“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No I tell you, but division.”
Jesus Christ in Luke 12:51
I came to Quadra to disturb and rankle you. To provoke your conditioned responses and refute them. To challenge your socially acceptable prejudices with my socially outrageous truths. To promote mental yoga by forcing your brain to establish new neural pathways to process your prefabricated information in alternative ways.
I came not to build upon a rotten foundation but to tear it asunder.
I came to force unspoken and unacknowledged disagreements to the surface with provocative and disrespectful questions so that they may examined and resolved.
I came to excavate the dormant truth rather than bury it with soothing falsehoods.
I came to yank the self-proclaimed enlightened ones from CBC-life support so that they may survive by intellectual self-reliance and impartial research, rather than their lazy dependence on Sierra-NDP sound bites.
I came to rip off the bandage of friendly banalities, false harmony, manufactured consent and superficial smiles and expose the festering wound of subterranean acrimony beneath it so that it can be lanced with satire, derision and criticism. Venting it with small town covert gossip is not a cure but a disease of the cowardly.
From the imposition of artificial unity comes simmering, septic resentments that ultimately erupt in war. Yugoslavian peace becomes a Balkan war. Delusion and denial do not make for a lasting armistice.
From civil wars comes durable harmony. Fevers cannot be cured by throwing out the thermometer nor wounds healed without ventilation. Beware of the “peacemakers” for they do not bring peace but an uneasy truce with unresolved disputes and a prescription of reconciliation and forgiveness for the corrupt and unrepentant.
I came not really as a trouble-maker because I found it already here hidden under lock and key by those afraid to air it out. I merely wish to release it with Gestalt therapy on a public scale.
I came not to be your emotional caretaker or take responsibility for your reactions and interpretations. I am not obligated to live by your limitations or submit to your chosen mantle of victimhood. If need be I will defy your taboos. You can choose not to take offense.
If you elect to be offended, your perceptions of me are not of my concern. I know who I am. I am a writer, and writers are not elected to be kind, but to liberate the truth and set you free. T. Murray
COURAGE IS THE MEASURE OF CHARACTER
“To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.” Theodore H. White
“Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet is the one essential, vital, quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.” Robert F. Kennedy
“Without courage, all other virtues are to of no avail” Charles Dickens
Ostracism and censure from the morally relativistic and depraved politically correct culture of Quadra is a badge of honour. The Suzuki cult and the Sierra-NDP ruling clique of wine-drinking, CBC-listening, artsy fartsy green yuppies, the unwitting servants and dupes of the corporate agenda---are the Pharisees of our time. Good is bad and bad is good. Soon they will belong to the dustbin of history, and the corrupt money-grubbing corporate lackeys in the Sierra Club hierarchy will be a distant memory.
Tim Murray
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
AN ECONOMIC CRISIS IS A TERRIBLE THING TO SQUANDER Environmentalists Blow Opportunity To Teach The Ecological Facts of Life
Once again when they are needed most, when important lessons could be drawn and taught about the subsidiary importance of the market meltdown, environmentalists are found missing in action, pissing around addressing symptoms and putting out brush fires while failing to deal with the root cause of our crisis---growth. They are hacking at the branches of evil while neo-Malthusians unilaterally try with no offer of assistance to pull up its roots.
For Canadians of my father’s generation, the farce of the last five months is too reminiscent of 1939. Think about it. Two different American presidents in concert with Congress have spent or will soon have spent over a trillion and a half dollars on bailing out the perpetrators of the stock market crash and credit crisis when no money could be found for environmental problems just the day before. Just like the politicians of the 1930s who insisted that government did not have the money to counteract mass unemployment with public works, then suddenly found that money in spades when Hitler invaded Poland. In one parliamentary sitting in the Canadian House of Commons, they voted for massive military expenditures, and eventually employed 10% of the population as members of the armed forces. Some of the same people that that same government would not employ to work on infrastructure projects during the depression that led up to the onset of war.
Now we have witnessed the sudden and mind-boggling dump of hundreds and hundreds of billion dollars down the rat-hole of market bail-outs after years of being told that there was no money available to make the adjustments called for by Kyoto, or for conservation management or for many other environmental projects. As one conservationist friend put it,
“The world has been told that the well being of human civilization is based entirely on consumption and the only way to get out of this downturn is to consume more.
In the blink of an eye we have been able to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to throw into the void of a virtual and abstract "economy" whereas all arguments for cleaning up the planet met with the refrain that it would cripple the economy. Can you imagine what we could do with just $1 billion. If the soft greens cannot now articulate the point that our consumption-and growth-based economies are a based on a lie, then they are even more pathetic than I thought.”
One can only conclude that, once again, the Environmental movement has dropped the ball. In fact, they haven’t even been in the game. They continue to be absent-without-leave when their critical voice was needed during this recession-cum-depression. Just as it was silent in March of 2007 when the Canadian census announced, to media applause, that Canada’s had suffered the largest immigrant-driven population growth rate of all G8 countries, with all of the attendant environmental consequences inherent in that trend. And when a Romanian-born couple gave birth to their 18th child, they countered media celebration with silence, as they do every New Year when television, radio and newspapers turn January 1st into a derby as to who shall be feted as parents of the first newborn of the year. Apparently population growth is of no account to their crusade to fight climate change, save farmland or wildlife habitat. It is all about green living tips to reduce our per capita consumption, renewable technology fantasies and smart growth nostrums to manage growth and protect nature reserves from the tidal wave of growth that will nullify all those measures.
Now the media features an another grotesque spectacle of a single mother of six children giving birth to octuplets thanks to fertility drugs. Bet on the Sierra Club and its green clones being mum about that incident too.
Mutliple births to demographic litterbugs, stratospheric immigration levels and the colossal waste involved in trying to prop up an unsustainable artificial economy all presented environmental NGOs with an unparalled opportunity to educate the masses, beginning with their own supporters and dupes. But how can a teacher who assigns failing grades to government for failing to address symptoms be qualified to educate us when he himself rates an F for ignorance, hypocrisy, cowardice and corruption?
In reviewing their conduct in just the last two years, never mind the last two decades, I am moved to address the environmental NGO’s in the same words that MP Leo Amery denounced his friend, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the British House of Commons after the debacle in Norway:
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go !”
They haven’t led, so they must either follow or get the hell out of the way. To save the environment, we must be rid of these so-called “environmentalists.”
For Canadians of my father’s generation, the farce of the last five months is too reminiscent of 1939. Think about it. Two different American presidents in concert with Congress have spent or will soon have spent over a trillion and a half dollars on bailing out the perpetrators of the stock market crash and credit crisis when no money could be found for environmental problems just the day before. Just like the politicians of the 1930s who insisted that government did not have the money to counteract mass unemployment with public works, then suddenly found that money in spades when Hitler invaded Poland. In one parliamentary sitting in the Canadian House of Commons, they voted for massive military expenditures, and eventually employed 10% of the population as members of the armed forces. Some of the same people that that same government would not employ to work on infrastructure projects during the depression that led up to the onset of war.
Now we have witnessed the sudden and mind-boggling dump of hundreds and hundreds of billion dollars down the rat-hole of market bail-outs after years of being told that there was no money available to make the adjustments called for by Kyoto, or for conservation management or for many other environmental projects. As one conservationist friend put it,
“The world has been told that the well being of human civilization is based entirely on consumption and the only way to get out of this downturn is to consume more.
In the blink of an eye we have been able to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to throw into the void of a virtual and abstract "economy" whereas all arguments for cleaning up the planet met with the refrain that it would cripple the economy. Can you imagine what we could do with just $1 billion. If the soft greens cannot now articulate the point that our consumption-and growth-based economies are a based on a lie, then they are even more pathetic than I thought.”
One can only conclude that, once again, the Environmental movement has dropped the ball. In fact, they haven’t even been in the game. They continue to be absent-without-leave when their critical voice was needed during this recession-cum-depression. Just as it was silent in March of 2007 when the Canadian census announced, to media applause, that Canada’s had suffered the largest immigrant-driven population growth rate of all G8 countries, with all of the attendant environmental consequences inherent in that trend. And when a Romanian-born couple gave birth to their 18th child, they countered media celebration with silence, as they do every New Year when television, radio and newspapers turn January 1st into a derby as to who shall be feted as parents of the first newborn of the year. Apparently population growth is of no account to their crusade to fight climate change, save farmland or wildlife habitat. It is all about green living tips to reduce our per capita consumption, renewable technology fantasies and smart growth nostrums to manage growth and protect nature reserves from the tidal wave of growth that will nullify all those measures.
Now the media features an another grotesque spectacle of a single mother of six children giving birth to octuplets thanks to fertility drugs. Bet on the Sierra Club and its green clones being mum about that incident too.
Mutliple births to demographic litterbugs, stratospheric immigration levels and the colossal waste involved in trying to prop up an unsustainable artificial economy all presented environmental NGOs with an unparalled opportunity to educate the masses, beginning with their own supporters and dupes. But how can a teacher who assigns failing grades to government for failing to address symptoms be qualified to educate us when he himself rates an F for ignorance, hypocrisy, cowardice and corruption?
In reviewing their conduct in just the last two years, never mind the last two decades, I am moved to address the environmental NGO’s in the same words that MP Leo Amery denounced his friend, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the British House of Commons after the debacle in Norway:
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go !”
They haven’t led, so they must either follow or get the hell out of the way. To save the environment, we must be rid of these so-called “environmentalists.”
ITS ALL ABOUT NUMBERS STUPID Kevin Rudd and the Green Dodgers
Kevin Rudd “a gormless fool”? http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/rudd_feels_the_heat_on_60_minute
Apparently Aussie Prime Minister Krudd doesn’t have his facts right on AGW. Should this surprise anyone? How can a politician effect such concern about man-caused global warming but apparently no concern whatsoever about population growth in Australia? If he is certain of the connection between humankind and global warming how is that he would make no connection between the increasing number of people and global warming After all, who makes up humankind but people? Surely “anthropogenic” implies the involvement of people in global warming (AGW)? Either people are involved in global warming or they are not. If they are not, then population growth in Australia or elsewhere has no bearing on global warming. In that case we can train our guns where they should have been trained all along: on the impact of population growth on the loss of farmland, the shortage of water, the loss of biodiversity, pollution, traffic congestion, social anomie and fragmentation and so on. In other words, all those things that politicians like Kevin Rudd are, through their mass immigration policies and birth incentives, responsible for.
On the other hand, if people are involved in global warming then he face up to his culpability in this matter, for stuffing Australia, the world’s greatest emitter of green house gases per capita, with more and more climate changers, aka, immigrants.
Of course, there is another sophist green dodge, isn’t there? Yes, the argument goes, there is manifestly global warming, but it is not “people” who are causing it, but “factories, cars, industry, energy companies….” Funny, I thought people had something to do with the demand for the products of industry, for cars and energy. Must be ghosts who buy products and services. Well, yes, they do, counter the green dodgers, but (and here is the old chestnut) “It is not the number of people that is relevant, but how much they consume. Americans make up but 5% of the global population but use 22% of the world’s energy resources. And did you know that one American consumes 3.7 million times as much as a slum dweller in Delhi?”
So I get it, lets import Delhi slum-dwellers so they can live like us. Lets multiply everyone’s footprint by bringing them here. After all, our biodiversity, as William Rees said, counts for squat in comparison to the rich biodiversity found elsewhere, like Central America. Who cares about our wildlife? Our forests, our farmland. We can give that up, can’t we?
“No,” replies green-dodger. “You’re missing the point. Obviously the world can’t live as we do, we would need another 3 or 4 planets for that. The solution is reduce OUR consumption, not throw up walls. We must adopt ‘inclusive’ strategies that invite global cooperation, not nationalize our environmentalism behind a gated community, not focus on the incremental consumption increases by immigrants.” Well, that sounds quite compassionate, doesn’t it? Except for the fact that our consumption habits are here and now, and more intractable and much less easy to adjust than our immigration levels. It would be tough for a Canadian to live on a Cambodian consumption level because a typical Canadian heating bill would devour the annual per capita Cambodian salary of $1800. If green-dodger was the Minister of Highways, would he open up a new highway or road improvement project before the traffic controls were in place? Would he allow new motorists from here and elsewhere to pour onto it? And if, as green-dodger always maintains, we could avoid the continued loss of farmland and the loss of biodiversity by strict and sensible land-use policies, would he, as Immigration Minister, allow mass immigration to continue at is alarming pace before these ‘smart growth’ land use policies were established? Would he hold open the immigration door so widely if he confessed that since land-use policy is not the province of national or federal governments but in the hands of local governments bought and paid for developers? Would he continue to be indifferent to rapid population growth here if he faced up to the fact that historically, biodiversity losses have increased with the increase of park dedications, that nature reserves are at the mercy of commercial and population pressures? Can he spell “Yosemite” or “the Steve Irwin reserve”?
Ah, but green-dodger, retorts, the answer is densification. The concentration of people into urban feedlots, where he alleges, so many more ecological efficiencies can occur. Rural populations consume so much more per capita. Since cities make 70% of resource demands, our challenge is to restructure cities to reduce those demands while at the same time wiping out their efficiency gains by inviting more foreign consumers here and jamming them into cities. Cities which obviously empower women as reflected in their lower birth rates as city-dwellers. Even the Delhi slum dwellers prefer cities, or they would have remained in rural India. Cities are the answer. We should all live cheek to jowl in urban sardine cans. Trouble here, though, is that people in densely packed cities still generate wastes and consume products, products that must be transported from distant localities with all the attendant energy and environmental costs that involves. That head of lettuce from California or across the state just multiplied its footprint (and its price) immensely just getting to that urban consumer, who could have had it more cheaply if he had not left the farm. A farm lost to population growth, not poor planning. Sprawl accounts for no more than half, at that, of farmland conversion to housing and commercial construction in North America. The other half is clearly the result of population growth, more 70% of which is driven by immigration, not counting the descendants of immigrants.
But, green-dodger replies, ‘Immigration does nothing to affect the number of people that live on planet Earth, only their disposition. If global population is to be reduced, it won’t be reduced by keeping them out of this affluent land. Moreover, there is no ethical way to reduce global population. Draconian Chinese methods are not acceptable. We can’t (playing to the feminist audience) morally control what women do with their bodies. Only offer them education and move them to cities. Cities like Chicago which a study showed emits just 20% of the green house gases per capita as those living in rural areas outside of it.” Odd, that, when Dr. David Suzuki observed that an occupant of a Shanghai high rise uses 2.5 times more energy than he did in the country. And when the people of Shanghai or rural China or any nation of low consumption arrives in America, he automatically quadruples his GHG footprint. Moving North American folks from rural to dense city environments is far less impactful than moving those in third world environments here.
The fact is, immigration policy does affect global population growth. Open doors offer developing nations an escape hatch to exit their surplus population and avoid confronting their own rampant population growth. And the enormous expenditures involved in settling immigrants, if deployed as foreign aid made conditional on family planning, would reduce population pressures in the source countries, and increase prosperity to make emigration less attractive. With effective, voluntary and accessible family planning options a country like Thailand can reduce its population growth rate from 3% to 0.5%, stabilize its population and be an exporter of rice. Without such planning, and by Canada dispensing unconditional aid, a country like the Philippines will add 30 million people as it has in the last two decades, and become a net importer of rice.
So whether you are talking about man-made climate change or the loss of biodiversity and farmland, it all comes down to numbers. It is all about population growth, stupid. Get it down now, and so many problems suddenly become solvable.
Apparently Aussie Prime Minister Krudd doesn’t have his facts right on AGW. Should this surprise anyone? How can a politician effect such concern about man-caused global warming but apparently no concern whatsoever about population growth in Australia? If he is certain of the connection between humankind and global warming how is that he would make no connection between the increasing number of people and global warming After all, who makes up humankind but people? Surely “anthropogenic” implies the involvement of people in global warming (AGW)? Either people are involved in global warming or they are not. If they are not, then population growth in Australia or elsewhere has no bearing on global warming. In that case we can train our guns where they should have been trained all along: on the impact of population growth on the loss of farmland, the shortage of water, the loss of biodiversity, pollution, traffic congestion, social anomie and fragmentation and so on. In other words, all those things that politicians like Kevin Rudd are, through their mass immigration policies and birth incentives, responsible for.
On the other hand, if people are involved in global warming then he face up to his culpability in this matter, for stuffing Australia, the world’s greatest emitter of green house gases per capita, with more and more climate changers, aka, immigrants.
Of course, there is another sophist green dodge, isn’t there? Yes, the argument goes, there is manifestly global warming, but it is not “people” who are causing it, but “factories, cars, industry, energy companies….” Funny, I thought people had something to do with the demand for the products of industry, for cars and energy. Must be ghosts who buy products and services. Well, yes, they do, counter the green dodgers, but (and here is the old chestnut) “It is not the number of people that is relevant, but how much they consume. Americans make up but 5% of the global population but use 22% of the world’s energy resources. And did you know that one American consumes 3.7 million times as much as a slum dweller in Delhi?”
So I get it, lets import Delhi slum-dwellers so they can live like us. Lets multiply everyone’s footprint by bringing them here. After all, our biodiversity, as William Rees said, counts for squat in comparison to the rich biodiversity found elsewhere, like Central America. Who cares about our wildlife? Our forests, our farmland. We can give that up, can’t we?
“No,” replies green-dodger. “You’re missing the point. Obviously the world can’t live as we do, we would need another 3 or 4 planets for that. The solution is reduce OUR consumption, not throw up walls. We must adopt ‘inclusive’ strategies that invite global cooperation, not nationalize our environmentalism behind a gated community, not focus on the incremental consumption increases by immigrants.” Well, that sounds quite compassionate, doesn’t it? Except for the fact that our consumption habits are here and now, and more intractable and much less easy to adjust than our immigration levels. It would be tough for a Canadian to live on a Cambodian consumption level because a typical Canadian heating bill would devour the annual per capita Cambodian salary of $1800. If green-dodger was the Minister of Highways, would he open up a new highway or road improvement project before the traffic controls were in place? Would he allow new motorists from here and elsewhere to pour onto it? And if, as green-dodger always maintains, we could avoid the continued loss of farmland and the loss of biodiversity by strict and sensible land-use policies, would he, as Immigration Minister, allow mass immigration to continue at is alarming pace before these ‘smart growth’ land use policies were established? Would he hold open the immigration door so widely if he confessed that since land-use policy is not the province of national or federal governments but in the hands of local governments bought and paid for developers? Would he continue to be indifferent to rapid population growth here if he faced up to the fact that historically, biodiversity losses have increased with the increase of park dedications, that nature reserves are at the mercy of commercial and population pressures? Can he spell “Yosemite” or “the Steve Irwin reserve”?
Ah, but green-dodger, retorts, the answer is densification. The concentration of people into urban feedlots, where he alleges, so many more ecological efficiencies can occur. Rural populations consume so much more per capita. Since cities make 70% of resource demands, our challenge is to restructure cities to reduce those demands while at the same time wiping out their efficiency gains by inviting more foreign consumers here and jamming them into cities. Cities which obviously empower women as reflected in their lower birth rates as city-dwellers. Even the Delhi slum dwellers prefer cities, or they would have remained in rural India. Cities are the answer. We should all live cheek to jowl in urban sardine cans. Trouble here, though, is that people in densely packed cities still generate wastes and consume products, products that must be transported from distant localities with all the attendant energy and environmental costs that involves. That head of lettuce from California or across the state just multiplied its footprint (and its price) immensely just getting to that urban consumer, who could have had it more cheaply if he had not left the farm. A farm lost to population growth, not poor planning. Sprawl accounts for no more than half, at that, of farmland conversion to housing and commercial construction in North America. The other half is clearly the result of population growth, more 70% of which is driven by immigration, not counting the descendants of immigrants.
But, green-dodger replies, ‘Immigration does nothing to affect the number of people that live on planet Earth, only their disposition. If global population is to be reduced, it won’t be reduced by keeping them out of this affluent land. Moreover, there is no ethical way to reduce global population. Draconian Chinese methods are not acceptable. We can’t (playing to the feminist audience) morally control what women do with their bodies. Only offer them education and move them to cities. Cities like Chicago which a study showed emits just 20% of the green house gases per capita as those living in rural areas outside of it.” Odd, that, when Dr. David Suzuki observed that an occupant of a Shanghai high rise uses 2.5 times more energy than he did in the country. And when the people of Shanghai or rural China or any nation of low consumption arrives in America, he automatically quadruples his GHG footprint. Moving North American folks from rural to dense city environments is far less impactful than moving those in third world environments here.
The fact is, immigration policy does affect global population growth. Open doors offer developing nations an escape hatch to exit their surplus population and avoid confronting their own rampant population growth. And the enormous expenditures involved in settling immigrants, if deployed as foreign aid made conditional on family planning, would reduce population pressures in the source countries, and increase prosperity to make emigration less attractive. With effective, voluntary and accessible family planning options a country like Thailand can reduce its population growth rate from 3% to 0.5%, stabilize its population and be an exporter of rice. Without such planning, and by Canada dispensing unconditional aid, a country like the Philippines will add 30 million people as it has in the last two decades, and become a net importer of rice.
So whether you are talking about man-made climate change or the loss of biodiversity and farmland, it all comes down to numbers. It is all about population growth, stupid. Get it down now, and so many problems suddenly become solvable.
WHY CLOSING OUR BORDERS WOULD BE AN ACT OF GLOBAL GENEROSITY
A Green critic posts a question that is among the most common of misconceptions about global growth; “I don’t see how closing borders helps save global biodiversity or stops global overpopulation.”
1. By providing a safety value for third world excess populations, we are allowing these countries not to come to terms with their overpopulation. Much like bailing your delinquent son out of any troubles he has with over-spending his allowance or his chronic clashes with the law. If he is not forced to face up to the consequences of his actions, he will NEVER learn. Unconditional foreign aid, that is aid not made conditional on birth control is another of our sins.
2. Immigration also allows dictators to survive in third world countries. If the oppressed populations knew that there no escape hatches out, the incentive to overthrow a Mugabe would be irresistible.
3. Immigration cost us as much money as we spend on health. Check out the Grubel report of 2002 on the cost of immigration. 80% of our immigrants are unskilled. Less than half have command of either French or Engish---a fundamental job skill. As a consequence, they do not re-imburse government in the taxes they pay for the government services that they consume. Their unskilled jobs do not pay high enough taxes in a progressive tax system. Immigrants who arrived in 1990 cost by 2002, over $18 billion dollars a year on average. That money could be deployed instead on foreign aid tied to family planning. Reducing immigration to Canada therefore WOULD impact global population levels positively if we spent money this way. THEIR biodiversity would benefit, as well as ours. Helping people where they presently live is a win, win situation. And the fact is, people fundamentally don’t want to move and leave their extended families behind. They never did. We could give them more good reasons to stay. Scrap immigration, vastly multiply foreign aid within the context of family planning and abolish the trade agreements which favour the affluent nations and cripple and rob the poor ones. Closing borders does not mean closing our hearts. On the contrary, it could mean opening our wallets wider and spending our resources with greater benefit to all.
4. Open borders allow for the emigration of people from lower footprint countries to ours, a very high footprint country. One immigrant to American quadruples his GHG emissions upon arrival, thereby accelerating the timetable of our collective global demise, if AGW is your chief concern. Yes we must reduce OUR footprint. But it is colossally irresponsible to permit entry of people until we have done so, and tightened up our land use planning to make efficient use of our space. You do not allow motorists onto a new highway system UNTIL the traffic controls are all in place. But even if they were, Canada should NOT increase its population level. The soils will not support more than a fraction of the people we now have when Petroleum is no longer economically available. There is no technological fix or renewable technology to replenish soils that have been mined of all their nutrients when fossil fuel based fertilizers are unavailable. Check out Dale Pfeiffer’s “Eating Fossil Fuels” and “A Ten thousand Year Misunderstanding” by soil microbiologist Peter Salonius. And remember, just 5% of our land base consists of arable land, land which is being lost to immigrant driven growth at an alarming rate outside of our major urban centres. Ontario alone loses 60,000 acres of prime farmland to development annually. Already subdivisions and commericial buildings have claimed one-fifth of our best “Class 1” farmland. And at least 70% of the housing units on this land are occupied by New Canadians.
5. More Canadian consumers mean an increased appetite and demand for unsustainably-produced products in foreign lands. We have in fact exported the environmental costs of making these products to less developed nations that typically have fewer environmental and labour safeguards. In other words, population growth here accelerates biodiversity loss there. A “lose-lose” proposition. As environmentalist Rick Shea puts it, “Canadians appropriate that capacity from all over the planet as we import goods and resources, and thus contribute greatly to the loss of biodiversity elsewhere. As one example among so many, we contribute to the mercury falling into the oceans and rivers from China's coal-fired power plants as we buy their goods at Wal-Mart and other stores.” This, he points out, fits with William Rees’ concept of “appropriated carrying capacity”.
1. By providing a safety value for third world excess populations, we are allowing these countries not to come to terms with their overpopulation. Much like bailing your delinquent son out of any troubles he has with over-spending his allowance or his chronic clashes with the law. If he is not forced to face up to the consequences of his actions, he will NEVER learn. Unconditional foreign aid, that is aid not made conditional on birth control is another of our sins.
2. Immigration also allows dictators to survive in third world countries. If the oppressed populations knew that there no escape hatches out, the incentive to overthrow a Mugabe would be irresistible.
3. Immigration cost us as much money as we spend on health. Check out the Grubel report of 2002 on the cost of immigration. 80% of our immigrants are unskilled. Less than half have command of either French or Engish---a fundamental job skill. As a consequence, they do not re-imburse government in the taxes they pay for the government services that they consume. Their unskilled jobs do not pay high enough taxes in a progressive tax system. Immigrants who arrived in 1990 cost by 2002, over $18 billion dollars a year on average. That money could be deployed instead on foreign aid tied to family planning. Reducing immigration to Canada therefore WOULD impact global population levels positively if we spent money this way. THEIR biodiversity would benefit, as well as ours. Helping people where they presently live is a win, win situation. And the fact is, people fundamentally don’t want to move and leave their extended families behind. They never did. We could give them more good reasons to stay. Scrap immigration, vastly multiply foreign aid within the context of family planning and abolish the trade agreements which favour the affluent nations and cripple and rob the poor ones. Closing borders does not mean closing our hearts. On the contrary, it could mean opening our wallets wider and spending our resources with greater benefit to all.
4. Open borders allow for the emigration of people from lower footprint countries to ours, a very high footprint country. One immigrant to American quadruples his GHG emissions upon arrival, thereby accelerating the timetable of our collective global demise, if AGW is your chief concern. Yes we must reduce OUR footprint. But it is colossally irresponsible to permit entry of people until we have done so, and tightened up our land use planning to make efficient use of our space. You do not allow motorists onto a new highway system UNTIL the traffic controls are all in place. But even if they were, Canada should NOT increase its population level. The soils will not support more than a fraction of the people we now have when Petroleum is no longer economically available. There is no technological fix or renewable technology to replenish soils that have been mined of all their nutrients when fossil fuel based fertilizers are unavailable. Check out Dale Pfeiffer’s “Eating Fossil Fuels” and “A Ten thousand Year Misunderstanding” by soil microbiologist Peter Salonius. And remember, just 5% of our land base consists of arable land, land which is being lost to immigrant driven growth at an alarming rate outside of our major urban centres. Ontario alone loses 60,000 acres of prime farmland to development annually. Already subdivisions and commericial buildings have claimed one-fifth of our best “Class 1” farmland. And at least 70% of the housing units on this land are occupied by New Canadians.
5. More Canadian consumers mean an increased appetite and demand for unsustainably-produced products in foreign lands. We have in fact exported the environmental costs of making these products to less developed nations that typically have fewer environmental and labour safeguards. In other words, population growth here accelerates biodiversity loss there. A “lose-lose” proposition. As environmentalist Rick Shea puts it, “Canadians appropriate that capacity from all over the planet as we import goods and resources, and thus contribute greatly to the loss of biodiversity elsewhere. As one example among so many, we contribute to the mercury falling into the oceans and rivers from China's coal-fired power plants as we buy their goods at Wal-Mart and other stores.” This, he points out, fits with William Rees’ concept of “appropriated carrying capacity”.
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN EXTREMIST
Soft-Green critics have called me an “extremist”, and I have always replied to that criticism with question. “Is an extremist someone who has relatively ‘extreme’ views, or someone who simply has a clearer comprehension of an extreme predicament?” Extremism is a function of time and place. In 1859, John Brown was regarded as an extremist, a dangerous and delusional man for suggesting that if the United States did not excavate and remove the cancer of slavery, it would become a bloodbath. By 1864 after the nation lost 4% of its population in doing just that, John Brown was a prophet and heroic martyr. Even during the Civil War, Union soldiers sang a song in his praise. Will our eulogy be sung by extra-terrestrial archaeologists? It must be remembered that Cassandra was an extremist too, and she was also right about her visions. Today’s heresy often becomes tomorrow’s truth.
Do you think in retrospect, that John Brown should have “toned down” and “softened” his message? Perhaps hired a New York publicity firm with polished hacks who could coach him what to say and how to say it? Perhaps he could have proposed to free just 50% of the slaves, rather than 100%, with a full compensation package for slave owners similar to the Golden Parachutes that Wall Street bankers are getting today. And Tony Robbins could have done a make-over of his negative personality traits, transforming him into a mellow meditator who felt at one with the universe, a universe that was unfolding as it should, without his interventions. If only the Self-Help Industry was thriving then, slaves and slaveowners alike could have felt good about themselves, and in the process re-define reality as consisting solely of their own perceptions of it. Don’t worry, be happy. At the very least, John Brown would have eschewed violent solutions, and changed his communication style. He would have not have come on so strong. Instead, he would say something like this,
“Like, maybe, perhaps, you kind of should maybe think of dumping this slavery thing America, I mean, it is toxic to your system don’t you think? I mean, no offence---I’m cool with your choices man, don’t get me wrong. I am not being judgmental here, I mean who I am I to judge, just because slavery is wrong to me, it may be OK to you and I have to appreciate where you are coming from. All morals are relative, right, do you know what I mean? So it’s just a suggestion. Think about it. Well, nice talking to you dudes, but I promised myself that I would veg-out on the beach for a while. You gotta take care of yourself first, right? Love yourself first, right? That’s what I do, and now I love all you guys, slaves and slaveowners, robber barrons, slave traders alike---all Americans, because we are all one with the universe. If we only loved one another, we wouldn’t have to change a darn thing because then our attitude would be one of acceptance and peace.”
I wonder how the course of history would have been different had the Self Help Industry been at the helm. No need for OPT, because if everyone loved one another, there would be enough to go around, like John Lennon thought. He could have kept his millions like Sir Paul and “Love” would have fed 6.8 billion people and more. Then again, the Self Help Industry has always been in charge, hasn’t it? Only we used to call it “The Help-Yourself Industry”. Motto, “Grab as much as you can and run, the devil take the hindmost.” And above all, stay positive. Article 51 of the Constitution says that it is mandatory to be positive, and radiate that positivity to others. The glass must always be seen as half-full, even though the aquifers soon won’t be able to refill it. Remember, we are not here to tell the truth, but deny it, for our mandate is boost morale. Feeling good is what counts. And making people happy makes you feel good. Ecological meltdown, what meltdown?
Now that is what I call an extreme view, don’t you?
Do you think in retrospect, that John Brown should have “toned down” and “softened” his message? Perhaps hired a New York publicity firm with polished hacks who could coach him what to say and how to say it? Perhaps he could have proposed to free just 50% of the slaves, rather than 100%, with a full compensation package for slave owners similar to the Golden Parachutes that Wall Street bankers are getting today. And Tony Robbins could have done a make-over of his negative personality traits, transforming him into a mellow meditator who felt at one with the universe, a universe that was unfolding as it should, without his interventions. If only the Self-Help Industry was thriving then, slaves and slaveowners alike could have felt good about themselves, and in the process re-define reality as consisting solely of their own perceptions of it. Don’t worry, be happy. At the very least, John Brown would have eschewed violent solutions, and changed his communication style. He would have not have come on so strong. Instead, he would say something like this,
“Like, maybe, perhaps, you kind of should maybe think of dumping this slavery thing America, I mean, it is toxic to your system don’t you think? I mean, no offence---I’m cool with your choices man, don’t get me wrong. I am not being judgmental here, I mean who I am I to judge, just because slavery is wrong to me, it may be OK to you and I have to appreciate where you are coming from. All morals are relative, right, do you know what I mean? So it’s just a suggestion. Think about it. Well, nice talking to you dudes, but I promised myself that I would veg-out on the beach for a while. You gotta take care of yourself first, right? Love yourself first, right? That’s what I do, and now I love all you guys, slaves and slaveowners, robber barrons, slave traders alike---all Americans, because we are all one with the universe. If we only loved one another, we wouldn’t have to change a darn thing because then our attitude would be one of acceptance and peace.”
I wonder how the course of history would have been different had the Self Help Industry been at the helm. No need for OPT, because if everyone loved one another, there would be enough to go around, like John Lennon thought. He could have kept his millions like Sir Paul and “Love” would have fed 6.8 billion people and more. Then again, the Self Help Industry has always been in charge, hasn’t it? Only we used to call it “The Help-Yourself Industry”. Motto, “Grab as much as you can and run, the devil take the hindmost.” And above all, stay positive. Article 51 of the Constitution says that it is mandatory to be positive, and radiate that positivity to others. The glass must always be seen as half-full, even though the aquifers soon won’t be able to refill it. Remember, we are not here to tell the truth, but deny it, for our mandate is boost morale. Feeling good is what counts. And making people happy makes you feel good. Ecological meltdown, what meltdown?
Now that is what I call an extreme view, don’t you?
PERSONALS: Man Seeking Ms. Ann Thrope
While reading a column in the Daily Mail, I noticed an ad from one of those on-line specialty dating services. It was called “Humanitarian Dating” (www.humanitariandating.com), and it was, upon scrutiny, designed so that members could “Meet friends who care about the world and its people.” Fascinating.
But does anyone know of an “Inhumane Dating” service that I might try? One where I could meet “friends” who cared about the world and all of its species, and who therefore couldn’t care less about the one species who was mismanaging them? The species whose club members typically breed carelessly and mindlessly like so much yeast in a Petri dish, unaware of the confines of its habitat and crowding out every other species from which it depends?
These websites have been characterized as bulletin boards for “do-gooders who seek same.” I rather think that they are for “feel-gooders” who don’t want to be told that they are up to no lasting good. People like “Vegan Vixen” who would reject me for eating a hamburger or throwing a plastic container into my garbage, yet ignore the emissions from the several children she conceived from more than one “partner” while scolding me for supporting cattle methane emissions. Such people can often be found at “anti-racism” protests that would intimidate and silence those who would question their open immigration agenda, which “Vegan Vixen” and her like adopted with the same utopian naivety as John Lennon and Yoko Ono once did.
We are all “together” you see, in one lifeboat. Therefore we must “love” our fellow third world passengers enough to invite them all over to sit with us on our one side of the vessel. A great recipe for seaworthiness in rough waters. Only by reducing our portions and leaving our front door wide open to the neighbours will we demonstrate that we care and thereby gain their cooperation. My questions to those like “Vegan Vixen” would be the same as those posed by “Karl”, who asked, “I do my travelling in Ontario like the Georgian Bay instead of flying around the world in jets to see exotic places, like most vegetarians I know like to do. What is bad or worse? Who emits more carbon---David Suzuki or the local cattle rancher?
The hypocrisy prize goes to “Ken” from California, though. A member of “Planet Earth Singles”, he describes himself as a “green real estate broker” who works with “developers and individual homeowners to both build green houses and to retro-fit existing structures.” In his words, he is “doing everything to lessen the impact of living on Mother Earth.” Doing everything, that is, but try to reduce the pool of potential customers for his green buildings, customers whose sheer numbers will erase all the benefits of his greening and retro-fitting that he does to “lessen” the impact of their living on Mother Earth.
Now if I was a younger man in search of a date, the woman I would seek would be much like the one I met visiting from Alaska last summer. She was more interested in simply surviving than living “green”. Like my mother, she carried a rifle, which she could disassemble, clean and reassemble effortlessly, and more impressively, had no compunction about firing it at predators of the human kind, those that would deprive her of life and liberty. For good measure, while she was at home, she found the company of her good friends, Smith and Wesson, most reassuring. A carnivore, she consumed vegetables as well, especially the ones first digested in the stomachs of the wild game she shot for dinner. And like dear old mom, she knew that the attributes of a good wife did not consist of a knowledge of Thai cooking, yoga or the sayings of the Delai Lama, but knowing how to grow food, and just as important, how to stop other people from taking it.
Come Kunstler’s Long Emergency, those are the kind of ‘dates’ a man should seek in these parts. A back-up to ward off starving marauders who live now as if the gravy train of state dependency will thrive forever as it does now on revenue from a carbon-based economy. A Ms. Ann Thrope.
I wonder if there is a website for catches like that?
But does anyone know of an “Inhumane Dating” service that I might try? One where I could meet “friends” who cared about the world and all of its species, and who therefore couldn’t care less about the one species who was mismanaging them? The species whose club members typically breed carelessly and mindlessly like so much yeast in a Petri dish, unaware of the confines of its habitat and crowding out every other species from which it depends?
These websites have been characterized as bulletin boards for “do-gooders who seek same.” I rather think that they are for “feel-gooders” who don’t want to be told that they are up to no lasting good. People like “Vegan Vixen” who would reject me for eating a hamburger or throwing a plastic container into my garbage, yet ignore the emissions from the several children she conceived from more than one “partner” while scolding me for supporting cattle methane emissions. Such people can often be found at “anti-racism” protests that would intimidate and silence those who would question their open immigration agenda, which “Vegan Vixen” and her like adopted with the same utopian naivety as John Lennon and Yoko Ono once did.
We are all “together” you see, in one lifeboat. Therefore we must “love” our fellow third world passengers enough to invite them all over to sit with us on our one side of the vessel. A great recipe for seaworthiness in rough waters. Only by reducing our portions and leaving our front door wide open to the neighbours will we demonstrate that we care and thereby gain their cooperation. My questions to those like “Vegan Vixen” would be the same as those posed by “Karl”, who asked, “I do my travelling in Ontario like the Georgian Bay instead of flying around the world in jets to see exotic places, like most vegetarians I know like to do. What is bad or worse? Who emits more carbon---David Suzuki or the local cattle rancher?
The hypocrisy prize goes to “Ken” from California, though. A member of “Planet Earth Singles”, he describes himself as a “green real estate broker” who works with “developers and individual homeowners to both build green houses and to retro-fit existing structures.” In his words, he is “doing everything to lessen the impact of living on Mother Earth.” Doing everything, that is, but try to reduce the pool of potential customers for his green buildings, customers whose sheer numbers will erase all the benefits of his greening and retro-fitting that he does to “lessen” the impact of their living on Mother Earth.
Now if I was a younger man in search of a date, the woman I would seek would be much like the one I met visiting from Alaska last summer. She was more interested in simply surviving than living “green”. Like my mother, she carried a rifle, which she could disassemble, clean and reassemble effortlessly, and more impressively, had no compunction about firing it at predators of the human kind, those that would deprive her of life and liberty. For good measure, while she was at home, she found the company of her good friends, Smith and Wesson, most reassuring. A carnivore, she consumed vegetables as well, especially the ones first digested in the stomachs of the wild game she shot for dinner. And like dear old mom, she knew that the attributes of a good wife did not consist of a knowledge of Thai cooking, yoga or the sayings of the Delai Lama, but knowing how to grow food, and just as important, how to stop other people from taking it.
Come Kunstler’s Long Emergency, those are the kind of ‘dates’ a man should seek in these parts. A back-up to ward off starving marauders who live now as if the gravy train of state dependency will thrive forever as it does now on revenue from a carbon-based economy. A Ms. Ann Thrope.
I wonder if there is a website for catches like that?
ONE MILLION ACTS OF FUTILITY The CBC's Campaign to Effect a Feel-Good National Spirit
Last night I inadvertently stumbled upon a CBC Newscast that eventually degenerated into a mushy and microcosmic Gen X version of Woodstock. It featured the PC-nominated moderator of Decency, Fair Play, Good Sense and Calm Reason, Peter Mansbridge, the omnipresent host of CBC Television News, and Mother Corp’s anointed spokesman of Young Cool, the famous George Strombopolous. Together they sat to gush about the great success of the CBC’s much advertised “One Million Acts of Green” campaign to encourage the efforts of Canadians to effect minor changes to their lifestyle or personal habits, that in their sum total, allegedly do so much to protect our environment. Their comments followed a short documentary which profiled Canadians who were heroically doing just that, from Vancouver to the Maritimes.
Of course, the emphasis was entirely on praiseworthy efforts by citizens who opted in various clever ways, to reduce their footprints. No mention at all was made of the increasing number of “footprints” that are admitted to our country by mass immigration, or who are born here with the inducement of increasingly generous child benefits. To do so would have violated the CBC Mandate, which is to promote harmony at the expense of the truth, to celebrate the differences, but not to acknowledge them if they have the potential to promote the division that they won’t speak of.
In Canada one must never cause “offense”, and never define it in objective terms but only according to the subjective reactions of those who choose to take offense. And now with the “One Million Acts of Green” campaign the CBC has converted the nation to a mass group psychotherapy session, relentlessly conducted on news “features” like these. For the CBC, all complex issues can be reduced to human interest stories. Last night falsehood was chaperoned into the public consciousness by Mark Kelly clones from West to East. Kelly, of course, was, and continues to be the prototype of this kind of journalism, where the pain and the glory of individuals who are unrepresentative of total reality receive an unjustified prominence at our expense.
This particular documentary was classic. Of the folks depicted in the Manitoba car-pool formed as an alternative to one occupant commuting, two were immigrants. And the story about the furniture store in Toronto that rehabilitated old items and sold them to save the landfill and make a buck, focused on refugee claimants who popped in for a good deal. No one pointed out that one immigrant of any description multiplies his footprint by several factors upon his settlement in Canada---or the inconvenient fact that just one New Canadian, native born or foreign born, erases perhaps 85 years of responsible recycling, if our disposal habits are anything like the British ones that the Stockholm Institute calculated. Or that each additional citizen will, if not immediately, match the Green house gas emission average of 23 metric tonnes per Canadian. That is a factoid for groupies of the Religion of Man-Made Climate Change (AGW). That includes all soft greens from the CBC to the environmental NGOs, who calculate all their green living tips exclusively in terms of per capita carbon emissions. The concept that population growth might have something to do with climate change, or that climate change should take a back seat to the more imminent consequences of biodiversity loss which is manifest and speculative, is beyond their imagination.
Folks, there is nothing that those immigrants interviewed can do, to make up in conserving, reusing or recycling or the multitude of petty individual lifestyle changes presented, for the damage that their consumption will do to the environment just by virtue of living the lifestyle they voted for with their feet.
I get the CBC formula for environmental salvation---just keeping cheerfully bailing water out of a boat that keeps sinking from the number of passengers who keep climbing aboard. Reduce our personal impact so there is room for more consumers to pick up the slack.
Why don’t so many other taxpayers “get it”?
Tim Murray
Feb 5/09
Of course, the emphasis was entirely on praiseworthy efforts by citizens who opted in various clever ways, to reduce their footprints. No mention at all was made of the increasing number of “footprints” that are admitted to our country by mass immigration, or who are born here with the inducement of increasingly generous child benefits. To do so would have violated the CBC Mandate, which is to promote harmony at the expense of the truth, to celebrate the differences, but not to acknowledge them if they have the potential to promote the division that they won’t speak of.
In Canada one must never cause “offense”, and never define it in objective terms but only according to the subjective reactions of those who choose to take offense. And now with the “One Million Acts of Green” campaign the CBC has converted the nation to a mass group psychotherapy session, relentlessly conducted on news “features” like these. For the CBC, all complex issues can be reduced to human interest stories. Last night falsehood was chaperoned into the public consciousness by Mark Kelly clones from West to East. Kelly, of course, was, and continues to be the prototype of this kind of journalism, where the pain and the glory of individuals who are unrepresentative of total reality receive an unjustified prominence at our expense.
This particular documentary was classic. Of the folks depicted in the Manitoba car-pool formed as an alternative to one occupant commuting, two were immigrants. And the story about the furniture store in Toronto that rehabilitated old items and sold them to save the landfill and make a buck, focused on refugee claimants who popped in for a good deal. No one pointed out that one immigrant of any description multiplies his footprint by several factors upon his settlement in Canada---or the inconvenient fact that just one New Canadian, native born or foreign born, erases perhaps 85 years of responsible recycling, if our disposal habits are anything like the British ones that the Stockholm Institute calculated. Or that each additional citizen will, if not immediately, match the Green house gas emission average of 23 metric tonnes per Canadian. That is a factoid for groupies of the Religion of Man-Made Climate Change (AGW). That includes all soft greens from the CBC to the environmental NGOs, who calculate all their green living tips exclusively in terms of per capita carbon emissions. The concept that population growth might have something to do with climate change, or that climate change should take a back seat to the more imminent consequences of biodiversity loss which is manifest and speculative, is beyond their imagination.
Folks, there is nothing that those immigrants interviewed can do, to make up in conserving, reusing or recycling or the multitude of petty individual lifestyle changes presented, for the damage that their consumption will do to the environment just by virtue of living the lifestyle they voted for with their feet.
I get the CBC formula for environmental salvation---just keeping cheerfully bailing water out of a boat that keeps sinking from the number of passengers who keep climbing aboard. Reduce our personal impact so there is room for more consumers to pick up the slack.
Why don’t so many other taxpayers “get it”?
Tim Murray
Feb 5/09
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