspected of faking her identity after she failed to correctly answer elementary questions about the city and country she had lived in for many years. DNA testing subsequently vindicated her contentions.
The issue for the discussion panel was “cultural competence”—“What should a Canadian be expected to know?” Or as the interviewer, veteran CBC journalist Jan Wong framed it, “Whether it is fair to assume that there is a common set of cultural reference points” that Canadians relate to.
As one would expect, the verdict was “No”---exactly the answer that Ms. Wong had engineered with loaded questions and a loaded panel, all of whom were members of visible minorities, like Wong, and all of whom were foreign-born, excepting Wong. The only missing ingredient in this classic formula for manufactured consent was a sound track for the usual “rent-a-crowd” that forms the cheer-leading section for politically correct pronouncements.
Jan Wong made no pretence of neutrality or objectivity. Thoughout the discussion, she consistently offered excuses for Suuad Hagi Mohamud’s memory lapses. So what if the woman struggled to remember what a T-4 slip was, or that she didn’t remember the date of her son’s birthday. “She was only off by two days”, she exclaimed, and besides, “not every culture uses the same calendar.” And why would anyone have to name the transit stops on their way to work? And how many Canadians know who the Prime Minister is? As for forgetting who her employer was, heck, it was just a courier company after all.
Wong even played her own victim card for emotional impact. She intimated that she too was wrongly detained by customs officials in Toronto after returning home from her assignment at the Atlanta Olympics. She was “thrown in a pen with illegal immigrants” and felt “powerless” and fearful. No matter what knowledge she acquired, people would always make assumptions about her from her appearance, not knowing that her family’s Canadian roots went back to 1880. Wong didn’t reflect that all of us are judged by our appearance in one fashion or another. That is why we dress formally at job interviews, or why those in wheelchairs are assumed to be without capabilities, or seniors are often patronized like children. But not everyone nurses these grievances to score verbal points or angle for sympathy.
Wong made a point to ridicule the comments of a representative of an immigrant settlement centre who argued that to be successful, immigrants must acquire so-called “soft skills” like making eye contact and shaking hands upon greeting people, which are common to our culture. She turned to her main witness for the prosecution, Debbie Douglas, the Executive Director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Servicing Immigrants, and remarked sarcastically, “Actually, Debbie, with the threat of the H1N1 virus, we are told not to shake hands. What is acceptable culture?” Silly question, according to the CBC and their champions, Canada doesn’t have a culture, at least not of the home-grown variety.
It is a measure of the CBC’s “stacked deck” strategy of rigging an “open” debate that it was left to panelist Nick Noorani, editor of Canadian Immigration Magazine, a man not normally known for his objectivity, to defend the importance of learning soft skills. “If I moved to Japan, I would learn to bow and leave my shoes outside at the door.” But Debbie Douglas interjected that learning soft skills were only necessary within the culture of institutions, but there was no general set of soft skills external to them in this new and wonderfully diverse Canada of ours. Lending emphasis to a point that she made a few times during the discussion, Canada is no longer “this white, Western, European place---we need to move away from this whole notion of what ‘Canadianism’ means.” It is a mistake, she asserted, to assume that there are “basic cultural reference points…we are as diverse as the rest of the world.” And why, Douglas asked, “should immigrants have a heavier burden of having this knowledge than Canadians themselves don’t have?”
But Mr. Noorani felt moved to draw a line. “Is that what we really want, to have immigrants still oblivious to what is going around them even after having lived in the country for 10 years?” Ms. Izumi Sakamoto, a Professor of Social Work at the University of Toronto, came to the rescue with another of her excuses. She cited the case of a Greek who had not had a vacation for ten years because like so many immigrants was too busy working to put food on the table and hadn’t the luxury of taking the time to explore his environment. Debbie Douglas concurred—“it is a class issue for everyone”. Douglas concluded the debate by stating that the conversation should be about “How do we get our communities engaged.”
Precisely. Should the question also not be “If there is in fact no longer ‘a common set of cultural reference points’, should we not set about to re-establish them?” Can a viable nation function without any cultural cohesion, a shared cultural vocabulary and a common knowledge of a shared history? Or are we to become merely an amalgam of ethnic solitudes more psychologically connected to foreign homelands than to other Canadians? Is Canada just, as Debbie Douglas would argue, just a microcosm of the United Nations? Is it already a “done deal’?
That seems to the CBC message. Their motto is “Canada lives here”, but the reality is that on the CBC, “Canada dies here”. Their advice is for traditionalists is to throw in the towel and park their nostalgia. Give it up. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated into the global shopping mall culture. We will never again be the country you yearn for. We are diverse, and getting more diverse with each passing day.
Sorry Mother Corp—the news of our death is greatly exaggerated. Eighty per cent of Canadians are not immigrants, and 83% are not visible minorities, 60% of whom congregate in just two major cities. Believe it or not, there is a world outside of Toronto, even of Ontario. A world where the real Canada still is alive and kicking, and not defeatist. You haven’t heard the last of us yet.
Tim Murray
October 7/09
How the CBC has become the mouthpiece of colonial occupation
In the annals of media bias, the Friday October 2/09 edition of CBC Radio’s “The Current” should be promoted to the Hall of Shame. The lead-off topic revolved around an incident where Canadian officials in Kenya confiscated the passport of a Canadian citizen whom they suspected of faking her identity after she failed to correctly answer elementary questions about the city and country she had lived in for many years. DNA testing subsequently vindicated her contentions.
The issue for the discussion panel was “cultural competence”—“What should a Canadian be expected to know?” Or as the interviewer, veteran CBC journalist Jan Wong framed it, “Whether it is fair to assume that there is a common set of cultural reference points” that Canadians relate to.
As one would expect, the verdict was “No”---exactly the answer that Ms. Wong had engineered with loaded questions and a loaded panel, all of whom were members of visible minorities, like Wong, and all of whom were foreign-born, excepting Wong. The only missing ingredient in this classic formula for manufactured consent was a sound track for the usual “rent-a-crowd” that forms the cheer-leading section for politically correct pronouncements.
Jan Wong made no pretence of neutrality or objectivity. Thoughout the discussion, she consistently offered excuses for Suuad Hagi Mohamud’s memory lapses. So what if the woman struggled to remember what a T-4 slip was, or that she didn’t remember the date of her son’s birthday. “She was only off by two days”, she exclaimed, and besides, “not every culture uses the same calendar.” And why would anyone have to name the transit stops on their way to work? And how many Canadians know who the Prime Minister is? As for forgetting who her employer was, heck, it was just a courier company after all.
Wong even played her own victim card for emotional impact. She intimated that she too was wrongly detained by customs officials in Toronto after returning home from her assignment at the Atlanta Olympics. She was “thrown in a pen with illegal immigrants” and felt “powerless” and fearful. No matter what knowledge she acquired, people would always make assumptions about her from her appearance, not knowing that her family’s Canadian roots went back to 1880. Wong didn’t reflect that all of us are judged by our appearance in one fashion or another. That is why we dress formally at job interviews, or why those in wheelchairs are assumed to be without capabilities, or seniors are often patronized like children. But not everyone nurses these grievances to score verbal points or angle for sympathy.
Wong made a point to ridicule the comments of a representative of an immigrant settlement centre who argued that to be successful, immigrants must acquire so-called “soft skills” like making eye contact and shaking hands upon greeting people, which are common to our culture. She turned to her main witness for the prosecution, Debbie Douglas, the Executive Director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Servicing Immigrants, and remarked sarcastically, “Actually, Debbie, with the threat of the H1N1 virus, we are told not to shake hands. What is acceptable culture?” Silly question, according to the CBC and their champions, Canada doesn’t have a culture, at least not of the home-grown variety.
It is a measure of the CBC’s “stacked deck” strategy of rigging an “open” debate that it was left to panelist Nick Noorani, editor of Canadian Immigration Magazine, a man not normally known for his objectivity, to defend the importance of learning soft skills. “If I moved to Japan, I would learn to bow and leave my shoes outside at the door.” But Debbie Douglas interjected that learning soft skills were only necessary within the culture of institutions, but there was no general set of soft skills external to them in this new and wonderfully diverse Canada of ours. Lending emphasis to a point that she made a few times during the discussion, Canada is no longer “this white, Western, European place---we need to move away from this whole notion of what ‘Canadianism’ means.” It is a mistake, she asserted, to assume that there are “basic cultural reference points…we are as diverse as the rest of the world.” And why, Douglas asked, “should immigrants have a heavier burden of having this knowledge than Canadians themselves don’t have?”
But Mr. Noorani felt moved to draw a line. “Is that what we really want, to have immigrants still oblivious to what is going around them even after having lived in the country for 10 years?” Ms. Izumi Sakamoto, a Professor of Social Work at the University of Toronto, came to the rescue with another of her excuses. She cited the case of a Greek who had not had a vacation for ten years because like so many immigrants was too busy working to put food on the table and hadn’t the luxury of taking the time to explore his environment. Debbie Douglas concurred—“it is a class issue for everyone”. Douglas concluded the debate by stating that the conversation should be about “How do we get our communities engaged.”
Precisely. Should the question also not be “If there is in fact no longer ‘a common set of cultural reference points’, should we not set about to re-establish them?” Can a viable nation function without any cultural cohesion, a shared cultural vocabulary and a common knowledge of a shared history? Or are we to become merely an amalgam of ethnic solitudes more psychologically connected to foreign homelands than to other Canadians? Is Canada just, as Debbie Douglas would argue, just a microcosm of the United Nations? Is it already a “done deal’?
That seems to the CBC message. Their motto is “Canada lives here”, but the reality is that on the CBC, “Canada dies here”. Their advice is for traditionalists is to throw in the towel and park their nostalgia. Give it up. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated into the global shopping mall culture. We will never again be the country you yearn for. We are diverse, and getting more diverse with each passing day.
Sorry Mother Corp—the news of our death is greatly exaggerated. Eighty per cent of Canadians are not immigrants, and 83% are not visible minorities, 60% of whom congregate in just two major cities. Believe it or not, there is a world outside of Toronto, even of Ontario. A world where the real Canada still is alive and kicking, and not defeatist. You haven’t heard the last of us yet.
Tim Murray
October 7/09
TOWARDS A PERFECT CURRENCY by John Meyer
Towards a Perfect Currency
Environmentalists measure in real physical units, not monetary units.
Money was developed to facilitate the trade of disparate real goods across a broad range of distances where direct exchange of goods was impractical. But money has many shortcomings in representing the full, real wealth creation process and assets especially over time.
Environmentalists have waited patiently for the commercial economics side of the real wealth creation process to develop monetary measurements which will capture the stocks and flows of environmental processes and non-renewable resource assets.
Without such common measurements, no broad based and unified initiatives on our planets many environmental challenges can easily take place.
There will continue to be strong resistance from the commercial economics sector to any environmental sector efforts to make radical policy changes based on factors which do not show up in their monetary based accounting system.
If we wait for commercial economists to develop a unit of measure which clearly represents all processes, we will wait in vain as it is not in the interests of the finance sector to change. It is up to the science community to provide a monetary basis which will adequately represent both human and natural processes.
Fortunately there is now an opportunity to combine the real wealth creation sectors demand for a representative currency with the need of the commercial economics sector to change the currency used as the basis for international trade.
As the international standard of commerce, the American dollar has had its day.
The proposal by Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central bank, in March 2009, to establish an international financial reserve currency based on a basket of national currencies is only the start of the process to replace the US dollar as the medium of trade and finance.
But a basket based currency, even if it is more stable, also adds more complexity. It is still based on printed money valuations and incorporates all of the other weaknesses inherent in currencies which are not hard asset based.
Even though the Chinese proposal was widely rejected, the need for a stable international trading currency is clear and is the subject of ongoing discussion. But why settle for another fabricated currency? The opportunity exists to advance to a real and stable standard.
Upon which bedrock can an upgraded currency be based to facilitate accurate valuations, stability, fluidity to represent any scale of asset or transaction and offer resistance to speculation? Gold is limited by scarcity and scalability. Although it can dampen the gyrations of national currencies, it doesn’t represent in and of itself, the real wealth creation process.
There is only one commodity which is universally produced and consumed with both the scale and resolution to represent the full scope of any human endeavour. We already measure it in tremendous detail and it is central to every economy and process.
Energy based currency would represent real wealth creation potential and would not be subject to the shifting valuation issues to which every national currency is prone. Energy represents the value of work already done as well as the potential of work which can be done.
Some 800 years ago, the Mongols avoided inflationary pressures on their currency by performing inventories of their assets and matching the money supply to it. The Mongol empire did not suffer from the boom and bust cycle generated by the currency inflation which has plagued other monetary economies. Energy based currency would eliminate this cycle by representing constant real product and illuminating actual input costs.
Energy underwrites all commercial and environmental activity. It is the most widely measured, consumed and produced commodity on the planet. In contrast to the gold producing club, every nation produces energy from a wide variety of sources.
Energy currency? Fine. But which units should be used? A barrel of oil in raw energy numbers, contains 5.9 million btus, 1729 kilowatt hours,
6.2 billion joules or 1.49 billion calories. Awkward, to say the least.
Currently a US dollar (at $50/bbl of oil) translates to about 120,000 btus, 35kw hours, 120 million joules and 30 million calories. Kilowatt hours is the best known and the most widely used measurement.
The closest thing to being a round number while having roughly the same magnitude as the current US dollar would be 100,000 btus or 100 million joules. Will we settle on “beatees”, “julies” or “watties” as the base currency unit?
Scientists could help monetary experts decide. That would be a new partnership. The first of many paradigm shifts necessary in the integration of real world physical accounting and the representation of commercial economic activity.
A kilowatt hour (or BTU, joule, calorie) is the same in Canada as it is in Kazakstan. It represents the same potential now as it would have centuries ago or will centuries into the future. As a scientific unit of measure, there will be no speculation about what a kilowatt will be worth in 10 years.
“Speculating”, “hedging”, “converting”, “runs against” - these would be superfluous activities of the past. Energy currency is elemental, timeless and universal; three qualities which arbitrary currencies or other commodity based currencies do not possess.
In moving to energy based currency, we will have made a huge step forward in stabilizing and rationalizing the economic process at every level. And when the technology is ready in 30 or 300 years, we can step easily from energy based currency to energy actually being the currency.
If energy storage technology can be developed to the point at which several thousand kilowatt hours can (safely) be carried on something the size of a credit card, then we will have developed the perfect currency.
Commodities, services and goods will always fluctuate in relation to energy but those fluctuations would be no longer be speculatively driven on the monetary side - they would be real cost and real demand driven.
And there would never be a stampede away from energy. To what? Time?
Our current national policy focus on monetary flows is one of the prime reasons for the disconnect between policy makers and environmentalists. The GDP/monetary metric simply does not represent the physical processes or the assets of the real world which environmentalists see as essential, uncounted and rapidly degrading.
Energy currency very readily yields energy accounting which can provide a more comprehensive description of real output and resource consumption. Compared to monetary analysis, it is a 3D catscan for programs associated with alternative energy and carbon emissions. These issues need energy accounting to avoid negative sum game red-herrings like corn ethanol at northern latitudes which can survive only in the fog of our current monetary system.
In contrast to adopting energy currency, the process of dumping the US dollar in favour of a spectrum of other national currencies is a political minefield loaded with huge implications for the many players.
No matter who champions it, no one nation will own energy based money.
It will be the first truly international, non-political currency base.
No nation will be able to manipulate it to avoid the consequences of its own economic mis-steps or to beggar its neighbours.
The recent Chinese efforts to promote the creation of a new standard for international financial reserves have not produced results although the reasons for the proposal remain obvious and valid. A move to energy based currency offers a graceful and non-political avenue of monetary reform as a logical step forward not an abandonment of a failure.
Despite the rejection of Mr. Zhou’s initiative, the ball is still in his court and will remain there until a successor to the US dollar is found.
In the face of rapidly deteriorating environmental conditions as well as the necessity of retooling international finance, change must come to our monetary system. Conversion to an energy standard will take full advantage of this opportunity.
John Meyer
October 11/09
Environmentalists measure in real physical units, not monetary units.
Money was developed to facilitate the trade of disparate real goods across a broad range of distances where direct exchange of goods was impractical. But money has many shortcomings in representing the full, real wealth creation process and assets especially over time.
Environmentalists have waited patiently for the commercial economics side of the real wealth creation process to develop monetary measurements which will capture the stocks and flows of environmental processes and non-renewable resource assets.
Without such common measurements, no broad based and unified initiatives on our planets many environmental challenges can easily take place.
There will continue to be strong resistance from the commercial economics sector to any environmental sector efforts to make radical policy changes based on factors which do not show up in their monetary based accounting system.
If we wait for commercial economists to develop a unit of measure which clearly represents all processes, we will wait in vain as it is not in the interests of the finance sector to change. It is up to the science community to provide a monetary basis which will adequately represent both human and natural processes.
Fortunately there is now an opportunity to combine the real wealth creation sectors demand for a representative currency with the need of the commercial economics sector to change the currency used as the basis for international trade.
As the international standard of commerce, the American dollar has had its day.
The proposal by Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central bank, in March 2009, to establish an international financial reserve currency based on a basket of national currencies is only the start of the process to replace the US dollar as the medium of trade and finance.
But a basket based currency, even if it is more stable, also adds more complexity. It is still based on printed money valuations and incorporates all of the other weaknesses inherent in currencies which are not hard asset based.
Even though the Chinese proposal was widely rejected, the need for a stable international trading currency is clear and is the subject of ongoing discussion. But why settle for another fabricated currency? The opportunity exists to advance to a real and stable standard.
Upon which bedrock can an upgraded currency be based to facilitate accurate valuations, stability, fluidity to represent any scale of asset or transaction and offer resistance to speculation? Gold is limited by scarcity and scalability. Although it can dampen the gyrations of national currencies, it doesn’t represent in and of itself, the real wealth creation process.
There is only one commodity which is universally produced and consumed with both the scale and resolution to represent the full scope of any human endeavour. We already measure it in tremendous detail and it is central to every economy and process.
Energy based currency would represent real wealth creation potential and would not be subject to the shifting valuation issues to which every national currency is prone. Energy represents the value of work already done as well as the potential of work which can be done.
Some 800 years ago, the Mongols avoided inflationary pressures on their currency by performing inventories of their assets and matching the money supply to it. The Mongol empire did not suffer from the boom and bust cycle generated by the currency inflation which has plagued other monetary economies. Energy based currency would eliminate this cycle by representing constant real product and illuminating actual input costs.
Energy underwrites all commercial and environmental activity. It is the most widely measured, consumed and produced commodity on the planet. In contrast to the gold producing club, every nation produces energy from a wide variety of sources.
Energy currency? Fine. But which units should be used? A barrel of oil in raw energy numbers, contains 5.9 million btus, 1729 kilowatt hours,
6.2 billion joules or 1.49 billion calories. Awkward, to say the least.
Currently a US dollar (at $50/bbl of oil) translates to about 120,000 btus, 35kw hours, 120 million joules and 30 million calories. Kilowatt hours is the best known and the most widely used measurement.
The closest thing to being a round number while having roughly the same magnitude as the current US dollar would be 100,000 btus or 100 million joules. Will we settle on “beatees”, “julies” or “watties” as the base currency unit?
Scientists could help monetary experts decide. That would be a new partnership. The first of many paradigm shifts necessary in the integration of real world physical accounting and the representation of commercial economic activity.
A kilowatt hour (or BTU, joule, calorie) is the same in Canada as it is in Kazakstan. It represents the same potential now as it would have centuries ago or will centuries into the future. As a scientific unit of measure, there will be no speculation about what a kilowatt will be worth in 10 years.
“Speculating”, “hedging”, “converting”, “runs against” - these would be superfluous activities of the past. Energy currency is elemental, timeless and universal; three qualities which arbitrary currencies or other commodity based currencies do not possess.
In moving to energy based currency, we will have made a huge step forward in stabilizing and rationalizing the economic process at every level. And when the technology is ready in 30 or 300 years, we can step easily from energy based currency to energy actually being the currency.
If energy storage technology can be developed to the point at which several thousand kilowatt hours can (safely) be carried on something the size of a credit card, then we will have developed the perfect currency.
Commodities, services and goods will always fluctuate in relation to energy but those fluctuations would be no longer be speculatively driven on the monetary side - they would be real cost and real demand driven.
And there would never be a stampede away from energy. To what? Time?
Our current national policy focus on monetary flows is one of the prime reasons for the disconnect between policy makers and environmentalists. The GDP/monetary metric simply does not represent the physical processes or the assets of the real world which environmentalists see as essential, uncounted and rapidly degrading.
Energy currency very readily yields energy accounting which can provide a more comprehensive description of real output and resource consumption. Compared to monetary analysis, it is a 3D catscan for programs associated with alternative energy and carbon emissions. These issues need energy accounting to avoid negative sum game red-herrings like corn ethanol at northern latitudes which can survive only in the fog of our current monetary system.
In contrast to adopting energy currency, the process of dumping the US dollar in favour of a spectrum of other national currencies is a political minefield loaded with huge implications for the many players.
No matter who champions it, no one nation will own energy based money.
It will be the first truly international, non-political currency base.
No nation will be able to manipulate it to avoid the consequences of its own economic mis-steps or to beggar its neighbours.
The recent Chinese efforts to promote the creation of a new standard for international financial reserves have not produced results although the reasons for the proposal remain obvious and valid. A move to energy based currency offers a graceful and non-political avenue of monetary reform as a logical step forward not an abandonment of a failure.
Despite the rejection of Mr. Zhou’s initiative, the ball is still in his court and will remain there until a successor to the US dollar is found.
In the face of rapidly deteriorating environmental conditions as well as the necessity of retooling international finance, change must come to our monetary system. Conversion to an energy standard will take full advantage of this opportunity.
John Meyer
October 11/09
DEBT COMPELS GROWTH
DEBT COMPELS GROWTH
Why the Numbers are Stacked Against Steady State Policies
Lesson number one, Economics 101:
Credit institutions make a living by charging interest on the money they lend you. It is not a gift---they lend it. And they want it back one day. But in the meantime you must pay a sum of money to rent it. How do you keep up your interest payments and pay back your balance-owing? By earning income. You get income from working for it, or you let your assets do your working for you and use the interest or rent they earn to pay off your loan.
How do you work for that income? You have a job, and jobs are less secure in a shrinking economy, as is rental, pension or other investment income. The return on stocks, bonds and other investment instruments require the same economic momentum that banks require to see their loans repaid. The vast majority of us are all, to one degree or another, “hooked” on growth. The growth-economy is like a dog forever chasing its tail, and with so many caught in the cycle, the growth lobby will always be irresistible. How many politicians will dare to retract the economy in the name of resource limits or ecological barriers that their advisors, the high priests of classic economics, will not acknowledge? No wonder the medieval church identified usury as a cardinal sin, the agent that could unravel a stable society where even merchants did not venture much beyond their accorded place.
Economic growth relies on debt to push all the players in a market economy toward behaviour that encourages growth. No debt, no growth, and no income or durable assets to generate the income to service that debt. But is most important, the greater the debt, the greater the pressure to stimulate more growth. That being the case, you are invited to review a snapshot of the US economy, as it stood on Saturday, October 10th, at approximately 3:15 PM PDT. The figures were as they appeared on the “Debt Clock”, and in the instant the numbers were recorded, greater numbers replaced them with terrifying rapidity. A glance at the Debt Clock a day or even an hour later would make the data look quite dated.
Take a look at this:
GDP per person $34, 764
Debt per person $38,802
GDP per worker $ 76,792
Debt per taxpayer $118,000 (changing too quickly to record)
Private debt per person $54,247
Personal savings per adult $ 1, 996
Liabilities per citizen $349,180
Assets per citizen $237,178
In round numbers, these were the expenditures in 2008-9:
Military $618 billion
Social Security $499 billion
Subsidies $ 51 billion
Medicare/Medicaid $643 billion
Interest on the debt $369 billion
Sub-total appox. $ 2.5 trillion
Government bailouts $11.5 trillion
When the world’s supreme economy cannot generate enough income to cover its debt obligations, it will be like a vortex that sucks the global economy down with it. The trillions thrown at consumers to ‘fix’ a system that is not broken but fatally flawed will not suffice in the long run to rescue it from the body-blow of rising fuel prices. And the kind of money needed to shift to renewable energy solutions dwarfs what has been spent or can ever be spent in the coming decade. The US government has shot its bolt, thrown most of the chips on the table. Expanding the money supply will be the last fatal gambit. It is through hyperinflation that interest on debt payments can be diminished when growth hits the brick wall of resource shortages. Expect foreign debt holders, currently clutching $3.5 trillion in IOUs, to pull the plug completely, and the real free-fall will begin in earnest. In retrospect, the current “downturn” will look like a peak, and the hope riding on this fake recovery will be likened to the brief relief Titanic passengers felt when the ship broke in two and for a short while leveled off.
Whatever fiscal rabbits they pull out of the hat, the brutal fact remains. Ours is an economy predicated on growth, but growth ultimately does not rely on imaginary wealth, but the supply of cheap energy, productive soil, accessible and abundant water and a resilient natural environment. As the Romans discovered in the last century of their crumbling empire, money is a fiction, not an elixir. People will stop believing in it when they come face to face with a reality that can’t be fooled by confidence tricks and greenwash. When that realization hits, my hope is that they will look for scapegoats, and find them in the financial industry, the universities, the think tanks, the journalism schools, parliament, the media, and last but not least, the offices of environmental NGOs. Let the victims be hung from the lamp-posts as Mussolini was, like a slab of meat on a hook in an abattoir, as befits liars and quislings. To paraphrase Diderot, I would not rest content until the last politician is strangled by the entrails of the last environmentalist---too busy sucking on corporate tits to alert us to the perils ahead, trying to “manage” growth rather than stop it.
Tim Murray October 10/09
Why the Numbers are Stacked Against Steady State Policies
Lesson number one, Economics 101:
Credit institutions make a living by charging interest on the money they lend you. It is not a gift---they lend it. And they want it back one day. But in the meantime you must pay a sum of money to rent it. How do you keep up your interest payments and pay back your balance-owing? By earning income. You get income from working for it, or you let your assets do your working for you and use the interest or rent they earn to pay off your loan.
How do you work for that income? You have a job, and jobs are less secure in a shrinking economy, as is rental, pension or other investment income. The return on stocks, bonds and other investment instruments require the same economic momentum that banks require to see their loans repaid. The vast majority of us are all, to one degree or another, “hooked” on growth. The growth-economy is like a dog forever chasing its tail, and with so many caught in the cycle, the growth lobby will always be irresistible. How many politicians will dare to retract the economy in the name of resource limits or ecological barriers that their advisors, the high priests of classic economics, will not acknowledge? No wonder the medieval church identified usury as a cardinal sin, the agent that could unravel a stable society where even merchants did not venture much beyond their accorded place.
Economic growth relies on debt to push all the players in a market economy toward behaviour that encourages growth. No debt, no growth, and no income or durable assets to generate the income to service that debt. But is most important, the greater the debt, the greater the pressure to stimulate more growth. That being the case, you are invited to review a snapshot of the US economy, as it stood on Saturday, October 10th, at approximately 3:15 PM PDT. The figures were as they appeared on the “Debt Clock”, and in the instant the numbers were recorded, greater numbers replaced them with terrifying rapidity. A glance at the Debt Clock a day or even an hour later would make the data look quite dated.
Take a look at this:
GDP per person $34, 764
Debt per person $38,802
GDP per worker $ 76,792
Debt per taxpayer $118,000 (changing too quickly to record)
Private debt per person $54,247
Personal savings per adult $ 1, 996
Liabilities per citizen $349,180
Assets per citizen $237,178
In round numbers, these were the expenditures in 2008-9:
Military $618 billion
Social Security $499 billion
Subsidies $ 51 billion
Medicare/Medicaid $643 billion
Interest on the debt $369 billion
Sub-total appox. $ 2.5 trillion
Government bailouts $11.5 trillion
When the world’s supreme economy cannot generate enough income to cover its debt obligations, it will be like a vortex that sucks the global economy down with it. The trillions thrown at consumers to ‘fix’ a system that is not broken but fatally flawed will not suffice in the long run to rescue it from the body-blow of rising fuel prices. And the kind of money needed to shift to renewable energy solutions dwarfs what has been spent or can ever be spent in the coming decade. The US government has shot its bolt, thrown most of the chips on the table. Expanding the money supply will be the last fatal gambit. It is through hyperinflation that interest on debt payments can be diminished when growth hits the brick wall of resource shortages. Expect foreign debt holders, currently clutching $3.5 trillion in IOUs, to pull the plug completely, and the real free-fall will begin in earnest. In retrospect, the current “downturn” will look like a peak, and the hope riding on this fake recovery will be likened to the brief relief Titanic passengers felt when the ship broke in two and for a short while leveled off.
Whatever fiscal rabbits they pull out of the hat, the brutal fact remains. Ours is an economy predicated on growth, but growth ultimately does not rely on imaginary wealth, but the supply of cheap energy, productive soil, accessible and abundant water and a resilient natural environment. As the Romans discovered in the last century of their crumbling empire, money is a fiction, not an elixir. People will stop believing in it when they come face to face with a reality that can’t be fooled by confidence tricks and greenwash. When that realization hits, my hope is that they will look for scapegoats, and find them in the financial industry, the universities, the think tanks, the journalism schools, parliament, the media, and last but not least, the offices of environmental NGOs. Let the victims be hung from the lamp-posts as Mussolini was, like a slab of meat on a hook in an abattoir, as befits liars and quislings. To paraphrase Diderot, I would not rest content until the last politician is strangled by the entrails of the last environmentalist---too busy sucking on corporate tits to alert us to the perils ahead, trying to “manage” growth rather than stop it.
Tim Murray October 10/09
QUESTION FOR CLIMATE CHANGE MINISTER PENNY WONG
QUESTION FOR CLIMATE CHANGE MINISTER PENNY WONG
I understand that Australia, if it keeps to its present course, is projected to grow its population by some 14 million people, or 65%, in just 25 years. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong of the growthist Labor administration of Kevin Rudd, was asked this question on September 21/09:
Interviewer:
"Minister, Australia's population is projected to increase by 65% to the level of 30m people by 2050. During that same period, the government is committed to cutting our carbon emissions by 60%. Aren't those goals or those facts mutually exclusive? How are we going to massively cut carbon as our population continues to massively grow?"
Penny Wong:
"Well, absolutely not, because the key issue with reducing emissions is that we have to de-link our levels of carbon pollution from economic growth and population growth. We have to ... Whereas the last few hundred years emissions growth - that is, growth in our carbon pollution - has essentially tracked our population and economic growth, we have to break that link and that the whole world has to break that link and so does Australia. So the key issue here is breaking that link, not, not trying to reduce population." http://candobetter.org/SheilaNewman
Letter to the Minister:
Penny, I have a weight problem. My doctor tells me that if I persist in eating a litre of ice-cream every day, I will increase my weight by 65% in just 25 months. But since it is chocolate ice-cream, I feel it is racist to pin the blame for my growing girth on it. I also feel that it is possible to “de-couple” my weight gain from my caloric intake.
In fact, while I now wolf down 4,000 calories a day, I believe that I should look forward to doubling that intake by 2035. I need a caloric stimulus package that will kick-start my body and brain from its current slow-down. I can compensate for any negative consequences by metabolizing the ice cream more efficiently. I call it “smart gluttony”, and already the environmental movement is wanting to adopt the phrase as a slogan for their “green living” tips.
If I buy green-coloured ice cream, lime-flavoured, it would be a symbolic statement of my fresh approach to a sustainable future for my body. As we know, cosmetic labeling in and of itself usually suffices for a substantive policy shift.
Ms. Wong, I must congratulate you for your faith in human ingenuity. Julian Simon was right. Malthusians chronically underestimate our intelligence. With enough brainpower, we can have our cake (or ice cream) and eat it too. Ice cream that doesn’t consist of calories. Growth that doesn’t result in carbon emissions. The Peter Pan School of Greenwash. Make a wish that growth will have no ecological cost, and that wish will make it true. Pure magic. Hey, I have seen that trick played in Canada too. We signed on to the Kyoto accords in 1990 with the promise that we would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 6% by 2012 but by 2006 we were 22% beyond our emissions level in 1990. Of course, that had nothing to do with the fact that immigrant-driven growth has increased our population level by 22% (27.7 to 33.7 million today). Like the environmental establishment, we simply ‘de-coupled’ our imagination from reality. Population growth, where? Who cares? Perhaps we could become a race of 15 billion “breatharians” who simply subsist on air in a world where thirst is decoupled from water use and hunger is decoupled from food use. As our population grows, so grows the pool of our ideas. The sky is the limit!
Oh to be young again. Hopeful, credulous and cornucopian.
Tim Murray
September 25/09
I understand that Australia, if it keeps to its present course, is projected to grow its population by some 14 million people, or 65%, in just 25 years. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong of the growthist Labor administration of Kevin Rudd, was asked this question on September 21/09:
Interviewer:
"Minister, Australia's population is projected to increase by 65% to the level of 30m people by 2050. During that same period, the government is committed to cutting our carbon emissions by 60%. Aren't those goals or those facts mutually exclusive? How are we going to massively cut carbon as our population continues to massively grow?"
Penny Wong:
"Well, absolutely not, because the key issue with reducing emissions is that we have to de-link our levels of carbon pollution from economic growth and population growth. We have to ... Whereas the last few hundred years emissions growth - that is, growth in our carbon pollution - has essentially tracked our population and economic growth, we have to break that link and that the whole world has to break that link and so does Australia. So the key issue here is breaking that link, not, not trying to reduce population." http://candobetter.org/SheilaNewman
Letter to the Minister:
Penny, I have a weight problem. My doctor tells me that if I persist in eating a litre of ice-cream every day, I will increase my weight by 65% in just 25 months. But since it is chocolate ice-cream, I feel it is racist to pin the blame for my growing girth on it. I also feel that it is possible to “de-couple” my weight gain from my caloric intake.
In fact, while I now wolf down 4,000 calories a day, I believe that I should look forward to doubling that intake by 2035. I need a caloric stimulus package that will kick-start my body and brain from its current slow-down. I can compensate for any negative consequences by metabolizing the ice cream more efficiently. I call it “smart gluttony”, and already the environmental movement is wanting to adopt the phrase as a slogan for their “green living” tips.
If I buy green-coloured ice cream, lime-flavoured, it would be a symbolic statement of my fresh approach to a sustainable future for my body. As we know, cosmetic labeling in and of itself usually suffices for a substantive policy shift.
Ms. Wong, I must congratulate you for your faith in human ingenuity. Julian Simon was right. Malthusians chronically underestimate our intelligence. With enough brainpower, we can have our cake (or ice cream) and eat it too. Ice cream that doesn’t consist of calories. Growth that doesn’t result in carbon emissions. The Peter Pan School of Greenwash. Make a wish that growth will have no ecological cost, and that wish will make it true. Pure magic. Hey, I have seen that trick played in Canada too. We signed on to the Kyoto accords in 1990 with the promise that we would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 6% by 2012 but by 2006 we were 22% beyond our emissions level in 1990. Of course, that had nothing to do with the fact that immigrant-driven growth has increased our population level by 22% (27.7 to 33.7 million today). Like the environmental establishment, we simply ‘de-coupled’ our imagination from reality. Population growth, where? Who cares? Perhaps we could become a race of 15 billion “breatharians” who simply subsist on air in a world where thirst is decoupled from water use and hunger is decoupled from food use. As our population grows, so grows the pool of our ideas. The sky is the limit!
Oh to be young again. Hopeful, credulous and cornucopian.
Tim Murray
September 25/09
POPULATION GROWTH IN AUSTRALIA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
POPULATION GROWTH IN AUSTRALIA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNh6ApXa_KM Bob Carr, former Premier NSW, introducing “Overloading Australia” by Mark O’Connor and William Lines. Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FtoSqStdTU&feature=related Bob Carr introducing “Overloading Australia” Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J7BAGdS_3k&feature=related Mark O’Connor speaking on “Overloading Australia” Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J7BAGdS_3k&feature=related Mark O’Connor speaking on “Overloading Australia” Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQKNouysjKE&feature=related Clive Hamilton on Population, Peak Oil and climate change Part 1 at a SPA conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmX8Mv-sBIU&NR=1 Clive Hamilton on Population, Peak Oil and climate change Part 2 at a SPA conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO92kV6Z6HE&feature=related Clive Hamilton on Population, Peak Oil and climate change Part 3 at a SPA conference
These seven you-tubes demonstrate that, at least in Canada, we are not making effective use of this medium. People are weighted down with text, and can’t budget enough time to read what they aspire to read. One speaker here, Clive Hamilton, expressed his disappointment that his audience consisted of mostly “baby boomers”. We must therefore embrace the media that the young generation, with shorter attention spans, favours. A 4-10 minute you-tube can make quite an impact, and is more enticing to our target audience.
Unfortunately, many of the other SPA videos, although valuable in content, suffer from poor audio quality, so were not included here. But these are outstanding, and are of great relevance to Canada.
My instinct is to forward these, not to interested parties, but those who are paid by taxpayers to be interested, but aren’t. Specifically politicians of the centre-left like Canada’s NDP leader Jack Layton and the rest of his terminally stupid caucus. Attached would be some questions. Questions like “Why do you think Canada’s population overshoot is any less serious than Australia”s?” Or, “Do you even know what ‘carrying capacity’ means?” Or “Why is it that social democrats like Bob Carr and Kelvin Thomson grasp the concept but you and your brain-dead colleagues don’t?”. Or “Why is a so-called social democrat like you buying into the corporate agenda of expanding Canada’s population base?” Or “Are you the MP for Toronto-Danforth” or the MP for the United Nations?” But alas these questions would be directed to the wrong address, Parliament Hill. The place where people take no time to do their own research or thinking. The kind of people who only count votes and pander to the identity groups they believe deliver the votes for them. No, the people who need to see these you-tubes are the public at large, the electorate. Only the grass roots can form a constituency large enough to force MPs to listen.
Tim Murray
October 8/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNh6ApXa_KM Bob Carr, former Premier NSW, introducing “Overloading Australia” by Mark O’Connor and William Lines. Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FtoSqStdTU&feature=related Bob Carr introducing “Overloading Australia” Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J7BAGdS_3k&feature=related Mark O’Connor speaking on “Overloading Australia” Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J7BAGdS_3k&feature=related Mark O’Connor speaking on “Overloading Australia” Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQKNouysjKE&feature=related Clive Hamilton on Population, Peak Oil and climate change Part 1 at a SPA conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmX8Mv-sBIU&NR=1 Clive Hamilton on Population, Peak Oil and climate change Part 2 at a SPA conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO92kV6Z6HE&feature=related Clive Hamilton on Population, Peak Oil and climate change Part 3 at a SPA conference
These seven you-tubes demonstrate that, at least in Canada, we are not making effective use of this medium. People are weighted down with text, and can’t budget enough time to read what they aspire to read. One speaker here, Clive Hamilton, expressed his disappointment that his audience consisted of mostly “baby boomers”. We must therefore embrace the media that the young generation, with shorter attention spans, favours. A 4-10 minute you-tube can make quite an impact, and is more enticing to our target audience.
Unfortunately, many of the other SPA videos, although valuable in content, suffer from poor audio quality, so were not included here. But these are outstanding, and are of great relevance to Canada.
My instinct is to forward these, not to interested parties, but those who are paid by taxpayers to be interested, but aren’t. Specifically politicians of the centre-left like Canada’s NDP leader Jack Layton and the rest of his terminally stupid caucus. Attached would be some questions. Questions like “Why do you think Canada’s population overshoot is any less serious than Australia”s?” Or, “Do you even know what ‘carrying capacity’ means?” Or “Why is it that social democrats like Bob Carr and Kelvin Thomson grasp the concept but you and your brain-dead colleagues don’t?”. Or “Why is a so-called social democrat like you buying into the corporate agenda of expanding Canada’s population base?” Or “Are you the MP for Toronto-Danforth” or the MP for the United Nations?” But alas these questions would be directed to the wrong address, Parliament Hill. The place where people take no time to do their own research or thinking. The kind of people who only count votes and pander to the identity groups they believe deliver the votes for them. No, the people who need to see these you-tubes are the public at large, the electorate. Only the grass roots can form a constituency large enough to force MPs to listen.
Tim Murray
October 8/09
CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE U.S. POPULATION MOVEMENT
Chronological History of the U.S. and N.E. Population Movement* By George Plumb
September, 2009
The population movement has a long and complicated history. This brief document is intended to provide a snapshot of important events, when they happened, and their broader meanings.
1839 – With the vulcanization of rubber by Goodyear, rubber condoms became available for use.
1900 – The U.S. population was 76 million.
1910 – Emma Goldman began to speak out on the necessity of effective birth control.
1915 – Margaret Sanger brought the diaphragm from the Netherlands to the U.S. It was the first truly effective birth control device under the control of women. In 1916 she organized the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League which became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942. She was jailed at one time for her activities by Anthony Comstock of Connecticut, author of the Comstock Laws prohibiting birth control and human sexuality education. In 1925 Sanger’s second husband financed the first manufacturing of the diaphragm in the U.S.
1954 - The Hugh Moore Fund first used the term “population bomb” on their published pamphlet. He was a philanthropist from Pennsylvania. His mantra was “Your cause is a lost cause unless you support family planning.”
1960 – The “pill” was invented and became available to women for contraception.
1965 – Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, ending four decades of restricted immigration. This law, while removing limits based on country of origin, included provisions for family reunification, opening the door to “chain migration.”
1965 – The U.S. Supreme Court decision of Buxton and Griswold vs. Conn. legalized birth control for married couples offering “privacy of the bedroom.”
1967 – U.S. population reached 200 million.
1968 - The Population Bomb, by Paul R. Ehrlich was published by the Sierra Club. This book laid the foundation for widespread concern about population growth among environmentalists and others that followed in the early years of the 1970’s. The Sierra Club distributed the film “No Room for Wilderness.”
1968 - The organization Zero Population Growth (ZPG) was formed. There were dozens of local chapters throughout the country. With some 600 members, Burlington, Vermont had the largest per capita chapter in the country. In 2003 ZPG changed its name to Population Connection and its focus to world population growth with the object of educating school age young people. In subsequent years many other population organizations formed including Negative Population Growth (NPG) in 1972, Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) the first state population organization in 1979, and Numbers USA (NUSA) in 1996.
1970 - Earth Day was declared with population growth a major issue on the agenda. Dr. Mary Steichen Calderon, past medical director of the PPFA, established the Sex, Information and Education Council (SIECUS).
1972 – The Commission on Population and the American Future report, chaired by John D. Rockefeller III, stated “We have looked for, and have not found, any convincing economic argument for continued population growth. The health of our economy does not depend upon it, nor does the vitality of business, nor the welfare of the average person.” President Richard Nixon supported this and the National Security Study Memorandum 200 on population, both of which were defeated by Congress.
1973 – The U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade affirmed a women’s the right to abortion.
1973 – The Vt. Natural Resources Council published the Population Policy Report. As far as is known Vermont was the only state to publish such a report during that era. Today the VNRC, as with some other environmental organizations, refuses to publicly acknowledge any connection between population growth and the environment.
1974 - The Population Activist’s Handbook was published by The Population Institute. It is now out of print but used copies can still be purchased.
1974 – The first United Nation International Conference on Population was held in Bucharest, Romania, bringing thousands from around the world to concentrate on this issue. It produced a Plan of Action. John D. Rockefeller III was the American leader.
1977 – Steady-State Economics was published by Herman Daly. This was the first book to prominently link the destructiveness of the growth economy with ever increasing growth in population and consumption. The Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy was founded in 2004.
1980’s – Environmental organizations and leaders began their retreat from dealing with the population issue. They were now large professional organizations, instead of volunteer organizations, and being largely dependent on fund raising, eschewed being labeled as racist, pro-abortion, or against immigration and/or large families.
1984 – President Ronald Reagan commissioned Senator James Buckley of New York State to carry his anti-abortion message called The Mexico City Policy to the United Nations International Conference on Population, the second of its kind.
1986 – Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act granting amnesty to almost three million illegal immigrants. It included provisions for workplace enforcement of immigration status requirements, but with mixed results. A new wave of illegal immigration followed.
1990 – Congress passed a law, in response to warnings of an “impending labor shortage”, which essentially doubled legal immigration into the U.S. This led to unprecedented growth in the U.S. population.
1991 – The New Hampshire Citizens for Sustainable Population was organized by that state’s environmental champion Annette Cottrell. This was the first New England state to have a state level population organization. In 1994 Vermont followed suit with Vermont Citizens for Sustainable Population founded by George Plumb, Barbara Duncan, Kathy Kashanski, and Douglas Kivet-Kylar. In 1998 Barbara Duncan was hired as the first part time executive director. It became the Vt. Earth Institute (VEI) in 1999 and shifted its focus to sustainable living.
1994 – The third and last United Nations International Conference on Population and Development was held in Cairo, Egypt, resulting in its Programme of Action calling for the education of women.
1996 – The New England Coalition for a Sustainable Population (NECSP) was organized by Anita King and Barbara Duncan. In 1996 Annie Faulker volunteered as coordinator and raised funds for her salary and NECSP. In 2006, thanks to the Boston Foundation, Joe Bish and Rachael Zegarius were hired as its part time staff. In 2007 Joe was appointed Executive Director. In 2008 the New Hampshire Citizens for a Sustainable Population elected the board members of the NECSP to its own board and changed its name to the New England Coalition for a Sustainable Population. In 2008 the Massachusetts Slow Growth Initiative became a project of NECSP.
1998 - The Population Media Center was founded by Bill Ryerson with its main offices in Shelburne, Vt. The organization produces family planning soap operas for the developing world.
1999 – The Center for the Environment and Population (CEP) was formed by Victoria Markham in New Hampshire. Its office is now in New Canaan, Ct.
2005 - Vermonters for Sustainable Population (VSP) was organized by George Plumb, Phil Dodd, Thomas McKenna, and Mark Powell to continue the work which VEI dropped.
2006 - The Population Fix: Breaking America’s Addiction to Population Growth, by Edward C. Hartman was published by Think Population Press. Mr. Hartman later traveled across the country to deliver the population message, speaking all over New England.
2006 – U.S. population reached 300 million.
2009 – The Montpelier Bridge newspaper held a public forum on population and followed this with a special supplement titled Speaking Out on Population. As far as is known this is the first time any newspaper in the world has done either of these activities.
2009 - The first full time executive director of the NECSP was hired, thanks to the generous gift from an anonymous donor.
2039 - The U.S. Census Bureau projects the population will reach 400 million if present trends continue.
_______________
* Compiled by George Plumb, Chair of NECSP and Executive Director of VSP. If you have any suggested additions/corrections please send to gplumb@pshift.com.
September, 2009
The population movement has a long and complicated history. This brief document is intended to provide a snapshot of important events, when they happened, and their broader meanings.
1839 – With the vulcanization of rubber by Goodyear, rubber condoms became available for use.
1900 – The U.S. population was 76 million.
1910 – Emma Goldman began to speak out on the necessity of effective birth control.
1915 – Margaret Sanger brought the diaphragm from the Netherlands to the U.S. It was the first truly effective birth control device under the control of women. In 1916 she organized the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League which became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942. She was jailed at one time for her activities by Anthony Comstock of Connecticut, author of the Comstock Laws prohibiting birth control and human sexuality education. In 1925 Sanger’s second husband financed the first manufacturing of the diaphragm in the U.S.
1954 - The Hugh Moore Fund first used the term “population bomb” on their published pamphlet. He was a philanthropist from Pennsylvania. His mantra was “Your cause is a lost cause unless you support family planning.”
1960 – The “pill” was invented and became available to women for contraception.
1965 – Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, ending four decades of restricted immigration. This law, while removing limits based on country of origin, included provisions for family reunification, opening the door to “chain migration.”
1965 – The U.S. Supreme Court decision of Buxton and Griswold vs. Conn. legalized birth control for married couples offering “privacy of the bedroom.”
1967 – U.S. population reached 200 million.
1968 - The Population Bomb, by Paul R. Ehrlich was published by the Sierra Club. This book laid the foundation for widespread concern about population growth among environmentalists and others that followed in the early years of the 1970’s. The Sierra Club distributed the film “No Room for Wilderness.”
1968 - The organization Zero Population Growth (ZPG) was formed. There were dozens of local chapters throughout the country. With some 600 members, Burlington, Vermont had the largest per capita chapter in the country. In 2003 ZPG changed its name to Population Connection and its focus to world population growth with the object of educating school age young people. In subsequent years many other population organizations formed including Negative Population Growth (NPG) in 1972, Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) the first state population organization in 1979, and Numbers USA (NUSA) in 1996.
1970 - Earth Day was declared with population growth a major issue on the agenda. Dr. Mary Steichen Calderon, past medical director of the PPFA, established the Sex, Information and Education Council (SIECUS).
1972 – The Commission on Population and the American Future report, chaired by John D. Rockefeller III, stated “We have looked for, and have not found, any convincing economic argument for continued population growth. The health of our economy does not depend upon it, nor does the vitality of business, nor the welfare of the average person.” President Richard Nixon supported this and the National Security Study Memorandum 200 on population, both of which were defeated by Congress.
1973 – The U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade affirmed a women’s the right to abortion.
1973 – The Vt. Natural Resources Council published the Population Policy Report. As far as is known Vermont was the only state to publish such a report during that era. Today the VNRC, as with some other environmental organizations, refuses to publicly acknowledge any connection between population growth and the environment.
1974 - The Population Activist’s Handbook was published by The Population Institute. It is now out of print but used copies can still be purchased.
1974 – The first United Nation International Conference on Population was held in Bucharest, Romania, bringing thousands from around the world to concentrate on this issue. It produced a Plan of Action. John D. Rockefeller III was the American leader.
1977 – Steady-State Economics was published by Herman Daly. This was the first book to prominently link the destructiveness of the growth economy with ever increasing growth in population and consumption. The Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy was founded in 2004.
1980’s – Environmental organizations and leaders began their retreat from dealing with the population issue. They were now large professional organizations, instead of volunteer organizations, and being largely dependent on fund raising, eschewed being labeled as racist, pro-abortion, or against immigration and/or large families.
1984 – President Ronald Reagan commissioned Senator James Buckley of New York State to carry his anti-abortion message called The Mexico City Policy to the United Nations International Conference on Population, the second of its kind.
1986 – Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act granting amnesty to almost three million illegal immigrants. It included provisions for workplace enforcement of immigration status requirements, but with mixed results. A new wave of illegal immigration followed.
1990 – Congress passed a law, in response to warnings of an “impending labor shortage”, which essentially doubled legal immigration into the U.S. This led to unprecedented growth in the U.S. population.
1991 – The New Hampshire Citizens for Sustainable Population was organized by that state’s environmental champion Annette Cottrell. This was the first New England state to have a state level population organization. In 1994 Vermont followed suit with Vermont Citizens for Sustainable Population founded by George Plumb, Barbara Duncan, Kathy Kashanski, and Douglas Kivet-Kylar. In 1998 Barbara Duncan was hired as the first part time executive director. It became the Vt. Earth Institute (VEI) in 1999 and shifted its focus to sustainable living.
1994 – The third and last United Nations International Conference on Population and Development was held in Cairo, Egypt, resulting in its Programme of Action calling for the education of women.
1996 – The New England Coalition for a Sustainable Population (NECSP) was organized by Anita King and Barbara Duncan. In 1996 Annie Faulker volunteered as coordinator and raised funds for her salary and NECSP. In 2006, thanks to the Boston Foundation, Joe Bish and Rachael Zegarius were hired as its part time staff. In 2007 Joe was appointed Executive Director. In 2008 the New Hampshire Citizens for a Sustainable Population elected the board members of the NECSP to its own board and changed its name to the New England Coalition for a Sustainable Population. In 2008 the Massachusetts Slow Growth Initiative became a project of NECSP.
1998 - The Population Media Center was founded by Bill Ryerson with its main offices in Shelburne, Vt. The organization produces family planning soap operas for the developing world.
1999 – The Center for the Environment and Population (CEP) was formed by Victoria Markham in New Hampshire. Its office is now in New Canaan, Ct.
2005 - Vermonters for Sustainable Population (VSP) was organized by George Plumb, Phil Dodd, Thomas McKenna, and Mark Powell to continue the work which VEI dropped.
2006 - The Population Fix: Breaking America’s Addiction to Population Growth, by Edward C. Hartman was published by Think Population Press. Mr. Hartman later traveled across the country to deliver the population message, speaking all over New England.
2006 – U.S. population reached 300 million.
2009 – The Montpelier Bridge newspaper held a public forum on population and followed this with a special supplement titled Speaking Out on Population. As far as is known this is the first time any newspaper in the world has done either of these activities.
2009 - The first full time executive director of the NECSP was hired, thanks to the generous gift from an anonymous donor.
2039 - The U.S. Census Bureau projects the population will reach 400 million if present trends continue.
_______________
* Compiled by George Plumb, Chair of NECSP and Executive Director of VSP. If you have any suggested additions/corrections please send to gplumb@pshift.com.
Borlaug Failed To Get It Right
Borlaug failed to get it right
George Bernhard Shaw once remarked that although Napoleon was no doubt a great man, it would have been better for the world if he had never been born. Notwithstanding his more noble motives and aspirations, the same could be said for Norman Borlaug. His “green revolution’, by tripling world food production merely allowed human population to triple. The damage that the extra 4 ½ billion people has wrought, as manifest in habitat loss, deforestation, the collapse of world fisheries and climate change, among other calamities, is damage that threatens the very existence of our species and misery and death on a scale far greater than starvation would have inflicted before Borlaug’s innovations were introduced.
Is it truly compassionate or sensible to keep feeding any species that given an abundant food source, will not stop over-breeding? Borlaug himself lamented that increased food production was not matched by population control, but that should have been anticipated. Does one introduce cars to a new highway before traffic controls are in place?
First the cart, then the horse. Family planning then food expansion.
Tim Murray,
George Bernhard Shaw once remarked that although Napoleon was no doubt a great man, it would have been better for the world if he had never been born. Notwithstanding his more noble motives and aspirations, the same could be said for Norman Borlaug. His “green revolution’, by tripling world food production merely allowed human population to triple. The damage that the extra 4 ½ billion people has wrought, as manifest in habitat loss, deforestation, the collapse of world fisheries and climate change, among other calamities, is damage that threatens the very existence of our species and misery and death on a scale far greater than starvation would have inflicted before Borlaug’s innovations were introduced.
Is it truly compassionate or sensible to keep feeding any species that given an abundant food source, will not stop over-breeding? Borlaug himself lamented that increased food production was not matched by population control, but that should have been anticipated. Does one introduce cars to a new highway before traffic controls are in place?
First the cart, then the horse. Family planning then food expansion.
Tim Murray,
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
