The “Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR)” made an
Assessment of Major Environmental Groups on Population/Immigration http://www.fairus.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=16923&security=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1009
FAIR examined the stances of various environmental groups on overpopulation and immigration. They asked four questions of 21 prominent environmental organizations:
1. Does this organization acknowledge that population growth is a problem?
2. Does this organization specifically address population growth in the U.S.
3. Does this group acknowledge the role of immigration in U.S. population growth?
4. Does this group take a stance on immigration reduction?
The results of this survey confirm the impression that this sorry excuse for an environmental movement has no comprehensive understanding of environmental degradation. They seem to believe that environmental damage is wrought by ghosts or gremlins. There seems to be no necessary connection in their minds between the volume of humanity and the impact they make on the environment. Humans can apparently reduce their consumption ad infinitum, or be so clever as to invent a technology that restores extinct fish and depleted soils in the face of an ubiquitous human presence.
Of the 21 groups surveyed, only three stood up to be counted to favour immigration reduction: Californians for Population Stabilization, Negative Population Growth and Northwest Environment Watch. Oddly, the Audobon Society and the World Wildlife Fund acknowledge that immigration does indeed play a major role in population growth but won’t take a public stand against it. In fact five green organizations will not walk up to the altar and say “I do”. They apparently believe that overpopulation is global problem that manifests itself even in North America, but won’t favour any measures, humane and inhumane, to stop it close to home. They are the Autobon Society, Native Wildlife Federation, Population-Connection, Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund.
Six organizations evidently repeat the soft-green mantra that oh, yes, overpopulation is a problem alright, but only in some far-distant third world land, certainly NOT HERE! An American population that is projected to increase by 145 million people in the next forty years to 450 million does not seem to qualify as a problem to them. These Mr. Magoos of Greendom include American Forests, Conservation International, Environmental Defense Fund, Izzak Walton League of America, Natural Resources Defense Council and Robert Engleman’s Worldwatch Institute.
But what is astounding is that there are eight major environmental groups whose focus is allegedly wildlife conservation and they not only do not believe that overpopulation is a threat to wildlife in America, or anywhere else either. They are, infamously, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, National Environment Trust, Nature Conservancy, Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) and the Wilderness Society. At least Mr. Magoo had partial sight. These people are completely blind. Or should we say, blinded by donations and subscriptions.
The American Environmental NGOs, like their counterparts in so many other countries, are a complete waste of time, money and hope. They are the nightwatchman who is chronically asleep on the job, and should be given the pink slip before Mother Nature gives us one.
Survey Results. Anwers to the 4 questions posed by the Federation of American Immigration Reform:
American Forests Yes No No No
Audubon Society Yes Yes Yes No
Californians for Population Stabilization Yes Yes Yes Yes
Conservation International Yes No No No
Defenders of Wildlife No No No No
Environmental Defense Fund Yes No No No
Friends of the Earth USA No No No No
Greenpeace No No No No
Izaak Walton League of America Yes No No No
National Environmental Trust No No No No
National Wildlife Federation Yes Yes No No
Natural Resources Defense Council Yes No No No
The Nature Conservancy No No No No
Negative Population Growth (NPG) Yes Yes Yes Yes
Northwest Environment Watch Yes Yes Yes Yes
Population Connection (formerly ZPG) Yes Yes No No
Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) No No No No
Sierra Club Yes Yes No No
The Wilderness Society No No No No
World Wildlife Fund Yes Yes Yes No
Worldwatch Institute Yes No No No
Thursday, February 26, 2009
BEING A TWO-WAY PLAYER ON TEAM IPAT
I =P x A x T
( Environmental impact= Population level times Affluence or per capita consumption x Technology)
I came upon an orchestration, the environmental movement, and all the musicians were playing violins to the tune of “Overconsumption, overconsumption, overconsumption.” They refused to play any other tune or use any other instrument to compliment that narrow repertoire. Apparently some corporate donors were paying them to be a one-trick pony.
So I immediately resolved to sound out the missing tune that would make an effective chorus. It would be “overpopulation, overpopulation, overpopulation”, and I would use my voice to sing that message loudly because, frankly, I can’t afford or take the time to learn to play another instrument. As soon as the Environmental Establishment Orchestra includes my tune in their program, and gives it the prominence it deserves, I will stop singing solo and apply to join them. They after all have the resources to go on the road with their act, while I can only sing in the shower or yell out the lyrics on the Internet.
But until that day, I will specialize in the one half of the equation, population level, without which there can be no comprehensive understanding of our environmental predicament. I will play left wing on a hockey team overstocked with centre forwards and right wingers. Under new management and coaching, perhaps my team, the “IPATs, will demand all-around players—“two way” players who can play the complete game. Like golfers who don’t try to win the match with “hole-in-one” strokes.
It is people who consume, not ghosts. Reduce their numbers and each can consume more sustainably if they recognize their limits and are rewarded for obeying them.
Population growth is the great multiplier of evils. Solve it and so many other problems of secondary concern become easier to solve. And it is much easier to solve alone than challenging popular consumptive habits. Many more people can be reconciled to lower fertility and lower immigration than are willing to see their standard of living drop to comply with lower consumption targets. The vast majority of Swedes, the world’s most affluent nation, are wanting to see immigration cut and a low birth rate persist, rather than sacrifice their standard of living. In 2006 the Dyskos poll revealed that 60% of them were not willing to make any material sacrifices to fight global warming. The working class majority there and here, are skeptical and intolerant of environmentalism that speaks with a middle class voice, and uses the same moralizing sermon that that voice gave them in the 1930s and other challenging times. The voice that cried “Hold the line on inflation” , or “suck it up for the boss”. Sermons given by preachers who preached chastity then drove off in a limousine to the whore house. Green yuppies won’t impress the working poor by putting solar panels on their 4000 square foot waterfront homes and taking their hybrid cars to the airport for their annual overseas trips to Mexico or Bali. If you never had to drive a “beater” to keep food on the table you have no moral authority to prescribe a carbon tax. And no credibility if you have sired more than two children.
“Too many people consuming too much. Neglect one factor and you neglect both. You are in denial.” But “too many people” is the Achilles heel of growthism, and the one that deserves priority attention.
Tim Murray,
February 19/09
( Environmental impact= Population level times Affluence or per capita consumption x Technology)
I came upon an orchestration, the environmental movement, and all the musicians were playing violins to the tune of “Overconsumption, overconsumption, overconsumption.” They refused to play any other tune or use any other instrument to compliment that narrow repertoire. Apparently some corporate donors were paying them to be a one-trick pony.
So I immediately resolved to sound out the missing tune that would make an effective chorus. It would be “overpopulation, overpopulation, overpopulation”, and I would use my voice to sing that message loudly because, frankly, I can’t afford or take the time to learn to play another instrument. As soon as the Environmental Establishment Orchestra includes my tune in their program, and gives it the prominence it deserves, I will stop singing solo and apply to join them. They after all have the resources to go on the road with their act, while I can only sing in the shower or yell out the lyrics on the Internet.
But until that day, I will specialize in the one half of the equation, population level, without which there can be no comprehensive understanding of our environmental predicament. I will play left wing on a hockey team overstocked with centre forwards and right wingers. Under new management and coaching, perhaps my team, the “IPATs, will demand all-around players—“two way” players who can play the complete game. Like golfers who don’t try to win the match with “hole-in-one” strokes.
It is people who consume, not ghosts. Reduce their numbers and each can consume more sustainably if they recognize their limits and are rewarded for obeying them.
Population growth is the great multiplier of evils. Solve it and so many other problems of secondary concern become easier to solve. And it is much easier to solve alone than challenging popular consumptive habits. Many more people can be reconciled to lower fertility and lower immigration than are willing to see their standard of living drop to comply with lower consumption targets. The vast majority of Swedes, the world’s most affluent nation, are wanting to see immigration cut and a low birth rate persist, rather than sacrifice their standard of living. In 2006 the Dyskos poll revealed that 60% of them were not willing to make any material sacrifices to fight global warming. The working class majority there and here, are skeptical and intolerant of environmentalism that speaks with a middle class voice, and uses the same moralizing sermon that that voice gave them in the 1930s and other challenging times. The voice that cried “Hold the line on inflation” , or “suck it up for the boss”. Sermons given by preachers who preached chastity then drove off in a limousine to the whore house. Green yuppies won’t impress the working poor by putting solar panels on their 4000 square foot waterfront homes and taking their hybrid cars to the airport for their annual overseas trips to Mexico or Bali. If you never had to drive a “beater” to keep food on the table you have no moral authority to prescribe a carbon tax. And no credibility if you have sired more than two children.
“Too many people consuming too much. Neglect one factor and you neglect both. You are in denial.” But “too many people” is the Achilles heel of growthism, and the one that deserves priority attention.
Tim Murray,
February 19/09
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
IN BECOMING A CREDIBLE, INDEPENDENT VOICE WOULD WE FORFEIT OUR INDEPENDENCE AND CREDIBILITY?
It is apparent to me that in order for an organization to be perceived as an independent voice in environmental matters it must surrender its independence by drinking from someone else’s trough. Be that corporate or government. In order to be a “credible” presence, we must, so we are told by our critics, have reputable scientists or ‘experts’ on board either on payroll or as consultants who have supported our position with “peer-reviewed’ research, or registered as a legitimate non-profit educational agency or foundation. And lately, we have been told implicitly by ostensible allies that we must become a detective agency with a staff of researchers who would expend the necessary time to produce a “smoking gun” to “prove” our allegations about the corporate corruption of environmental NGOs.
Folks, all of this requires money, money to fund a permanent bureaucracy. But once we become a foundation, or a “green” think tank, our focus would change from pursuing our original objectives to chasing and maintaining donations. Job security for ourselves would eclipse our raison d’etre. Case in point: David Suzuki’s first priority appears to be to secure $2.6 million in donations and subscriptions JUST TO KEEP HIS STAFF AT THE DAVID SUZUKI FOUNDATION IN BUSINESS. The $4 million raised above that maintenance cost can then be deployed in fighting environmental battles, PROVIDING THOSE ACTIONS DO NOT OFFEND HIS DONOR BASE. He thus can arrange it so, conveniently, the DSF does not, according to the testimony of one its spokesman, “have the resources to address the population issue”. No danger then, of the DSF angering its number one Sugar Daddy, the Royal Bank of Canada by thwarting the bank’s project of stuffing Canada with more foreign born consumers than our environment can handle. So the DSF is just a cop on the take, making a great deal of noise about jaywalking (climate change), but remaining mum about homicide (biodiversity loss from mass immigration).
The Sierra Club similarly manages to be quiet about population growth too, whether it is through immigration or child birth incentives. Of course the fact that the Toronto Dominion Bank and the Van City mortgage lending empire support it with their dollars is completely coincidental. And how much of their timidity is based on the need to keep charitable status for their “educational” Sierra Club Foundation, which permits them to entice tax-deduction donations under the Charities Act so that it support the Club’s politically partisan activities?
Moral of the story: He who pays the piper calls the tune. Accept outside money in any form from a corporate or government source, and you customize your agenda and pronouncements to harmonize with your benefactor’s. Is that what we are business for? How many benefactors do you know who would subsidize a no-growth think tank when the resources of benefactors are sustained by growth? That would be like a Vegetarian restaurant chain or health food agency looking for funding from the Cattlemen’s Association.
Here’s the alternative. We tell all of them TO GET STUFFED. We say what we want to say in our own words.
Folks, all of this requires money, money to fund a permanent bureaucracy. But once we become a foundation, or a “green” think tank, our focus would change from pursuing our original objectives to chasing and maintaining donations. Job security for ourselves would eclipse our raison d’etre. Case in point: David Suzuki’s first priority appears to be to secure $2.6 million in donations and subscriptions JUST TO KEEP HIS STAFF AT THE DAVID SUZUKI FOUNDATION IN BUSINESS. The $4 million raised above that maintenance cost can then be deployed in fighting environmental battles, PROVIDING THOSE ACTIONS DO NOT OFFEND HIS DONOR BASE. He thus can arrange it so, conveniently, the DSF does not, according to the testimony of one its spokesman, “have the resources to address the population issue”. No danger then, of the DSF angering its number one Sugar Daddy, the Royal Bank of Canada by thwarting the bank’s project of stuffing Canada with more foreign born consumers than our environment can handle. So the DSF is just a cop on the take, making a great deal of noise about jaywalking (climate change), but remaining mum about homicide (biodiversity loss from mass immigration).
The Sierra Club similarly manages to be quiet about population growth too, whether it is through immigration or child birth incentives. Of course the fact that the Toronto Dominion Bank and the Van City mortgage lending empire support it with their dollars is completely coincidental. And how much of their timidity is based on the need to keep charitable status for their “educational” Sierra Club Foundation, which permits them to entice tax-deduction donations under the Charities Act so that it support the Club’s politically partisan activities?
Moral of the story: He who pays the piper calls the tune. Accept outside money in any form from a corporate or government source, and you customize your agenda and pronouncements to harmonize with your benefactor’s. Is that what we are business for? How many benefactors do you know who would subsidize a no-growth think tank when the resources of benefactors are sustained by growth? That would be like a Vegetarian restaurant chain or health food agency looking for funding from the Cattlemen’s Association.
Here’s the alternative. We tell all of them TO GET STUFFED. We say what we want to say in our own words.
SUSTAINABLE TOURISM: AN OXYMORONIC DELUSION?
In echoing the sentiment shared by many environmentalists who, according to an Australian testament, “want a stronger native tourism industry and more people enjoying our parks”, a travel writer made the following case:
“The travel industry cannot prosper in a degraded world if we destroy the natural beauty and ambience people came to enjoy. Both need each other to survive….A sensitive and well-managed tourism industry brings benefits for the visitor, the host country and can help preserve the national environment.”
But this argument prompts several questions. Questions like, why “must” there be a stronger nature tourism industry, with “more people enjoying our parks”? Why does nature “need” the travel industry to survive? How does a “sensitive and well-managed tourism industry help preserve the national environment”? In fact, why does healthy biodiversity require people at all? If we were to go extinct, would not biodiversity be on the road to recovery? I know that I need to enjoy nature. But I don’t why nature needs me to enjoy it.
I would assert that “sustainable tourism” is an oxymoronic delusion. I suspect that no matter how carefully sensitive flora and fauna is protected, the beauty and allure of ecologically attractive tourist destinations inevitably motivate visitors to become permanent residents. In other words, there is a direct correlation—and causation—between tourist visits and subsequent population growth. In their paper “Beautiful City: Leisure Amenities and Urban Growth”, Albert Saiz, professor of real estate at Wharton College (University of Pennsylvania), and Gerald Carlino, a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, correlated leisure visits with population growth. According to the Saiz-Carlino formula, cities that offer substantial leisure amenities grow an average 2% more than they would have grown had they had fewer amenities. This seemingly trivial increment has an exponential impact. A town that grows 2% per year will double its population in 35 years. But if Saiz and Carlino are right, such a town will double its population in just 17.67 years if it is a popular tourist destination.
In fact, tourism provides a more accurate forecast of future population growth than any other factor, according their conclusions. Tourists come to visit, and almost instantly resolve to stay—some day. They typically snap up once cheap property, and then drive up the cost of living for those who had welcomed them. Some locals simply cannot pay for escalating property tax assessments. Others can’t even pay the higher rents.
It is my observation and contention that this growth overwhelms the most vigilant defense of natural ecosystems, as well as gentrifying small localities and effectively pricing local inhabitants out of the real estate market. Locals, or their children, become a low wage service class that caters to the needs of the richer migrants while struggling economically to remain in the community they grew up in. To add insult to injury, many of the relative wealthy newcomers appear in the guise of environmental crusaders who demand sacrifices of the locals while living immodestly themselves.
Visitors to impressive destinations typically purchase real estate as a holding property to await their retirement or summer vacations and often withhold it from the rental market of local young or poor residents. The host community then comes to resemble a ghost town in the winter and a booming madhouse in the summer, with service workers subsisting on low wages while scrambling to find affordable housing in this now gentrified environment. On B.C.’s Saltspring Island, the magnet for visiting Albertans flush with oil money, one in three homes is said to lie vacant half the year. The homeless can be identified carrying discarded bottles in ragged clothing along the road, or standing as hitchhikers in the rain—a scene not uncommon in other coastal localities and coveted tourist havens across the land.
To my reckoning, “sustainable tourism” is merely the bastard child of “sustainable growth”, itself a mutation of “sustainable development”, which, as Garrett Hardin noted, only affords the defenders of the unsteady state “a few more years’ moratorium from the painful process of thinking.” It is a fraudulent delusion that offers up ecological nuggets to attract a wave of migrant gold-diggers who wish to “retire at first sight” and, in the execution of their plans, conjure up a bigger service sector to serve them and spawn a fifth column of real estate sharks who gather to feast on the dreams of subsequent visitors. No matter how carefully flora and fauna are sequestered and defended, the resulting population boom will overwhelm them. Then a fatal political dynamic is born.
Socialists and progressives take up the cudgels of both locals and newcomers marginalized by inflated real estate and the rents that climb with it and in the process become growth advocates by lobbying for more housing construction to accommodate them. They bleed for unfortunate people but not so much for unfortunate biodiversity, concerns for which they attempt to allay with smart growth snake-oil nostrums.
Those few of us who would aspire to arrest growth rather than “manage” it are then caught in a vise between seemingly unlikely bedfellows. On the one hand there is the coalition of developers and real estate pimps and the planners who do their bidding by coating their naked greed with the greenwash of “strict” land-use planning. Planning that bends with the times and their insatiable appetites. Planning which defies the authentic mission of planning, which is not the passive accommodation to projected trends (“it’s inevitable so let’s plan for it’), but the proactive imposition of popular will upon those so-called inevitable trends by the simple expedients that some jurisdictions like Noosa Shire, Queensland or Qualicum Beach, BC, have flirted with. Try just withholding building permits for starters!
On the other hand, working in tandem with these dark forces, are the race-baiting, soft green yuppie leftists who collude with growthism in the name of social justice, yet somehow manage to cloak it with a respectable environmentalist ethic. Caught with us in this “squeeze of the sleaze”, this excruciating, ineluctable drama of greed, hypocrisy and myopia, are local wildlife, which the growth coalition with brazen duplicity celebrates while holding it out as bait to attract new arrivals whose motto should be “I came, I saw, I destroyed.”
Economic considerations then become part of a more “holistic” paradigm, whereby “environmental” sustainability is balanced off against “economic” and “cultural” sustainability. This “three legged stool” model of viability represents what may be termed “the fallacy of equivalent concerns”. It is the assumption that would, if applied to human health, rate the heart as an organ of equal importance to every other organ in the body when, as we know, a patient can survive with one lung, or one kidney, or a colonoscopy, or brain impairment, but when his heart stops all of these important but ancillary parts die with the patient. The economy is, as Herman Daly famously noted, “a fully owned branch plant of the environment.” We make a living in an economy, but we live in a biosphere.
Many advocates see ecotourism as a mechanism to assist indigenous or traditional groups, who comprise 5% of the global population, maintain their culture. But Brock University professor David A. Fennell, in his article “Ecotourism and the Myth of Indigenous Stewardship” (Vol. 16, No. 2 Journal of Sustainable Tourism) has shown that “ecotourism research abounds with cases where traditional lifestyles (eg. fishing and farming) have been displaced by hotels, golf courses and other tourism developments.” Fennell’s references comprise some one hundred studies and books. Citing King and Stewart (Biodiversity and Conservation 5, 1996), he makes the point that “the onset of tourism forces a shift in the relationship between indigenous people and the environment, ‘from a source of direct sustenance with a use value to a commodity with an exchange value…from one of working with the land to one working for tourists.” It is a shift seen in northern Canada “where the cash economy translates into the ability to purchase newer forms of technology and transportation for the purpose of reaching harvesting sites.” Fennell relates a testimony from an academic observer at Pond Inlet who, during his guided eco-tour, saw ‘large numbers’ of narwhals being hunted by Inuit “with high powered rifles and fast boats, purchased with Canadian government assistance to service the tourism industry.” Non-traditional technologies employed by aboriginals, who are wrongly credited with a conservation ethic that predated European contact, clearly threaten conservation efforts.
While the travel industry may employ 200 million people throughout the world, those millions represent, after all, only 3% of the population, and the income they generate is seldom weighed against the staggering costs, both environmental and economic. One needs to ask, would we sacrifice critical habitat for 3% of our population if doing so increased the likelihood of die-off of 90% (or more) of our global population? To answer in the affirmative would surely place one in the company of those who say that the local pulp mill must be maintained at the cost of severe environmental damage because it employs so many people, or that the Alberta Tars sands development should not be shut down because it is now vital to the livelihood of so many people.
To argue that we can flood an ecologically sensitive area with tourists but at the same time protect it is delusional and contradictory. There are many case histories to showcase my point, but the Galapagos Islands will do nicely. I have enumerated its problems, and salient is the point that tourists need services, which need people to provide them. Hotels, motels, roads, cars, auto mechanics to maintain them, doctors, nurses, dentists, dental assistants, school teachers to instruct the children of service workers etc etc. And the provision of those services cannot be satisfied by local labour. Even if they had the requisite training and skills, the number of local workers is insufficient to meet the growing demand for their services as the “protected” areas gain fame. Not surprisingly, since the tourist boom began in the early seventies, the human population on the Galapagos Islands has increased 14-fold. This has resulted not only in visual damage and the introduction of foreign species, but also an increase in solid waste generated by the extra 130,000 residents. It is not really about the irresponsible behaviour of tourists, but their numbers. Because their numbers generate ancillary services, which then require people to render them. As Brishen Hoff of Biodiversity First commented, “Tourism does not help preserve the natural environment. It may provide jobs to locals that offer an alternative to primary resource extraction, but jobs only encourage more people to move there (some will extract primary resources and others will work in tourism, likely a growing number of both). Tourism requires infrastructure like hotels, water, sewage, supply stores, etc to accommodate visitors no matter how eco-friendly it is.” And it must be noted that nascent commercial greed grows along with tourist numbers and stimulate more tourism by aggressive marketing. But the joke is on the local businesses. Because the cruise ships and the big tour operators external to the locality rake off the big profits.
You can post educational signs on every trail and hire vigilant park wardens to supervise tourists. But there are these defenses cannot cope with large numbers. That realization has dawned on Ecuador’s green-left President Rafael. His first move was to begin the expulsion of the illegal immigrants on the Galapagos who took up jobs in the tourist industry. Imagine a left-wing President coming down on poor, immigrant service residents. Good on him. Some sober critics have praised his actions, but argue that a cap must be placed on the number of tourists as well. But President Rafael wants to have his cake of ecological integrity and eat it too. He wants the $350 million in tourist revenue but not the tourists. A conundrum. Without services, he will satisfy the demand for a cap because many tourists won’t come. Then the cruise ships will fill the vacuum. Tourists can come to visit, wreak havoc on nature, then return to their floating hotel with all services provided on board. Environmental damage but without state revenue. So where is the advantage? To big off-shore tour operators, obviously. Certainly not to wildlife.
To this dynamic of increased tourism>larger sector of resident service workers and their families>environmental damage wrought by that population irrespective of the respectful, educated behaviour of tourists, add the numbers of visitors who decide to make the tourist destination they fall in love with a retirement destination. Or one that they can hold a rental property in while they wait for retirement, or for staying during their visits during peak season, or just for real estate speculation. This may or may not be the case in the Galapogos, but it surely is where I live, and where millions of others live world-wide. Gentrification corrodes and divides a community. Local “haves” either develop a vested interest in growth or are priced out of their community by wealthy part-time residents who invest little of themselves in community life. And there is always a parasitical class of real estate agents who rise up like a Phoenix to lubricate this process by embellishing paradise and disguising its troubles for the visiting love-struck affluent.
The Sierra Club believes that national parks and areas like my own cannot be effectively defended if they do not build up a constituency of political support by allowing more and more visitors to enjoy them. In other words, we need to degrade our treasures in order to promote their preservation. This is a pernicious argument. I can fight for animals without disturbing them with my presence. Let a handful of wildlife biologists do the filming. I am thrilled to see flora and fauna in the wild—that is why I live where I do— but their survival trumps my enjoyment.
No doubt numerous palliatives and controls (e.g., changes in the tax regime) can be offered to mitigate the tourist assault on the environment and the social structure of small local communities that exist at the gateways. But in the context of the corrupt and apparently insuperable power structure that prevails, these measures seem utopian or hypothetical at best. In the more environmentally fragile zones of precious biodiversity at least, it is clear that we must stop tourist growth, not manage it. This effort would reprise David and Goliath, except that it would not likely duplicate David’s success. But heck, why not go for it? Anything less would be unsatisfactory.
Tim Murray
“The travel industry cannot prosper in a degraded world if we destroy the natural beauty and ambience people came to enjoy. Both need each other to survive….A sensitive and well-managed tourism industry brings benefits for the visitor, the host country and can help preserve the national environment.”
But this argument prompts several questions. Questions like, why “must” there be a stronger nature tourism industry, with “more people enjoying our parks”? Why does nature “need” the travel industry to survive? How does a “sensitive and well-managed tourism industry help preserve the national environment”? In fact, why does healthy biodiversity require people at all? If we were to go extinct, would not biodiversity be on the road to recovery? I know that I need to enjoy nature. But I don’t why nature needs me to enjoy it.
I would assert that “sustainable tourism” is an oxymoronic delusion. I suspect that no matter how carefully sensitive flora and fauna is protected, the beauty and allure of ecologically attractive tourist destinations inevitably motivate visitors to become permanent residents. In other words, there is a direct correlation—and causation—between tourist visits and subsequent population growth. In their paper “Beautiful City: Leisure Amenities and Urban Growth”, Albert Saiz, professor of real estate at Wharton College (University of Pennsylvania), and Gerald Carlino, a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, correlated leisure visits with population growth. According to the Saiz-Carlino formula, cities that offer substantial leisure amenities grow an average 2% more than they would have grown had they had fewer amenities. This seemingly trivial increment has an exponential impact. A town that grows 2% per year will double its population in 35 years. But if Saiz and Carlino are right, such a town will double its population in just 17.67 years if it is a popular tourist destination.
In fact, tourism provides a more accurate forecast of future population growth than any other factor, according their conclusions. Tourists come to visit, and almost instantly resolve to stay—some day. They typically snap up once cheap property, and then drive up the cost of living for those who had welcomed them. Some locals simply cannot pay for escalating property tax assessments. Others can’t even pay the higher rents.
It is my observation and contention that this growth overwhelms the most vigilant defense of natural ecosystems, as well as gentrifying small localities and effectively pricing local inhabitants out of the real estate market. Locals, or their children, become a low wage service class that caters to the needs of the richer migrants while struggling economically to remain in the community they grew up in. To add insult to injury, many of the relative wealthy newcomers appear in the guise of environmental crusaders who demand sacrifices of the locals while living immodestly themselves.
Visitors to impressive destinations typically purchase real estate as a holding property to await their retirement or summer vacations and often withhold it from the rental market of local young or poor residents. The host community then comes to resemble a ghost town in the winter and a booming madhouse in the summer, with service workers subsisting on low wages while scrambling to find affordable housing in this now gentrified environment. On B.C.’s Saltspring Island, the magnet for visiting Albertans flush with oil money, one in three homes is said to lie vacant half the year. The homeless can be identified carrying discarded bottles in ragged clothing along the road, or standing as hitchhikers in the rain—a scene not uncommon in other coastal localities and coveted tourist havens across the land.
To my reckoning, “sustainable tourism” is merely the bastard child of “sustainable growth”, itself a mutation of “sustainable development”, which, as Garrett Hardin noted, only affords the defenders of the unsteady state “a few more years’ moratorium from the painful process of thinking.” It is a fraudulent delusion that offers up ecological nuggets to attract a wave of migrant gold-diggers who wish to “retire at first sight” and, in the execution of their plans, conjure up a bigger service sector to serve them and spawn a fifth column of real estate sharks who gather to feast on the dreams of subsequent visitors. No matter how carefully flora and fauna are sequestered and defended, the resulting population boom will overwhelm them. Then a fatal political dynamic is born.
Socialists and progressives take up the cudgels of both locals and newcomers marginalized by inflated real estate and the rents that climb with it and in the process become growth advocates by lobbying for more housing construction to accommodate them. They bleed for unfortunate people but not so much for unfortunate biodiversity, concerns for which they attempt to allay with smart growth snake-oil nostrums.
Those few of us who would aspire to arrest growth rather than “manage” it are then caught in a vise between seemingly unlikely bedfellows. On the one hand there is the coalition of developers and real estate pimps and the planners who do their bidding by coating their naked greed with the greenwash of “strict” land-use planning. Planning that bends with the times and their insatiable appetites. Planning which defies the authentic mission of planning, which is not the passive accommodation to projected trends (“it’s inevitable so let’s plan for it’), but the proactive imposition of popular will upon those so-called inevitable trends by the simple expedients that some jurisdictions like Noosa Shire, Queensland or Qualicum Beach, BC, have flirted with. Try just withholding building permits for starters!
On the other hand, working in tandem with these dark forces, are the race-baiting, soft green yuppie leftists who collude with growthism in the name of social justice, yet somehow manage to cloak it with a respectable environmentalist ethic. Caught with us in this “squeeze of the sleaze”, this excruciating, ineluctable drama of greed, hypocrisy and myopia, are local wildlife, which the growth coalition with brazen duplicity celebrates while holding it out as bait to attract new arrivals whose motto should be “I came, I saw, I destroyed.”
Economic considerations then become part of a more “holistic” paradigm, whereby “environmental” sustainability is balanced off against “economic” and “cultural” sustainability. This “three legged stool” model of viability represents what may be termed “the fallacy of equivalent concerns”. It is the assumption that would, if applied to human health, rate the heart as an organ of equal importance to every other organ in the body when, as we know, a patient can survive with one lung, or one kidney, or a colonoscopy, or brain impairment, but when his heart stops all of these important but ancillary parts die with the patient. The economy is, as Herman Daly famously noted, “a fully owned branch plant of the environment.” We make a living in an economy, but we live in a biosphere.
Many advocates see ecotourism as a mechanism to assist indigenous or traditional groups, who comprise 5% of the global population, maintain their culture. But Brock University professor David A. Fennell, in his article “Ecotourism and the Myth of Indigenous Stewardship” (Vol. 16, No. 2 Journal of Sustainable Tourism) has shown that “ecotourism research abounds with cases where traditional lifestyles (eg. fishing and farming) have been displaced by hotels, golf courses and other tourism developments.” Fennell’s references comprise some one hundred studies and books. Citing King and Stewart (Biodiversity and Conservation 5, 1996), he makes the point that “the onset of tourism forces a shift in the relationship between indigenous people and the environment, ‘from a source of direct sustenance with a use value to a commodity with an exchange value…from one of working with the land to one working for tourists.” It is a shift seen in northern Canada “where the cash economy translates into the ability to purchase newer forms of technology and transportation for the purpose of reaching harvesting sites.” Fennell relates a testimony from an academic observer at Pond Inlet who, during his guided eco-tour, saw ‘large numbers’ of narwhals being hunted by Inuit “with high powered rifles and fast boats, purchased with Canadian government assistance to service the tourism industry.” Non-traditional technologies employed by aboriginals, who are wrongly credited with a conservation ethic that predated European contact, clearly threaten conservation efforts.
While the travel industry may employ 200 million people throughout the world, those millions represent, after all, only 3% of the population, and the income they generate is seldom weighed against the staggering costs, both environmental and economic. One needs to ask, would we sacrifice critical habitat for 3% of our population if doing so increased the likelihood of die-off of 90% (or more) of our global population? To answer in the affirmative would surely place one in the company of those who say that the local pulp mill must be maintained at the cost of severe environmental damage because it employs so many people, or that the Alberta Tars sands development should not be shut down because it is now vital to the livelihood of so many people.
To argue that we can flood an ecologically sensitive area with tourists but at the same time protect it is delusional and contradictory. There are many case histories to showcase my point, but the Galapagos Islands will do nicely. I have enumerated its problems, and salient is the point that tourists need services, which need people to provide them. Hotels, motels, roads, cars, auto mechanics to maintain them, doctors, nurses, dentists, dental assistants, school teachers to instruct the children of service workers etc etc. And the provision of those services cannot be satisfied by local labour. Even if they had the requisite training and skills, the number of local workers is insufficient to meet the growing demand for their services as the “protected” areas gain fame. Not surprisingly, since the tourist boom began in the early seventies, the human population on the Galapagos Islands has increased 14-fold. This has resulted not only in visual damage and the introduction of foreign species, but also an increase in solid waste generated by the extra 130,000 residents. It is not really about the irresponsible behaviour of tourists, but their numbers. Because their numbers generate ancillary services, which then require people to render them. As Brishen Hoff of Biodiversity First commented, “Tourism does not help preserve the natural environment. It may provide jobs to locals that offer an alternative to primary resource extraction, but jobs only encourage more people to move there (some will extract primary resources and others will work in tourism, likely a growing number of both). Tourism requires infrastructure like hotels, water, sewage, supply stores, etc to accommodate visitors no matter how eco-friendly it is.” And it must be noted that nascent commercial greed grows along with tourist numbers and stimulate more tourism by aggressive marketing. But the joke is on the local businesses. Because the cruise ships and the big tour operators external to the locality rake off the big profits.
You can post educational signs on every trail and hire vigilant park wardens to supervise tourists. But there are these defenses cannot cope with large numbers. That realization has dawned on Ecuador’s green-left President Rafael. His first move was to begin the expulsion of the illegal immigrants on the Galapagos who took up jobs in the tourist industry. Imagine a left-wing President coming down on poor, immigrant service residents. Good on him. Some sober critics have praised his actions, but argue that a cap must be placed on the number of tourists as well. But President Rafael wants to have his cake of ecological integrity and eat it too. He wants the $350 million in tourist revenue but not the tourists. A conundrum. Without services, he will satisfy the demand for a cap because many tourists won’t come. Then the cruise ships will fill the vacuum. Tourists can come to visit, wreak havoc on nature, then return to their floating hotel with all services provided on board. Environmental damage but without state revenue. So where is the advantage? To big off-shore tour operators, obviously. Certainly not to wildlife.
To this dynamic of increased tourism>larger sector of resident service workers and their families>environmental damage wrought by that population irrespective of the respectful, educated behaviour of tourists, add the numbers of visitors who decide to make the tourist destination they fall in love with a retirement destination. Or one that they can hold a rental property in while they wait for retirement, or for staying during their visits during peak season, or just for real estate speculation. This may or may not be the case in the Galapogos, but it surely is where I live, and where millions of others live world-wide. Gentrification corrodes and divides a community. Local “haves” either develop a vested interest in growth or are priced out of their community by wealthy part-time residents who invest little of themselves in community life. And there is always a parasitical class of real estate agents who rise up like a Phoenix to lubricate this process by embellishing paradise and disguising its troubles for the visiting love-struck affluent.
The Sierra Club believes that national parks and areas like my own cannot be effectively defended if they do not build up a constituency of political support by allowing more and more visitors to enjoy them. In other words, we need to degrade our treasures in order to promote their preservation. This is a pernicious argument. I can fight for animals without disturbing them with my presence. Let a handful of wildlife biologists do the filming. I am thrilled to see flora and fauna in the wild—that is why I live where I do— but their survival trumps my enjoyment.
No doubt numerous palliatives and controls (e.g., changes in the tax regime) can be offered to mitigate the tourist assault on the environment and the social structure of small local communities that exist at the gateways. But in the context of the corrupt and apparently insuperable power structure that prevails, these measures seem utopian or hypothetical at best. In the more environmentally fragile zones of precious biodiversity at least, it is clear that we must stop tourist growth, not manage it. This effort would reprise David and Goliath, except that it would not likely duplicate David’s success. But heck, why not go for it? Anything less would be unsatisfactory.
Tim Murray
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
THE COMMON-PLACE ASSERTIONS OF SARAH M
Just who is credible and how should they convey their message?
“Canada needs immigration because our own population isn't having enough children, nor will our own citizens do the work that many immigrants will take on.”
How many children is “enough”. Enough to replace our current population? Why would we want to replace a population that is so demonstrably unsustainable? I went into the hospital 48 pounds overweight, and thanks to post-operative nausea, antibiotics and hospital food, I lost 20 pounds. Should I then attempt to “replace” those lost 20 pounds? We need to go on a demographic crash diet. Will this sustain our growth economy? Japan and Germany are doing better than most in losing people, and Russia has the highest economic growth of any G8 country, despite shedding a ton of people in the post-Soviet era. But what if we can’t “sustain” our economy by shrinking our population? Our per capita GNP, and certainly our per capita share of natural resources, aka as real wealth, will then be increased.
And we certainly don’t require a bigger youth cohort to support an ageing population. Supporting the under-20s is more costly than supporting the over-65s. A zero immigration policy would free up $2 billion from the fiscal deficits incurred by low skill immigrants and allow it to be spent on improving technology. It is the higher productivity of a smaller workforce, not the taxes of a larger unskilled workforce swollen by immigration, which will support the aged, as well as their postponed retirement. And oh, as for that old chestnut, the one that has been parroted throughout the ages in Canada, America, France, Germany and elsewhere, that “immigrants will do work that our people won’t do”, one needs to ask: What kind of work is that, the kind not remunerated by decent, living wages? Minimum wage laws and unionization are the remedy for that, not the importation of an ecologically unsustainable slave class.
“You have to ensure your message is not about keeping particular groups, religions or faiths out of Canada. We need these to help understand cultures and communities outside of Canada.”
Again, Japan and Germany seem to do quite well “understanding” the cultures of foreign export markets. Our message is actually about the need not to exclude particular groups, but the need to exclude almost everyone. Then again, why shouldn’t we exclude those who fail to understand us, who will not accept our core values? Are we not entitled to have a culture of own? Dr. William Rees is on record supporting the “integrative” as opposed to the “multicultural” model of accepting immigrants. He has argued that multicultural societies are less sustainable because in the emergency ahead, all groups of individuals need to share a firm and common consensus in order to meet our tough challenges.
“I would suggest re-evaluating how your opinions are presented and backing them up with more notable scientists…”
What kind of scientists are “notable”? Our articles are laced with links to “experts” in their field. It should be remembered that notable scientists gave us thalidomide, DDT, chemical weapons, Chernobyl and the flawed engineering of the space shuttle, the Tacoma bridge and the Titanic, as well as an over-confidence in climate models that are less than perfect. Notable scientists have been wrong, and while they have been knowledgeable, they often have been unwise, myopic, and guided by the wishes of those who provide their funding.
Many of the individuals on your list share the same point of views as you but do not carry the credibility to stimulate change.”
What “qualifications”, other than 20/20 vision, does anyone need to see the truth? To access information, to sift through data and weigh conflicting studies one against the other, all composed by credentialed experts? Judgment is as important as knowledge. And judging someone by his credentials is akin to judging someone by his skin colour or class background. It is not the credentials of a writer that should be persuasive, but the merits of his arguments. One does not have to have a degree to be a logician, or be anointed as such by a professional body. As Jack Alpert remarked:
“I have a pile of degrees and completed real world tasks. It does not make my causal understanding more sound. Anyone can create causal understanding…I have read all the papers you quoted and I have spoken to all the writers and they are not historians nor are their ideas experience-based. They make their views with causal models which are not experienced-based rules of thumb. They hold the same anchors in reality that I find to be true and they have connected those anchors with causal links to other variables that I find true with out correlational experiments…Who the hell are you? When you are not letting your emotions get the best of you, you think and write clearly.”
My writing may not be to your taste. This is as to be expected. Different people react differently to different communication styles. That is why all styles are needed to communicate a given message to a broad readership. Direct, indirect, scholarly, scientific, polemical, caustic and confrontational. All bring something to the table and can be useful in the right setting. We obviously require the raw data and detached objectivity of scientific or academic papers. But too many of us find these presentations less than “stimulating”. Scholars are inhibited by the inherent caution of proper methodology and the desire to find conclusive evidence before recommending timely policy action. They cannot weigh heavily into the battle as decisively as a militant activist who is driven by the urgency of our predicament. And it is this detachment which typically makes scientists inferior communicators. The masses are moved by rhetoricians and the leadership of those who are willing to act now on provisional evidence because definitive evidence usually comes too late to save us.
Thus, the “credibility” to “stimulate” change is most often provided by skilled communicators who permit logic, not factoids or dry dissertations, to stimulate the change we so desperately require.
“Bad mouthing organizations like the Wildlife Foundation, Sierra Club etc isn't a good idea either as these are recognizable organizations whom people respect and trust.”
Many organizations do not deserve popular respect or trust. The fact that they do or are “recognizable” should not gain them immunity from exposure for corruption or stupidity. They are not the Santa Claus who must not be revealed as fake so that little children can revel in their innocence and credulity. Thinking adults in a democracy need to know the naked truth behind the environmental NGOs. These pied pipers must not be allowed to lead us along a path of denial, ignorance and ruin. To many the Ku Klux Klan was respectable and trustworthy, as was the National Socialist Party that won a German election in the early thirties. Many politicians have enjoyed respectability and trust before their disgrace. Do these organizations and leaders get a free pass at fraud and misrepresentation because their followers might be traumatized by the truth? Mainstream environment NGOs are watchdogs on the corporate take, trained not to bark at the environmental threats posed by overpopulation and over-immigration, and intellectually hamstrung by political correctness. They must be discredited and dismissed from active duty.
“…you have to approach it in a slightly more toned-down approach….A gentle push is sometimes more effective than an all out battle.”Sometimes it is, and more often it is not. As neo-Malthusians we are firefighters who see that your roof is on fire while you are calmly eating your dinner oblivious to the danger. Would you have us gently tap at your door and whisper a gentle suggestion that perhaps, maybe, you could, at some future point, consider the wisdom of our recommendation that you GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE NOW! ??? And that, BTW, your smoke alarms---the Sierra Club, the WWF, the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace and Nature Conservancy---AREN’T WORKING! That your money would be better spent on monitors and clarions like us?
Tim Murray,
Just a blogger with a title
February 24/09 © copyright
“Canada needs immigration because our own population isn't having enough children, nor will our own citizens do the work that many immigrants will take on.”
How many children is “enough”. Enough to replace our current population? Why would we want to replace a population that is so demonstrably unsustainable? I went into the hospital 48 pounds overweight, and thanks to post-operative nausea, antibiotics and hospital food, I lost 20 pounds. Should I then attempt to “replace” those lost 20 pounds? We need to go on a demographic crash diet. Will this sustain our growth economy? Japan and Germany are doing better than most in losing people, and Russia has the highest economic growth of any G8 country, despite shedding a ton of people in the post-Soviet era. But what if we can’t “sustain” our economy by shrinking our population? Our per capita GNP, and certainly our per capita share of natural resources, aka as real wealth, will then be increased.
And we certainly don’t require a bigger youth cohort to support an ageing population. Supporting the under-20s is more costly than supporting the over-65s. A zero immigration policy would free up $2 billion from the fiscal deficits incurred by low skill immigrants and allow it to be spent on improving technology. It is the higher productivity of a smaller workforce, not the taxes of a larger unskilled workforce swollen by immigration, which will support the aged, as well as their postponed retirement. And oh, as for that old chestnut, the one that has been parroted throughout the ages in Canada, America, France, Germany and elsewhere, that “immigrants will do work that our people won’t do”, one needs to ask: What kind of work is that, the kind not remunerated by decent, living wages? Minimum wage laws and unionization are the remedy for that, not the importation of an ecologically unsustainable slave class.
“You have to ensure your message is not about keeping particular groups, religions or faiths out of Canada. We need these to help understand cultures and communities outside of Canada.”
Again, Japan and Germany seem to do quite well “understanding” the cultures of foreign export markets. Our message is actually about the need not to exclude particular groups, but the need to exclude almost everyone. Then again, why shouldn’t we exclude those who fail to understand us, who will not accept our core values? Are we not entitled to have a culture of own? Dr. William Rees is on record supporting the “integrative” as opposed to the “multicultural” model of accepting immigrants. He has argued that multicultural societies are less sustainable because in the emergency ahead, all groups of individuals need to share a firm and common consensus in order to meet our tough challenges.
“I would suggest re-evaluating how your opinions are presented and backing them up with more notable scientists…”
What kind of scientists are “notable”? Our articles are laced with links to “experts” in their field. It should be remembered that notable scientists gave us thalidomide, DDT, chemical weapons, Chernobyl and the flawed engineering of the space shuttle, the Tacoma bridge and the Titanic, as well as an over-confidence in climate models that are less than perfect. Notable scientists have been wrong, and while they have been knowledgeable, they often have been unwise, myopic, and guided by the wishes of those who provide their funding.
Many of the individuals on your list share the same point of views as you but do not carry the credibility to stimulate change.”
What “qualifications”, other than 20/20 vision, does anyone need to see the truth? To access information, to sift through data and weigh conflicting studies one against the other, all composed by credentialed experts? Judgment is as important as knowledge. And judging someone by his credentials is akin to judging someone by his skin colour or class background. It is not the credentials of a writer that should be persuasive, but the merits of his arguments. One does not have to have a degree to be a logician, or be anointed as such by a professional body. As Jack Alpert remarked:
“I have a pile of degrees and completed real world tasks. It does not make my causal understanding more sound. Anyone can create causal understanding…I have read all the papers you quoted and I have spoken to all the writers and they are not historians nor are their ideas experience-based. They make their views with causal models which are not experienced-based rules of thumb. They hold the same anchors in reality that I find to be true and they have connected those anchors with causal links to other variables that I find true with out correlational experiments…Who the hell are you? When you are not letting your emotions get the best of you, you think and write clearly.”
My writing may not be to your taste. This is as to be expected. Different people react differently to different communication styles. That is why all styles are needed to communicate a given message to a broad readership. Direct, indirect, scholarly, scientific, polemical, caustic and confrontational. All bring something to the table and can be useful in the right setting. We obviously require the raw data and detached objectivity of scientific or academic papers. But too many of us find these presentations less than “stimulating”. Scholars are inhibited by the inherent caution of proper methodology and the desire to find conclusive evidence before recommending timely policy action. They cannot weigh heavily into the battle as decisively as a militant activist who is driven by the urgency of our predicament. And it is this detachment which typically makes scientists inferior communicators. The masses are moved by rhetoricians and the leadership of those who are willing to act now on provisional evidence because definitive evidence usually comes too late to save us.
Thus, the “credibility” to “stimulate” change is most often provided by skilled communicators who permit logic, not factoids or dry dissertations, to stimulate the change we so desperately require.
“Bad mouthing organizations like the Wildlife Foundation, Sierra Club etc isn't a good idea either as these are recognizable organizations whom people respect and trust.”
Many organizations do not deserve popular respect or trust. The fact that they do or are “recognizable” should not gain them immunity from exposure for corruption or stupidity. They are not the Santa Claus who must not be revealed as fake so that little children can revel in their innocence and credulity. Thinking adults in a democracy need to know the naked truth behind the environmental NGOs. These pied pipers must not be allowed to lead us along a path of denial, ignorance and ruin. To many the Ku Klux Klan was respectable and trustworthy, as was the National Socialist Party that won a German election in the early thirties. Many politicians have enjoyed respectability and trust before their disgrace. Do these organizations and leaders get a free pass at fraud and misrepresentation because their followers might be traumatized by the truth? Mainstream environment NGOs are watchdogs on the corporate take, trained not to bark at the environmental threats posed by overpopulation and over-immigration, and intellectually hamstrung by political correctness. They must be discredited and dismissed from active duty.
“…you have to approach it in a slightly more toned-down approach….A gentle push is sometimes more effective than an all out battle.”Sometimes it is, and more often it is not. As neo-Malthusians we are firefighters who see that your roof is on fire while you are calmly eating your dinner oblivious to the danger. Would you have us gently tap at your door and whisper a gentle suggestion that perhaps, maybe, you could, at some future point, consider the wisdom of our recommendation that you GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE NOW! ??? And that, BTW, your smoke alarms---the Sierra Club, the WWF, the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace and Nature Conservancy---AREN’T WORKING! That your money would be better spent on monitors and clarions like us?
Tim Murray,
Just a blogger with a title
February 24/09 © copyright
Monday, February 23, 2009
THE WWF ABANDONS ITS POST TO CHASE AFTER A DECOY: The futile attempt to mop up the flooding floor of growth before turning off the tap
The World Wildlife Fund, having fought a losing battle against human encroachment on wildlife habitat, nevertheless declares victory so that it can leave the front lines to fight the global warming boogeyman at the rear. In a world where some 30,000 species become extinct each year as a result of human activity http://www.truthout.org/article/jerry-coyne-and-hopi-e-hoekstra-the-greatest-dying they make the startling claim that “climate change is the most pressing issue facing the planet right now”. http://thegoodlife.wwf.ca/WWFtheGoodLife.cfm Really? Species loss is occurring unchecked “right now” and their loss is inversely proportional to the proliferation of our species. It is a loss more imminent and lethal to human prospects than what any climate model can conjure up.
In “WWF and The Good Life: Helping Canadians Fight Climate Change”, they declare that “ WWF has been working for years to protect the living things on Earth. We've helped create massive protected areas, pulled species back from the brink of extinction and established sustainable resource management methods. But all these gains are in danger of being lost if the planet continues to warm. Warmer temperatures and unstable weather will put more species and ecosystems at risk.”
One hates to break it to the WWF that the “gains” they speak of have already been lost, and well before global warming made itself manifest. Oh yes, there are more nature reserves than ever before, but for each square kilometer of land dedicated to park “protection”, more sq. kilomentres of wild habitat are subject to rapid and intense development. And it is delusional to believe that any nature reserve is a durable sanctuary from runaway population and economic growth. Too many examples of such land losing its inviolability to growth abound, Yosemite being a famous case of that. All of this prompted WWF founder Sir Peter Scott to lament, “You know, I have often thought at the end of the day, we would have saved more wildlife if we had spent all WWF’s money on buying condoms.”
But apparently the WWF believes that the paper fortresses behind which their dedicated nature reserves hide from growth are sufficiently impregnable that it can afford to drop the ball and chase after the new kid on the block, climate change. But it apparently has never occurred to them that human population growth is the animus of that as well. Instead, they tell us that we must look to inefficient technologies and the many habits that we have in our personal lives that must change. They are distressed to note that while Canada needed to cut its emissions by 3% as it agreed to do under the Kyoto Protocol, emissions have risen steadily since 1990. The fact that the Canadian government embarked on a policy of mass immigration at that same time did not capture their notice. Nor did the extra 5 million immigrants since then seem to trouble them. That is 115 million metric tonnes of green house gas emissions worth of new Canadians.
Instead, the WWF has launched its very own crusade for green living practices. It has prepared 60 Green Living tips and explains the environmental rationale for taking them. Each recommendation asks readers if they would be prepared to follow it. The number in brackets beside each green living tip indicates the number of people who would indeed adopt the WWF’s advice. While most are simply common sense suggestions as to how we can save money and do the environment a favour at the same time, many present an efficiency paradox. There are several examples of this.
We are told to replace toilets that are more than ten years old with “low flush” ones that use just 6 litres of water rather than 20 litres to flush, thereby saving $100 per year and paying off the new purchase in two years. Fair enough. But like refrigerators and air conditioners that got more efficient and cheaper, why wouldn’t the consumer convert those savings into the purchase of more energy consuming products? When air conditioners improved their efficiency by 17%, the number of air conditioners went up by 36%. And when Californian refrigerators became three times more efficient over five decades, the number of refrigerator buyers, that is, California residents, tripled over that time span. And many acquired a second refrigerator to store the beer or put in the suite downstairs or in the cabin at the lake.
My community, for example, has more than doubled its population in 30 years, experiencing an average growth rate of 2 ½%, which precisely translates into a doubling time of 28 years. It has been estimated that toilet use accounts for 30% of household water consumption, and that low-flush toilets would cut that consumption by two thirds, thus claiming only 10% of daily water consumption. Therefore if everyone installed low-flush toilets then eight years or less of average population growth would wipe out all the savings in water consumption. Curiously, the resident environmental group, our trusty Sierra Club, will not take a no-growth but rather a “smart growth” stand, which invites growth and simply proposes to render it ecologically benign, with measures like this, as promoted by their celebrated “Technology Fair.”
Efficiency paradoxes, as first described in 1865 by British economist William Stanley Jevons, can be illustrated in areas other than technology. The WWF advises us to “eat less meat” or even “to become a vegetarian”. It may be rudely counter-intuitive to point out that in the long run, meat consumption by requiring ten times as much fuel for each calorie of protein than a plant-based diet, or by “inefficiently” using land for grazing cattle than for grain crops, etc. does in that very action prevent the sustenance of more people who would only breed more people. Even if all of those extra people became vegetarians, their collective footprint would impose more environmental costs than the smaller meat-eating population. Whenever one limiting factor, eg. farmland, is removed, new and greater consumption is provoked, growing until it presses up against another limiting factor, eg. water. Does the WWF really want human population to rise even more dramatically to wipe out more wildlife habitat sooner? Imagine if technology found an unlimited source of totally free energy. Great news eh? Our problems solved. Wrong. It would be our ultimate nightmare. Even more population and economic growth would result to ravish the remainder of our dwindling fish stocks, wildlife habitat and farm acreage. Heaven and earth would then be moved to feed that exploding population and service all of its needs at the cost of biodiversity.
Should that happen, though, it is likely that the WWF and other environmental NGOs would seek yet another technological fix for the “fix” that just generated more problems on a grander scale in the first place. Anything but locate the problem at its root source—growth--- and summon the courage to fight it, its donor base be damned. The WWF frets that from the inception of the Kyoto Protocal in 1990, instead of reducing our GHG emissions by 3%, as promised, Canada increased them. Duh. They apparently didn’t notice that thanks to mass immigration, our country grew by 19% in numbers by 2007. Instead of confronting the Elephant in the Room and acknowledging the correlation between growing population and growing GHG emissions, it goes on a moral crusade to tell us that our per capita emissions and sinful consumption habits are to blame. Sorry guys, but Mother Nature doesn’t really give a damn about our sinful ways or our per capita footprints. She cares about the sum total of those “per capitas”, Canada’s total consumption, which is a function of the population level times per capita consumption (or emissions). But the environmental movement will do somersaults to avoid facing up to this fact.
Thus WWF recommendations like “recycle your garbage” to reduce landfills are pointless in this context of relentless growth. All city residents may reduce their garbage contributions by 33%, but what if they continue to elect politicians whose Official Community Plan calls for a 33% increase in the population? And why is it that environmental organizations propose only to “manage” this growth rather than to stop it? Why do they fall back on the excuse that it can’t be stopped, or that “how we grow” is more important than “how much we grow”. The clichés of “smart growth” are oxymoronic palliatives peddled by green snake oil salesmen. Land use planning is a proven failure in saving Greenfield acreage or reducing urban footprints. http://sustainablesalmonarm.ning.com/profiles/blogs/smart-growth-the-worst-kind-of But the myth persists that we can manage infinite growth without ecological consequences if humanity was all densely packed into urban feedlots.
And good luck on the WWF’s advice to “eat local”. Do they imagine that there will be any “local” farmland available in close proximity to major cities when Ontario alone is losing 60,000 acres of prime farmland annually to house the immigrants whose impact the WWF and its green clones ignore? Do they have a technological “fix” for our mined-out soils that require oil-based fertilizers to produce food? Are their mechanical draught animals on the drawing board to replace the tractors that will have no fuel to run them, or solar-powered or electric machines that will excrete the manure to replace synthetic fertilizers? And suppose enough draught animals could be found, would they not compete for precious land for their own support? How could these animals and the people who need them co-exist on land that is mutually coveted? What portion of the urban labour force would have to be conscripted to work the land in substitution for tractors? Where would they live? How would the produce be kept befor winter storage in the absence of electricity to freeze or cool it? The WWF has not thought this through, they have not grasped the impracticalities of relocalization in the context of a power-down. Their “Goodlife” tips are a feeble response to the Kunstlerian Long Emergency which faces us.
It is time that the WWF and the rest of the Green establishment discard their mop and pail and focus their efforts upon turning off the faucet of growth which will drown both them and us in a demographic tidal wave that will see Canada double its population by 2066 at our current pace.
Tim Murray,
February 22/09 copyright
PS, for the record, these are the WWF’s “GoodLife” green recommendations for reducing your personal footprint. The number of readers who promised to follow through with each suggestion is bracketed. The most popular ten suggestions are highlighted.
Use Green power (737)
Get a High Efficiency furnace (1892)
Solar water heating (20)
Insulate your home (1449)
Equip your home with smart controls (377)
Install low-flow showerheads (3024)
Get programmable thermostats (3551)
Install ceiling fans(3201)
Retire beer fridge (1121)
Hang dry your clothes (2338)
Replace your clothes washer with an Energy Star appliance (2543)
Draft-proof your home (1772)
Wash clothes in cold water (8448)
Replace your refrigerator with an Energy Star appliance (1868)
Hang dry your clothes (3315)
Get CFL Lights (1504)
Replace your central A/C with an Energy Star appliance (474)
Replace your doors with Energy Star versions (111)
Replace your window A/C with an Energy Star version (301)
Replace your windows with Energy Star versions (204)
Replace your television with an Energy Star version (962)
Get low-flush toilets (2146)
Join a “peak saver” program (429)
Get a home energy audit (177)
Choose not to own a car (1628)
Fly less for overseas business (279)
Teleconference with overseas colleagues (172)
Fly less for North American business (202)
Teleconference with colleagues in North America (281)
Cycle or walk instead of driving (2406)
Sign up for car sharing (225)
Take a transit to work (2199)
Carpool (664)
Drive less (2863)
Work from home (1065)
Fly less for local business (112)
Teleconference with nearby colleagues (155)
Reduce Idling (3685)
Keep Your Tires Properly Inflated (2980)
Become a vegetarian (113)
Eat local (3738)
Compost (4204)
Purchase 2nd hand clothing (438)
Shop with reusable bags (7374)
Fly-Less for overseas travel (345)
Fly-Less for North American travel (377)
Fly-Less for local travel (364)
Use push lawnmower (1140)
Recycle (7778)
Use E-billing (4161)
Sign up for Earth Hour 2009 (245)
Support higher Canadian standards for emissions (2167)
Conspicuously missing from the WWF list:
Rather than give birth to children, adopt Canadian children.
If you adopt, do not take a child from a country with a lower per capita ecological footprint than ours---each immigrant quadruples his GHG emissions on average upon arrival to North America.
If you must duplicate your genes and have children, confine yourself to preferably one, or two at the very most.
Consider being an uncle, aunt, Big Brother, Big Sister, babysitter, teacher or coach as a means to enjoy children rather than adding more footprints to this country.
Take the little step of writing letters to politicians demanding that Canada make its foreign aid conditional on birth control. People, not technology, ultimately cause pollution and species extermination.
Write politicians to demand a moratorium on immigration. Each immigrant multiplies his footprint to this country and has more children than the average Canadian, stressing a country that, despite its geographical size, is in overshoot. Writing letters are the most impactful “small steps” you can make.
Donate money to foreign family planning agencies rather than sponsor a refugee who is running from a country ravaged by overpopulation.
“There is no climate change without climate changers.” Andrew Ferguson
In “WWF and The Good Life: Helping Canadians Fight Climate Change”, they declare that “ WWF has been working for years to protect the living things on Earth. We've helped create massive protected areas, pulled species back from the brink of extinction and established sustainable resource management methods. But all these gains are in danger of being lost if the planet continues to warm. Warmer temperatures and unstable weather will put more species and ecosystems at risk.”
One hates to break it to the WWF that the “gains” they speak of have already been lost, and well before global warming made itself manifest. Oh yes, there are more nature reserves than ever before, but for each square kilometer of land dedicated to park “protection”, more sq. kilomentres of wild habitat are subject to rapid and intense development. And it is delusional to believe that any nature reserve is a durable sanctuary from runaway population and economic growth. Too many examples of such land losing its inviolability to growth abound, Yosemite being a famous case of that. All of this prompted WWF founder Sir Peter Scott to lament, “You know, I have often thought at the end of the day, we would have saved more wildlife if we had spent all WWF’s money on buying condoms.”
But apparently the WWF believes that the paper fortresses behind which their dedicated nature reserves hide from growth are sufficiently impregnable that it can afford to drop the ball and chase after the new kid on the block, climate change. But it apparently has never occurred to them that human population growth is the animus of that as well. Instead, they tell us that we must look to inefficient technologies and the many habits that we have in our personal lives that must change. They are distressed to note that while Canada needed to cut its emissions by 3% as it agreed to do under the Kyoto Protocol, emissions have risen steadily since 1990. The fact that the Canadian government embarked on a policy of mass immigration at that same time did not capture their notice. Nor did the extra 5 million immigrants since then seem to trouble them. That is 115 million metric tonnes of green house gas emissions worth of new Canadians.
Instead, the WWF has launched its very own crusade for green living practices. It has prepared 60 Green Living tips and explains the environmental rationale for taking them. Each recommendation asks readers if they would be prepared to follow it. The number in brackets beside each green living tip indicates the number of people who would indeed adopt the WWF’s advice. While most are simply common sense suggestions as to how we can save money and do the environment a favour at the same time, many present an efficiency paradox. There are several examples of this.
We are told to replace toilets that are more than ten years old with “low flush” ones that use just 6 litres of water rather than 20 litres to flush, thereby saving $100 per year and paying off the new purchase in two years. Fair enough. But like refrigerators and air conditioners that got more efficient and cheaper, why wouldn’t the consumer convert those savings into the purchase of more energy consuming products? When air conditioners improved their efficiency by 17%, the number of air conditioners went up by 36%. And when Californian refrigerators became three times more efficient over five decades, the number of refrigerator buyers, that is, California residents, tripled over that time span. And many acquired a second refrigerator to store the beer or put in the suite downstairs or in the cabin at the lake.
My community, for example, has more than doubled its population in 30 years, experiencing an average growth rate of 2 ½%, which precisely translates into a doubling time of 28 years. It has been estimated that toilet use accounts for 30% of household water consumption, and that low-flush toilets would cut that consumption by two thirds, thus claiming only 10% of daily water consumption. Therefore if everyone installed low-flush toilets then eight years or less of average population growth would wipe out all the savings in water consumption. Curiously, the resident environmental group, our trusty Sierra Club, will not take a no-growth but rather a “smart growth” stand, which invites growth and simply proposes to render it ecologically benign, with measures like this, as promoted by their celebrated “Technology Fair.”
Efficiency paradoxes, as first described in 1865 by British economist William Stanley Jevons, can be illustrated in areas other than technology. The WWF advises us to “eat less meat” or even “to become a vegetarian”. It may be rudely counter-intuitive to point out that in the long run, meat consumption by requiring ten times as much fuel for each calorie of protein than a plant-based diet, or by “inefficiently” using land for grazing cattle than for grain crops, etc. does in that very action prevent the sustenance of more people who would only breed more people. Even if all of those extra people became vegetarians, their collective footprint would impose more environmental costs than the smaller meat-eating population. Whenever one limiting factor, eg. farmland, is removed, new and greater consumption is provoked, growing until it presses up against another limiting factor, eg. water. Does the WWF really want human population to rise even more dramatically to wipe out more wildlife habitat sooner? Imagine if technology found an unlimited source of totally free energy. Great news eh? Our problems solved. Wrong. It would be our ultimate nightmare. Even more population and economic growth would result to ravish the remainder of our dwindling fish stocks, wildlife habitat and farm acreage. Heaven and earth would then be moved to feed that exploding population and service all of its needs at the cost of biodiversity.
Should that happen, though, it is likely that the WWF and other environmental NGOs would seek yet another technological fix for the “fix” that just generated more problems on a grander scale in the first place. Anything but locate the problem at its root source—growth--- and summon the courage to fight it, its donor base be damned. The WWF frets that from the inception of the Kyoto Protocal in 1990, instead of reducing our GHG emissions by 3%, as promised, Canada increased them. Duh. They apparently didn’t notice that thanks to mass immigration, our country grew by 19% in numbers by 2007. Instead of confronting the Elephant in the Room and acknowledging the correlation between growing population and growing GHG emissions, it goes on a moral crusade to tell us that our per capita emissions and sinful consumption habits are to blame. Sorry guys, but Mother Nature doesn’t really give a damn about our sinful ways or our per capita footprints. She cares about the sum total of those “per capitas”, Canada’s total consumption, which is a function of the population level times per capita consumption (or emissions). But the environmental movement will do somersaults to avoid facing up to this fact.
Thus WWF recommendations like “recycle your garbage” to reduce landfills are pointless in this context of relentless growth. All city residents may reduce their garbage contributions by 33%, but what if they continue to elect politicians whose Official Community Plan calls for a 33% increase in the population? And why is it that environmental organizations propose only to “manage” this growth rather than to stop it? Why do they fall back on the excuse that it can’t be stopped, or that “how we grow” is more important than “how much we grow”. The clichés of “smart growth” are oxymoronic palliatives peddled by green snake oil salesmen. Land use planning is a proven failure in saving Greenfield acreage or reducing urban footprints. http://sustainablesalmonarm.ning.com/profiles/blogs/smart-growth-the-worst-kind-of But the myth persists that we can manage infinite growth without ecological consequences if humanity was all densely packed into urban feedlots.
And good luck on the WWF’s advice to “eat local”. Do they imagine that there will be any “local” farmland available in close proximity to major cities when Ontario alone is losing 60,000 acres of prime farmland annually to house the immigrants whose impact the WWF and its green clones ignore? Do they have a technological “fix” for our mined-out soils that require oil-based fertilizers to produce food? Are their mechanical draught animals on the drawing board to replace the tractors that will have no fuel to run them, or solar-powered or electric machines that will excrete the manure to replace synthetic fertilizers? And suppose enough draught animals could be found, would they not compete for precious land for their own support? How could these animals and the people who need them co-exist on land that is mutually coveted? What portion of the urban labour force would have to be conscripted to work the land in substitution for tractors? Where would they live? How would the produce be kept befor winter storage in the absence of electricity to freeze or cool it? The WWF has not thought this through, they have not grasped the impracticalities of relocalization in the context of a power-down. Their “Goodlife” tips are a feeble response to the Kunstlerian Long Emergency which faces us.
It is time that the WWF and the rest of the Green establishment discard their mop and pail and focus their efforts upon turning off the faucet of growth which will drown both them and us in a demographic tidal wave that will see Canada double its population by 2066 at our current pace.
Tim Murray,
February 22/09 copyright
PS, for the record, these are the WWF’s “GoodLife” green recommendations for reducing your personal footprint. The number of readers who promised to follow through with each suggestion is bracketed. The most popular ten suggestions are highlighted.
Use Green power (737)
Get a High Efficiency furnace (1892)
Solar water heating (20)
Insulate your home (1449)
Equip your home with smart controls (377)
Install low-flow showerheads (3024)
Get programmable thermostats (3551)
Install ceiling fans(3201)
Retire beer fridge (1121)
Hang dry your clothes (2338)
Replace your clothes washer with an Energy Star appliance (2543)
Draft-proof your home (1772)
Wash clothes in cold water (8448)
Replace your refrigerator with an Energy Star appliance (1868)
Hang dry your clothes (3315)
Get CFL Lights (1504)
Replace your central A/C with an Energy Star appliance (474)
Replace your doors with Energy Star versions (111)
Replace your window A/C with an Energy Star version (301)
Replace your windows with Energy Star versions (204)
Replace your television with an Energy Star version (962)
Get low-flush toilets (2146)
Join a “peak saver” program (429)
Get a home energy audit (177)
Choose not to own a car (1628)
Fly less for overseas business (279)
Teleconference with overseas colleagues (172)
Fly less for North American business (202)
Teleconference with colleagues in North America (281)
Cycle or walk instead of driving (2406)
Sign up for car sharing (225)
Take a transit to work (2199)
Carpool (664)
Drive less (2863)
Work from home (1065)
Fly less for local business (112)
Teleconference with nearby colleagues (155)
Reduce Idling (3685)
Keep Your Tires Properly Inflated (2980)
Become a vegetarian (113)
Eat local (3738)
Compost (4204)
Purchase 2nd hand clothing (438)
Shop with reusable bags (7374)
Fly-Less for overseas travel (345)
Fly-Less for North American travel (377)
Fly-Less for local travel (364)
Use push lawnmower (1140)
Recycle (7778)
Use E-billing (4161)
Sign up for Earth Hour 2009 (245)
Support higher Canadian standards for emissions (2167)
Conspicuously missing from the WWF list:
Rather than give birth to children, adopt Canadian children.
If you adopt, do not take a child from a country with a lower per capita ecological footprint than ours---each immigrant quadruples his GHG emissions on average upon arrival to North America.
If you must duplicate your genes and have children, confine yourself to preferably one, or two at the very most.
Consider being an uncle, aunt, Big Brother, Big Sister, babysitter, teacher or coach as a means to enjoy children rather than adding more footprints to this country.
Take the little step of writing letters to politicians demanding that Canada make its foreign aid conditional on birth control. People, not technology, ultimately cause pollution and species extermination.
Write politicians to demand a moratorium on immigration. Each immigrant multiplies his footprint to this country and has more children than the average Canadian, stressing a country that, despite its geographical size, is in overshoot. Writing letters are the most impactful “small steps” you can make.
Donate money to foreign family planning agencies rather than sponsor a refugee who is running from a country ravaged by overpopulation.
“There is no climate change without climate changers.” Andrew Ferguson
NHL AIR TRAVEL FACTOIDS
A Footnote to the CBC Hockey Day Celebration of hockey’s war on climate change:
30 NHL teams play 82 games each during their regular season
That amounts to a total of 1230 regular season games
Collectively NHL teams fly about 1,210,008 miles to plays those games. http://www.kuklaskorner.com/index.php/otf/comments/check_out_the_nhl_super_schedule/
Each game therefore involves about 984 miles of air travel alone to play. Bus trips to hotels and arenas for games and practices are another extra not factored in here.
The average NHL team flies 40, 333.6 miles per regular season. That translates to flying 492 miles for each game on average. http://www.kuklaskorner.com/index.php/otf/comments/check_out_the_nhl_super_schedule/
And the NHL is talking about extending the regular season by 2 games each team to a total of 84 regular season games each. That would involve 30 more games and about 29,520 more miles of air travel for the league.
Each player on the typical 25 man roster of an NHL team emits 10 metric tonnes of green house gases in travel, according to the David Suzuki Foundation. (The average Canadian emits about 23 metric tonnes in his or her total activity). In other words, each team is responsible for 250 metric tonnes of GHG emissons or just over 3 tonnes per game. And extra 2 games in the schedule will therefore cost the atmosphere about 90 tonnes of GHG.
That is to say an extended schedule of 84 rather than 82 NHL games is equivalent to what another 9 NHL hockey players would emit for the year.
Suppose that the NHLPA was really serious about fighting climate change, and negotiated a 70 game rather than the current 82 game schedule. That would be twelve fewer games each for 30 teams, or 180 fewer games. 70 game seasons were the rule in NHL hockey for decades until expansion (and greed) became the rule. Since it cost the atmosphere 3 metric tonnes of GHG on average for each NHL game played, that would be 540 metric tonnes of GHG not emitted because of a shortened schedule of 70 games per team. That would be equivalent of the league dropping at least two teams. Down to 28 instead of 30.
Each of the 750 players in the NHL emit on average, 10 tonnes of GHG. Collectively then, NHL players dump 7,500 tonnes of GHG into the atmosphere. If 12 games were dropped from the schedule, 180 fewer games would be played and 540 tonnes of GHG would not be emitted. That is equivalent to shedding two teams from the league, with something left over. That would be a meaningful gesture of sacrifice. Much more than the “Carbon Neutral Challenge” taken up in response to the David Suzuki Foundation. Ah, but shrinking the league would involve negative “growth”, something any environmental NGO in Canada is loathe to think of. Growth is something they “manage”, not limit or reverse.
30 NHL teams play 82 games each during their regular season
That amounts to a total of 1230 regular season games
Collectively NHL teams fly about 1,210,008 miles to plays those games. http://www.kuklaskorner.com/index.php/otf/comments/check_out_the_nhl_super_schedule/
Each game therefore involves about 984 miles of air travel alone to play. Bus trips to hotels and arenas for games and practices are another extra not factored in here.
The average NHL team flies 40, 333.6 miles per regular season. That translates to flying 492 miles for each game on average. http://www.kuklaskorner.com/index.php/otf/comments/check_out_the_nhl_super_schedule/
And the NHL is talking about extending the regular season by 2 games each team to a total of 84 regular season games each. That would involve 30 more games and about 29,520 more miles of air travel for the league.
Each player on the typical 25 man roster of an NHL team emits 10 metric tonnes of green house gases in travel, according to the David Suzuki Foundation. (The average Canadian emits about 23 metric tonnes in his or her total activity). In other words, each team is responsible for 250 metric tonnes of GHG emissons or just over 3 tonnes per game. And extra 2 games in the schedule will therefore cost the atmosphere about 90 tonnes of GHG.
That is to say an extended schedule of 84 rather than 82 NHL games is equivalent to what another 9 NHL hockey players would emit for the year.
Suppose that the NHLPA was really serious about fighting climate change, and negotiated a 70 game rather than the current 82 game schedule. That would be twelve fewer games each for 30 teams, or 180 fewer games. 70 game seasons were the rule in NHL hockey for decades until expansion (and greed) became the rule. Since it cost the atmosphere 3 metric tonnes of GHG on average for each NHL game played, that would be 540 metric tonnes of GHG not emitted because of a shortened schedule of 70 games per team. That would be equivalent of the league dropping at least two teams. Down to 28 instead of 30.
Each of the 750 players in the NHL emit on average, 10 tonnes of GHG. Collectively then, NHL players dump 7,500 tonnes of GHG into the atmosphere. If 12 games were dropped from the schedule, 180 fewer games would be played and 540 tonnes of GHG would not be emitted. That is equivalent to shedding two teams from the league, with something left over. That would be a meaningful gesture of sacrifice. Much more than the “Carbon Neutral Challenge” taken up in response to the David Suzuki Foundation. Ah, but shrinking the league would involve negative “growth”, something any environmental NGO in Canada is loathe to think of. Growth is something they “manage”, not limit or reverse.
CBC HOCKEY JUMPS ON THE GREEN TRIVIA BANDWAGON
Ron MacLean, the effusive motor-mouth for Hockey-Night-In-Canada, waxed with enthusiasm for the efforts of one and all to join in on the CBC Crusade to encourage “a million acts of green”, which has now, at last count, become “one and a half million acts of green”. MacLean boasted that the Crusade had made a carbon impact equivalent to taking 10,000 cars off the road. Is that all? For every 100 Canadian citizens, 56 own a car, in other words about 56% of us drive cars. http://www.auto123.com/en/news/car-news/canada-5th-for-car-ownership-per-capita?artid=104396 Immigrants aspire to our lifestyle, so that it would be logical that of the 240,000 who legally entered the country last year, over 134,000 put a car on the road. In other words CBC’s “One million acts of green” has only succeeded in defraying the CO2 costs of 7% of last year’s stratospherically absurd immigration quota, the one that makes Canada suffer the highest population growth rate in the G8 group.
He then extolled the efforts of the Mississauga minor hockey league team to pitch in and do its bit. And what was that exactly? This might enlighten you.
The video interview with Barry Carroll, the President of the Mississauga Braves Association and others explained the rationale for the minor hockey club joining the WWF Canada Goodlife progam. Mr. Carroll explained that they wanted to join forces with the WWF to reduce carbon footprints to show the community that the Braves were concerned about the future. One commentator stated that the Braves had saved 2607 kilograms of Green House Gases from being emitted.
To put that saving into perspective, the entire hockey operation of the Mississauga Braves with their boy scout efforts to cut their carbon output managed to save about 11% of what the average Canadian emits annually in GHG. 2607 kilograms is just under 11% of the 23.8 metric tonnes of per capita Canadian emissions.
A boy in the Braves’ line-up stood up and enumerated six things which hockey parents could do to fight climate change.
1. Wash hockey uniforms in cold water.
2. Hang them out to dry rather than use a drying machine.
3. Turn down the thermostat a couple of degrees, then turn off the lights before you leave for the practice or the hockey game.
4. If parents like to drink coffee on their way, don’t stop at a drive-thru. And they should bring their own mugs.
5. Car-pool to the practices and games.
6. Send old hockey equipment to second hand shops or charities.
The boy parroted the Gore line: “This is important because every small step you take builds to a greater cause.” Naturally, no one mentioned the small step of sending a letter to an MP to encourage governments to limit population growth at home or abroad. The focus here is reduce each individual’s footprint, and not give a damn about the number of footprints.
Mr. Carroll added that “we have mistreated the planet, and it was time to clean things up.” Enlisting the boys in this effort was important because his responsibility was not to produce simply good players but “good individuals”.
The WWF had perhaps better hope that none of these “good individuals” become so good as players, because if they graduate to the NHL, they will emit something close to 10 metric tonnes of GHG each just in following the NHL travel schedule, and their 4% share of each flight to each NHL game, as one player in 25, will be amount to 120 kilograms of GHG. In 22 NHL games that one player will have wiped out the savings of the whole Mississauga Braves so far this year.
Of course, thanks to the help and counsel of the David Suzuki Foundation, the NHL Players Association last year accepted the “Carbon Footprint Challenge” and resolved to reduce NHL footprints.
They pulled out the DSF kit bag of green living tips. But missing was the one obvious measure to slash NHL carbon emissions. Reduce the NHL schedule. Currently NHL teams play 82 games in the regular schedule, and plans are afoot to extend that to 84 games next season.
If the NHL reverted to a 70 game schedule, long the staple of the NHL season, 180 fewer games would be played, resulting in a savings of 540 metric tonnes of GHG. The equivalent of reducing the league from 30 to 26 teams.
But shrinking the schedule or the number of teams would mean limiting or reversing growth, and the DSF is an environmental NGO. They aren’t in the business of limiting growth, just “managing” it.
Here’s a suggestion. You heard of China’s successful “One Child Per Family” policy, which has saved China the horror of feeding another 400 million mouths. A one child per family law is even more justified in the frigid land of Canada, where every citizen must, by necessity, consume very much more than a Chinese citizen, young or old.
To allay fears, how about a pilot project. A “One Hockey Player Per Family policy.”? Now that would have an ecological impact!
Tim Murray,
Feb 22/09
PS More on the hypocrisy and myopia of the WWF later
Braves Association goes Green on CBC Hockey Day in Canada
The Mississauga Braves Association will be featured during the Saturday, February 21 Tim Hortons Hockey Day in Canada broadcast on CBC. The "Green Team" segment deals with the Braves efforts to reduce global warming in conjunction with the WWF Canada Goodlife program. VIEW CBC VIDEO HERE http://www.cbc.ca/sports/ondemand/?playlistId=ce476241bf046f26ab9d45b53e9cf17a879750b7&videoId=1030109602
He then extolled the efforts of the Mississauga minor hockey league team to pitch in and do its bit. And what was that exactly? This might enlighten you.
The video interview with Barry Carroll, the President of the Mississauga Braves Association and others explained the rationale for the minor hockey club joining the WWF Canada Goodlife progam. Mr. Carroll explained that they wanted to join forces with the WWF to reduce carbon footprints to show the community that the Braves were concerned about the future. One commentator stated that the Braves had saved 2607 kilograms of Green House Gases from being emitted.
To put that saving into perspective, the entire hockey operation of the Mississauga Braves with their boy scout efforts to cut their carbon output managed to save about 11% of what the average Canadian emits annually in GHG. 2607 kilograms is just under 11% of the 23.8 metric tonnes of per capita Canadian emissions.
A boy in the Braves’ line-up stood up and enumerated six things which hockey parents could do to fight climate change.
1. Wash hockey uniforms in cold water.
2. Hang them out to dry rather than use a drying machine.
3. Turn down the thermostat a couple of degrees, then turn off the lights before you leave for the practice or the hockey game.
4. If parents like to drink coffee on their way, don’t stop at a drive-thru. And they should bring their own mugs.
5. Car-pool to the practices and games.
6. Send old hockey equipment to second hand shops or charities.
The boy parroted the Gore line: “This is important because every small step you take builds to a greater cause.” Naturally, no one mentioned the small step of sending a letter to an MP to encourage governments to limit population growth at home or abroad. The focus here is reduce each individual’s footprint, and not give a damn about the number of footprints.
Mr. Carroll added that “we have mistreated the planet, and it was time to clean things up.” Enlisting the boys in this effort was important because his responsibility was not to produce simply good players but “good individuals”.
The WWF had perhaps better hope that none of these “good individuals” become so good as players, because if they graduate to the NHL, they will emit something close to 10 metric tonnes of GHG each just in following the NHL travel schedule, and their 4% share of each flight to each NHL game, as one player in 25, will be amount to 120 kilograms of GHG. In 22 NHL games that one player will have wiped out the savings of the whole Mississauga Braves so far this year.
Of course, thanks to the help and counsel of the David Suzuki Foundation, the NHL Players Association last year accepted the “Carbon Footprint Challenge” and resolved to reduce NHL footprints.
They pulled out the DSF kit bag of green living tips. But missing was the one obvious measure to slash NHL carbon emissions. Reduce the NHL schedule. Currently NHL teams play 82 games in the regular schedule, and plans are afoot to extend that to 84 games next season.
If the NHL reverted to a 70 game schedule, long the staple of the NHL season, 180 fewer games would be played, resulting in a savings of 540 metric tonnes of GHG. The equivalent of reducing the league from 30 to 26 teams.
But shrinking the schedule or the number of teams would mean limiting or reversing growth, and the DSF is an environmental NGO. They aren’t in the business of limiting growth, just “managing” it.
Here’s a suggestion. You heard of China’s successful “One Child Per Family” policy, which has saved China the horror of feeding another 400 million mouths. A one child per family law is even more justified in the frigid land of Canada, where every citizen must, by necessity, consume very much more than a Chinese citizen, young or old.
To allay fears, how about a pilot project. A “One Hockey Player Per Family policy.”? Now that would have an ecological impact!
Tim Murray,
Feb 22/09
PS More on the hypocrisy and myopia of the WWF later
Braves Association goes Green on CBC Hockey Day in Canada
The Mississauga Braves Association will be featured during the Saturday, February 21 Tim Hortons Hockey Day in Canada broadcast on CBC. The "Green Team" segment deals with the Braves efforts to reduce global warming in conjunction with the WWF Canada Goodlife program. VIEW CBC VIDEO HERE http://www.cbc.ca/sports/ondemand/?playlistId=ce476241bf046f26ab9d45b53e9cf17a879750b7&videoId=1030109602
Saturday, February 21, 2009
REPOWERING AMERICA while remaining in the dark intellectually
http://www.repoweramerica.org/plan/
Translation:
Repower America with 100% clean electricity so that it can continue growing its population to the point where all gains from this soft energy path will be wiped out by the additional consumers. Consumers can continue to build bigger houses on farmland, drive more and bigger cars, accumulate more electronic toys , boats, ATVs and snowmobiles, overuse national parks, consume more scarce water, and more resources generally. In short, they can use the energy savings from this new clean power source for higher consumption elsewhere.
Sweep away one limiting factor---energy---only to press up against a myriad of others.
Yep, the soft green message of progressive polyannas remains consistent. Consistently delusional!
Better to be depressed by reality than buoyed up by fantasy. You can’t solve a problem by pretending that you don’t have one, or being afraid to attack its roots.
Translation:
Repower America with 100% clean electricity so that it can continue growing its population to the point where all gains from this soft energy path will be wiped out by the additional consumers. Consumers can continue to build bigger houses on farmland, drive more and bigger cars, accumulate more electronic toys , boats, ATVs and snowmobiles, overuse national parks, consume more scarce water, and more resources generally. In short, they can use the energy savings from this new clean power source for higher consumption elsewhere.
Sweep away one limiting factor---energy---only to press up against a myriad of others.
Yep, the soft green message of progressive polyannas remains consistent. Consistently delusional!
Better to be depressed by reality than buoyed up by fantasy. You can’t solve a problem by pretending that you don’t have one, or being afraid to attack its roots.
WHY SOME SCIENTISTS ARE NOT PERSUASIVE
A writer with the on-line magazine "climate change opinion" made a very interesting argument on September 0/08, which contends that scientists who promote AGW theory, as well as others, fail to win debates for severl reasons. http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/30/why-scientists-arent-more-persuasive-part-1/ and http://climateprogress.org/2008/10/13/why-scientists-aren%E2%80%99t-more-persuasive-part-2-why-deniers-out-debate-smart-talkers/
Among the points made, the author offers the following advice and observations to those who would want avoid losing debates to less informed or incompetent opponents:
1. Deny eloquence and accuse your opponent of being a rhetorician.
2. Fake straight talk. Straight talkers beat smart talkers.
3. Be blunt and ineloquent because this comes across as being honest and steadfast.
4. Don’t appear as a smarty pants, but rather a plainspoken man of the people.
5. Don’t talk smart or use big words.
6. Repeat simple words and phrases.
7. Claim that once you too were once shared your opponent’s viewpoints. This makes the listeners seem that you are just like them, and they become very interested as to why you changed your mind.
In short, debates are not won by the merits of the arguments presented or the volume of evidence presented, but by employing the tactics as outlined above. This is a valid and potent line of reasoning. Unfortunately, the un-named author uses the proponents of man-made climate change (AGW) as his self-evident example of scientists who are less than persuasive. The implication is that those who dare question climate change science are not scientists, but typically folks who have no such expertise. The issue is more complicated than that.
It may or may not be that only 2% of scientists oppose the AGW theory and that it enjoys the support of a “consensus” of scientists. But truth is not subject to a democratic vote. If 50 million scientists believe something to be true, it would not make it true. And if only one scientist in the world believed something to be true it would not necessarily make it false. A “consensus” of scientists once believed in the authenticity of Piltdown Man for four decades, until the truth emerged to discredit their beliefs as a hoax Only evidence can adjudicate the truth, and those who make scientific claims must first present those claims as an hypothesis. That is, their claim must offer a test that will prove its falsehood. Those who do not provide a testable proposition or persist in defending an hypothesis that evidence does not validate are not practicing science but religion. This is exactly what the “Friends of Science” would accuse AGW scientists of: http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Climate_Change_Science.html Given their contention, might another spin be put on why Michael Crichton’s debating team of AGW-deniers defeated a team that advanced the guardians of truth and light in 2007? In other words, was it that the scientists with IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) were not persuasive, or is it their theory that is not persuasive? Could it be that it is not so much that the American public is so ill-informed , but that IPCC scientists are unobservant and in denial?
Nullius in verba Take no one’s word.
Among the points made, the author offers the following advice and observations to those who would want avoid losing debates to less informed or incompetent opponents:
1. Deny eloquence and accuse your opponent of being a rhetorician.
2. Fake straight talk. Straight talkers beat smart talkers.
3. Be blunt and ineloquent because this comes across as being honest and steadfast.
4. Don’t appear as a smarty pants, but rather a plainspoken man of the people.
5. Don’t talk smart or use big words.
6. Repeat simple words and phrases.
7. Claim that once you too were once shared your opponent’s viewpoints. This makes the listeners seem that you are just like them, and they become very interested as to why you changed your mind.
In short, debates are not won by the merits of the arguments presented or the volume of evidence presented, but by employing the tactics as outlined above. This is a valid and potent line of reasoning. Unfortunately, the un-named author uses the proponents of man-made climate change (AGW) as his self-evident example of scientists who are less than persuasive. The implication is that those who dare question climate change science are not scientists, but typically folks who have no such expertise. The issue is more complicated than that.
It may or may not be that only 2% of scientists oppose the AGW theory and that it enjoys the support of a “consensus” of scientists. But truth is not subject to a democratic vote. If 50 million scientists believe something to be true, it would not make it true. And if only one scientist in the world believed something to be true it would not necessarily make it false. A “consensus” of scientists once believed in the authenticity of Piltdown Man for four decades, until the truth emerged to discredit their beliefs as a hoax Only evidence can adjudicate the truth, and those who make scientific claims must first present those claims as an hypothesis. That is, their claim must offer a test that will prove its falsehood. Those who do not provide a testable proposition or persist in defending an hypothesis that evidence does not validate are not practicing science but religion. This is exactly what the “Friends of Science” would accuse AGW scientists of: http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Climate_Change_Science.html Given their contention, might another spin be put on why Michael Crichton’s debating team of AGW-deniers defeated a team that advanced the guardians of truth and light in 2007? In other words, was it that the scientists with IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) were not persuasive, or is it their theory that is not persuasive? Could it be that it is not so much that the American public is so ill-informed , but that IPCC scientists are unobservant and in denial?
Nullius in verba Take no one’s word.
IT IS TIME THAT WE DEALT WITH THE GREEN BENEDICT ARNOLDS
I think, when this is done, that we should re-visit what I said in “The Old Boys Network”. Solomon Asch’s findings will come into play. I must open the whole question why Green Icons are locked into this mutual admiration society, swept off their feet in the presence of celebrities of their own social class, whom they feel most comfortable with. For them, meeting one of the Brotherhood Of Men Who Know Better is self-validation, it is looking in the mirror. To have a fellow Demi-God offer his name as an endorsement on the jacket of your new book is an accolade far more important to them than the support of the great unwashed.
Case in point. Bill Ryerson referred to Suzuki as “David” just after meeting him, and he presented the Asch hypothesis as alternative to my sordid revelations about Suzuki having been “bought off”. I told him that Canada has its David Gelbaums too, but they are powerful credit institutions not maverick billionaires. Now, yesterday, Ryerson’s bulletin features the 1992 Rio speech of Suzuki’s daughter, Severn. Severn is Suzuki’s star, his heir to the thrown. I sent Ryerson my essay of last August, the one you never commented on or printed, called “Severn Suzuki Did Not Invent Doomsday”, about how Severn’s west side life was vastly different than my working class east side life, and that she had no right to tell an international audience how “good” my life has been. Then I presented my essay, the one appended to it, about how I (and my generation) was terrorized by the threat of nuclear war, a threat that may yet materialize when the desperate scramble for resources ensues. “Confessions of a Cave Dweller”. Ryerson will likely never print that either. And now Robert Bateman just met with “David”. I still don’t have a report about that meeting. My fear is that David’s selective charm might have the same effect as Hitler did on our Prime Minister Mackenzie King. King was entranced by the Fuhrer’s graciousness and civility. ‘A reasonable fellow, that German Chancellor is.’ We after all, are members of the OLD BOYS CLUB. What Katherine Betts called THE NEW CLASS.
Charm, BTW, means squat to Mother Nature. She prefers an abrasive, gauche neo-Malthusian jerk to a cultured professor of urban planning and “smart” growth at UBC. Just ask Her in a decade or two, when she casts Her vote in the global referendum on over-shoot. Result: Humans, Ney, 8 billion. Mother Nature Yea. Winner Mother Nature. Gaia wins everytime.
I am beginning to appreciate Pol Pot now. First, cull the intelligentsia. The elite club of the Erudite Cosmopolitan Myopics and Quislings (ECMQ) who prefer to smooze with celebrities rather than roll up their sleeves and get down dirty in the trenches, at the grass roots level where the front line is. Who would Coulter prefer to speak to, a mass of protesters in Melbourne protesting growth, pickets protesting a new development that threatens kangaroos, or to a Premier holding a cocktail glass? If it is the latter, then he is a fully paid up member of the ECMQ club, one which includes our entire Green ‘intellegentsia’ in Canada. Even Farley Mowat has been corrupted, compromised and beguiled by the presence of a demi-goddess, Elizabeth May.
As I am tired of saying, our first stumbling block is not the developers, nor the ethnic spokesmen, nor any of the political parties. It is these revered green mouthpieces who capture our anger, our donations, our time and our energy and then use it strike up a mutual back-scratching bargain with our enemies on the QT. Therefore the Green Establishment IS our enemy. Our public enemy Number One. You can’t move forward until you turn and deal with the “friends” who are stabbing you in the back.
Case in point. Bill Ryerson referred to Suzuki as “David” just after meeting him, and he presented the Asch hypothesis as alternative to my sordid revelations about Suzuki having been “bought off”. I told him that Canada has its David Gelbaums too, but they are powerful credit institutions not maverick billionaires. Now, yesterday, Ryerson’s bulletin features the 1992 Rio speech of Suzuki’s daughter, Severn. Severn is Suzuki’s star, his heir to the thrown. I sent Ryerson my essay of last August, the one you never commented on or printed, called “Severn Suzuki Did Not Invent Doomsday”, about how Severn’s west side life was vastly different than my working class east side life, and that she had no right to tell an international audience how “good” my life has been. Then I presented my essay, the one appended to it, about how I (and my generation) was terrorized by the threat of nuclear war, a threat that may yet materialize when the desperate scramble for resources ensues. “Confessions of a Cave Dweller”. Ryerson will likely never print that either. And now Robert Bateman just met with “David”. I still don’t have a report about that meeting. My fear is that David’s selective charm might have the same effect as Hitler did on our Prime Minister Mackenzie King. King was entranced by the Fuhrer’s graciousness and civility. ‘A reasonable fellow, that German Chancellor is.’ We after all, are members of the OLD BOYS CLUB. What Katherine Betts called THE NEW CLASS.
Charm, BTW, means squat to Mother Nature. She prefers an abrasive, gauche neo-Malthusian jerk to a cultured professor of urban planning and “smart” growth at UBC. Just ask Her in a decade or two, when she casts Her vote in the global referendum on over-shoot. Result: Humans, Ney, 8 billion. Mother Nature Yea. Winner Mother Nature. Gaia wins everytime.
I am beginning to appreciate Pol Pot now. First, cull the intelligentsia. The elite club of the Erudite Cosmopolitan Myopics and Quislings (ECMQ) who prefer to smooze with celebrities rather than roll up their sleeves and get down dirty in the trenches, at the grass roots level where the front line is. Who would Coulter prefer to speak to, a mass of protesters in Melbourne protesting growth, pickets protesting a new development that threatens kangaroos, or to a Premier holding a cocktail glass? If it is the latter, then he is a fully paid up member of the ECMQ club, one which includes our entire Green ‘intellegentsia’ in Canada. Even Farley Mowat has been corrupted, compromised and beguiled by the presence of a demi-goddess, Elizabeth May.
As I am tired of saying, our first stumbling block is not the developers, nor the ethnic spokesmen, nor any of the political parties. It is these revered green mouthpieces who capture our anger, our donations, our time and our energy and then use it strike up a mutual back-scratching bargain with our enemies on the QT. Therefore the Green Establishment IS our enemy. Our public enemy Number One. You can’t move forward until you turn and deal with the “friends” who are stabbing you in the back.
SEVERN SUZUKI DID NOT INVENT DOOMSDAY
“In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great hearts of animals, jungles and rainforests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see.” The then twelve year old daughter of Dr. David Suzuki, Severn Suzuki, then asked,
“Did you have to worry about those little things when you were my age?
No Severn, I didn’t, actually. I only had to worry about living long enough to see out the end of the week. You see, my twelfth birthday came on October 14, 1962. Smack in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis. Every day and every night we were riveted to our tiny TV sets in our tiny working class homes on the poor east side of Vancouver, a world away from the upscale west side of town you grew up in, where celebrity environmentalists oblivious to our hardship travel about to scold us for over-consumption. As you will read in the following testament, my generation too, had its “little things” to worry about.
THE GENESIS OF A CAVE-DWELLER
My life as a cave-dweller really began during the cold war while I was in my mother’s womb. Our house had the misfortune of being situated just two blocks from the air raid siren on the water tower that dominated the hill, which was in fact a 750 foot mountain.
Like a Pavlovian dog I was trained to drop everything, turn and run in full flight for home when that siren went off, and it went off randomly about once or twice a week for the first dozen years of my life. At times I felt that I was living in a firehall, except I never was guaranteed a block of four days respite with union pay.
Most of the time I kept within a five minute sprint of home base, but when I started kindergarten at age five, I was three blocks away down the hill, and had to content myself with taking cover under one of Mrs.Yorston’s desks, along with the other children. In September of 1955, just one month shy of my sixth birthday, I had to make the long one mile trek down the other side of the mountain to the elementary school to Grade One. I was so terrified of being that far away from my mother’s protection that she accompanied me to school everyday for the first ten days and actually sat in the classroom with me. When the siren finally went off, the teacher, Mrs.Gillespie, had all the kids hide under the desks just as in kindergarten. But somehow, I felt safer with my mother there as an added psychological buffer.
A year later I was walking home from school with my neighbour and girlfriend Daphne, whom I had promised to marry. We had managed to get within just two blocks from home when that damned siren went off again. We ran for our lives. By the time she reached her mother she was in hysterics. Welcome to the 1950s. The Golden Era.
I managed to hold it together until my twelfth birthday, which I sincerely thought was going to be my last. October 14, 1962. Yes, I truly believed, along with most of my classmates and I surmised, many adults, we were all going to die very soon. The Cuban missile crisis. This was it. 9/11 Terrorism.Y2K. Bird Flu. Al Gore’s Global Warming were a piece of cake. Nothing in life will ever match the feeling of despair and doom of those ten days in October of 62. For most of my boyhood I begged my parents to build a bomb shelter. But sensibly, they refused to build one. They had many reasons. But their main one was, “What if we are the only ones with a shelter and the bombs drop--- are you going to keep your friends out--- can you keep them out?”
I never realized how the Nuclear Terror affected me until about a year ago, that’s right, four decades later, when I observed my dog Barney. That requires an explanation.
As a boy, I would frequently do a disappearing act. My mother would call me without success and then two brothers, a father and two grandparents would scour the house and the yard looking for me. Invariably they would find me sleeping in a cupboard or a drawer with a pillow or blanket even when I was as old as nine years. My father would not build a bomb shelter, so apparently I would find a place that would give me that feeling of safety.
Barney, I notice, is much the same way. I offer him the very best and most capacious of three different beds. But when I turn my back I often find him curled up in the cramped , dark confines of the back of my car where he feels it is safe and cozy. The first seven months of his life were spent in a crate like that.
To this day I must sleep in the inner most recesses of the house, in the basement, in the darkest room, with the windows covered with cardboard and foam to block out the light. I feel threatened by light, brightness and brilliant sunshine---a nuclear blast is my definition of hell. “Gloomy” landscapes inspire comfort. The venues of the Bronte novels, dark stately manors, overcast skies that shadow dark moors also soothe me. There is also nothing that tempts me more than a trail through a dark forest. The Munsters were the first normal family I ever saw on television. When I arrived on Quadra my doctor suggested that I buy a special lamp from the drug store to counter-act SADS (depression) during the winter. On the contrary, I really need a dark shroud to cover the house to combat depression during the summer. Or better still, build a bomb shelter and live in it. Hitler’s residence in the dark forest of East Prussia, “The Wolf’s Lair” would be my Dream Home. The last place I would ever go for a vacation would be sunny Mexico. The last thing I would ever wear would be sunscreen.
That is what the Cold War did for me. I am a Cave-Dweller. Only my dog understands.
POSTCRIPT:
Every generation, it seems, faces a unique test, and emerges stronger or traumatized. Those that follow sometimes arrogantly assume that they invented the end of the world. Biodiversity loss and climate change are indeed calamities that could deal our species out of the game. But so was nuclear war, and it is in our fixation on environmental threats, that we have forgotten to notice the gathering storm clouds. I look over my shoulder at Iran, Israel and the White House, the probability of resource wars, and I just can’t get the monkey of fearing the Bomb off my back. Much in the way my parents couldn’t forget living through the Depression. Like a huckster at a carnival, the Grim Reaper may be playing a shell game with us. We are looking at the two shells labeled climate change and species loss. But the pea is under the one that says “all-out nuclear free-for-all”. Wouldn’t that be the irony. Both Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon lose their bet. To Dr. Strangelove.
Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
August 30, 2008
“Did you have to worry about those little things when you were my age?
No Severn, I didn’t, actually. I only had to worry about living long enough to see out the end of the week. You see, my twelfth birthday came on October 14, 1962. Smack in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis. Every day and every night we were riveted to our tiny TV sets in our tiny working class homes on the poor east side of Vancouver, a world away from the upscale west side of town you grew up in, where celebrity environmentalists oblivious to our hardship travel about to scold us for over-consumption. As you will read in the following testament, my generation too, had its “little things” to worry about.
THE GENESIS OF A CAVE-DWELLER
My life as a cave-dweller really began during the cold war while I was in my mother’s womb. Our house had the misfortune of being situated just two blocks from the air raid siren on the water tower that dominated the hill, which was in fact a 750 foot mountain.
Like a Pavlovian dog I was trained to drop everything, turn and run in full flight for home when that siren went off, and it went off randomly about once or twice a week for the first dozen years of my life. At times I felt that I was living in a firehall, except I never was guaranteed a block of four days respite with union pay.
Most of the time I kept within a five minute sprint of home base, but when I started kindergarten at age five, I was three blocks away down the hill, and had to content myself with taking cover under one of Mrs.Yorston’s desks, along with the other children. In September of 1955, just one month shy of my sixth birthday, I had to make the long one mile trek down the other side of the mountain to the elementary school to Grade One. I was so terrified of being that far away from my mother’s protection that she accompanied me to school everyday for the first ten days and actually sat in the classroom with me. When the siren finally went off, the teacher, Mrs.Gillespie, had all the kids hide under the desks just as in kindergarten. But somehow, I felt safer with my mother there as an added psychological buffer.
A year later I was walking home from school with my neighbour and girlfriend Daphne, whom I had promised to marry. We had managed to get within just two blocks from home when that damned siren went off again. We ran for our lives. By the time she reached her mother she was in hysterics. Welcome to the 1950s. The Golden Era.
I managed to hold it together until my twelfth birthday, which I sincerely thought was going to be my last. October 14, 1962. Yes, I truly believed, along with most of my classmates and I surmised, many adults, we were all going to die very soon. The Cuban missile crisis. This was it. 9/11 Terrorism.Y2K. Bird Flu. Al Gore’s Global Warming were a piece of cake. Nothing in life will ever match the feeling of despair and doom of those ten days in October of 62. For most of my boyhood I begged my parents to build a bomb shelter. But sensibly, they refused to build one. They had many reasons. But their main one was, “What if we are the only ones with a shelter and the bombs drop--- are you going to keep your friends out--- can you keep them out?”
I never realized how the Nuclear Terror affected me until about a year ago, that’s right, four decades later, when I observed my dog Barney. That requires an explanation.
As a boy, I would frequently do a disappearing act. My mother would call me without success and then two brothers, a father and two grandparents would scour the house and the yard looking for me. Invariably they would find me sleeping in a cupboard or a drawer with a pillow or blanket even when I was as old as nine years. My father would not build a bomb shelter, so apparently I would find a place that would give me that feeling of safety.
Barney, I notice, is much the same way. I offer him the very best and most capacious of three different beds. But when I turn my back I often find him curled up in the cramped , dark confines of the back of my car where he feels it is safe and cozy. The first seven months of his life were spent in a crate like that.
To this day I must sleep in the inner most recesses of the house, in the basement, in the darkest room, with the windows covered with cardboard and foam to block out the light. I feel threatened by light, brightness and brilliant sunshine---a nuclear blast is my definition of hell. “Gloomy” landscapes inspire comfort. The venues of the Bronte novels, dark stately manors, overcast skies that shadow dark moors also soothe me. There is also nothing that tempts me more than a trail through a dark forest. The Munsters were the first normal family I ever saw on television. When I arrived on Quadra my doctor suggested that I buy a special lamp from the drug store to counter-act SADS (depression) during the winter. On the contrary, I really need a dark shroud to cover the house to combat depression during the summer. Or better still, build a bomb shelter and live in it. Hitler’s residence in the dark forest of East Prussia, “The Wolf’s Lair” would be my Dream Home. The last place I would ever go for a vacation would be sunny Mexico. The last thing I would ever wear would be sunscreen.
That is what the Cold War did for me. I am a Cave-Dweller. Only my dog understands.
POSTCRIPT:
Every generation, it seems, faces a unique test, and emerges stronger or traumatized. Those that follow sometimes arrogantly assume that they invented the end of the world. Biodiversity loss and climate change are indeed calamities that could deal our species out of the game. But so was nuclear war, and it is in our fixation on environmental threats, that we have forgotten to notice the gathering storm clouds. I look over my shoulder at Iran, Israel and the White House, the probability of resource wars, and I just can’t get the monkey of fearing the Bomb off my back. Much in the way my parents couldn’t forget living through the Depression. Like a huckster at a carnival, the Grim Reaper may be playing a shell game with us. We are looking at the two shells labeled climate change and species loss. But the pea is under the one that says “all-out nuclear free-for-all”. Wouldn’t that be the irony. Both Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon lose their bet. To Dr. Strangelove.
Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
August 30, 2008
WHEN LEFT-WING GROWTHIST GATE KEEPERS WILL NO LONGER STIFLE OUR VOICE
So the editor of Canadian Dimension, Cy Gonick, will not publish the neo-Malthusian perspectives of Brishen Hoff, President of Biodiversity First, because they are too “simplistic”. http://biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com/index.htm
As a university student in the early seventies and late sixties, I subscribed to Cy Gonick’s Canadian Dimension, and read HIS simplistic socialist message until I could stand no more. Don’t you know? To him and his stable of contributors, the world’s problems are all down to “capitalism”. Not industrial civilization or civilization itself. But to this particular form of industrial civilization. There is enough to go around, you see. Just as Marx was trying to tell Malthus more than a century ago. All we have to do is to re-arrange industrial civilization so that the have-nots share the “bounty”. The earth is just bursting with treasures, but the corporate capitalists are holding the key to this Fort Knox of plenty. There is enough food to feed everyone-----but it just isn’t being distributed fairly or efficiently. There is enough room for everyone too. It just requires proper “planning” to protect designated areas of park, farmland, nature etc. Oh yes, in 2009, Marxists are on the green bandwagon too. So there is no space for Hoff’s kind of “simplistic” reasoning. That is, his reactionary idea that population growth is the multiplier of all evils, and that whether you have a socialist or a capitalist agenda, every problem from feeding, housing and educating the masses to defending agricultural and biodiverse lands and oceans is made so much harder to tackle in the context of too many people.
Yep, it is all the fault of “capitalism”. And when socialist regimes in the Soviet Bloc, China, North Korea or Zimbabwe make an even bigger mess of the environment than the capitalist ones, well, you see, it is because “they aren’t really socialist”, but examples of “state capitalism”. Or simply because one individual and the personality cult that develops around him, hijacks the revolution and governs as a dictator. Funny how that always seems to happen though, isn’t it? Funny because socialists, as we see in Canada, Britain, Australia etc. are such paragons and champions of free speech, always willing to let “a hundred flowers bloom and a thousand thoughts contend”. That is of course, if those thoughts aren’t “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic ad infinitum”. And what objective criteria exists for identifying whether opinions are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic ad infinitum”? Why, the objective criteria of the socialists’ subjectivity, naturally. It all depends on whether one of the identity groups that make up the socialist coalition chooses to be offended by your remark. Then the remark becomes the simplistic expression of bigotry or ignorance, and must be shut out to protect authentic democracy. Only “progressive”, “constructive” speech is to be permitted. This is known as “Repressive Tolerance”, the doctrine articulated by the father of contemporary Western left-wing totalitarianism, Herbert Marcuse. No free speech to “fascists”.
Getting a neo-Malthusian article printed in Canadian Dimension would be like the Catholic Weekly printing an article from Watchtower magazine. Far too disturbing to their comfort zone. Why, they might have start thinking and observing what is happening around them, and Good God, they might have to then go shopping for a new paradigm. Better to hold fast to the old one. After all, it has only been around since 1848 and the world hasn’t changed a bit since then, has it? Marx only died yesterday, in 1883. He had ALL the answers then so let’s just confine ourselves to repeating and fine-tuning them. As the leading monk in “The Name of the Rose” warned the protagonist, played by Sean Connery, knowledge must consist of merely repeating the revealed truth of the past, not trying to break new ground with fresh discoveries. That is vanity at its worst. For there is nothing new under the sun. And the villainous monk said something else too. To respect God we must fear Him, but laughter undermines that fear. This is something I have taken to heart. I never dare to tell politically incorrect jokes or write satire. Humour is a form of art, and art must serve the revolution, that is, the politically correct agenda of the month.
Who shall then judge art? Well those who KNOW BETTER of course. The gatekeepers of expression. The editors of left wing rags and the government bureaucrats who censor and threaten you on the one hand, and on the other hand use taxpayers money to subsidize bohemian dead beats so that we may have “art” as they define it. The concept of cutting arts funding so that you or I might benefit from lower taxes and therefore purchase OUR kind of “art” is something quite unacceptable to them. We have what Marx called “false consciousness” you see, that is a belief system not in harmony with “our” true interests as they see them. In other words not consistent with their world view. The view of those who KNOW BETTER. We are the rednecks, the great unwashed, the ignorant, and we are not to be trusted with our own judgment. Is it any wonder then, why they are not impressed with our demands for direct democracy? To them, direct democracy is just “mob” rule. And we can’t have that. Because we are inherently “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic etc etc.” And they are enlightened.
Pity then that their party will soon be over. For the mechanisms of censorship, thought persecutions and the manufactured consent of state broadcasting and public education all depend on the inflated tax revenues from a fossil fuel economy. “Progressive” McCarthyism has been living high on the hog for the last four decades because all the Human Rights Tribunals, the government anti-villification watchdogs, the Womens Studies (Fem-Nazi indoctrination) College courses, the “Hostile Work Environment Thought Police”, the Multicultural state-subsidizied propaganda to engineer our attitudes----all of this machinery of social sculpting and intimidation---requires generous taxpayer funding. When that collapses with Kunstlerian certainty, “soft” totalitarianism will collapse with it, like a House of Cards, like the regimes on the other side of the Berlin Wall suddenly did. Then Mr. Gonick and his ilk will have to find real work and become one of the working class in whose name he has written for so long. And then we will no longer approach them as supplicants, but instead look to our own devices to “educate” people on a more even playing field. As horrible as the Long Emergency may be, the pleasure of seeing those WHO KNOW BETTER knocked off their perch will be compensation enough for me.
As a university student in the early seventies and late sixties, I subscribed to Cy Gonick’s Canadian Dimension, and read HIS simplistic socialist message until I could stand no more. Don’t you know? To him and his stable of contributors, the world’s problems are all down to “capitalism”. Not industrial civilization or civilization itself. But to this particular form of industrial civilization. There is enough to go around, you see. Just as Marx was trying to tell Malthus more than a century ago. All we have to do is to re-arrange industrial civilization so that the have-nots share the “bounty”. The earth is just bursting with treasures, but the corporate capitalists are holding the key to this Fort Knox of plenty. There is enough food to feed everyone-----but it just isn’t being distributed fairly or efficiently. There is enough room for everyone too. It just requires proper “planning” to protect designated areas of park, farmland, nature etc. Oh yes, in 2009, Marxists are on the green bandwagon too. So there is no space for Hoff’s kind of “simplistic” reasoning. That is, his reactionary idea that population growth is the multiplier of all evils, and that whether you have a socialist or a capitalist agenda, every problem from feeding, housing and educating the masses to defending agricultural and biodiverse lands and oceans is made so much harder to tackle in the context of too many people.
Yep, it is all the fault of “capitalism”. And when socialist regimes in the Soviet Bloc, China, North Korea or Zimbabwe make an even bigger mess of the environment than the capitalist ones, well, you see, it is because “they aren’t really socialist”, but examples of “state capitalism”. Or simply because one individual and the personality cult that develops around him, hijacks the revolution and governs as a dictator. Funny how that always seems to happen though, isn’t it? Funny because socialists, as we see in Canada, Britain, Australia etc. are such paragons and champions of free speech, always willing to let “a hundred flowers bloom and a thousand thoughts contend”. That is of course, if those thoughts aren’t “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic ad infinitum”. And what objective criteria exists for identifying whether opinions are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic ad infinitum”? Why, the objective criteria of the socialists’ subjectivity, naturally. It all depends on whether one of the identity groups that make up the socialist coalition chooses to be offended by your remark. Then the remark becomes the simplistic expression of bigotry or ignorance, and must be shut out to protect authentic democracy. Only “progressive”, “constructive” speech is to be permitted. This is known as “Repressive Tolerance”, the doctrine articulated by the father of contemporary Western left-wing totalitarianism, Herbert Marcuse. No free speech to “fascists”.
Getting a neo-Malthusian article printed in Canadian Dimension would be like the Catholic Weekly printing an article from Watchtower magazine. Far too disturbing to their comfort zone. Why, they might have start thinking and observing what is happening around them, and Good God, they might have to then go shopping for a new paradigm. Better to hold fast to the old one. After all, it has only been around since 1848 and the world hasn’t changed a bit since then, has it? Marx only died yesterday, in 1883. He had ALL the answers then so let’s just confine ourselves to repeating and fine-tuning them. As the leading monk in “The Name of the Rose” warned the protagonist, played by Sean Connery, knowledge must consist of merely repeating the revealed truth of the past, not trying to break new ground with fresh discoveries. That is vanity at its worst. For there is nothing new under the sun. And the villainous monk said something else too. To respect God we must fear Him, but laughter undermines that fear. This is something I have taken to heart. I never dare to tell politically incorrect jokes or write satire. Humour is a form of art, and art must serve the revolution, that is, the politically correct agenda of the month.
Who shall then judge art? Well those who KNOW BETTER of course. The gatekeepers of expression. The editors of left wing rags and the government bureaucrats who censor and threaten you on the one hand, and on the other hand use taxpayers money to subsidize bohemian dead beats so that we may have “art” as they define it. The concept of cutting arts funding so that you or I might benefit from lower taxes and therefore purchase OUR kind of “art” is something quite unacceptable to them. We have what Marx called “false consciousness” you see, that is a belief system not in harmony with “our” true interests as they see them. In other words not consistent with their world view. The view of those who KNOW BETTER. We are the rednecks, the great unwashed, the ignorant, and we are not to be trusted with our own judgment. Is it any wonder then, why they are not impressed with our demands for direct democracy? To them, direct democracy is just “mob” rule. And we can’t have that. Because we are inherently “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic etc etc.” And they are enlightened.
Pity then that their party will soon be over. For the mechanisms of censorship, thought persecutions and the manufactured consent of state broadcasting and public education all depend on the inflated tax revenues from a fossil fuel economy. “Progressive” McCarthyism has been living high on the hog for the last four decades because all the Human Rights Tribunals, the government anti-villification watchdogs, the Womens Studies (Fem-Nazi indoctrination) College courses, the “Hostile Work Environment Thought Police”, the Multicultural state-subsidizied propaganda to engineer our attitudes----all of this machinery of social sculpting and intimidation---requires generous taxpayer funding. When that collapses with Kunstlerian certainty, “soft” totalitarianism will collapse with it, like a House of Cards, like the regimes on the other side of the Berlin Wall suddenly did. Then Mr. Gonick and his ilk will have to find real work and become one of the working class in whose name he has written for so long. And then we will no longer approach them as supplicants, but instead look to our own devices to “educate” people on a more even playing field. As horrible as the Long Emergency may be, the pleasure of seeing those WHO KNOW BETTER knocked off their perch will be compensation enough for me.
WHEN WILL CANADA FIND RELIEF FROM INTELLECTUAL TERRORISM?
US College Speech Code Enforcers Face Penalties
http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/01/9630n.htm
At last a victory for free speech. But Canada does not have the 1st amendment, and America does not have a state broadcasting network to smother intellectual independence. The task of rooting out political correctness from our public education system, and CBC Pravda, is most probably an insuperable challenge. Only the collapse of our fossil fuel-based economy offers hope, for the mechanisms of totalitarian intimidation and mind-bending---the human rights tribunals, the workplace harassment guidelines and the ubiquitous CBC---are utterly dependent on the revenues that a post-carbon world will not yield. Judges, complaint officers, trade union ideologues and other factions of the Thought Police will not work for free. They demand the salaries and perks that this artificial economy has provided them. When the power down occurs, those who have made it their life to look for reasons to be “offended” will suddenly have to learn to grow a hide and experience the cold wind of an authentic democracy. They have lived in the hothouse environment of complete immunity from criticism for so long that the shock of freedom will kill them.
Imagine having to endure a dumb blond joke, a judgment on your lifestyle, a critique of your cultural heritage, or a surrender of the victim-role that you used as a club to beat down critics. Life is tough. Especially when you have relied upon the state funded propaganda machine to shield you. Finally you will learn that tolerance was never meant to require mandatory approval. Of course the collapse of state intellectual coercion from under-funding will also mean the starvation of the health and educational systems. Good deal. Then perhaps people might have a chance to get healthy and smart.
If I valued security, free medical care and access to approved information at the cost of my freedom, I would have arranged to be the guest of one of our federal prisons. They guarantee socialized medicine, free housing and access to the approved books of the prison library to all their inmates. The catch is you give up your freedom. Sounds like the bargain all Canadians made a decade or so ago.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/01/9630n.htm
At last a victory for free speech. But Canada does not have the 1st amendment, and America does not have a state broadcasting network to smother intellectual independence. The task of rooting out political correctness from our public education system, and CBC Pravda, is most probably an insuperable challenge. Only the collapse of our fossil fuel-based economy offers hope, for the mechanisms of totalitarian intimidation and mind-bending---the human rights tribunals, the workplace harassment guidelines and the ubiquitous CBC---are utterly dependent on the revenues that a post-carbon world will not yield. Judges, complaint officers, trade union ideologues and other factions of the Thought Police will not work for free. They demand the salaries and perks that this artificial economy has provided them. When the power down occurs, those who have made it their life to look for reasons to be “offended” will suddenly have to learn to grow a hide and experience the cold wind of an authentic democracy. They have lived in the hothouse environment of complete immunity from criticism for so long that the shock of freedom will kill them.
Imagine having to endure a dumb blond joke, a judgment on your lifestyle, a critique of your cultural heritage, or a surrender of the victim-role that you used as a club to beat down critics. Life is tough. Especially when you have relied upon the state funded propaganda machine to shield you. Finally you will learn that tolerance was never meant to require mandatory approval. Of course the collapse of state intellectual coercion from under-funding will also mean the starvation of the health and educational systems. Good deal. Then perhaps people might have a chance to get healthy and smart.
If I valued security, free medical care and access to approved information at the cost of my freedom, I would have arranged to be the guest of one of our federal prisons. They guarantee socialized medicine, free housing and access to the approved books of the prison library to all their inmates. The catch is you give up your freedom. Sounds like the bargain all Canadians made a decade or so ago.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Shhh!!! IN CANADA MOST EVERYBODY NOW IS A SCHOOL LIBRARIAN
Shhh! You can’t say that. This is Canada. You might offend someone! God forbid if he should have his beliefs questioned. In a democracy of all places. We once were a nation of two solitudes, English and French. Now it seems to be the ambition of government, in all its guises and agencies, to create a Canada of 33 million solitudes, each defended from incoming ideas that might disturb his comfort zone. A Canada where no one can talk to anyone, a democracy that cannot have a real national conversation about anything of fundamental importance. Like the role religion should play in our lives. Our right to make our own choices. Or our right to determine what our population level should be.
Case in point. The Halifax Transit Authority recently refused to place an ad from “Humanist Canada” that did not even question the existence of God, but only the need for God. It simply wanted to tell the people of Halifax that “You can be good without God”. To the bus company, that message is too incendiary. After all, too many of the 75% of Canadians who believe in God and His importance might experience a sudden outbreak of goodness from 8 million non-believers and have their whole belief system rocked. At the very least, they might become upset. Oh dear me, imagine becoming upset. That clearly violates our Constitution under the Section reading, “As a Canadian you are guaranteed the absolute right never to be upset by contrarian opinions.” That is reflective of our more famous assertion that our country is devoted to “Peace, order and good government”. A dream never realized in any of those categories. But still a dream worth pursuing obviously. Not like the American commitment to “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Who needs liberty? It only upsets the peace.
One appreciates the fact, of course, that Canada is not the only beneficiary of this British attitude. After all, last year the town council of Peterborough, England, saw fit to spend the taxpayers’ money on prosecuting and fining a man who dared to wear a T-shirt adorned with a slogan they thought inappropriate for the tender eyes of his fellow citizens. But hey, we invented Official Multiculturalism for Darwin’s sake, and enshrined the concept that citizens have the right never to be offended.
The fallacy is, though, that citizens of any kind are offended. Rather, they choose to take offence, and are encouraged and programmed to look for opportunities to be offended by, that is, to take offence at. After all, if one can offended enough times, it earns persecution points in the quest to have your chosen identity category be certified as a legitimate and officially designated “victim” group. Once you earn that status, you are guaranteed state immunity from criticism. Thereafter, any legitimate criticism of your group can only be tolerated if it comes from within your group. That is quite a recipe for a healthy democracy, isn’t it?
On the contrary, a healthy democracy is not a Diversity Hyper-Sensitivity session. Its mission is to encourage a diversity of opinions, thoughts and ideas. Not to smother expression of differences in the name of harmony, for harmony does not follow from censorship but from the full ventilation of differences. Don’t believe me? Ask the people in the former Yugoslavian Republic of Serene Tolerance. Only by having those differences defined by public debate can they be resolved. But tell those in government that, or the agencies of government, like the Halifax Metro Transit Authority. They insisted that they will not advertise a message that is “controversial or upsetting”, leading the President of Humanist Canada, Pat O’Brien, to ask:
“It would be interesting to see what vegans think about the KFC ads---I mean, at what point do you stop offending people?”
Case in point. The Halifax Transit Authority recently refused to place an ad from “Humanist Canada” that did not even question the existence of God, but only the need for God. It simply wanted to tell the people of Halifax that “You can be good without God”. To the bus company, that message is too incendiary. After all, too many of the 75% of Canadians who believe in God and His importance might experience a sudden outbreak of goodness from 8 million non-believers and have their whole belief system rocked. At the very least, they might become upset. Oh dear me, imagine becoming upset. That clearly violates our Constitution under the Section reading, “As a Canadian you are guaranteed the absolute right never to be upset by contrarian opinions.” That is reflective of our more famous assertion that our country is devoted to “Peace, order and good government”. A dream never realized in any of those categories. But still a dream worth pursuing obviously. Not like the American commitment to “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Who needs liberty? It only upsets the peace.
One appreciates the fact, of course, that Canada is not the only beneficiary of this British attitude. After all, last year the town council of Peterborough, England, saw fit to spend the taxpayers’ money on prosecuting and fining a man who dared to wear a T-shirt adorned with a slogan they thought inappropriate for the tender eyes of his fellow citizens. But hey, we invented Official Multiculturalism for Darwin’s sake, and enshrined the concept that citizens have the right never to be offended.
The fallacy is, though, that citizens of any kind are offended. Rather, they choose to take offence, and are encouraged and programmed to look for opportunities to be offended by, that is, to take offence at. After all, if one can offended enough times, it earns persecution points in the quest to have your chosen identity category be certified as a legitimate and officially designated “victim” group. Once you earn that status, you are guaranteed state immunity from criticism. Thereafter, any legitimate criticism of your group can only be tolerated if it comes from within your group. That is quite a recipe for a healthy democracy, isn’t it?
On the contrary, a healthy democracy is not a Diversity Hyper-Sensitivity session. Its mission is to encourage a diversity of opinions, thoughts and ideas. Not to smother expression of differences in the name of harmony, for harmony does not follow from censorship but from the full ventilation of differences. Don’t believe me? Ask the people in the former Yugoslavian Republic of Serene Tolerance. Only by having those differences defined by public debate can they be resolved. But tell those in government that, or the agencies of government, like the Halifax Metro Transit Authority. They insisted that they will not advertise a message that is “controversial or upsetting”, leading the President of Humanist Canada, Pat O’Brien, to ask:
“It would be interesting to see what vegans think about the KFC ads---I mean, at what point do you stop offending people?”
BROWN LIVING TIPS----A Million Acts of Unkindness to Save Species From Human Population Growth
According to Brishen Hoff, essentially,“Buying local means buying more environmental degradation”. This would make a good chapter in a broadside called “Bring on the Apocalypse”. Included: Gentlemen, “Idle Your Engines” and “A Neo-Malthusian Garbage Strike”. Inside this anthology must also be“Brown Living Tips—a million acts to save species from daily Human growth”. I will say that I too made a life style change. I pulled out my CFL lights, I now buy regular and not premium gasoline, I mix my garbage and I eat as much beef as I can. I also discourage tourism by being gratuitously unfriendly to outsiders and giving them bum directions. I don’t report fallen trees across the hiking trails so that they may not be quickly repaired by the Sierra Club whose trail maintenance only attracts more tourists and potential residents. If a tourist is gay I will pretend to be homophobic. If he is homophobic I will pretend to be a member of a thriving gay community. If he is Christian and wants to know if there are many welcoming churches in the area I will tell him that atheists drove them off the island and that the only meeting hall is run by humanists. If he is Jewish like one tourist I met last June and asks me if there is any anti-Semitism here I will tell him that there isn’t anymore after all the Jews left town. If he is anti-semitic I will tell him that I am president of the local 500 member chapter of B’nai Brith. If a stranger asks me where he can buy a fishing licence I will tell him that none are sold because our lakes have been fished out. The possibilities are endless. The number of Brown living tips are too many to count. But they will all serve one Higher Environmental Purpose. TO KEEP OUR NUMBERS DOWN. Each day 200 species die out because we live on---and keep growing.
Which makes me suggest yet another statement for our Biodiversity First Vision Statements. That we believe in the establishment of an Anti-Tourism Department which will discourage people from coming to Canada. Slogan “Come to Canada, Where you will either FREEZE YOUR ASS in the winter or be EATEN ALIVE by black flies in the summer.” Or “Canada, Not Where You Want to Be, Believe Me”. An aggressive marketing plan by the Ministry of Immigration to highlight all the negative facts of life about our country posted across the four corners of the earth should be started. Instead of encouraging people to come with their culture intact we will announce restrictions that would make their life here impossible. American immigration applicants would be told that they will be arrested if heard speaking without putting an “ly” after adverbs and saying “Huh” when they should say “eh”. And all would have to swear off 4-down football. The Germans won’t be welcome unless they laugh audibly at jokes none of which they seem to get. Italians will be fined for using hand gestures while talking. Poles will be told that they must keep an even keel and never go into the plumbing business. Irish newcomers will be told that no drinking is allowed on the premises. Anywhere. Australians will be informed that they are prohibited from skiing or partying. And so on. Life in a straight jacket. A prohibition customized for every group. Accompanied by films about the horrors have having children, especially by teens, who will be shown as young parents who have no life. Unwed mothers will once again be stigmatized and those who sired their children social outcasts.
At the very least we should have billboards like they did in Oregon in the early seventies. “Come to Oregon for a visit, but don’t stay”. Unfortunately the research indicates that tourists do stay. Permanently. What is called for to contain local growth is an “Unwelcome Wagon” which drives up to the motel of a prospective buyer and heaps scorn on him. Visitors will be presented upon arrival will be greeted by a booth of Visitor Disinformation. Unhelpful maps and guides will be offered to all those who are confused. Such booths should also be placed at every airport to discourage immigrants. A brochure in several languages should enumerate Canada’s shortcomings. The extreme temperature variations, the lack of professional jobs, gang violence, biodiversity loss etc. And those in the tourist service sector will be required to take courses on how to be surly. Then one fine day we will be able to call it the Inhospitable Industry . Canada’s slogan will become not “Canada, Home to the World” but “Canada, Do not Disturb”.
Which makes me suggest yet another statement for our Biodiversity First Vision Statements. That we believe in the establishment of an Anti-Tourism Department which will discourage people from coming to Canada. Slogan “Come to Canada, Where you will either FREEZE YOUR ASS in the winter or be EATEN ALIVE by black flies in the summer.” Or “Canada, Not Where You Want to Be, Believe Me”. An aggressive marketing plan by the Ministry of Immigration to highlight all the negative facts of life about our country posted across the four corners of the earth should be started. Instead of encouraging people to come with their culture intact we will announce restrictions that would make their life here impossible. American immigration applicants would be told that they will be arrested if heard speaking without putting an “ly” after adverbs and saying “Huh” when they should say “eh”. And all would have to swear off 4-down football. The Germans won’t be welcome unless they laugh audibly at jokes none of which they seem to get. Italians will be fined for using hand gestures while talking. Poles will be told that they must keep an even keel and never go into the plumbing business. Irish newcomers will be told that no drinking is allowed on the premises. Anywhere. Australians will be informed that they are prohibited from skiing or partying. And so on. Life in a straight jacket. A prohibition customized for every group. Accompanied by films about the horrors have having children, especially by teens, who will be shown as young parents who have no life. Unwed mothers will once again be stigmatized and those who sired their children social outcasts.
At the very least we should have billboards like they did in Oregon in the early seventies. “Come to Oregon for a visit, but don’t stay”. Unfortunately the research indicates that tourists do stay. Permanently. What is called for to contain local growth is an “Unwelcome Wagon” which drives up to the motel of a prospective buyer and heaps scorn on him. Visitors will be presented upon arrival will be greeted by a booth of Visitor Disinformation. Unhelpful maps and guides will be offered to all those who are confused. Such booths should also be placed at every airport to discourage immigrants. A brochure in several languages should enumerate Canada’s shortcomings. The extreme temperature variations, the lack of professional jobs, gang violence, biodiversity loss etc. And those in the tourist service sector will be required to take courses on how to be surly. Then one fine day we will be able to call it the Inhospitable Industry . Canada’s slogan will become not “Canada, Home to the World” but “Canada, Do not Disturb”.
BLESSED ARE THE TROUBLE-MAKERS
“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No I tell you, but division.”
Jesus Christ in Luke 12:51
I came to Quadra to disturb and rankle you. To provoke your conditioned responses and refute them. To challenge your socially acceptable prejudices with my socially outrageous truths. To promote mental yoga by forcing your brain to establish new neural pathways to process your prefabricated information in alternative ways.
I came not to build upon a rotten foundation but to tear it asunder.
I came to force unspoken and unacknowledged disagreements to the surface with provocative and disrespectful questions so that they may examined and resolved.
I came to excavate the dormant truth rather than bury it with soothing falsehoods.
I came to yank the self-proclaimed enlightened ones from CBC-life support so that they may survive by intellectual self-reliance and impartial research, rather than their lazy dependence on Sierra-NDP sound bites.
I came to rip off the bandage of friendly banalities, false harmony, manufactured consent and superficial smiles and expose the festering wound of subterranean acrimony beneath it so that it can be lanced with satire, derision and criticism. Venting it with small town covert gossip is not a cure but a disease of the cowardly.
From the imposition of artificial unity comes simmering, septic resentments that ultimately erupt in war. Yugoslavian peace becomes a Balkan war. Delusion and denial do not make for a lasting armistice.
From civil wars comes durable harmony. Fevers cannot be cured by throwing out the thermometer nor wounds healed without ventilation. Beware of the “peacemakers” for they do not bring peace but an uneasy truce with unresolved disputes and a prescription of reconciliation and forgiveness for the corrupt and unrepentant.
I came not really as a trouble-maker because I found it already here hidden under lock and key by those afraid to air it out. I merely wish to release it with Gestalt therapy on a public scale.
I came not to be your emotional caretaker or take responsibility for your reactions and interpretations. I am not obligated to live by your limitations or submit to your chosen mantle of victimhood. If need be I will defy your taboos. You can choose not to take offense.
If you elect to be offended, your perceptions of me are not of my concern. I know who I am. I am a writer, and writers are not elected to be kind, but to liberate the truth and set you free. T. Murray
COURAGE IS THE MEASURE OF CHARACTER
“To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.” Theodore H. White
“Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet is the one essential, vital, quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.” Robert F. Kennedy
“Without courage, all other virtues are to of no avail” Charles Dickens
Ostracism and censure from the morally relativistic and depraved politically correct culture of Quadra is a badge of honour. The Suzuki cult and the Sierra-NDP ruling clique of wine-drinking, CBC-listening, artsy fartsy green yuppies, the unwitting servants and dupes of the corporate agenda---are the Pharisees of our time. Good is bad and bad is good. Soon they will belong to the dustbin of history, and the corrupt money-grubbing corporate lackeys in the Sierra Club hierarchy will be a distant memory.
Tim Murray
Jesus Christ in Luke 12:51
I came to Quadra to disturb and rankle you. To provoke your conditioned responses and refute them. To challenge your socially acceptable prejudices with my socially outrageous truths. To promote mental yoga by forcing your brain to establish new neural pathways to process your prefabricated information in alternative ways.
I came not to build upon a rotten foundation but to tear it asunder.
I came to force unspoken and unacknowledged disagreements to the surface with provocative and disrespectful questions so that they may examined and resolved.
I came to excavate the dormant truth rather than bury it with soothing falsehoods.
I came to yank the self-proclaimed enlightened ones from CBC-life support so that they may survive by intellectual self-reliance and impartial research, rather than their lazy dependence on Sierra-NDP sound bites.
I came to rip off the bandage of friendly banalities, false harmony, manufactured consent and superficial smiles and expose the festering wound of subterranean acrimony beneath it so that it can be lanced with satire, derision and criticism. Venting it with small town covert gossip is not a cure but a disease of the cowardly.
From the imposition of artificial unity comes simmering, septic resentments that ultimately erupt in war. Yugoslavian peace becomes a Balkan war. Delusion and denial do not make for a lasting armistice.
From civil wars comes durable harmony. Fevers cannot be cured by throwing out the thermometer nor wounds healed without ventilation. Beware of the “peacemakers” for they do not bring peace but an uneasy truce with unresolved disputes and a prescription of reconciliation and forgiveness for the corrupt and unrepentant.
I came not really as a trouble-maker because I found it already here hidden under lock and key by those afraid to air it out. I merely wish to release it with Gestalt therapy on a public scale.
I came not to be your emotional caretaker or take responsibility for your reactions and interpretations. I am not obligated to live by your limitations or submit to your chosen mantle of victimhood. If need be I will defy your taboos. You can choose not to take offense.
If you elect to be offended, your perceptions of me are not of my concern. I know who I am. I am a writer, and writers are not elected to be kind, but to liberate the truth and set you free. T. Murray
COURAGE IS THE MEASURE OF CHARACTER
“To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.” Theodore H. White
“Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet is the one essential, vital, quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.” Robert F. Kennedy
“Without courage, all other virtues are to of no avail” Charles Dickens
Ostracism and censure from the morally relativistic and depraved politically correct culture of Quadra is a badge of honour. The Suzuki cult and the Sierra-NDP ruling clique of wine-drinking, CBC-listening, artsy fartsy green yuppies, the unwitting servants and dupes of the corporate agenda---are the Pharisees of our time. Good is bad and bad is good. Soon they will belong to the dustbin of history, and the corrupt money-grubbing corporate lackeys in the Sierra Club hierarchy will be a distant memory.
Tim Murray
Thursday, February 5, 2009
AN ECONOMIC CRISIS IS A TERRIBLE THING TO SQUANDER Environmentalists Blow Opportunity To Teach The Ecological Facts of Life
Once again when they are needed most, when important lessons could be drawn and taught about the subsidiary importance of the market meltdown, environmentalists are found missing in action, pissing around addressing symptoms and putting out brush fires while failing to deal with the root cause of our crisis---growth. They are hacking at the branches of evil while neo-Malthusians unilaterally try with no offer of assistance to pull up its roots.
For Canadians of my father’s generation, the farce of the last five months is too reminiscent of 1939. Think about it. Two different American presidents in concert with Congress have spent or will soon have spent over a trillion and a half dollars on bailing out the perpetrators of the stock market crash and credit crisis when no money could be found for environmental problems just the day before. Just like the politicians of the 1930s who insisted that government did not have the money to counteract mass unemployment with public works, then suddenly found that money in spades when Hitler invaded Poland. In one parliamentary sitting in the Canadian House of Commons, they voted for massive military expenditures, and eventually employed 10% of the population as members of the armed forces. Some of the same people that that same government would not employ to work on infrastructure projects during the depression that led up to the onset of war.
Now we have witnessed the sudden and mind-boggling dump of hundreds and hundreds of billion dollars down the rat-hole of market bail-outs after years of being told that there was no money available to make the adjustments called for by Kyoto, or for conservation management or for many other environmental projects. As one conservationist friend put it,
“The world has been told that the well being of human civilization is based entirely on consumption and the only way to get out of this downturn is to consume more.
In the blink of an eye we have been able to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to throw into the void of a virtual and abstract "economy" whereas all arguments for cleaning up the planet met with the refrain that it would cripple the economy. Can you imagine what we could do with just $1 billion. If the soft greens cannot now articulate the point that our consumption-and growth-based economies are a based on a lie, then they are even more pathetic than I thought.”
One can only conclude that, once again, the Environmental movement has dropped the ball. In fact, they haven’t even been in the game. They continue to be absent-without-leave when their critical voice was needed during this recession-cum-depression. Just as it was silent in March of 2007 when the Canadian census announced, to media applause, that Canada’s had suffered the largest immigrant-driven population growth rate of all G8 countries, with all of the attendant environmental consequences inherent in that trend. And when a Romanian-born couple gave birth to their 18th child, they countered media celebration with silence, as they do every New Year when television, radio and newspapers turn January 1st into a derby as to who shall be feted as parents of the first newborn of the year. Apparently population growth is of no account to their crusade to fight climate change, save farmland or wildlife habitat. It is all about green living tips to reduce our per capita consumption, renewable technology fantasies and smart growth nostrums to manage growth and protect nature reserves from the tidal wave of growth that will nullify all those measures.
Now the media features an another grotesque spectacle of a single mother of six children giving birth to octuplets thanks to fertility drugs. Bet on the Sierra Club and its green clones being mum about that incident too.
Mutliple births to demographic litterbugs, stratospheric immigration levels and the colossal waste involved in trying to prop up an unsustainable artificial economy all presented environmental NGOs with an unparalled opportunity to educate the masses, beginning with their own supporters and dupes. But how can a teacher who assigns failing grades to government for failing to address symptoms be qualified to educate us when he himself rates an F for ignorance, hypocrisy, cowardice and corruption?
In reviewing their conduct in just the last two years, never mind the last two decades, I am moved to address the environmental NGO’s in the same words that MP Leo Amery denounced his friend, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the British House of Commons after the debacle in Norway:
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go !”
They haven’t led, so they must either follow or get the hell out of the way. To save the environment, we must be rid of these so-called “environmentalists.”
For Canadians of my father’s generation, the farce of the last five months is too reminiscent of 1939. Think about it. Two different American presidents in concert with Congress have spent or will soon have spent over a trillion and a half dollars on bailing out the perpetrators of the stock market crash and credit crisis when no money could be found for environmental problems just the day before. Just like the politicians of the 1930s who insisted that government did not have the money to counteract mass unemployment with public works, then suddenly found that money in spades when Hitler invaded Poland. In one parliamentary sitting in the Canadian House of Commons, they voted for massive military expenditures, and eventually employed 10% of the population as members of the armed forces. Some of the same people that that same government would not employ to work on infrastructure projects during the depression that led up to the onset of war.
Now we have witnessed the sudden and mind-boggling dump of hundreds and hundreds of billion dollars down the rat-hole of market bail-outs after years of being told that there was no money available to make the adjustments called for by Kyoto, or for conservation management or for many other environmental projects. As one conservationist friend put it,
“The world has been told that the well being of human civilization is based entirely on consumption and the only way to get out of this downturn is to consume more.
In the blink of an eye we have been able to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to throw into the void of a virtual and abstract "economy" whereas all arguments for cleaning up the planet met with the refrain that it would cripple the economy. Can you imagine what we could do with just $1 billion. If the soft greens cannot now articulate the point that our consumption-and growth-based economies are a based on a lie, then they are even more pathetic than I thought.”
One can only conclude that, once again, the Environmental movement has dropped the ball. In fact, they haven’t even been in the game. They continue to be absent-without-leave when their critical voice was needed during this recession-cum-depression. Just as it was silent in March of 2007 when the Canadian census announced, to media applause, that Canada’s had suffered the largest immigrant-driven population growth rate of all G8 countries, with all of the attendant environmental consequences inherent in that trend. And when a Romanian-born couple gave birth to their 18th child, they countered media celebration with silence, as they do every New Year when television, radio and newspapers turn January 1st into a derby as to who shall be feted as parents of the first newborn of the year. Apparently population growth is of no account to their crusade to fight climate change, save farmland or wildlife habitat. It is all about green living tips to reduce our per capita consumption, renewable technology fantasies and smart growth nostrums to manage growth and protect nature reserves from the tidal wave of growth that will nullify all those measures.
Now the media features an another grotesque spectacle of a single mother of six children giving birth to octuplets thanks to fertility drugs. Bet on the Sierra Club and its green clones being mum about that incident too.
Mutliple births to demographic litterbugs, stratospheric immigration levels and the colossal waste involved in trying to prop up an unsustainable artificial economy all presented environmental NGOs with an unparalled opportunity to educate the masses, beginning with their own supporters and dupes. But how can a teacher who assigns failing grades to government for failing to address symptoms be qualified to educate us when he himself rates an F for ignorance, hypocrisy, cowardice and corruption?
In reviewing their conduct in just the last two years, never mind the last two decades, I am moved to address the environmental NGO’s in the same words that MP Leo Amery denounced his friend, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the British House of Commons after the debacle in Norway:
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go !”
They haven’t led, so they must either follow or get the hell out of the way. To save the environment, we must be rid of these so-called “environmentalists.”
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