environment

The ball is in your court: Hard questions for Soft Greens

You say you’re OK with the idea of reducing our population. But you are not comfortable with immigration cut-backs. Birth control, more abortion services, tax incentives for fewer children are fine. But your parents, or grand-parents, or friends are immigrants and by the way, aren’t mine too? The problem is, all the measures you would agree to would do little to reverse population growth in North America. Immigration accounts for 70% of American population growth and two-thirds of Canada’s. Without immigration, population in both countries levels off. If immigration persists at current rates, the USA will see one billion citizens and Canada 70 million by century’s end. But you’re just not comfortable about dealing with immigration in a country of 33 million people. Will you be comfortable dealing with it when we reach Jack Layton’s goal of 40 million—shared by other federal leaders? Will you be comfortable with no immigration freeze at 50 million? 60 million? 70 million? At what point would you be willing to concede that we had exceeded our carrying-capacity in Canada? DO YOU EVEN ACCEPT THAT WE HAVE A “CARRYING CAPACITY” IN CANADA?” According to Millenium Assessment findings 60% of 24 ecosystem services were being degraded unsustainably over the past 50 years. There is a fundamental conflict between economic growth and ecosystem services and between economic growth and biodiversity conservation. Economic growth is a function of population level and per capita consumption. You say you want to reduce consumption. Great. But you apparently want to take population growth out of the equation. Absurd. Paul Ehrlich’s old “IPAT” formula still applies. When assessing environmental impact, its I (Impact)= P(Population)X A(Affluence or Consumption) X T for Technology. Biologist Neil Dawe of the Qualicum Institute, in the most optimistic guess I’ve read, said that biodiversity could probably subsist alongside Canada’s current population of 32 million---if we consumed at the level we did in 1950. Do you think that’s likely? You speak of hybrid cars, solar panels, windmills and retro-fits. How far toward 1950 will that get us? And when Jack Layton’s dream comes true—very shortly—and we have 40 million Canadians, will we then need to consume at the level of 1935? How “green” would consumers have to get to erase the damage that that extra 8 million consumers will inflict on the environment? And we haven’t yet talked about that great sacred cow of Canadian political discourse---REFUGEES. Oh dear me, we can’t keep them out, can we? OK then, how many? The UN says there are 15- 50 million right now. How many of these are we going to take in? 1 million? 5 million? 10 million? That’s just for starters. Along comes global warming and rising sea levels. Al Gore says that around the city of Shanghai alone 40 million people will be displaced. Multiply that a hundred times around the world. Where will your bleeding heart take us then? You call yourself an “environmentalist”. Your politics are “green”. But your concern for people obviously takes priority over your self-proclaimed concern for nature. Trouble is, nature is in the driver’s seat. Whatever number of people you want to admit to Canada is academic. It’s what the ecosystem will sustain. And with 33 million people, it’s not bearing up very well. To repeat , 60% of 24 ecosystem “services” are degraded. Your human rights agenda will come right up against biodiversity collapse. Its called a “Limiting Factor”. There is a limit, yes even in Canada, to population growth and to the economic growth it propels. And when push comes to shove, there will also be a limit to our compassion. Or to put it another way, our compassion toward the world will no longer come at the expense of our compassion to our own families, our community, our own nation, and the biodiversity that sustains us all. So the ball’s in your court, soft green. You won’t face up to the need for population stabilization. You would prefer runaway population growth to immigration cut-backs and an open-ended refugee policy without regard to the environmental consequences of such a course. Apparently, for you, the sky’s the limit. All we need do is be good little “green” consumers and reduce our footprint just a little bit more for each new entrant to the country. Now tell me how this is all supposed to work. How is biodiversity supposed to co-exist with 40, 50, 70 million Canadian consumers, however “green” they are? How do you reduce green-house emissions when you substantially increase the population. Tony Blair’s bold plan was to reduce emissions with tough new standards by 20% over 10 years. Instead, emissions increased 3% ! Why? Because although factories and cars spewed less noxious gas, economic and population growth increased the number of factories and cars! Back to square one! Numbers do matter. Until you cope with these questions, soft green, you are, in my estimation, a counterfeit green. And in your estimation I am, no doubt, all of those nasty adjectives in the politically correct lexicon—a callous, xenophobic, misanthropic, deep ecologist with a fortress mentality and a hidden “racist” agenda. It’s OK. I’m used to it. The race card always gets played when all other arguments fail. I’m inclined to believe that what was said of patriotism is true of anti-racism—it’s the last refuge of scoundrels. Tim Murray

The Dependence Law

The freedom of humans to be creative and innovative is acclaimed – by us. This is the positive side of the uniquely human attribute. There is, however, a negative side that is not generally recognized. Humans employ a huge range of transient operations they have installed that invariably involve using and abusing natural resources. Each of these operations provides something deemed of value to society during its lifetime. Each of these operations incurs an irrevocable, un-repayable ecological cost. We are irreversibly drawing down on the irreplaceable natural bounty. I argue in ‘What went wrong? The misdirection of civilization’ that this Dependence Law is soundly based but that society generally does not weigh up worth against eco cost realistically. A natural law is the summation of what invariably happens during natural operations. It is therefore appropriate to classify the dependence of the material operations of civilization on what is available from the environment as a natural law. Natural operations are also dependent on what is available but generally they draw down on natural bounty income only. The consequence of society’s exuberance is unnecessarily rapid degradation of our life support system, the bounty available from the ecosystem. There are too many people consuming too much of what nature has left to offer and then providing irrevocable waste. This holistic consumption predicament is exacerbated by the demands on the bounty to maintain the aging foundations of civilization. It is made worse by the gluttony of the powerful. The spree is unsustainable. It is a plague coming to its end. Catabolic collapse can only be avoided by a wise power down. Even then, there is the problem of maintaining cultural benefits even as the population declines. The conventional economic growth paradigm is based on the fallacious argument that the materialistic structure and operations of our civilization can occur without exacerbating this holistic malaise, consumption of the natural bounty. So growth is being fostered even as the available bounty is declining more rapidly. This is an unsustainable double whammy exacerbated by the need to look after the structure of civilization. The Dependence Law really does under lay the operation and maintenance of the foundations of our civilization. Appreciation of that fact makes it much easier to understand how it is that current trends are based on false premises, so are unsustainable. It explains what went wrong. Denis Frith Melbourne Australia ‘What went wrong? The misdirection of civilization.’ ‘The Usufruct Delusion’

Illegal aliens burn precious forest while Sierra Club is mum

Funny, I never read about THIS in any Sierra Club publication or newsletter. I wonder why? Environmentalists have had much to say about the damage a Mexican border fence would do to wildlife movement. But precious forests being torched and they say nothing? Could it be that David Gelbaum's money has bought their silence on this outrage too? Is there any catastrophe involving immigration---illegal or legal---that WOULD awaken this organization's conscience? The website of our local Sierra club---"Sierra Quadra"---described themselves as a "respectable" environmental organization. If they were an authentic environmental organization they would not be "respectable", ie. compliant with government policy, but quite the opposite. Paul Watson, for example, understands the threat that human population growth in North America poses to wildlife habitat and is not willing to step around politically correct eggshells just to widen his subscription base and fund a bloated bureaucracy. From the Washington Times of 18 June 2007:

Illegals setting fires to burn agents out of observation posts and patrol routes

"U.S. Border Patrol agents seeking to secure the nation's border in some of the country's most pristine national forests are being targeted by illegal aliens, who are using intentionally set fires to burn agents out of observation posts and patrol routes.

The wildfires have destroyed valuable natural and cultural resources in the National Forest System and pose an ongoing threat to visitors, residents and responding firefighters, according to federal law-enforcement authorities and others.

In the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, with 60 miles of land along the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Forest Service firefighters sent in to battle fires or clear wild-land fire areas are required to be escorted by armed law-enforcement officers.

Are these arsonists the kind of people the ruling clique of the Sierra Club referred to when it said it had to keep immigration reduction and population stabilization out of its policy book so it could broaden its membership base beyond English-speaking people---and keep David Gelbaum's $100 million bribe?

And then there are the thousands of tons of trash left by illegal aliens who have made the Sonoran Desert of Arizona north of the Mexican border a virtual landfill site. Have the self-appointed guardians of North American wilderness---the Sierra Club---said boo about this environmental disaster?

Apparently not. The Grand Canyon Chapter of the Club, stationed in Phoenix, is more worried about the damage that 7 miles of border fencing will do in impeding jaguars from reaching their historical American range. What the Sierra Club does not understand, because its livelihood depends on not understanding, is that nothing threatens wildlife like the traffic of HUMANS across the Mexican border. Runaway population growth will destroy wildlife habitat, and is rapidly doing so. Even the protected national parks are being loved to death. Oxymoronic 'smart' growth palliatives so favoured by the Sierra Club and the green establishment can't indefinitely sequester wildlife from developmental pressures propelled by rapid population growth.

If immigrants and their children will potentially add another 105 million consumers to America in the next five decades, the choice will not be, as the Grand Canyon Chapter would put it, between jaguars or a border fence, but between jaguars or illegal immigrants.

One cannot help but observe, with bitter irony, that both the environment and the North American working class would prosper from a "closed-borders" policy, and yet, both are betrayed by organizations led by those who take the contrary position.

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC

Help us put final nail in coffin of Mount Cotton Superquarry Wed 9am Cleveland

According to the Bayside Bulletin Newspaper (see below), the vote of two councillors who had formerly favoured approving the expansion of the existing Mount Cotton Quarry into a rainforest-destroying superquarry, may change in response to concerted community oppostion. Nevertheless it is still important that the pressure be maintained.

Protest outside Redland Shire Council chambers against plans to destroy Rainforest and Mount Cotton community with a giant quarry.

Where: Redland Shire Council Chambers, Bloomfield St., Cleveland
When:  9.00AM Wed 8 Aug 2007

Also please attend the on Sunday 12 August.

For further information see or visit

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