For nearly half a century now, NDP supporters were told by federal Liberals that “A vote for the NDP is a vote for the Conservatives---don’t split the ‘progressive’ vote." New Democrats responded that it was more important to vote for something than against it, to vote according to one’s hopes and ideals rather than according to one’s fears and anathemas. The NDP stood for something quite distinct from the Liberals—so we were told.
Now we hear New Democrats singing the same old federal Liberal tune: a vote for the Green Party is a vote for the provincial Liberals. “Don’t split the vote !” they warn. “We can’t allow THEM to return to power to complete their ruination of the province.”
But is it the Campbell Liberals who are ruining British Columbia or the ideology which drives them, the prevailing ideology of our time and the death knell of our civilization? The ideology of Growthism, the belief that infinite growth is possible and necessary in a finite world. A belief in a “hair-of-the-dog” therapy for our economic hang-over, a stimulation of stalled growth by the creation of money from thin air to fix a toxic system rather than scrap it? The BC Liberals and the NDP are merely two factions of this religion of madness and denial.
NDP Environment critic Shane Simpson is a proponent of an oxymoronic palliative he calls “managed growth”. He is like a man who thinks he can stuff an entire clothing store into his bedroom closet just by buying closet organizers. It has never occurred to him just to stop buying clothes. We don’t “manage” growth, growth manages us. The time for steady-state economics is four decades overdue. And the leader of the BC Green Party, Jane Sterk, is the first leader of a Canadian political party to commit to it. It is an historic intellectual breakthrough. Finally someone offers a revolutionary vision.
A vote for one’s principles is NEVER a wasted vote. For it is from a small bridgehead that ultimate victories are won. Third parties can form governments--ask Ed Schreyer. And failing that, they can certainly influence them.
Strategic voting, on the other hand, is a delegation of one’s conscience and a betrayal of one’s ideals. Both the incumbent Liberals and the putative “alternative”, the NDP, want to “grow the pie”--- they merely argue about its division. The NDP is not the alternative. Economic growth combined with a “green agenda” is as dubious as a virgin birth. There is no social democracy on a dead planet.
Why did it take me so long to understand that and break with my robotic voting habits? I’m proof that addictions can be broken. Time for you to give it a trial too.
Tim Murray
May 2/09
PS This is a departure for me.(Just read my last rant about the federal Green Party's confused vision.) I have been scathing in my denunciations of the Greens and not satisfied with any form of representatve democracy. Direct democracy is my antidote. However, in this BC provincial electiion finally someone has something negative to say about growth. No other Green leader has taken Sterk's stand. I feel I must line up behind her and her historic stance, despite my distaste for much of the party's approach. I don't feel that I can nitpick now. If they accept my key premise, how can I NOT work with them? They are the only vehicle I see now for some of my ideas, ideas founded on the formerly conventional wisdom of the "IPAT" equation formulated by Ehrlich and Holdren four decades ago.
As I have written, the Greens are an evolving party that is rife with inconsistency. But the NDP, on the other hand, is consistently wrong. They have cohesion but then so do a herd of lemmings that run toward the cliff. There are pockets of full comprehension in the Green Party, and from these seeds a greater understanding can grow. Even those Greens with whom I have had vehement disagreements with have exhibited a base line of ecological literacy seldom found in the NDP. They have potential, Canada's social democrats apparently don't. I know, it took me four decades to find out working from the inside.
New Democrats fundamentally don't get it. Their ideology is rooted in the cornucopian belief that there is enough to go around, and that just redisbribution and new technologies will solve all shortages. They are profoundly wrong, and the end of the petroleum age will be their rude awakening. Those of us who will survive the coming Kunstlerian future will experience a crash dive in population and consumption levels. While equitable wealth dispersion must be an important feature of this brutally austere post-carbon world, the emphasis must still be placed on sustainability.
So far, New Democrats still have not grasped the concept of "carrying capacity". They are pathetically antique and should be stuffed and placed in the Smithsonian so that visitors may marvel at how such a dinosaur could have survived for so long on a diet of shop-worn left/right dichotomies and tired slogans.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
THE INCOHERENT AND CONFUSED VISION OF CANADA'S GREEN PARTY
Forgive me, but this is a joke. An essential ingredient to a steady state economy is population control. Not only do the Greens not evidence any understanding of this, their party is committed to the 1% immigration target of the opposition parties in Ottawa. That is right. The Greens favour an immigration quota that is 25% higher than the present intake of 265,000 immigrants per year. Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May is oblivious to the fact that immigration since 1990 is responsible for 3 to 4 times as much GHG emissions as the Alberta tar sands project, which she claims makes immigration a relatively trivial issue. Immigration is not only responsible for 80% of our 30% overshoot of the 2012 Kyoto emissions target, but it is responsible for sprawl that is 3-4 times the size of Toronto or 3-4 times the size of the tar sands. And that sprawl consumes 60,000 acres of prime farmland per year in Ontario alone. When confronted by the absurdity of taking the “P” out of the IPAT formula, Greens reply with standard clichés
. Elizabeth May says that population growth is not the issue, the issue is, in her words, “Shall we live like Ghandi or live like Bill Gates”. It is all just a question of overconsumption. She is confused. On the one hand she touts smart growth as a method of blunting any ecological consequences of mass immigration, but when shown the failure of smart growth experiments in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, she replies that New Canadians can be settled in northern and rural Canada where local governments are crying out for more people. She wants both densification AND dispersal, in other words. The problem is there is no constitutional mechanism to keep immigrants in regions that they don’t prefer to live in. Like native born Canadians who have left those areas, immigrants tend not to like desolation, isolation, sub-zero temperatures and black flies, much preferring the major urban centres close to the border. And since land use planning is in local hands, and not federal, she must know that local governments are bought and paid for by developers, who finance 75% of local political campaigns. OK, that is the federal Greens. But the ideological bent is in that direction elsewhere.
Ontario provincial Green leader Frank de Jong is similarly confused. He told me, when pressed, that Canada is probably overpopulated “by a factor of 4 to 10”. But publicly he has stated here and in Australia his oft-repeated line that “population is a red herring”. Economic growth is too, he claims, because we can grow the economy ten fold as long as we reduce “throughput”. An economy of yoga teachers and musicians would be ecologically benign, in his estimation. But how can a service industry exist without secondary and primary industry to support it? If not locally or in Canada, then through “appropriated capacity”? What is the morality of making a foreign locality do the dirty work?
Elizabeth May claims to be against economic growth, quoting Ehrlich in saying that it is “the ideology of the cancer cell”. Yet how can we inject 330,000 new consumers into a hyper consumer economy from immigration each year and NOT grow economically? How can British Columbia accept 60,000 newcomers, half from other provinces and half from overseas, every year, and NOT grow economically? Do Greens propose that we live like Fred Flinstone? Or is economic growth generated by ghosts? If Chris Clugston’s Societal Overextension Analysis of America is applied to Canada, we have a choice. We can live as we do now, but only with a population of 1.12 million Canadians, or the population of Ottawa-Carelton and Cornwall, Ontario combined. Or, we can keep our 33 million consumers, but subsist on a Cambodian income of $1800 per year. Try making it through a typical Canadian winter trying to heat your home on that budget. Alternatively, we can occupy an intermediate position of say, 10 million Canadians earning $20,000 each. Sounds good, but we still have to off-load twenty million people or so. Elizabeth May’s immigration plans would not fit in with that prescription. Perhaps we could trade her for Australian Green Party leader Bob Brown, or any New Zealand Green politician, both of whom see the Elephant on the pool table and have proposed a Population Plan for their respective countries.
To achieve a steady state economy for the province of British Columbia, we need zero net migration at the very least federally, eliminate birth incentives and over-ride the freedom of movement clause in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Only then could do what Albert Bartlett said was necessary for successful local planning: Stabilize the regional population. Locally we could then apply the tools used by Noosa Shire, Queensland, Qualicum Beach, BC and Okotoks, Alberta to cap local growth. But I don’t know whether Greens will ever go there. They are, like the NDP, growth managers, not growth-stoppers. And as we know, you don’t manage growth, growth manages you.
In the meantime, I intend to vote with a write-in ballot---for the Cambodian Party of BC.
Tim Murray
________________________________________
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/BC-Politics/2009/04/14/SteadyStateBC/
Greens propose steady-state economy for BC
By Colleen Kimmett April 14, 2009 10:08 am 2 comments
The Green Party is proposing a steady-state economy for British Columbia, party leader Jane Sterk told The Hook this weekend.
In March, the Greens released their platform without a budget. Sterk asserted that "we would have had to do what the NDP did, which is to create unreal numbers with an unreal statement," and said her party is proposing a different way of accounting.
"We would be looking at the costs and benefits of the economy, the environment and the social fabric," she said. "Translating the budget as it is now into that triple bottom line thinking would be an extraordinarily resource-intensive exercise which would require economists and financial analysts and we simply don't have the resources to do that."
Sterk called the gross domestic product measure of the economy an additive measure that doesn't account for the negative effects of actions, as long as they generate revenue.
"We're proposing to add into our measure of our society the genuine progress indicator, which would say that if you have 13 per cent of your population living in poverty...it's not a healthy economy."
Sterk acknowledged that a model of limited economic growth might not be an easy sell, but added that it could also be difficult to convince a public to consume goods they don't really need in order to save the economy.
"We see strong regional economies with a lot of job development, a lot of green industry development. We're saying better, not bigger. I think that's a saleable model for most people."
. Elizabeth May says that population growth is not the issue, the issue is, in her words, “Shall we live like Ghandi or live like Bill Gates”. It is all just a question of overconsumption. She is confused. On the one hand she touts smart growth as a method of blunting any ecological consequences of mass immigration, but when shown the failure of smart growth experiments in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, she replies that New Canadians can be settled in northern and rural Canada where local governments are crying out for more people. She wants both densification AND dispersal, in other words. The problem is there is no constitutional mechanism to keep immigrants in regions that they don’t prefer to live in. Like native born Canadians who have left those areas, immigrants tend not to like desolation, isolation, sub-zero temperatures and black flies, much preferring the major urban centres close to the border. And since land use planning is in local hands, and not federal, she must know that local governments are bought and paid for by developers, who finance 75% of local political campaigns. OK, that is the federal Greens. But the ideological bent is in that direction elsewhere.
Ontario provincial Green leader Frank de Jong is similarly confused. He told me, when pressed, that Canada is probably overpopulated “by a factor of 4 to 10”. But publicly he has stated here and in Australia his oft-repeated line that “population is a red herring”. Economic growth is too, he claims, because we can grow the economy ten fold as long as we reduce “throughput”. An economy of yoga teachers and musicians would be ecologically benign, in his estimation. But how can a service industry exist without secondary and primary industry to support it? If not locally or in Canada, then through “appropriated capacity”? What is the morality of making a foreign locality do the dirty work?
Elizabeth May claims to be against economic growth, quoting Ehrlich in saying that it is “the ideology of the cancer cell”. Yet how can we inject 330,000 new consumers into a hyper consumer economy from immigration each year and NOT grow economically? How can British Columbia accept 60,000 newcomers, half from other provinces and half from overseas, every year, and NOT grow economically? Do Greens propose that we live like Fred Flinstone? Or is economic growth generated by ghosts? If Chris Clugston’s Societal Overextension Analysis of America is applied to Canada, we have a choice. We can live as we do now, but only with a population of 1.12 million Canadians, or the population of Ottawa-Carelton and Cornwall, Ontario combined. Or, we can keep our 33 million consumers, but subsist on a Cambodian income of $1800 per year. Try making it through a typical Canadian winter trying to heat your home on that budget. Alternatively, we can occupy an intermediate position of say, 10 million Canadians earning $20,000 each. Sounds good, but we still have to off-load twenty million people or so. Elizabeth May’s immigration plans would not fit in with that prescription. Perhaps we could trade her for Australian Green Party leader Bob Brown, or any New Zealand Green politician, both of whom see the Elephant on the pool table and have proposed a Population Plan for their respective countries.
To achieve a steady state economy for the province of British Columbia, we need zero net migration at the very least federally, eliminate birth incentives and over-ride the freedom of movement clause in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Only then could do what Albert Bartlett said was necessary for successful local planning: Stabilize the regional population. Locally we could then apply the tools used by Noosa Shire, Queensland, Qualicum Beach, BC and Okotoks, Alberta to cap local growth. But I don’t know whether Greens will ever go there. They are, like the NDP, growth managers, not growth-stoppers. And as we know, you don’t manage growth, growth manages you.
In the meantime, I intend to vote with a write-in ballot---for the Cambodian Party of BC.
Tim Murray
________________________________________
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/BC-Politics/2009/04/14/SteadyStateBC/
Greens propose steady-state economy for BC
By Colleen Kimmett April 14, 2009 10:08 am 2 comments
The Green Party is proposing a steady-state economy for British Columbia, party leader Jane Sterk told The Hook this weekend.
In March, the Greens released their platform without a budget. Sterk asserted that "we would have had to do what the NDP did, which is to create unreal numbers with an unreal statement," and said her party is proposing a different way of accounting.
"We would be looking at the costs and benefits of the economy, the environment and the social fabric," she said. "Translating the budget as it is now into that triple bottom line thinking would be an extraordinarily resource-intensive exercise which would require economists and financial analysts and we simply don't have the resources to do that."
Sterk called the gross domestic product measure of the economy an additive measure that doesn't account for the negative effects of actions, as long as they generate revenue.
"We're proposing to add into our measure of our society the genuine progress indicator, which would say that if you have 13 per cent of your population living in poverty...it's not a healthy economy."
Sterk acknowledged that a model of limited economic growth might not be an easy sell, but added that it could also be difficult to convince a public to consume goods they don't really need in order to save the economy.
"We see strong regional economies with a lot of job development, a lot of green industry development. We're saying better, not bigger. I think that's a saleable model for most people."
THE UK GREEN PARTY HAS HEARD ABOUT OVERPOPULATION
http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/policypointers/pppopulation.pdf
This document, the Population Policy of the UK Green Party, while imperfect, once again shows that a few of the world’s Green Parties (eg. Australia, New Zealand and now the UK) are LIGHT YEARS ahead of the Green Party of Canada. Of all the countries in the world, Canada is stuck with a dud in Elizabeth May. A new leader might change them around. There are a few closet Malthusians in that crowd, but one is struck how uneven, inconsistent and contradictory that party is. It’s only saving grace is that it contains a few individuals who know what sustainability actually means. By contrast, the NDP is consistent. Consistently ignorant, that is.
This document, the Population Policy of the UK Green Party, while imperfect, once again shows that a few of the world’s Green Parties (eg. Australia, New Zealand and now the UK) are LIGHT YEARS ahead of the Green Party of Canada. Of all the countries in the world, Canada is stuck with a dud in Elizabeth May. A new leader might change them around. There are a few closet Malthusians in that crowd, but one is struck how uneven, inconsistent and contradictory that party is. It’s only saving grace is that it contains a few individuals who know what sustainability actually means. By contrast, the NDP is consistent. Consistently ignorant, that is.
DAVID SUZUKI'S SORDID BENEFACTORS
Well, well. What do we have here? It looks like one of those famous “synchronicities” that mystics talk about. Startling coincidences that seem to reveal our inter-connectedness. Last January I made arrangements to meet a man from Vermont who was attending an environment summit conference of some two dozen major figures in the movement, sponsored by the David Suzuki Foundation. It was hosted in the magnificent home of an important DSF benefactor who lives on BC’s Saltspring Island, one John Lefebrvre, touted by a friend as a “caring visionary” and climate change activist. Among his fans are a group with a website who fight climate skeptics, “DeSmogBlog”. This is how they described him:
“The DeSmogBlog team is especially grateful to our benefactor John Lefebvre, a lawyer, internet entrepreneur and past-president of NETeller, a firm that has been providing secure online transactions since 1999. John has been outspoken, uncompromising and courageous in challenging those who would muddy the climate change debate, and he has enabled and inspired the same standard on the blog.”
But wait. Isn’t that the John Lefebrvre who was arrested for processing payments to Internet gamblers, plead guilty, paid a $100 million fine and forfeited his two Malibu beach houses in recompense? Apparently, for this is what the Washington Post said on December 1st of 2008:
"The Neteller case is a prime example. In January 2007, federal agents arrested two of the company's founders, Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre, while they were in California and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The government charged the pair with facilitating online gambling payments of more than $10 billion."
“Lawrence and Lefebvre, both Canadians, also agreed to plead guilty and forfeit $100 million, including two Malibu beach houses owned by Lefebvre, court records show. "Supporting illegal gambling is not a business risk, it is a crime," said Michael J. Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002006.html
I know, I know. You ask, am I accusing David Suzuki of “guilt by association”? Yeah, why not? If he accepts money from the Royal Bank of Canada, as well as an award from the that corporate goliath, and by another of those amazing coincidences fails to PUBLICLY criticize the negative ecological impact of Canada’s mass immigration policy at the same time that RBC is publicly lobbying Ottawa to increase immigration by 51%, then yes. He is associated. He is a silent partner whose silence appears to bought and paid for by a corporation that stands to gain a great deal from his silence. Having a very prominent “environmentalist” on board while you proceed to twist Stephen Harper’s arm trying to make him open the borders to hundreds of thousands of potential mortgage borrowers is a proven public relations strategy. Just ask the nuclear industry and the forest companies who used former Greenpeace luminary Patrick Moore to great advantage. Much in the way that Al Capone secured a blessing with his support of the church. And is it a stretch to notice that a multi-millionaire donor committed to fighting climate change supports a high profile environmentalist who fails to mention that population growth in Canada will thwart our Kyoto ambitions? Growth is how billionaires and banks make money, isn’t it?
You see, two can play this game. The environmentalists are quick to use race-baiting tactics upon those who criticize their silence on rampant North American population growth. Carl Pope and his Sierra Club clique were only too grateful to Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Centre for tarring their opponents with the brush of “racism”. Anything to throw their opponents off the scent. The rotten smell, that is, of billionaire David Gelbaum’s $100 million bribe to Pope’s group conditional on the Sierra Club never reinstituting its long held support for restricted immigration. Any Sierran who expressed opposition to neutrality on immigration issues was a closet racist, and collectively their concerns were framed as “The Greening of Hate”. Southern Poverty Law also went to town on John Tanton, the so-called “puppeteer” of “racist” front groups who opposed runaway immigrant-driven population growth in the US. If you were associated with Tanton, you were, and continue to be, a racist wolf in a sheep’s green clothing. Hitler was a vegetarian, and so are you. Therefore you are a Nazi.
Thus, I feel licensed to reciprocate that logic in condemning Dr. David Suzuki for HIS associations. He accepts money from a corporation that is intent on underwriting the spread of subdivisions over our farmland by financing the dreams of 400,000 New Canadians every year. And he accepts the money and the hospitality of a convicted Canadian refugee from the American legal system. But, in fairness, Suzuki is not unique, too many of the major environmental NGOs are on the corporate payroll as well. Nature Conservancy Canada is also an RBC beneficiary, as is the BC Sierra Club of the Toronto Dominion Bank. As Christine MacDonald wrote in “Green Inc”, corporate influence permeates the whole environmental movement. Nature Conservancy USA “has partnered with oil and gas, power, mining, homebuilding, high-tech, financial services, carmakers, and aircraft builders, among others. Its ties to big logging companies and paper and pulp-industry conglomerates have been controversial, along with TNC’s policy to log and ranch many of its ‘conservation lands’. The partners of World Wildlife Fund USA include “mining, logging, consumer goods, financial services, high-tech, and large retailers.” Conservation International, to cite just one more example of many, has had “success developing fundraising operations tied to big oil and gas, power, mining, construction, financial services, consumer goods industries, carmakers, and the cruise ship industry.”
In summary, according to MacDonald, “Groups that once dedicated themselves solely to saving pandas and parklands today compete for the favors of mining operations that remove entire mountaintops, logging and paper companies that clear-cut old growth forests, and homebuilders who contribute to urban sprawl. They rely on funds from cruise ship companies, despite the industry’s record for polluting the oceans. Among the most generous donors are the biggest environmental scofflaws of all: energy companies.” The donations these corporate interests provide the key players in the environmental movement are a relative pittance in relation to their financial clout. Their most effective leverage is found in the number of corporate executives on the governing boards of many of the more prominent green NGOs.
I don’t know what sickens me most. The corruption of these counterfeit green crusaders or the tens of thousands of yuppie dupes who support them. People who haven’t the time or the inclination, apparently, to do basic research. Yet these same star-struck groupies in the Suzuki cult and others of their ilk, will not hesitate to spend hours on the Internet researching what model of car or television set to buy, or scrutinize the financial reports of their strata council, or do a credit check on a prospective tenant. They choose not to know, but if they did know, would they care? I think not. They would instead prefer to gloat over the scandal of a defrocked Christian fundamentalist minister exposed for a financial scam or a sexual indiscretion. Their hypocrisy, ignorance and Green-Left McCarthyism is revolting beyond description. Equally disgusting are the apologies made for them by those who believe that their organizations are of net benefit. But what use is a cop on the take? What value is a watchdog who doesn’t bark when a corporate intruder throws him a bone? Why would we employ a night watchman who sleeps on the job while some CEO breaks in and robs the vault?
These eco-frauds are the kept women and whores of the corporate globalist agenda. And yet they would pillory me for communicating with a racist. A pathetic, marginal voice in the wilderness. Far worse that I would communicate with a corporate benefactor.
I dedicate my research to the man who had the courage to blow the whistle on a revered politician of the party he supported. Jacques Carpentier endured ridicule, shunning and accusations of being a traitor for doggedly following the money trail of two-time NDP cabinet minister Dave Stupich , whom he found to be guilty of defrauding a bingo charity of one million dollars. It took seven years, but the courts vindicated Carpentier’s efforts and Stupich paid the price, as did his party. Carpentier believed, as I do, that Good Works do not forgive corruption.
Tim Murray, April 23/09
PS I dedicate my research to the man who had the courage to blow the whistle on a revered politician of the party he supported. Jacques Carpentier endured ridicule, shunning and accusations of being a traitor for doggedly following the money trail of two-time NDP cabinet minister Dave Stupich , whom he found to be guilty of defrauding a bingo charity of one million dollars. It took seven years, but the courts vindicated Carpentier’s efforts and Stupich paid the price, as did his party. Once more, we were reminded that a man who is in the right constitutes a majority of one. And a politically correct left-wing herd does not add up to anything more than a consensus of decadent, delusional dolts. Carpentier believed, as I do, that Good Works do not forgive corruption.
“The DeSmogBlog team is especially grateful to our benefactor John Lefebvre, a lawyer, internet entrepreneur and past-president of NETeller, a firm that has been providing secure online transactions since 1999. John has been outspoken, uncompromising and courageous in challenging those who would muddy the climate change debate, and he has enabled and inspired the same standard on the blog.”
But wait. Isn’t that the John Lefebrvre who was arrested for processing payments to Internet gamblers, plead guilty, paid a $100 million fine and forfeited his two Malibu beach houses in recompense? Apparently, for this is what the Washington Post said on December 1st of 2008:
"The Neteller case is a prime example. In January 2007, federal agents arrested two of the company's founders, Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre, while they were in California and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The government charged the pair with facilitating online gambling payments of more than $10 billion."
“Lawrence and Lefebvre, both Canadians, also agreed to plead guilty and forfeit $100 million, including two Malibu beach houses owned by Lefebvre, court records show. "Supporting illegal gambling is not a business risk, it is a crime," said Michael J. Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002006.html
I know, I know. You ask, am I accusing David Suzuki of “guilt by association”? Yeah, why not? If he accepts money from the Royal Bank of Canada, as well as an award from the that corporate goliath, and by another of those amazing coincidences fails to PUBLICLY criticize the negative ecological impact of Canada’s mass immigration policy at the same time that RBC is publicly lobbying Ottawa to increase immigration by 51%, then yes. He is associated. He is a silent partner whose silence appears to bought and paid for by a corporation that stands to gain a great deal from his silence. Having a very prominent “environmentalist” on board while you proceed to twist Stephen Harper’s arm trying to make him open the borders to hundreds of thousands of potential mortgage borrowers is a proven public relations strategy. Just ask the nuclear industry and the forest companies who used former Greenpeace luminary Patrick Moore to great advantage. Much in the way that Al Capone secured a blessing with his support of the church. And is it a stretch to notice that a multi-millionaire donor committed to fighting climate change supports a high profile environmentalist who fails to mention that population growth in Canada will thwart our Kyoto ambitions? Growth is how billionaires and banks make money, isn’t it?
You see, two can play this game. The environmentalists are quick to use race-baiting tactics upon those who criticize their silence on rampant North American population growth. Carl Pope and his Sierra Club clique were only too grateful to Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Centre for tarring their opponents with the brush of “racism”. Anything to throw their opponents off the scent. The rotten smell, that is, of billionaire David Gelbaum’s $100 million bribe to Pope’s group conditional on the Sierra Club never reinstituting its long held support for restricted immigration. Any Sierran who expressed opposition to neutrality on immigration issues was a closet racist, and collectively their concerns were framed as “The Greening of Hate”. Southern Poverty Law also went to town on John Tanton, the so-called “puppeteer” of “racist” front groups who opposed runaway immigrant-driven population growth in the US. If you were associated with Tanton, you were, and continue to be, a racist wolf in a sheep’s green clothing. Hitler was a vegetarian, and so are you. Therefore you are a Nazi.
Thus, I feel licensed to reciprocate that logic in condemning Dr. David Suzuki for HIS associations. He accepts money from a corporation that is intent on underwriting the spread of subdivisions over our farmland by financing the dreams of 400,000 New Canadians every year. And he accepts the money and the hospitality of a convicted Canadian refugee from the American legal system. But, in fairness, Suzuki is not unique, too many of the major environmental NGOs are on the corporate payroll as well. Nature Conservancy Canada is also an RBC beneficiary, as is the BC Sierra Club of the Toronto Dominion Bank. As Christine MacDonald wrote in “Green Inc”, corporate influence permeates the whole environmental movement. Nature Conservancy USA “has partnered with oil and gas, power, mining, homebuilding, high-tech, financial services, carmakers, and aircraft builders, among others. Its ties to big logging companies and paper and pulp-industry conglomerates have been controversial, along with TNC’s policy to log and ranch many of its ‘conservation lands’. The partners of World Wildlife Fund USA include “mining, logging, consumer goods, financial services, high-tech, and large retailers.” Conservation International, to cite just one more example of many, has had “success developing fundraising operations tied to big oil and gas, power, mining, construction, financial services, consumer goods industries, carmakers, and the cruise ship industry.”
In summary, according to MacDonald, “Groups that once dedicated themselves solely to saving pandas and parklands today compete for the favors of mining operations that remove entire mountaintops, logging and paper companies that clear-cut old growth forests, and homebuilders who contribute to urban sprawl. They rely on funds from cruise ship companies, despite the industry’s record for polluting the oceans. Among the most generous donors are the biggest environmental scofflaws of all: energy companies.” The donations these corporate interests provide the key players in the environmental movement are a relative pittance in relation to their financial clout. Their most effective leverage is found in the number of corporate executives on the governing boards of many of the more prominent green NGOs.
I don’t know what sickens me most. The corruption of these counterfeit green crusaders or the tens of thousands of yuppie dupes who support them. People who haven’t the time or the inclination, apparently, to do basic research. Yet these same star-struck groupies in the Suzuki cult and others of their ilk, will not hesitate to spend hours on the Internet researching what model of car or television set to buy, or scrutinize the financial reports of their strata council, or do a credit check on a prospective tenant. They choose not to know, but if they did know, would they care? I think not. They would instead prefer to gloat over the scandal of a defrocked Christian fundamentalist minister exposed for a financial scam or a sexual indiscretion. Their hypocrisy, ignorance and Green-Left McCarthyism is revolting beyond description. Equally disgusting are the apologies made for them by those who believe that their organizations are of net benefit. But what use is a cop on the take? What value is a watchdog who doesn’t bark when a corporate intruder throws him a bone? Why would we employ a night watchman who sleeps on the job while some CEO breaks in and robs the vault?
These eco-frauds are the kept women and whores of the corporate globalist agenda. And yet they would pillory me for communicating with a racist. A pathetic, marginal voice in the wilderness. Far worse that I would communicate with a corporate benefactor.
I dedicate my research to the man who had the courage to blow the whistle on a revered politician of the party he supported. Jacques Carpentier endured ridicule, shunning and accusations of being a traitor for doggedly following the money trail of two-time NDP cabinet minister Dave Stupich , whom he found to be guilty of defrauding a bingo charity of one million dollars. It took seven years, but the courts vindicated Carpentier’s efforts and Stupich paid the price, as did his party. Carpentier believed, as I do, that Good Works do not forgive corruption.
Tim Murray, April 23/09
PS I dedicate my research to the man who had the courage to blow the whistle on a revered politician of the party he supported. Jacques Carpentier endured ridicule, shunning and accusations of being a traitor for doggedly following the money trail of two-time NDP cabinet minister Dave Stupich , whom he found to be guilty of defrauding a bingo charity of one million dollars. It took seven years, but the courts vindicated Carpentier’s efforts and Stupich paid the price, as did his party. Once more, we were reminded that a man who is in the right constitutes a majority of one. And a politically correct left-wing herd does not add up to anything more than a consensus of decadent, delusional dolts. Carpentier believed, as I do, that Good Works do not forgive corruption.
A CASE HISTORY OF DELUSIONAL DENIAL---The World According to Wendell Krossa
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4628)
The ecological footprint model (EF) has to do with other demands but carbon/CO2 is the main element by far (referred to as energy demands by Rees). In Canada fully 58% of the EF estimate is allocated to energy (carbon sink) and this is typical of the developed world estimates (see Eco-Footprint Analysis: Tracking (Un)Sustainability by Bill Rees http://policyresearch.gc.ca/doclib/4_Rees.pdf ).
Your comments, “the overshoot of carrying capacity began as soon as humans began cultivation agriculture….(and) environmental destruction that has been escalating for the last 10,000 years”, express something of the ideological themes that underpin this EF model and the sustainability thinking related to it. Yes, there is some science present in the mix of EF thinking but this is often overwhelmed by the ideological thrust of modern environmentalism that also colors EF analysis.
I was a student at a UBC grad program in the early 90s when Bill Rees and Mathis Wackernagel (one of his PhD students) were constructing this EF model at the School of Community and Regional Planning where Rees was Director. Bill often presented tidbits of his ideological leanings in classroom discussions. This past year (2008) I had an extensive discussion with Bill re his model.
My concerns with the model have to do with Rees’s contention (as with yours) that the human enterprise is degrading/destroying the environment. As evidence of this degradation, Bill refers repeatedly to a litany of disasters which he claims show how humanity is destroying nature and the natural resource base on which all life depends. His list is as follows (see above article by Rees and here are some of my responses to his litany):
Climate change- Which climate change? The present cooling period which once again calls into question the CO2/warming relationship and the anthropogenic influence on climate?
Ozone depletion- Other scientists (see James Marusek’s The Origin of the Ozone Hole- Natural or Anthropological at galaxyinternet.net ) argue that the ozone layer increases and decreases naturally and is unrelated to human activity.
Sea level rise- What sea level rise? A similar rate of sea level rise has been occurring since the end of the last glaciation some 10,000 years ago (about 120 meters).
Deforestation- What deforestation? Over the past six decades Earth’s forest cover has remained fairly stable at about 30% of land area (see FAO Yearbooks for the best and only source of credible data). In fact, there was actually an increase in forest cover between 1949-94 from some 40 million square kilometers to some 43 million square kilometers and this during the time that we were told publicly that Earth’s forests were disappearing.
Fish stock collapses- a favorite element in Rees’ litany. But you cannot extrapolate a few isolated incidents out to generalize the situation of the entire world fishery. FAO data on fisheries is quite hopeful. Overall ocean catch is decreasing and farmed fish production is increasing.
And then species extinctions- I have pointed out to Bill that his figures (17,000 extinctions per year in one article) are grossly exaggerated. The famous 1992 IUCN study on extinctions (summarized by Julian Simon in Scarcity or Abundance) revealed absolutely no evidence of any extinctions above historical rates of 1-2 per year. It also challenged environmentalist’s assumptions behind species loss (a rate of loss related to loss of primary forest cover that did not recognize such things as species adaptability to secondary habitat). And what about the periods of glaciation that have massively changed the surface of the Earth over the past 2 million years, much more than humans have ever impacted nature. Species have adapted and remained fairly stable (numbers of species) over this period by moving north and south over continents and up and down mountain slopes.
And further on the forest resource- remember that since 1949 the human population has gone from 2.5 billion to over 6 billion and GDP (consumption) has increased immensely over the same time period yet forest cover has remained stable (actually increased) over this time. According to EF predictions we should have exhausted forest resources. But we didn’t because we are learning to use resources more efficiently and sustainably.
I believe it was the World Resources Institute that, despite their typical alarmism regarding forests, noted that there were only two current areas (“hotspots”) of forest devastation- one in Central Africa and another in a state in Brazil.
So are we really devastating nature? What does the evidence show? Here we confront the ideology that drives much contemporary environmentalism. Is humanity destroying nature or changing elements of it to new uses such as agriculture. Is this really degradation or just change, and beneficial change? What are the values, beliefs, and science that apply here?
Wilfred Beckerman (Green Colored Glasses) discusses some of the differing values that are applied in regard to nature. And which values should take preeminence and to what extent? Some people (personal aesthetics) want a world covered in wilderness. To them any human engagement of nature is destruction and devastation. To others, human engagement of nature and changing wilderness to other uses is simply progress.
So many issues arise here. The value of humanity in relation to other species. Are we just another species deserving of no special rights to natural resources than any other species? Alston Chase (In A Dark Wood) traces the various ideas that contribute to modern environmental ideology, including the synthesis of American nature religion with German metaphysics: the holism that views individuals as only parts of a larger system with no independent standing. He also notes the environmental antipathy to values of humanism, anti-capitalism, anti-materialism, anti-private property, anti-technology, anti-consumerism, anti-urban living, nature worship, a belief in the superiority of primitive culture, a desire to return to the land, faith in organic farming, and a program to create nature reserves (this list is from his book In a Dark Wood, p.129). J. E. de Steiguer has also traced various contributing sources of ideas in The Origins of Modern Environmental Thought.
My point is that we need to challenge this idea of the primacy of nature (wilderness) over all other considerations. Personal aesthetics play a big role here.
And is nature inherently wise (GAIA, Mother Nature) and humanity corrupt and destructive? Or, as Julian Simon and Greg Easterbrook argue (The Ultimate Resource and A Moment on the Earth), does humanity bring a much needed intelligence to a natural world that has too long been shaped by random, dumb, and blind forces that have led to many dead ends and too much destructiveness (untamed natural forces that produce disasters, diseases, parasites, toxins, massive species extinctions, predatory violence and all the rest that make nature so dark and threatening).
So is humanity really a blot on nature, a cancer, or are we the creative intelligence that can rescue nature and improve on it? Simon argues that humanity has been more of a creative force for good than a destructive force.
Others have argued that humanity is as natural as any other part of nature and what we do is as natural as any other activity in nature (whether bees building hives, ants building anthills, or beavers building dams).
This is not to argue for thoughtless elimination of wilderness. No. Most of us value some wilderness for recreational and other purposes. And our track record shows that we are protecting vast areas of wilderness. The argument here seems to pivot around how much should be preserved. Bill Rees argues that we need lots to support our civilization and also it is the right of other species to have their natural habitat. Interesting here is the fact that many species seem to prefer more civilized habitat to natural wilderness. Some studies have shown that more species of birds inhabit German cities than wild areas. And as the novel Pan’s Labyrinth notes, animals may even prefer such situations as zoos where they are protected from predation, disease, climate extremes, and other discomforts of wilderness. Nature as it is without human engagement can be quite dark and nasty (I refer to Lyall Watson’s Dark Nature).
The EF model raises all sorts of issues. Such as the substitution of exhausting resources for alternatives. Human history has proven that we make adjustments well to resource issues. Huber and Mills in Bottomless Well show how humans have found new resources or created new ones when others were being depleted (fiber optics to replace copper). Rees rejects the response of substitution.
Rees also rejects the Kuznet’s curve response. Indur Goklany has offered a new version of this curve (The Improving State of the World) which shows that when people gain enough wealth and their basic needs are met, they naturally turn to improving their environments. This is high value to most people.
The EF model is not built on rational and objective science but incorporates much of the ideology of its founder Rees. He is stubbornly pessimistic in his evaluation of life and the human enterprise. In classroom discussions he revealed something of his anti-capitalist, anti-urban, anti-growth and development, and generally anti-human enterprise leanings.
The EF model is not helpful in understanding the real state of the planet and nature. Simon, Lomberg, Goklany, Huber, Beckerman, and others provide a more accurate and helpful picture of the world and the human influence on the world. While problems still exist in various places, overall we are doing well in managing the planet’s resources. Our satellites now monitor most aspects of the natural world 24/7 and if problems arise we will take action to prevent any sort of calamitous outcome.
Our track record gives much reason for optimism.
Wendell Krossa
PS. The carbon/CO2 element of the EF analysis is one of its weakest elements (and this undermines over half the footprint). Co2science.org is one among other sites that provide much excellent up-to-date research on this element and the relation to climate and the human influence. As with other evidence, we are not contributing to any destruction of the planet but our CO2 emissions appear to be improving nature significantly.
My reaction to Krossa? I may be looking at the world through “Green Coloured Glasses”, but hey, at least I am wearing glasses. Krossa doesn’t need them because he is completely blind. He would have me believe that I am Keenu Reeves in The Matrix. This world that is being devastated before my eyes is just a computer simulation, a virtual world. Those shopping malls and vynal subdivisions that have covered 20% of Canada’s Class 1 farmland , those clear cuts in the boreal forest, those waters outside my window that were choked with salmon just a generation ago but now are a mere shadow of their former self, those wetlands that are now filled and developed, those more than 500 endangered species in British Columbia are not endangered but flourishing, albeit invisibly, those days when metro Vancouver’s air quality index is sky high and that yellow band that of smog that is seen hanging over it----all of this is just a mirage, a figment of my imagination, a projection of my ideological twist.
There have been politicians like Krossa. We had a Minister of Highways who went to South Africa in the 1970s and told the media that he saw no evidence of Apartheid. We had a Soviet UN ambassador that told Adlai Stevenson that the U2 aerial photo of Soviet missile installations in Cuba that he was waving in front of him were fake. We had a former Prussian Interior Minister and Luftwafe chief Hermann Goering deny that millions were gassed in Nazi camps. Even now, Holocaust denial is a growing industry, as is Creation “science” and its new guise, “Intelligent Design Theory”. Is there any point in debating such people? Famous moral philosopher G. E. Moore did not apparently think so. A graduate student once came into his office at Trinity College and argued that Moore did not exist. He was simply an extension of the student’s imagination. Having concluded his argument, essentially--- an articulation of “Solipsism”--- Moore paused, then administered a swift kick to the student’s shin. “It seems that are now coping with a painful illusion”, he said. One day the real world will catch up to Krossa. Tim Murray
The ecological footprint model (EF) has to do with other demands but carbon/CO2 is the main element by far (referred to as energy demands by Rees). In Canada fully 58% of the EF estimate is allocated to energy (carbon sink) and this is typical of the developed world estimates (see Eco-Footprint Analysis: Tracking (Un)Sustainability by Bill Rees http://policyresearch.gc.ca/doclib/4_Rees.pdf ).
Your comments, “the overshoot of carrying capacity began as soon as humans began cultivation agriculture….(and) environmental destruction that has been escalating for the last 10,000 years”, express something of the ideological themes that underpin this EF model and the sustainability thinking related to it. Yes, there is some science present in the mix of EF thinking but this is often overwhelmed by the ideological thrust of modern environmentalism that also colors EF analysis.
I was a student at a UBC grad program in the early 90s when Bill Rees and Mathis Wackernagel (one of his PhD students) were constructing this EF model at the School of Community and Regional Planning where Rees was Director. Bill often presented tidbits of his ideological leanings in classroom discussions. This past year (2008) I had an extensive discussion with Bill re his model.
My concerns with the model have to do with Rees’s contention (as with yours) that the human enterprise is degrading/destroying the environment. As evidence of this degradation, Bill refers repeatedly to a litany of disasters which he claims show how humanity is destroying nature and the natural resource base on which all life depends. His list is as follows (see above article by Rees and here are some of my responses to his litany):
Climate change- Which climate change? The present cooling period which once again calls into question the CO2/warming relationship and the anthropogenic influence on climate?
Ozone depletion- Other scientists (see James Marusek’s The Origin of the Ozone Hole- Natural or Anthropological at galaxyinternet.net ) argue that the ozone layer increases and decreases naturally and is unrelated to human activity.
Sea level rise- What sea level rise? A similar rate of sea level rise has been occurring since the end of the last glaciation some 10,000 years ago (about 120 meters).
Deforestation- What deforestation? Over the past six decades Earth’s forest cover has remained fairly stable at about 30% of land area (see FAO Yearbooks for the best and only source of credible data). In fact, there was actually an increase in forest cover between 1949-94 from some 40 million square kilometers to some 43 million square kilometers and this during the time that we were told publicly that Earth’s forests were disappearing.
Fish stock collapses- a favorite element in Rees’ litany. But you cannot extrapolate a few isolated incidents out to generalize the situation of the entire world fishery. FAO data on fisheries is quite hopeful. Overall ocean catch is decreasing and farmed fish production is increasing.
And then species extinctions- I have pointed out to Bill that his figures (17,000 extinctions per year in one article) are grossly exaggerated. The famous 1992 IUCN study on extinctions (summarized by Julian Simon in Scarcity or Abundance) revealed absolutely no evidence of any extinctions above historical rates of 1-2 per year. It also challenged environmentalist’s assumptions behind species loss (a rate of loss related to loss of primary forest cover that did not recognize such things as species adaptability to secondary habitat). And what about the periods of glaciation that have massively changed the surface of the Earth over the past 2 million years, much more than humans have ever impacted nature. Species have adapted and remained fairly stable (numbers of species) over this period by moving north and south over continents and up and down mountain slopes.
And further on the forest resource- remember that since 1949 the human population has gone from 2.5 billion to over 6 billion and GDP (consumption) has increased immensely over the same time period yet forest cover has remained stable (actually increased) over this time. According to EF predictions we should have exhausted forest resources. But we didn’t because we are learning to use resources more efficiently and sustainably.
I believe it was the World Resources Institute that, despite their typical alarmism regarding forests, noted that there were only two current areas (“hotspots”) of forest devastation- one in Central Africa and another in a state in Brazil.
So are we really devastating nature? What does the evidence show? Here we confront the ideology that drives much contemporary environmentalism. Is humanity destroying nature or changing elements of it to new uses such as agriculture. Is this really degradation or just change, and beneficial change? What are the values, beliefs, and science that apply here?
Wilfred Beckerman (Green Colored Glasses) discusses some of the differing values that are applied in regard to nature. And which values should take preeminence and to what extent? Some people (personal aesthetics) want a world covered in wilderness. To them any human engagement of nature is destruction and devastation. To others, human engagement of nature and changing wilderness to other uses is simply progress.
So many issues arise here. The value of humanity in relation to other species. Are we just another species deserving of no special rights to natural resources than any other species? Alston Chase (In A Dark Wood) traces the various ideas that contribute to modern environmental ideology, including the synthesis of American nature religion with German metaphysics: the holism that views individuals as only parts of a larger system with no independent standing. He also notes the environmental antipathy to values of humanism, anti-capitalism, anti-materialism, anti-private property, anti-technology, anti-consumerism, anti-urban living, nature worship, a belief in the superiority of primitive culture, a desire to return to the land, faith in organic farming, and a program to create nature reserves (this list is from his book In a Dark Wood, p.129). J. E. de Steiguer has also traced various contributing sources of ideas in The Origins of Modern Environmental Thought.
My point is that we need to challenge this idea of the primacy of nature (wilderness) over all other considerations. Personal aesthetics play a big role here.
And is nature inherently wise (GAIA, Mother Nature) and humanity corrupt and destructive? Or, as Julian Simon and Greg Easterbrook argue (The Ultimate Resource and A Moment on the Earth), does humanity bring a much needed intelligence to a natural world that has too long been shaped by random, dumb, and blind forces that have led to many dead ends and too much destructiveness (untamed natural forces that produce disasters, diseases, parasites, toxins, massive species extinctions, predatory violence and all the rest that make nature so dark and threatening).
So is humanity really a blot on nature, a cancer, or are we the creative intelligence that can rescue nature and improve on it? Simon argues that humanity has been more of a creative force for good than a destructive force.
Others have argued that humanity is as natural as any other part of nature and what we do is as natural as any other activity in nature (whether bees building hives, ants building anthills, or beavers building dams).
This is not to argue for thoughtless elimination of wilderness. No. Most of us value some wilderness for recreational and other purposes. And our track record shows that we are protecting vast areas of wilderness. The argument here seems to pivot around how much should be preserved. Bill Rees argues that we need lots to support our civilization and also it is the right of other species to have their natural habitat. Interesting here is the fact that many species seem to prefer more civilized habitat to natural wilderness. Some studies have shown that more species of birds inhabit German cities than wild areas. And as the novel Pan’s Labyrinth notes, animals may even prefer such situations as zoos where they are protected from predation, disease, climate extremes, and other discomforts of wilderness. Nature as it is without human engagement can be quite dark and nasty (I refer to Lyall Watson’s Dark Nature).
The EF model raises all sorts of issues. Such as the substitution of exhausting resources for alternatives. Human history has proven that we make adjustments well to resource issues. Huber and Mills in Bottomless Well show how humans have found new resources or created new ones when others were being depleted (fiber optics to replace copper). Rees rejects the response of substitution.
Rees also rejects the Kuznet’s curve response. Indur Goklany has offered a new version of this curve (The Improving State of the World) which shows that when people gain enough wealth and their basic needs are met, they naturally turn to improving their environments. This is high value to most people.
The EF model is not built on rational and objective science but incorporates much of the ideology of its founder Rees. He is stubbornly pessimistic in his evaluation of life and the human enterprise. In classroom discussions he revealed something of his anti-capitalist, anti-urban, anti-growth and development, and generally anti-human enterprise leanings.
The EF model is not helpful in understanding the real state of the planet and nature. Simon, Lomberg, Goklany, Huber, Beckerman, and others provide a more accurate and helpful picture of the world and the human influence on the world. While problems still exist in various places, overall we are doing well in managing the planet’s resources. Our satellites now monitor most aspects of the natural world 24/7 and if problems arise we will take action to prevent any sort of calamitous outcome.
Our track record gives much reason for optimism.
Wendell Krossa
PS. The carbon/CO2 element of the EF analysis is one of its weakest elements (and this undermines over half the footprint). Co2science.org is one among other sites that provide much excellent up-to-date research on this element and the relation to climate and the human influence. As with other evidence, we are not contributing to any destruction of the planet but our CO2 emissions appear to be improving nature significantly.
My reaction to Krossa? I may be looking at the world through “Green Coloured Glasses”, but hey, at least I am wearing glasses. Krossa doesn’t need them because he is completely blind. He would have me believe that I am Keenu Reeves in The Matrix. This world that is being devastated before my eyes is just a computer simulation, a virtual world. Those shopping malls and vynal subdivisions that have covered 20% of Canada’s Class 1 farmland , those clear cuts in the boreal forest, those waters outside my window that were choked with salmon just a generation ago but now are a mere shadow of their former self, those wetlands that are now filled and developed, those more than 500 endangered species in British Columbia are not endangered but flourishing, albeit invisibly, those days when metro Vancouver’s air quality index is sky high and that yellow band that of smog that is seen hanging over it----all of this is just a mirage, a figment of my imagination, a projection of my ideological twist.
There have been politicians like Krossa. We had a Minister of Highways who went to South Africa in the 1970s and told the media that he saw no evidence of Apartheid. We had a Soviet UN ambassador that told Adlai Stevenson that the U2 aerial photo of Soviet missile installations in Cuba that he was waving in front of him were fake. We had a former Prussian Interior Minister and Luftwafe chief Hermann Goering deny that millions were gassed in Nazi camps. Even now, Holocaust denial is a growing industry, as is Creation “science” and its new guise, “Intelligent Design Theory”. Is there any point in debating such people? Famous moral philosopher G. E. Moore did not apparently think so. A graduate student once came into his office at Trinity College and argued that Moore did not exist. He was simply an extension of the student’s imagination. Having concluded his argument, essentially--- an articulation of “Solipsism”--- Moore paused, then administered a swift kick to the student’s shin. “It seems that are now coping with a painful illusion”, he said. One day the real world will catch up to Krossa. Tim Murray
The Costs of Illegal Immigration Mock Obama's Sentimental Cant
In 2007 the then Senator Barack Obama made the following remark in his “courageous” speech on immigration reform:
"... we cannot weaken the very essence of what America is by turning our backs on immigrants who want to reunite with their family members, or immigrants who have a willingness to work hard but who may not have the right graduate degrees. This is not who we are as a country."
It is not clear whether his speech was courageous or whether it was in fact a cowardly capitulation to Real Politik, that is, to an America where Latinos could shift 46 crucial electoral votes in Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado from Republican red to Democrat blue. The underlying meaning behind Obama’s commonplace conflation of “immigrants” with illegal immigrants was made clear on the Lou Dobbs show on CNN April 9/09.
Dobbs interviewed Steve Camarotta of the Centre for Immigration Studies, and then refereed a debate between Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation with an Obama appointee who attempted to rationalize his employer’s predilection for amnesty. Rector exposed his opponent’s clichéd arguments for what they were. In his words, “nonsense”. Amnesty in 1986 merely sent a signal to potential queue jumpers that they need only enter the United States, and wait it out for another retroactive pardon, for the government of the United States was clearly not serious about the enforcement of its own laws. Even the Obama mouthpiece conceded that Amnesty then was flawed because “it failed to put something in place to deal with the day after amnesty”---or words to that effect.
The most pernicious and catastrophic feature of amnesty , however, in Rector’s analysis, was not the people who were allowed to come in through the back door, but the number of relatives that they would subsequently be able to sponsor as immigrants once they had secured their citizenship status. Wives, mothers, grandparents etc. In fact, for each illegal immigrant accepted, three or more relatives on average, would follow him. And it must be remembered that, as Rector observed, 60% of illegal immigrants have less than a high school diploma, and therefore cannot earn the kind of income which can be taxed to reimburse the treasury for the welfare, educational, health and other government services that are provided for them.
As a result, the 12 million illegal immigrants that are officially estimated to be resident in the United States--- a number that Rector would almost quadruple---cost American taxpayers $40 billion a year. Now triple that for the chain migration that would follow them with amnesty. As Steve Camarotta has stated before Congress, amnesty does not upgrade the skill level of those granted a pathway to citizenship. They may indeed have a willingness to work hard, as Obama argued, but hard work alone is not enough to deliver the productivity that a sound modern economy increasing requires from its workforce. In 2007 more than 23 million American households received more than $47 billion in EITC or “Earned Income Tax Credit”, a misnomer surely, for much of that money went to folks who never paid a cent in taxes because they never “earned” enough to pay it. The EITC is the most illegal-immigrant friendly and accessible poverty relief program in the country.
The CNN debate revealed another politically incorrect factoid. There are 8 million “undocumented” workers in the United States and 13 million native-born Americans without jobs. This is a correlation that liberals cannot run away from. Especially when on their left, the Socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, cites illegal immigration, in tandem with ongoing out-sourcing to cheap labour foreign locations, as the reason that 5 million American workers lost their jobs under George W. Bush.
But apparently to reject this massive corporate welfare scam to supplement low paid illegal immigrant incomes with the free provision of government services so that cheap labour employers can remain off the hook is or was to Senator now President, Obama, “not who we are as a country”.
But whose country is it now, though? And one wonders if family unification is such a priority with illegals, why it would not be more cost-effcective to just reunify families by sending illegal immigrants back from whence they came, all expenses paid.
"... we cannot weaken the very essence of what America is by turning our backs on immigrants who want to reunite with their family members, or immigrants who have a willingness to work hard but who may not have the right graduate degrees. This is not who we are as a country."
It is not clear whether his speech was courageous or whether it was in fact a cowardly capitulation to Real Politik, that is, to an America where Latinos could shift 46 crucial electoral votes in Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado from Republican red to Democrat blue. The underlying meaning behind Obama’s commonplace conflation of “immigrants” with illegal immigrants was made clear on the Lou Dobbs show on CNN April 9/09.
Dobbs interviewed Steve Camarotta of the Centre for Immigration Studies, and then refereed a debate between Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation with an Obama appointee who attempted to rationalize his employer’s predilection for amnesty. Rector exposed his opponent’s clichéd arguments for what they were. In his words, “nonsense”. Amnesty in 1986 merely sent a signal to potential queue jumpers that they need only enter the United States, and wait it out for another retroactive pardon, for the government of the United States was clearly not serious about the enforcement of its own laws. Even the Obama mouthpiece conceded that Amnesty then was flawed because “it failed to put something in place to deal with the day after amnesty”---or words to that effect.
The most pernicious and catastrophic feature of amnesty , however, in Rector’s analysis, was not the people who were allowed to come in through the back door, but the number of relatives that they would subsequently be able to sponsor as immigrants once they had secured their citizenship status. Wives, mothers, grandparents etc. In fact, for each illegal immigrant accepted, three or more relatives on average, would follow him. And it must be remembered that, as Rector observed, 60% of illegal immigrants have less than a high school diploma, and therefore cannot earn the kind of income which can be taxed to reimburse the treasury for the welfare, educational, health and other government services that are provided for them.
As a result, the 12 million illegal immigrants that are officially estimated to be resident in the United States--- a number that Rector would almost quadruple---cost American taxpayers $40 billion a year. Now triple that for the chain migration that would follow them with amnesty. As Steve Camarotta has stated before Congress, amnesty does not upgrade the skill level of those granted a pathway to citizenship. They may indeed have a willingness to work hard, as Obama argued, but hard work alone is not enough to deliver the productivity that a sound modern economy increasing requires from its workforce. In 2007 more than 23 million American households received more than $47 billion in EITC or “Earned Income Tax Credit”, a misnomer surely, for much of that money went to folks who never paid a cent in taxes because they never “earned” enough to pay it. The EITC is the most illegal-immigrant friendly and accessible poverty relief program in the country.
The CNN debate revealed another politically incorrect factoid. There are 8 million “undocumented” workers in the United States and 13 million native-born Americans without jobs. This is a correlation that liberals cannot run away from. Especially when on their left, the Socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, cites illegal immigration, in tandem with ongoing out-sourcing to cheap labour foreign locations, as the reason that 5 million American workers lost their jobs under George W. Bush.
But apparently to reject this massive corporate welfare scam to supplement low paid illegal immigrant incomes with the free provision of government services so that cheap labour employers can remain off the hook is or was to Senator now President, Obama, “not who we are as a country”.
But whose country is it now, though? And one wonders if family unification is such a priority with illegals, why it would not be more cost-effcective to just reunify families by sending illegal immigrants back from whence they came, all expenses paid.
Friday, May 1, 2009
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH FINALLY STEPS UP TO THE PLATE: Environmental Orgs Must tackle population growth
OPTIMUM POPULATION TRUST UK
ATTENBOROUGH IS NEW OPT PATRON
Greens urged to spell out population dangers
Sir David Attenborough, Britain's best-known natural history film-maker, today (Monday April 13) described the growth in human numbers as “frightening” and urged environmental organisations to spell out “loud and clear” the problems caused by population growth.
Sir David, who has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, the leading think tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment, said: “I’ve seen wildlife under mounting human pressure all over the world and it’s not just from human economy or technology - behind every threat is the frightening explosion in human numbers.
“I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more. That’s why I support the OPT, and I wish the environmental NGOs would follow their lead, and spell out this central problem loud and clear.”
Roger Martin, OPT chair, said: "We're delighted that one of the world's best known, liked and respected naturalists should have become our patron.
“All serious environmentalists know perfectly well that population growth, exploding in the 20th century, has been a key driver of every environmental problem. It's a fact, not an opinion, that total human impact is the average per person multiplied by the number of people.
“Yet for far too long, governments and environmental NGOs have observed a taboo - invented in the 1980s by a bizarre coalition of the religious right and the liberal left - on stating this obvious fact. So they keep on implying that our numbers can grow forever with no ill effects. It's a ‘silent lie’ and by encouraging us to ignore the vital need to stabilise our numbers by humane means (contraception) before nature does it for us by inhumane, natural means (famine, disease, war) this absurd taboo betrays our children.
“David's breaking of it should embolden others in the green movement to follow suit.”
Sir David, who was knighted in 1985, is a trustee of the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a fellow of the Royal Society.
ATTENBOROUGH IS NEW OPT PATRON
Greens urged to spell out population dangers
Sir David Attenborough, Britain's best-known natural history film-maker, today (Monday April 13) described the growth in human numbers as “frightening” and urged environmental organisations to spell out “loud and clear” the problems caused by population growth.
Sir David, who has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, the leading think tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment, said: “I’ve seen wildlife under mounting human pressure all over the world and it’s not just from human economy or technology - behind every threat is the frightening explosion in human numbers.
“I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more. That’s why I support the OPT, and I wish the environmental NGOs would follow their lead, and spell out this central problem loud and clear.”
Roger Martin, OPT chair, said: "We're delighted that one of the world's best known, liked and respected naturalists should have become our patron.
“All serious environmentalists know perfectly well that population growth, exploding in the 20th century, has been a key driver of every environmental problem. It's a fact, not an opinion, that total human impact is the average per person multiplied by the number of people.
“Yet for far too long, governments and environmental NGOs have observed a taboo - invented in the 1980s by a bizarre coalition of the religious right and the liberal left - on stating this obvious fact. So they keep on implying that our numbers can grow forever with no ill effects. It's a ‘silent lie’ and by encouraging us to ignore the vital need to stabilise our numbers by humane means (contraception) before nature does it for us by inhumane, natural means (famine, disease, war) this absurd taboo betrays our children.
“David's breaking of it should embolden others in the green movement to follow suit.”
Sir David, who was knighted in 1985, is a trustee of the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a fellow of the Royal Society.
FROM THE ARCHIVES OF FOOLISHNESS: The Federal Green Party on Climate Change and Population Growth
How do you like this gem of logic by a prominent member, (and candidate in the last federal election), of the Green Party of Canada. The inimitable Erich Jacoby-Hawkins, who actually said that a great many more immigrants would REDUCE our ecological burden by raising urban populations to the point that rapid urban transit would become an economically viable proposition.
Random idea Climate Theory II
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:27:01 -0500
"Climate change is not caused by the number of humans, but by unnatural things some of them (okay, most of them) do.
Because of extinctions and reductions in other species, there is not actually more mass of mammalian flesh on the earth, so our respiration and digestion aren't causing global warming. (In fact, total biomass may be at a recent historic low).
However, the fossil fuels that some of us burn in ridiculous amounts, and the forests that others destroy, are definitely culprits. We need to realize that we can exist without burning so much fossil fuel or clearing so much forest. If people live in sustainable, natural ways our contribution to GHG, GW, CC etc. could be reduced to near nil, despite a relatively large human population.
Not easy, of course, but possible."
Random idea Climate Theory II
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:27:01 -0500
"Climate change is not caused by the number of humans, but by unnatural things some of them (okay, most of them) do.
Because of extinctions and reductions in other species, there is not actually more mass of mammalian flesh on the earth, so our respiration and digestion aren't causing global warming. (In fact, total biomass may be at a recent historic low).
However, the fossil fuels that some of us burn in ridiculous amounts, and the forests that others destroy, are definitely culprits. We need to realize that we can exist without burning so much fossil fuel or clearing so much forest. If people live in sustainable, natural ways our contribution to GHG, GW, CC etc. could be reduced to near nil, despite a relatively large human population.
Not easy, of course, but possible."
WHO SHOT DOWN THE SCIENCE COUNCIL'S REPORT NO. 25?
The Science Council of Canada's Report #25 was titled "Population, Technology and Resources" and was published in July, 1976.
The Science Council of Canada existed between 1966 and 1993. It is described as "an organization created by federal statute...to advise the government on science and technology policy. The original membership was 25 appointed scientists and senior federal civil servants, later altered to 30 appointed eminent experts from the natural and social sciences, business and finance, and no civil servants.
"It most often saw itself as a national adviser, transcending purely federal considerations. It also assumed an early warning function to alert governments and society to emerging opportunities and problems. The council often argued against the mainstream of advice from other agencies, public and private, and sometimes against the apparent inclinations of federal ministers. It was often a catalyst for action." (The Canadian Encyclopedia)
The major point in this report is that Canada's resources are not limitless and that Canada had to slow down its immigration and population growth. If Canada did not do these things, it would jeopardize its own food and energy supply, and severely curtail both its standard of living and its personal and national sovereignty. It is almost certain that if the Science Council were to research this subject today, their conclusions would be even stronger.
The Science Council's recommendations, which were made in 1976, are very relevant today. As most will see, the thoughtfulness of their recommendations dwarfs that of Canada's immigration industry which, unbelievably, has convinced some politicians and others that notions such as diversity, multiculturalism and perpetual high immigration should become Canada's highest national goals.
MAJOR POINTS FROM REPORT 25 :
1. Canada has to slow down its population growth. Canadians must discard some hitherto popular mythology about Canada: namely, that its agricultural potential is more or less infinite, and that its resources and land area will always support a virtually open-door immigration policy. (P.9) Prime agricultural land, with good climate, which is very scarce in Canada, is as yet unprotected. We have not yet taken seriously the problem of ensuring our own future food supply, much less protecting our own position as an important exporter of food.
2. A growth moratorium in relation to exploding living standards is just as urgent as one in regard to exploding populations. It follows from this that one of Canada's principal international contributions would be to live frugally and avoid waste. In no way of course could Canada ever solve the world problem of overpopulation. It may sound incongruous that the second largest country in the world should seek to limit its numbers. Yet extent of territory is not a dominant factor when so much of it is desert and rock, swept by winter's wind. Failing to slow population growth and following a virtually open-door immigration policy will reduce Canada's future policy options and constrict Canada's ability to act.
3. Throughout history, most societies have been demographically young. Medical technology has allowed a substantial proportion of the world's present population to survive into their 60's and 70's. Canada has been young for most of its history. By UN standards, a country is 'old' when 8% of its population is 65+ .Canada joined this category in 1971 and it is anticipated that the 8% will double by 2001. Immigration levels should be in line with Canada's overall demographic objectives, and not be set solely to tide the country over short-term economic developments. Society must prepare for the meaningful and active participation of a considerably larger proportion of elderly people. This will require not only better access to goods and services but also opportunities for useful part-time employment. Adequate numbers of trained people must be provided to give good health care to the increasing number of elderly people. Policies must be adopted which will foster alternatives to institutional care, such as in-home and community services. Other countries have gone through their own aging process and survived. Canada has special problems, but it too can survive.
4. One can tell a great deal about a country by examining how its inhabitants spend their time : how much they work, at what occupations, and how they occupy their free time. Canada is second only to the US in the proportion of its work force engaged in providing services, yet the Canadian economy has a larger resource extraction base and a smaller manufacturing sector than most developed countries.
5. The population of Canada in 1975 was 23 million. Three-quarters of Canada's population was "urban"; 55% were metropolitan dwellers, living in continuous built-up areas with populations of 100,000 and more. Almost all of Canada's population increase in the next 40 years (to 2015) will occur there. The economy of scale argument might be breaking down with the metropolitan sizes projected for Canada. At some point, the environmental and social costs begin to outweigh the purely economic benefits. Growth of low density urban communities onto good agricultural land should be stopped.
6. Serious conflicts arise between the use of land for agricultural purposes and its use for development. At present, 13% of our land area is capable of some kind of agricultural production, but considerably less than half of this is capable of sustained production of common field crops. (P.44) Between 1966 and 1971, a million acres or almost one-tenth of the improved farmland in Southern Ontario was lost to agriculture.(P.45) Most of this land is being held in reserve for future urban expansion over the next two decades. In the meantime, it falls under the urban "shadow", and is no longer used for agricultural production. This phenomenon is seen mostly in Southern Ontario, but is also visible outside of Montreal and Vancouver. The elaboration of local, regional and provincial policies and mechanisms for land use planning and control and the synthesis of these into a national policy is an urgent necessity. Our best agricultural land, in terms of soil and climate, must be designated for agricultural purposes only. This is the responsibility of the provincial governments, and it should be done immediately in Ontario and probably also in Quebec. The B.C. Agricultural Land Reserve precedent should be studied and the issue of adequate compensation must be resolved. In order to have land farmed and not just saved for farming, and in order to improve rural land generally, agricultural land planning should have as high a priority as urban land planning.
7. The most important issue in Canadian agriculture is whether it will meet the great needs of the future. Canada has a favourable trade balance in agricultural produce (almost $1 Billion in 1974). Our principal agricultural export is grain, 15 million tonnes annually. There is a growing world dependence on North America to make up for food production shortfalls in the rest of the world. The number of net food exporting countries has diminished drastically and no important new ones have emerged in the last quarter century. The U.S. (with grain exports of 70 million tonnes), Canada (with grain exports of 18 million tonnes) and Australia (with a similar 7 million tonnes) are the three major suppliers. Canada should continue to be a major exporter. Food exports should prove of major benefit to our balance of payments. We can succeed in maintaining our level of exports and in assuring the needs of our own population by slowing population growth, increasing our own production and cutting down on waste---in consumption and production.
8. Adequate energy supplies and a satisfactory living environment for Canada's future population should be continuing national goals of overriding importance. Canada has been among the most energy-intensive countries in the world. The reasons are our hostile climate, transportation needs, industrial demands (one-third of total energy use) and energy-dependent lifestyle. Canada needs energy as much as fish need water. A severe energy shortage would endanger our survival in our climate. Two factors influence future energy demand: rates of change in per capita consumption and rates of population growth. The rate of increase in per capita energy consumption from 1960 to 1973 was 3.5%, equivalent to a doubling every 20 years. It is easier to control population increases than it is to control energy consumption. The former highly optimistic views of Canada's "limitless" resources now sound hollow. Recent investigations have revealed that even short-term supply data are alarming. The whole picture appears to be darkening. We need to conserve our own available supply. It should be treated as a critical and strategic national resource to be used only when needed.
9. The Science Council has therefore concluded that Canada is likely to need a great deal of capital in the decade ahead, and that this capital will be hard to raise. This however we must strive to do. We will need to increase our savings and reduce the current level of our consumption of goods and services---in government and the private sector. Canadians should recognize that we live in a capital-intensive society and that we should no longer rely on immigration to regulate the economy. RECOMMENDATIONS : (1) Canada's rate of domestic savings must be maintained at a very high level. (2) We should attempt to fund our investment needs as independently of foreign sources of savings as possible.(3) In accepting foreign investment into Canada, relatively little should be admitted in the form of equity.
10. All serious opinion now points to the finiteness of Canada's resources, particularly in the energy sector. Canada's arable land and food resources are also finite and under pressure. Canada needs to control population growth at a conservative level and to organize more effectively our utilization of energy, land and manpower. The biggest international contribution Canada can make is to moderate its population growth in order to strengthen its position as an exporter of food, services and technologies. Even with the most generous immigration policies, Canada could accommodate only a tiny fraction of the over-population of other countries as to be insignificant. We should be encouraging our food producers to increase output to keep pace with rising demand. This would help us to meet our international obligations and contribute substantially to our balance of payments.
Dan Murray
Immigration Watch Canada
www.immigrationwatchcanada.org
PS. My comment. The question "Who shot down the Science Council of Canada's Report Number 25 begs others: Why was it shot down, why was the Science Council of Canada itself canned and why was it canned in 1993? Here is a clue. The policy of mass immigration, of dramatically raising immigration levels began in 1991. Both major political parties found it politically necessary to pander to the immigration lobby. Who carried more clout, the scientific community or ethnic power blocs and the immigration industry? Which of the two was expendable?
The Science Council of Canada existed between 1966 and 1993. It is described as "an organization created by federal statute...to advise the government on science and technology policy. The original membership was 25 appointed scientists and senior federal civil servants, later altered to 30 appointed eminent experts from the natural and social sciences, business and finance, and no civil servants.
"It most often saw itself as a national adviser, transcending purely federal considerations. It also assumed an early warning function to alert governments and society to emerging opportunities and problems. The council often argued against the mainstream of advice from other agencies, public and private, and sometimes against the apparent inclinations of federal ministers. It was often a catalyst for action." (The Canadian Encyclopedia)
The major point in this report is that Canada's resources are not limitless and that Canada had to slow down its immigration and population growth. If Canada did not do these things, it would jeopardize its own food and energy supply, and severely curtail both its standard of living and its personal and national sovereignty. It is almost certain that if the Science Council were to research this subject today, their conclusions would be even stronger.
The Science Council's recommendations, which were made in 1976, are very relevant today. As most will see, the thoughtfulness of their recommendations dwarfs that of Canada's immigration industry which, unbelievably, has convinced some politicians and others that notions such as diversity, multiculturalism and perpetual high immigration should become Canada's highest national goals.
MAJOR POINTS FROM REPORT 25 :
1. Canada has to slow down its population growth. Canadians must discard some hitherto popular mythology about Canada: namely, that its agricultural potential is more or less infinite, and that its resources and land area will always support a virtually open-door immigration policy. (P.9) Prime agricultural land, with good climate, which is very scarce in Canada, is as yet unprotected. We have not yet taken seriously the problem of ensuring our own future food supply, much less protecting our own position as an important exporter of food.
2. A growth moratorium in relation to exploding living standards is just as urgent as one in regard to exploding populations. It follows from this that one of Canada's principal international contributions would be to live frugally and avoid waste. In no way of course could Canada ever solve the world problem of overpopulation. It may sound incongruous that the second largest country in the world should seek to limit its numbers. Yet extent of territory is not a dominant factor when so much of it is desert and rock, swept by winter's wind. Failing to slow population growth and following a virtually open-door immigration policy will reduce Canada's future policy options and constrict Canada's ability to act.
3. Throughout history, most societies have been demographically young. Medical technology has allowed a substantial proportion of the world's present population to survive into their 60's and 70's. Canada has been young for most of its history. By UN standards, a country is 'old' when 8% of its population is 65+ .Canada joined this category in 1971 and it is anticipated that the 8% will double by 2001. Immigration levels should be in line with Canada's overall demographic objectives, and not be set solely to tide the country over short-term economic developments. Society must prepare for the meaningful and active participation of a considerably larger proportion of elderly people. This will require not only better access to goods and services but also opportunities for useful part-time employment. Adequate numbers of trained people must be provided to give good health care to the increasing number of elderly people. Policies must be adopted which will foster alternatives to institutional care, such as in-home and community services. Other countries have gone through their own aging process and survived. Canada has special problems, but it too can survive.
4. One can tell a great deal about a country by examining how its inhabitants spend their time : how much they work, at what occupations, and how they occupy their free time. Canada is second only to the US in the proportion of its work force engaged in providing services, yet the Canadian economy has a larger resource extraction base and a smaller manufacturing sector than most developed countries.
5. The population of Canada in 1975 was 23 million. Three-quarters of Canada's population was "urban"; 55% were metropolitan dwellers, living in continuous built-up areas with populations of 100,000 and more. Almost all of Canada's population increase in the next 40 years (to 2015) will occur there. The economy of scale argument might be breaking down with the metropolitan sizes projected for Canada. At some point, the environmental and social costs begin to outweigh the purely economic benefits. Growth of low density urban communities onto good agricultural land should be stopped.
6. Serious conflicts arise between the use of land for agricultural purposes and its use for development. At present, 13% of our land area is capable of some kind of agricultural production, but considerably less than half of this is capable of sustained production of common field crops. (P.44) Between 1966 and 1971, a million acres or almost one-tenth of the improved farmland in Southern Ontario was lost to agriculture.(P.45) Most of this land is being held in reserve for future urban expansion over the next two decades. In the meantime, it falls under the urban "shadow", and is no longer used for agricultural production. This phenomenon is seen mostly in Southern Ontario, but is also visible outside of Montreal and Vancouver. The elaboration of local, regional and provincial policies and mechanisms for land use planning and control and the synthesis of these into a national policy is an urgent necessity. Our best agricultural land, in terms of soil and climate, must be designated for agricultural purposes only. This is the responsibility of the provincial governments, and it should be done immediately in Ontario and probably also in Quebec. The B.C. Agricultural Land Reserve precedent should be studied and the issue of adequate compensation must be resolved. In order to have land farmed and not just saved for farming, and in order to improve rural land generally, agricultural land planning should have as high a priority as urban land planning.
7. The most important issue in Canadian agriculture is whether it will meet the great needs of the future. Canada has a favourable trade balance in agricultural produce (almost $1 Billion in 1974). Our principal agricultural export is grain, 15 million tonnes annually. There is a growing world dependence on North America to make up for food production shortfalls in the rest of the world. The number of net food exporting countries has diminished drastically and no important new ones have emerged in the last quarter century. The U.S. (with grain exports of 70 million tonnes), Canada (with grain exports of 18 million tonnes) and Australia (with a similar 7 million tonnes) are the three major suppliers. Canada should continue to be a major exporter. Food exports should prove of major benefit to our balance of payments. We can succeed in maintaining our level of exports and in assuring the needs of our own population by slowing population growth, increasing our own production and cutting down on waste---in consumption and production.
8. Adequate energy supplies and a satisfactory living environment for Canada's future population should be continuing national goals of overriding importance. Canada has been among the most energy-intensive countries in the world. The reasons are our hostile climate, transportation needs, industrial demands (one-third of total energy use) and energy-dependent lifestyle. Canada needs energy as much as fish need water. A severe energy shortage would endanger our survival in our climate. Two factors influence future energy demand: rates of change in per capita consumption and rates of population growth. The rate of increase in per capita energy consumption from 1960 to 1973 was 3.5%, equivalent to a doubling every 20 years. It is easier to control population increases than it is to control energy consumption. The former highly optimistic views of Canada's "limitless" resources now sound hollow. Recent investigations have revealed that even short-term supply data are alarming. The whole picture appears to be darkening. We need to conserve our own available supply. It should be treated as a critical and strategic national resource to be used only when needed.
9. The Science Council has therefore concluded that Canada is likely to need a great deal of capital in the decade ahead, and that this capital will be hard to raise. This however we must strive to do. We will need to increase our savings and reduce the current level of our consumption of goods and services---in government and the private sector. Canadians should recognize that we live in a capital-intensive society and that we should no longer rely on immigration to regulate the economy. RECOMMENDATIONS : (1) Canada's rate of domestic savings must be maintained at a very high level. (2) We should attempt to fund our investment needs as independently of foreign sources of savings as possible.(3) In accepting foreign investment into Canada, relatively little should be admitted in the form of equity.
10. All serious opinion now points to the finiteness of Canada's resources, particularly in the energy sector. Canada's arable land and food resources are also finite and under pressure. Canada needs to control population growth at a conservative level and to organize more effectively our utilization of energy, land and manpower. The biggest international contribution Canada can make is to moderate its population growth in order to strengthen its position as an exporter of food, services and technologies. Even with the most generous immigration policies, Canada could accommodate only a tiny fraction of the over-population of other countries as to be insignificant. We should be encouraging our food producers to increase output to keep pace with rising demand. This would help us to meet our international obligations and contribute substantially to our balance of payments.
Dan Murray
Immigration Watch Canada
www.immigrationwatchcanada.org
PS. My comment. The question "Who shot down the Science Council of Canada's Report Number 25 begs others: Why was it shot down, why was the Science Council of Canada itself canned and why was it canned in 1993? Here is a clue. The policy of mass immigration, of dramatically raising immigration levels began in 1991. Both major political parties found it politically necessary to pander to the immigration lobby. Who carried more clout, the scientific community or ethnic power blocs and the immigration industry? Which of the two was expendable?
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