(We) can do better

#TheProblem" id="TheProblem">The problem

Are GM (genetically modified, some prefer "GE", genetically engineered) crops and food safe? Reading the mainstream press is probably going to confuse you more than anything else. The reason for this is it's extremely hard to tell who's telling "the truth". However, use of the Internet (and a few books that you can purchase through the Internet) can help you to see through the half-truths and distortions frequently used by proponents of GM crops and food. People who oppose the introduction of GM crops and food can, of course, resort to the same kind of tactics, so it's really up to the individual to look at the evidence and come to his or her own conclusion. The information is freely available on the Internet, all I do is give a few guidelines below to help you find it.

As I write (late June 2008), Australia is slowly trying to make up its collective mind about whether to allow the introduction of GM crops. Victoria and New South Wales, for example, have ended their moratorium on the planting of GM crops, and WA is maintaining its moratorium, though a debate on whether to extend it or not is now raging in that state. A friend of mine sent me an article from the Farm Weekly and I would like to use this article as an example of pro-GM writing. I would like to show how the writer uses half-truths and distortions to make his points, and how more detailed knowledge about much of the material in the article, allowing the reader to see 'where the writer is coming from,' is quite easily available on the Internet. Since information is democracy's oxygen, it would be a good idea perhaps if Australians take a deep breath before they finally decide on whether they really want GM crops and food or not.

The writer, Peter Lee, uses quotations from Shakespeare to back up some of the arguments he makes in the article. That's fine. I know almost nothing about Shakespeare, but I think this shows that Peter is a well-educated person of the English-speaking world. He especially gives the Shakespearean quote #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." just before he launches into his main argument about #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"whether WA farmers should be allowed to grow GM canola." Let's have a look at Peter's argument.

#ScientificProof" id="ScientificProof">Why the lack of scientific proof?

Just after the Shakespeare quote, Peter says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"There is no scientific proof that GM foods are dangerous, yet an entire industry has been built up world-wide to frighten (well-fed!) people into believing that such foods are unnatural and unsafe."

Yes, there is no scientific proof concerning whether GM foods are safe or not because the entire biotechnology industry has quite adamantly refused to do any conclusive testing on GM foods.

Yes, there is no scientific proof concerning whether GM foods are safe or not because the entire biotechnology industry has quite adamantly refused to do any conclusive testing on GM foods. Several preliminary and rigorous experiments by independent researchers on the feeding of GM foods to rats (e.g. by Arpad Pusztai and Irina Ermakova) have shown that there may be severe health impacts from the consumption of GM foods, but the biotechnology industry, whilst rebutting these experimental results has not followed up on them. The researchers who have carried out these experiments have complained of being forced to desist, through a cutting off of their funding, sudden firing, or retirement (in the case of Arpad Pusztai). The relevant books, see below, which are easily available from Internet bookstores, documentaries, such as the YouTube broadcasts here and here and The Genetic Conspiracy, and websites, e.g. ISIS (www.i-sis.org.uk), whose director is Dr Mae Wan Ho, note several such examples. What is frightening people is what appears to be a refusal to carry out rigorous testing on the human health effects of GM foods.

A small sample of useful books:

• Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods
• Jeffrey M. Smith, Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating
• Mae-Wan Ho, Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare?: The Brave New World of Science and Business

#OrganicVsConventional" id="OrganicVsConventional">The organic vs. conventional and the non-GM vs. GM analogy

Peter goes on to set up an analogy on possible similarities in the contrasts between organic and conventionally-grown food on the one hand and between non-GM food (essentially the same thing as conventionally-grown food) and GM food on the other. However, we need to look at what Peter says in a little detail to see whether his analogy is actually valid or not.

Peter says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"It is interesting to compare the attitude of these [anti-GM] believers with those who have a similar belief about organic foods and have convinced themselves that non-organic food is either unsafe or unpalatable, even though science is unable to support their beliefs."

Anyone as apparently ill-informed on agriculture as this really should not be writing a column as an "agripolitical analyst" in a farm-related newspaper. I can only suggest that Peter go to Wikipedia and enter the keywords "(Sir) Albert Howard". He will find information on Sir Albert Howard's 1940 book, An Agricultural Testament, and Lady Eve Balfour's The Living Soil. These contain information on comparative studies on the effects of eating organic food and conventionally-grown (using chemical fertilizers and pesticides) food on people. This is over half a century ago, when food, water, soil and air were nowhere near as polluted with chemicals as they are now. These books are available at no cost as electronic editions on the Internet_#main-fn1">1. I recommend anyone who is interested in food issues read them.

I was told … that GM canola will not help Japanese children's atopy (skin allergy) problems. Only when food is cooked with non-GM canola is the atopy relieved. Because the scientific tests have not been carried out, we have no way of knowing why this is, …

Closer to home, I recently visited Caralyn Lagrange, who does wonderful organic gardening near Perth, WA. Caralyn came to organic farming through breast cancer as a viable way to get good chemical-free nutrition. Her book "Gardening and Eating for Living" is a little treasure, and you can find out more about it on her website. You see, most people seem to be able to eat conventionally grown food with no apparent problems, but some people are more sensitive to the chemicals used to produce the food. I've heard of people in Japan whose lips become numb as soon as they put chemically-grown vegetables in their mouths and thus cannot survive without very conscientiously grown organic food.

#JapaneseConsumers" id="JapaneseConsumers">With respect to the non-GM/GM canola problem, I was told by a friend who was a member of the Japanese consumer group representatives mission to WA, mentioned #VisitOfJapanese">below, that GM canola will not help Japanese children's atopy (skin allergy) problems. Only when food is cooked with non-GM canola is the atopy relieved. Because the scientific tests have not been carried out, we have no way of knowing why this is, but we may conjecture, for example, that it is the different, possibly novel, protein content in the GM canola that is the culprit. Perhaps we'll know if anyone is ever allowed to do the tests. Of course, organic canola would be even better than the conventionally-grown non-GM canola, but it is not available in the amounts necessary. If WA canola farmers want to try their hand at producing organic canola for the Japanese market, I'm sure they will be welcomed with open arms.

#Coexistence" id="Coexistence">Coexistence

Peter continues, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"But organic supporters have not tried to ban the production of non-organic food, merely wishing to ensure that they have access to sufficient quantities of the food of their choice."

Yes, that's because organic farming and conventional farming has managed to coexist, for example by taking precautions (overwhelmingly on the side of the organic farmer) against the chemicals polluting organic farming lands. The seeds used in both types of farming might be the same, and there is usually no big problem with pollution from wind-blown or insect-carried pollen.

Now let's take a look at the GM/non-GM issue. The point is that the novel genes from the GM plant will pollute the non-GM varieties. When the farmer next door plants a GM crop (canola, soybeans, maize, and so on) next to your field where you have planted a non-GM variety of the same crop, your produce will almost certainly be polluted with the GM variety genes. There are two major problems with this. Firstly, depending on who you are planning to sell the produce to, the level of GM pollution in your produce may become unacceptable to the buyer. If you are trying to export non-GM canola to a Japanese consumer group, NO level of GM contamination is acceptable. 0%. At this point you have lost your market. If you are an organic farmer, there is no way, once the GM contamination is discovered, that you can sell your produce as organic. In other words, the coexistence of GM and non-GM varieties is extremely problematical. With respect to canola, this fact has already been amply demonstrated in Canada, which has been extensively contaminated with GM canola genes such that it is effectively impossible to grow non-GM canola in Canada now.

Secondly, that's just how the GM variety seed producing companies want it. In the USA and Canada, non-GM farmers have been ruined by court cases, or the threat of them, from GM seed companies simply because of the contaminated plants that have 'fortuitously' grown on their land. A well-known case is that of Percy Schmeiser, information on whom you can find with a simple web search. The actions of the companies threaten to have the effect of driving out all non-GM growers. Coexistence just doesn't seem to be possible.

In WA, the recommended buffer zone between GM and non-GM canola crops is five meters, which is supposed to be on the non-GM farmer's side of the fence, by the way. You can find references to this on the website of the the Network of Concerned Farmers. Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) recommends 600 m. Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, where concern over the commercial planting of GM crops is higher, the recommended distance is 1200 m, but it is not certain whether this distance will completely prevent contamination (cross-pollination by wind-borne pollen and so on) or not. If you type in the search words "five-metre buffer zone canola" in Google, you will see that one entry says"GM canola pollen has been found up to 26 kilometres from its source." Try putting that buffer zone on the inside of your fence. Five meters is laughable. It also comes with a caveat that the non-GM farmer "is to accept" a 0.9% contamination of his/her crop. You can find this in the pdf file of the Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation report "Delivering Market Choice with GM Canola". Just type the title into Google to find the file. That's not coexistence, that's downright surrender. Surrender to what? What are the GM seed companies trying to achieve? It looks to me like they are trying to achieve nothing less than the total control of all the world's food crop seeds. They appear to be acting in a manner that would give them control of the world's food supply and an everlasting source of income from the sale of the seeds, which must be bought anew each year. This comes courtesy of the legalistic sleight of hand that allows patents on life. If that doesn't send a chill up your spine, nothing ever will.

#PayingMore" id="PayingMore">Paying more for your food

Peter goes on to say, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"More importantly, they are willing to pay extra for it [organic food], with various organizations dedicated to the production of organic food designing codes of practice to describe how this task should be performed."

Yes, people pay more for organic food because under the present economic arrangements organic food is more expensive to produce. Generally speaking, food produced on farms which run a chemical and mechanical system of farming are more efficient in terms of labour. Very few people are producing a lot of food, so relatively the labour costs are low. In organic farming, although cash inputs (chemicals, fuel and so on) are fewer, it is labour-intensive. Given the amounts of money required to live a decent life these days, i.e. wage levels, organic farmers have to charge relatively more for their produce in order to make a living. This accounts for a large proportion of the price differential between organic and conventionally produced food. There are more factors, as you can see here. (This website takes a little while to load, but you will also see here that prices of organic food include not only the cost of the food production itself, but also a range of other factors that are not captured in the price of conventionally-grown food).

However, consumers of organic food are willing to pay more because they feel that cheap food might actually turn out to be more expensive in terms of health effects. Paying a little more for food that is more likely to keep you in good health may eventually be saving you steep hospital bills.

… if the price of oil continues to rise … this may eventually result in people paying the same or less for organic produce.

Now, what will happen if the price of oil continues to rise? Chemicals are mostly produced from oil, natural gas, or coal (fossil energy resources), so the economic advantage of the cheap part of the chemical-mechanical farm that makes it so efficient (relatively cheap fuels, fertilizers and other chemicals) will be eroded. This may eventually result in people paying the same or less for organic produce.

Peter continues, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"They have a regime of production, inspection and accreditation in force that allows supporters of this type of food to shop with confidence and to obtain the type of product they desire."

All very well and good and protects consumers' right to choose what they eat.

Peter then says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"It seems an eminently practical and workable system that should provide a methodology that would allow the anti-GM supporters to to obtain their needs from growers who wish to supply such produce."

Not as planned, it won't, as we have already seen above.

#ProofOrLiability" id="ProofOrLiability">Proof or liability

Peter then says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"Growers of non-GM crops should be required to prove that their product is as claimed, just as organic producers also carry the onus of proof, a system that works for them because their consumers pay extra."

Peter is implying that consumers of organic food are paying higher prices for their food because of the inspection and accreditation systems necessary to prove that the food is really organic. However, as seen above, that's neither the main reason why organic food is more expensive, nor is it necessarily true that organic food will always be more expensive than conventionally produced food, or GM food for that matter. OK, so perhaps there should be some mechanism for proving that non-GM food is just what it says it is. Who should pay for the testing is something that can be argued over, since there is no system in place now. And maybe the non-GM farmer will end up having to pay for this and will pass the cost on to the consumer, who will have to pay a little more for the food.

Let's look a little closer at the difference between this and the contrast between organic and conventionally grown food. Suppose an organic farmer is growing a crop next door to a conventional farmer. The organic farmer will surely take precautions to see that his/her produce is not affected by the neighbouring farmer, but it might happen. The organic farmer might be extremely annoyed about this, depending on the seriousness of the pollution, and may lose income, but it is extremely rare that any irreversible permanent damage would be done. The organic farmer might try to sue the chemical farmer for damage, but I cannot find on the Internet any examples of this ever having occurred. Can you? Anyway, now we're not talking so much about proving that organic produce is organic as whose liability it is if pollution occurs and the farmer loses income because of that.

Peter seems to be confident that GM and non-GM crops can coexist, just as organic and conventional farming manage to coexist today. The Canadian experience shows that in the case of canola this is very doubtful. So, rather than this being a problem of who pays for testing to prove that a harvested crop is what it is said to be, since pollution is almost certain to occur (according to the GRDC, the non-GM farmer is supposed to accept 0.5% pollution of seed and 0.9% pollution of a non-GM crop anyway), who takes responsibility for the loss of income that results? Thus far, as in the example of Percy Schmeiser and many others in Canada and the USA, far from the company that manufactured the GM seed taking any responsibility for GM pollution, these companies are likely to threaten to sue the non-GM farmer for infringement of patent rights. Slowly, this is now beginning to turn around (Percy Schmeiser did eventually win a court case against Monsanto), but let's look at the nature of GM pollution when compared with the chemical pollution of an organic crop. (All farmers are, of course, concerned about cross-fertilization of crop varieties, but have learned to control it. See, for example, the Seed Savers' Network).

Once the transgenes (the new genes the biotechnology company has inserted into the DNA of the plant to give it the novel trait) enter the genome (the totality of DNA in the cell nucleus of the plant) of the non-GM plant, how can you get them out again? You cannot, and that means your seed is contaminated with the transgenes; permanent irreversible damage. So if you are a non-GM farmer who has been saving your own seeds for replanting, like Percy Schmeiser was, you might lose decades of work. You cannot plant those polluted seeds because you would be infringing a patent right if you did. The GM seed manufacturing companies do not seem to be seriously interested in preventing this problem, as we have seen with the five-metre canola buffer zone above. There's little doubt that after a number of years under a system like this only GM crops will be planted. That appears to be what the seed companies want.

Peter goes on to say, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"This is where the proposal could fail, because those who believe that GM is unsafe won't pay extra for non-GM food, preferring legislation to prohibit the production of the GM variety, which allows them to get their non-GM fix on the cheap."

Quite wrong; they will pay. They are already paying because the price of oil is rising. And anyway, why should they have to pay just because the biotechnology industry wants to sell its seeds? After what you have read above, is it any surprise that some people feel they need legislation to protect their farming, their food, and their way of life?

#VisitOfJapanese" id="VisitOfJapanese">Visit of the Japanese consumer group reps

Here, the argument shifts a little to mention the visit by a group of Japanese consumer group representatives. Peter says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"The Conservation Council has again sponsored a visit from an anti-GM group from Japan, a so-called consumer group that admits it only accounts for 4000t of WA canola per year and represents only a handful of Japan's 125 million people."

The Conservation Council of Western Australia did not 'sponsor' the visit of the group. They 'hosted' it. Perhaps Peter missed the substantial articles mentioning the group's visit and participation in the forum at Williams (June 13) on pages 4, 5, and 6 in the June 19 edition of Farm Weekly. The consumers' group representatives came of their own accord_#main-fn2">2 to ask the government and farmers of WA to extend the moratorium so that they could continue to buy non-GM canola from WA, perhaps soon to be the only place where they can obtain it in sufficient quantities.

These co-ops and organic food suppliers (representing 2.9 million Japanese consumers) do what they do to help consumers obtain the safe and nutritious food they want to eat instead of having to put up with being force-fed the chemically-produced and GM food that they do not want to eat.

Why does Peter say #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"a so-called consumer group"? I cannot imagine what is meant by this. They are consumer group representatives whose organizations represent 2.9 million members. These co-ops and organic food suppliers do what they do to help consumers obtain the safe and nutritious food they want to eat instead of having to put up with being force-fed the chemically-produced and GM food that they do not want to eat. The organizations represented were: The NO! GMO Campaign (closely associated with the Consumers' Union of Japan), the Green Co-op, the Kirari Cooperative Union Association, The Association to Preserve the Earth (Daichi wo Mamoru Kai), and the well-known Seikatsu Club. Unfortunately, most of the websites are in Japanese, but you will be able to see that these organizations, as well as working to provide safe and nutritious food to their members, are also social movements which work for grassroots democracy, assistance for handicapped and other socially disadvantaged people, and carry out other socially beneficial activities. Certainly not fanatics, and certainly not fanatical organizations posing as consumer groups.

Then Peter says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"They also acknowledged that most of the canola consumed in Japan was GM canola from Canada, yet they still claimed that 70pc of Japanese oppose the use of GM food!"

GM seed companies and governments are effectively cooperating to force-feed you GM food without your knowledge.

Sounds like a contradiction doesn't it? Public opinion polls show that around 60% to 75% of Japanese people do not want to eat GM foods. But the reason that they are buying and using canola oil produced from Canadian GM canola is that they don't have a choice. The Japanese food labelling system is very similar to the Australian one. There's nothing on labels to show that a food product is produced from GM crops. If you want to buy non-GM, then you have to look for the labels that say "non-GM", "GM free" and so on. So a very large number of people are eating GM foods without knowing or being aware that they are doing so. The feeling is that the governments of Australia and Japan have introduced these labelling systems because they know what would happen to purchasing behaviour if foods were labelled accurately. Looks like someone doesn't want you to enjoy your right of consumer choice. GM seed companies and governments are effectively cooperating to force-feed you GM food without your knowledge. By the time we find out what the human health problems are with these foods, it will be far, far too late to anything about it. Who will benefit from that?

#MuchAdoAbout Nothing" id="MuchAdoAbout Nothing">A fanatical much ado about nothing?

Peter goes on to say, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"The really astounding thing about the current debate is that so many seemingly rational people actually take the anti-GM fanatics seriously."

Apart from the implication that the above-mentioned consumer group representatives are "fanatics", given the potential for information democracy provided by the Internet, the really astounding thing is that pro-GM analysts like this can get articles printed in the newspaper and actually expect that some poor fools will believe them!

Finally, Peter says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"If Shakespeare was given the last word, he would probably observe that the dispute is 'much ado about nothing'."

It is quite clearly not #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"much ado about nothing" - it's a lot of fuss about controlling the world's food supply (and all that that implies). Perhaps more appropriately we should say, "There's no smoke without fire." If people are protesting about something, then it is just as well that we take pains to see if they have reasonable grounds for doing so. If Peter wants to refute their arguments, under our current social system, where freedom of speech is respected, he is at liberty to do so. However, if he uses terms like 'fanatics' and implicates that these people only hold their views through some form of irrational 'belief', or because their 'thinking made it so,' I would like to suggest that his readers take a long hard look at the evidence for and against before they swallow his arguments whole.

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ I couldn't locate an online version of The Living Soil although Wikipedia implies that one is to be found on www.soilandhealth.org. To order printed version, visit the Soil Association.

#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ See, also, comments posted by two of the visitors #comment-986">The media's responsibility and duty to report the truth about GM and #comment-991">Only 4000 tonnes canola per year, but ZERO contamination and a comment by another Japanese consumer #comment-994">Monsanto makes coexistence between GM and non-GM impossible.

This article was originally posted to Sinking LifeBoat.

We still value your opinion.

We're working to create our vision for Sierra Club Canada five years from now.

If you haven't had a chance to complete this opinion survey, we'd like to remind you that you still can!

It will take a little of your time, but will make a great difference to our planning!

We would appreciate your reply by Friday, July 4. Please use this link to fill out your survey.

Sierra Club of Canada

Dear Sierra Club,

This is just a friendly reminder that you have until Friday, July 4th to reply to MY “survey”. This was the set of questions I sent to you to pre-empt the pre-fabricated set of twenty-one questions that you sent to me, not a single one of which mentioned over-population or over-immigration as an issue or factor to be considered in the environmental degradation of Canada. Kind of like my fitness instructor stressing cardio, strength training and flexibility without mentioning my chain smoking habit.

Please reply to my questions by my arbitrary deadline or I will continue to follow your lead and make policy decisions without your input.

Remember our slogan. “Tell us what we want to hear or take us off your list!” (but we'll never take you off of ours. And Oh, of course, send us your money to save our poster endangered animal of the month ….”

In case you have forgotten, these were the questions in my survey:

And if you think we should just keep tightening our belts to accommodate more and immigrants, cut back our per capita consumption more and more just to increase total consumption through immigration more and more, tell us, how many immigrants is too many for you? Another 10? 20? 30? 40? 50 million? How many Canadians would there be in an ecologically sound Canada as defined by Sierra Club Canada? Do you have any evidence that wildlife “sanctuaries” and reserves enjoy permanent safety from human population growth? As for Sustainable Energy options, is there a technological fix for the species lost from human population growth? Is there a technological fix for marine life eradicated from over harvesting and pollution? Is there a technological fix for soils exhausted by 10,000 years of intensive farming? Why does the Sierra Club think that climate change warrants more concern than the loss of biodiversity services? Why does the Sierra Club not seem to understand that population that is the underlying agency of both? No climate change without climate changers. Growing cities shrinking wilderness.

One should also ask: Why haven't you taken action on your leader Stephen Hazell's comments on TVO's May 5, 2008 “The Agenda” when he said we should decide what an optimum population for Canada is? What do you believe an optimum population for Canada is? Are you afraid of covering this uncharted territory because you don't know of a politically correct way to answer that question? Is Mr. Hazell afraid to follow through on his own advice?

source:
www.tvo.org/podcasts/theagenda/audio/TAWSP_Dbt_20080505_0_0_40k.mp3
ecologicalcrash.blogspot.com/2008/05/review-of-tvos-agenda-may-5-2008.html

This is my survey. I will not be confined by your prefabricated questions. The questions I need answering involve your complicity in the overpopulation of Canada, and your focus on inconsequential feel-good concepts of consumption, conservation and recycling. Remember it is our total consumption which is relevant, not our per capita consumption.

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC
Home of the sanctimonious
Sierra Quadra Club
Motto “Take HIM off the island”

Dear Ben West, Chairperson of The Green Party of Vancouver,

A friend, Tim Murray, has alerted me to a quote you have made in a letter you wrote to the Mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan:

"Densification is of course environmentally positive in so far as it prevents the devastation of agricultural lands or wilderness areas but this initiative if not part of an overarching smart growth land use plan would not accomplish this goal."

I have some questions for you.

How is it "environmentally positive" to concentrate people into highrise apartment complexes where it takes massive energy inputs to treat their drinking water and sewage, run their elevators, maintain their multi-story parking garages, power their artificial indoor fitness club environments, and bring them food and resources from distances that grow in proportion to their population size, giving them no hope of growing their own food to survive the new end-of-cheap-energy era?

How is it "environmentally positive" to concentrate people into highrise apartment complexes where it takes massive energy inputs to treat their drinking water and sewage, run their elevators, maintain their multi-story parking garages, power their artificial indoor fitness club environments, and bring them food and resources from distances that grow in proportion to their population size, giving them no hope of growing their own food to survive the new end-of-cheap-energy era?

Isn't it more environmentally friendly for people to live in the country where their water needs no chlorine or UV treatment and their sewage requires no chemical treatments and their septic tank uses less energy per person in its lifecycle than urban waste treatment facilities? Just because people own no land doesn't mean they don't require resources from land in order to survive. Wouldn't it make more sense for people to live on the same land where their food comes from, work this land with their own muscle instead of with machines, and find wood for heating and building materials from their own land instead of importing it from far-away industrial clearcuts? Of course, for this ultra low footprint lifestyle (rural, not urban) to work really well, there would have to be few enough people that each person could have enough quality and quantity of land that they could be self-sufficient without breaking their back.

In the upcoming era of depleted fossil fuels whereby the only oil, coal, wood, and natural gas remaining will take more energy to extract than what you get out of it, we simply will not have a use for so many urban bureaucrats living densely in highrise apartments. The earth's carrying capacity will be drastically reduced due to lack of energy resources. Finding a new unprecedentedly abundant source of energy with zero impact on the environment is not only impossible, but it is also undesirable as it would enable humans to further grow their population, which would displace even more other species, destroy biodiversity services, and therefore lower quality of life on earth for humans.

Would you agree that it is not just the average consumer's consumption level that is relevant, but also the number of consumers?

Whether population growth occurs in the city, in the suburbs, or in the country, is there such a thing as "Smart Growth" when it still involves population growth, which guarantees that environmental damage will increase no matter what conservation measures are imposed? (HINT: Each person must consume finite resources and produce waste just in order to survive. If the number of people keeps growing, it is only a matter of time before the total environmental damage increases even if the theoretical minimum for average per capita consumption is achieved.)

Are you one of those people who uses cliches like "You can't stop progress" or "Growth is inevitable" as a cop-out excuse for letting our environment get worse, while lying at the same time by telling people that our environment can get better alongside continued population growth so long as this growth is "managed/contained/smart/densification/steered/deflected"?

How long will Canada's protected areas be protected if our 1% annual population growth trend continues (doubling our numbers every 70 years); how many National and Provincial Parks will relax legislation to allow agriculture, roads, power corridor easements, mining, native hunting, increased camp sites and recreational development, etc to meet this growing demand? How many Parks will incidentally fall victim to air and groundwater pollution as well as poaching and alien species infestations caused by Canada's population growth?

Would it not be prudent for the Green Party of Canada to advocate lower immigration to Canada so that Canada can set a good example in an overpopulated world by reducing its population to a sustainable level to avoid mass species extinctions and human deaths due to the downside of Peak Food caused by fossil fuel depletion?

Thanks and I look forward to your reply,

Brishen Hoff
President of Biodiversity First biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com

The following was posted in response to an article Working the land - or not of 24 Jun 08 by Jenny Hume on Web Diary.

This article raises the vexing question of how we are to live sustainably off the land in the longer term. If incomes to be earned from sustainable farming practices are low in comparison to those to be earned by working in the city or in mines, then we need to consider whether those economic activities are sustainable.

The government needs to control the activities of any sector where they threaten the viability of other sectors, particularly vital sectors like food production. To risk severe social disruption for short-term profit might make sense to corporations, but it is the duty of governments to mitigate corporate excesses and to direct and balance activities so that the community is buffered and major conflicts are avoided.

Clearly in the case of mining, and in that light, the current activities are not sustainable, as I argued earlier. Is it any wonder that farmers, who are ultimately attempting to turn the comparative trickle of energy obtained from the sun into wealth, cannot offer wages competitive with those on offer from industries which are, in large part, simply plundering energy accumulated over at least tens of millions of years by biological and geological processes? If other city-based economic activities were also placed under the microscope, we would invariably find that they are also ultimately based upon the unsustainable destruction of the our finite capital.

So, agriculture has been placed at an extremely unfair disadvantage compared with other economic activities. To expect it to compete with those other activities under these circumstances would guarantee the destruction of our soil and our future impoverishment. As David R. Montgomery's Dirt - the Erosion of Civilisations (2007) shows, this is far from being just a theoretical question.

If we are to establish an economy which is to be sustainable in the longer term, we are going to have to face the fact that many of us may find unpalatable, that is, whether we live on the land or in cities, we are going to have to learn to live by consuming far fewer material resources than we do now. Even if we eliminate many absurdly wasteful practices of our throw-away society, and even if we remove the enormous inequalities in income distribution, we may still find ourselves without the same access to all the convenient gadgets and comforts to which we are now accustomed. We are going to have to get used the idea that we won't all be able to travel by air to the other side of the world every year or across the continent every two months or so, or be able to buy every gizmo we desire almost at will only to throw them away a mere 12 months later.

Of course one first and necessary step will be to remove the often crippling burden placed upon on farms by the finance sector, which, in turn, drives farmers to ruin their land. As I mentioned earlier, one means towards achieving this would be to re-establish a Peoples' (i.e. Commonwealth) Bank.

On top of that, the rest of us should consider paying more for food in order to allow farmers to be able to both earn a decent income and to properly look after the land. It would also help if were to change the grossly inefficient industrialised food processing and distribution system (the US version of which is described lucidly in the US by Christopher Cook's Diet for A Dead Planet – See YouTube broadcast). Breaking the Coles Woolworths duopoly would help. Similar to the re-establishment of a Peoples' Bank, why not establish a publicly owned supermarket company that only has to meet its operating expenses and not pay inflated returns to its shareholders, company directors and CEO's? Local cooperative producers' markets could complement the aforementioned Peoples' Supermarket to allow as much food as possible to be consumed locally.

Local food distribution and consumption would reduce transport, storage and packaging costs, which can only continue to climb from now on due to the growing scarcity of petroleum, and to make easier the recycling of all nutrients. The alternative of continuing to mine nutrients from the soil and dump most of them in landfill up to hundreds of kilometres away cannot be sustainable. The fertilisers currently used to partially replace lost nutrients are either finite resources or are manufactured unsustainably using finite and limited fossil fuels. Moreover, their use, in conjunction with the use of pesticides, tends make soil sterile and lifeless as Jenny Hume is, no doubt, aware.

Some links which may be of interest include: Working the land - or not of 24 Jun 08 by Jenny Hume on Web Diary, Who owns your sewage? of 3 Jul 08 by Valerie Yule on Online Opinion, Last gasp for single desk marketing of Australian wheat of 17 Jun 08, Peak oil prices cause South Australian Farmers to call for 'fair market forces' of 10 Jun 08, Orwellian Waterworks: big-agribusiness and Victorian Gov of 27 May 08, Insight program's take on Labor Shortage of 17 Jun 08, A 10,000 year misunderstanding of 1 May 08 by Canadian soil microbiologist Peter Salonius, I will govern for all Victorians (caveat: but only if you are powerful and connected) of 26 Jun 08.

Victorian State Member of Parliament, Neale Burgess, has alerted the public to the fact that Minister Gavin Jennings has introduced, through Peter Batchelor, a BILL in Parliament to ensure the lowest possible Classification of Devilbend as a Natural Features Reserve.

This will ensure priority for recreational fishing, horseriding, and other recreational activities inimical to wildlife, in an area which has protected indigenous fauna to date.

Devilbend is precious keystone wildlife habitat essential to Frankston and Peninsula Wildlife Corridors. (See www.awpc.org.au for the corridor plans). The Wildlife corridors are needed to save Peninsula wildlife from extinction via development. Toll-way developers and other friends of Mr Brumby’s can make the idea of turning Devilbend into a glorified sportsground sound environmentally and community-friendly, completely failing to mention that they will thereby destroy a lynchpin in a proposed wildlife corridor for Melbourne’s Southern region.

Extinction of native fauna throughout the Peninsula will permit greedy developers and cold-hearted, exploitative politicians to simply fill the Peninsula with housing and industrial developments like the 400 ha one planned for Port of Hastings. This is an outrage! Soon Victoria will have no more wildlife than Singapore - which has one single mudskipper species listed.

It is so essential that Devilbend be RE-Classified as a NATURE CONSERVATION RESERVE to save rapidly disappearing, remaining native animals on the Mornington Peninsula.

Brendan Sydes, of the Environment Defenders Office, (EDO), has suggested that if we act before tomorrow, there is a way to turn this around by making an Amendment to the present BILL in Parliament.

The Amendment needs to make Devilbend a Nature Conservation Reserve, instead of a 'natural features reserve'.

So if anyone has an MP sympathetic to wildlife, please write seeking the Amendment in the Lower House BEFORE the vote which is tomorrow. Thursday.

The Land and Biodiversity is a waste of time. Minister Jennings hypocritically fails to protect wildlife by ensuring their decimation on the one hand in the BILL and then on the other with his pathetic Green Paper for Biodiversity in a time of Climate Change, which only serves to waste Wildlife defenders’ time and energy and drive them to despair.

#WhatYouCanDo" id="WhatYouCanDo">What you Can Do

AWPC was alerted by Neale Burgess, local MP and Brendan Sydes Chief Solicitor EDO, to the suggestion of such an ammendment.

Yesterday AWPC called Neale Burgess office requesting that Burgess MOVE the AMENDMENT through Barry in his office.

AWPC has also been in touch with GREEN MP Sue Pennicuik ( office in Brighton), and sent a lot of material to Cameron Pidgeon.

AWPC will call Edward O'Donahue, Upper House MP in Pakenham, who lives on the Mornington Peninsula

Labor Upper house man for the region is johan.scheffer[at]parliament.vic.gov.au
Please let him know how you feel he should vote.

It is essential to move on this today to prevent the Bill from passing without an amendment in the Lower House and proceeding to the Upper House.

"Michael Crichton spoke of environmentalists requiring a belief in an unspoiled 'Eden' that existed before we corrupted it and will again exist once we have had our comeuppance. My thought is that the belief that Aboriginals were noble eco-savages falls into this same category. The Platonic need to believe in perfection." Tim Murray

Whilst I am a great fan of Tim Murray's, I feel the topic and the opinions expressed need further investigation.

Tim Murray's article, The Record of Indigenous North Americans raises the issue of whether non-capitalistic or less complex cultures were as unethical or worse than modern industrial societies. Since the initiator of the debate, Tim Murray, hails from Anglo-Canada and talks about North American Indians, I will proceed as if we are mainly talking here about Anglo-capitalism. I don't want to be accused of cultural-cringing because of my own precision of 'Anglo' capitalism, so I will precise here that the system of capitalism and industrial society originated in England and colonised itself most typically in the English-speaking settler societies like the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and, I think, South Africa. Other capitalisms have different relationships with fossil fuels, democracy, and land-inheritance systems. They incorporate other organisational, economic, social and political blends, although industrialisation is heavily affected everywhere by Anglo-capitalism.

I think that the imbalance of romanticism almost entirely favours fossil-fuel based Anglo-capitalism. I agree with Michael Creighton about environmentalism as a religion in that, clearly, some environmentalism is religious. Corporations, spin-doctors, the mainstream media and advertising (the latter three being parts of the same thing) rely on this uncritical faith by the public in symbols and banners. Religious environmentalism ritualises and promotes 'environmental values' in the same way religions push various other ethical values, without the rituals having much if any practical application to Energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) and preserving biodiversity, any more than a politician's or Corporate CEO's swallowing wine-soaked bread from a priest (taking of the Eucharist) necessarily affects their real-life conduct of business.

The same religious approach is often present in defenses of the superiority of industrial society and of what passes for democracy in Anglo-capitalist societies. I would also say that people believe naively in the value of their governments in the way that children believe that their parents are essentially good and loving even when they are cruel, dishonest, niggardly and abusive. To seriously challenge the idea that your country's leader ultimately has your country's welfare at heart, upon which your welfare utterly depends, is in practice as unlikely as a pre-schooler losing faith in his mother or a priest losing faith in the God the Father. Although it does happen, populations have to be pushed to the limit and to have little left to lose before they seriously challenge outrageous governments. The tendency is for the worshipper to seek in themselves the explanation for bad behaviour in a leader, a parent, or a deity. The first person the doubter approaches is the parent or the priest, who reinforce the dogma of course. In Australia the tendency is to write to one's member of parliament or to the editor of a mainstream newspaper - with predictable results. The last person we tend to rely on for verification is ourself.

Anglo-capitalism is a system born of dispossession and one which has industrialised cruelty to humans and animals on a massive, constantly worsening scale. (See Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism, a longer view, Verso, London and New York, 2002 and Christopher D. Cook, Diet for a dead planet

There is abundant evidence of steady-state hunter gatherer and herding cultures lasting many hundred and even thousands of years. They had to get along with the other species in their environment because they depended upon them for survival; they could not afford to to damage or scare them all away. Those cultures which did break their environments also broke, died back, and often did not survive. The societies which survived for long periods got it right.

A recent book which tests theory on the durability of such cultures is Fikret Berkes & Carl Folke (Eds.), Linking Social and Ecological Systems, Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience, Cambridge Univ Press, 2000.

Only if we equate material abundance - an accident of fossil-fuels permitting complex technology, starting in England and producing ghastly inequities and sufferings there which then were globalised and continue to burgeon - with some kind of evolutionary progress of the species (which I find an absurdity) - could we pretend that the amount of waste and destruction in our culture was justified. That is, however, a widely held belief, marketed as an excuse for grossly interfering with peoples' rights in non-industrialised countries.

My view is by no means some kind of cultural cringe about what was imposed on my ancestors; it is a political view I have formed through the experience of testing Anglo-capitalist associated democracy and trying to make the system live up to the values that Tim believes it embodies. The capitalist Western Culture simply doesn't actually follow through on the democratic and kindness values that it markets itself under. The only reason a shrinking proportion of those under its sway still believe that it does is because they have not tested those values and because they happen to remain a part of the shrinking circle of beneficiaries. There are many countries out there which are actively revolting at the cost they bear for provisioning Western capitalist culture Inc.

This comment is also not some kind of defense of communism or socialism, which, as far as I can see, had their roots in an opposition to capitalism and classically attempt to operate on the same dehumanising scale. It looks as if Western capitalism is now going the same way as Soviet communism, but now Russian capitalism is on the rise - and for one reason only - fossil fuel possessions. As Western fossil-fuel sources deplete, Russian and ex-Soviet sources are still comparatively well stocked.

I think there is a conflict in the anti-population movement between those who have not sufficiently explored the fossil-fuel connection between wealth, technology and mass propaganda and those who look at thermodynamic underpinnings of culture and social systems.

With regard to Michael Creighton (a favourite author of mine) and his comments about the Eden myth and popular romanticism of less complex cultures, my own opinion is that Creighton romanticises his own complex culture. I think he has bought the commercial myth that all our ancestors laboured in misery and cruelty until the industrial revolution brought them out of their torment. That's the myth of Industrial Eden. I look forward to Creighton writing a new science-based novel on the role of fossil-fuel reserves on capitalism and the relationship or non-relationship of capitalism with democracy.

By the way, Creighton's ideas for strengthening and depoliticising the funding of scientific research are very interesting. Take a look here.

I would be interested to see Tim Murray look into his Icelandic origins to find out more about the traditions of kindness, responsibility, altruism and friendships with animals there. As I have probably made clear, I think that capitalism simply stole kindly ethics from herding and other cultures and now wears those ethics like a false badge.

In recent years, newspapers of the Murdoch-owned News Limited media empire haven't been in the least shy in counselling, indeed demanding of Governments to disregard the will of the public to implement policies it deemed to be in the public's best interest. One obvious example which springs to mind is the Australian's strident endorsement of the current attempts by the Iemma Government to privatise NSW's electricity assets, even though it's opposed by 85% of the public and even though when privatisation was last specifically put the the NSW public in the 1999 elections by the Liberal Opposition they were roundly trounced. Other past examples include the Murdoch press's campaigns for:

• The privatisation of Telstra;
• the (aborted) privatisation of the Snowy Mountains Electricity Corporation
• The forced amalgamations of local governments by the Queensland Beattie state government in 2007
• Calling on the Queensland Government to use dictatorial powers to over-ride local councils opposed to over-development who were elected in in the March 2008 elections.
• Rebuking of Anna Bligh for using powers to prevent the destruction of the historic Regent Theatre by developers

The editorial Protection in name of popularity of 26 Feb 08 in the Murdoch-owned Courier Mail concerning Bligh's decision to save the Regent Theatre, complained:

But is it possible that this whole exercise is less about protecting fond memories and more about good old-fashioned, politically motivated playing to the crowd?

However on other occasions, when it suits the Courier Mail editorial writers, “playing to the crowd” is precisely what they demand of our political leaders. Take for example the editorial Rising costs an expensive issue for PM of 23 June.

The editorial seems to be part of a growing pattern in the Murdoch Press which appears to be directed towards undermining the popularity of the Rudd Labor Government in the face of the growing global economic and resource shortage crises. Even though the current Federal Government cannot possibly be held responsible for these and even though the Federal Opposition is not proposing policies to deal with these which are likely to cope any better with these crises than those being implemented by the Federal Government, the Murdoch press appears to be attempting to engender the idea in the Australian public's consciousness that it is appropriate for them to automatically punish whatever Government in office when things turn sour. So stories and opinion pieces such as this editorial, which seek to imply that the Rudd Government's honeymoon with the Australian public is over are becoming more common.

The editorial begins by noting that more people now consider Labor (53%) to be better economic mangers than the Liberal opposition(37%).

However, astonishingly, it proceeds to argue that Labor, having finally convinced the public after many long years, that it is more economically responsible than the Coalition should immediately abandon economically responsible policies in one critical area:

But on other indicators Labor is found wanting. Almost 70 per cent, for example, feel Mr Rudd "should have done more" in his first Budget to alleviate cost of living pressures. And if increasing mortgage repayments, rents and groceries are biting hard into household budgets, the soaring cost of petrol must surely hurt the most.

Startlingly for Labor, three out of four Queenslanders are dissatisfied with the way Mr Rudd has handled petrol prices. More worrying for the Prime Minister will be the finding that two out of three Queenslanders support Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson's plan to reduce petrol prices by cutting fuel excise. …

As the editorial noted, Labor had dismissed the proposal as economically irresponsible. The editorial made no attempt to prove otherwise, but, nevertheless, proceeded to argue that Labor should adopt Nelson's proposals all the same.

Why?

Whilst it conceded that “Most Queenslanders don't blame Labor for rising fuel costs.“ it nevertheless maintained that Labor needed to be seen to be doing something, no matter how futile or counterproductive in the longer term. Here are its words:

… all Australians nonetheless expect their newly-elected government to do something tangible about inflation that sees real prices coming down, especially in - if nothing else - petrol.

Australians might also wonder what happened to the human sensitivity that Labor demonstrated last year in opposition. When Mr Rudd talked passionately during the campaign about the cost of petrol, housing and food, voters listened intently, with many switching their support to Labor on this message alone. But in the past six months the Prime Minister appears to have blunted his finely-attuned antennae. And, semantics aside as to what Mr Rudd actually promised on food and fuel, Australians now expect the Prime Minister to act decisively on bread-and-butter issues.

So the Courier Mail is apparently demanding of Rudd that he “act decisively” even though such ‘decisive’ action could well deny the Government millions in necessary revenue whilst having almost no significant effect in comparison to the price rises caused by the increasing scarcity of petroleum.

The editorial concludes:

… while a deteriorating economy is in itself unlikely to prise Labor from office after a single term, Mr Rudd should know he will be punished if voters believe that he failed to act on the cost of living when he at least had the chance.

The audacity in this is breathtaking. The editorial writer knows full well that it is within the power of his/her own newspaper to make the Queensland public understand why such band-aid measures as proposed by Brendan Nelson would be harmful to its interests. If the Courier Mail was truly serving the public interest, it would do its utmost to ensure that a Government that acted economically responsibly would not be punished by the public for having done so.

#LetterToEditor" id="LetterToEditor">Appendix: Letter to Editor concerning Coalition's proposal to lower fuel excise

25 May 08

Title: Coalition never governs again ?!?

MP Hockey proclaims: "Petrol will always be cheaper under the Coalition than it will be under the Labor Party."

Obviously, Hockey never expects the Coalition to lead Government again, with oil prices predicted to rise, and competition for existing oil supplies to increase substantially.

The Opposition would have to eliminate completely the 38-cent fuel excise tax once petrol hits AU$2.00/L for petrol to approximate its current price. Dropping GST entirely on petrol would save three times the five-cent fuel excise tax reduction. But the Opposition couldn't advocate that, as the Opposition gave us the GST in the first place!

What is Hockey smoking??? I hope he shares it with the rest of us "average Australians"!

Judy Bamberger,
O'Connor ACT

+61-2-6247-6220 (work and fax)
bamberg[AT]eaglet.rain.com

The original article by Alistair McConnachie was published on the web-site sovereignty.org.uk in September 2006.

There were fears of a new wave of clandestine migrants from eastern Europe last night after Poland announced it is opening its doors to workers from outside the EU.

In an attempt to ease labour shortages, people from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus will no longer need work permits to enter the country.

With thousands of its citizens flocking to the UK, Poland finds itself short of skilled workers.(Unaccredited, "Poland in new migrant alert",The Scottish Daily Mail, 2 Sep 06, p.55)

Irony of ironies! Poland is short of skilled workers because they're all flocking to Britain because, allegedly, we're short of skilled workers!

Such is the absurdity of neo-liberalism – the term which has come to refer to minimum government intervention in the economy, or government intervention intended to ensure complete freedom of movement of capital and labour.

This article demonstrates that neo-liberalism is upheld by those on the Left as well as those on the Right.

On the question of free movement of labour, the free-marketeers and capitalists on the Right meet the anti-capitalists and anarchists on the Left in complete agreement.

The reason the free-marketeers uphold a central pillar of neo-liberalism – free movement of people - is their desire to make a lot of money.

The free-marketeers cannot speak out against free movement of labour because that would require them to re-assess their commitment to free movement of capital.

It's unfortunate that some anti-EU groups simplistically advocate "free trade" without thinking it through properly and realising that the full implications may often be the antithesis of their professed belief in national sovereignty, both political and economic. After all, even if we left the EU, cheap labour would still come here, unless there were restrictions set on this particular aspect of "free trade."

The reason the anti-capitalists uphold a central pillar of neo-liberalism – free movement of people - is their desire to promote "equality".

In this regard, the Left emphasise "international workers' solidarity". This can often be a very good idea.

Constructive solidarity and politically perverse ‘solidarity’

For example, I realise that if my job is shipped to Mexico, the Mexican worker will probably have a pretty crummy job working for low-wages in poor conditions.

I can accept that the system is screwing us both.

We all benefit when living standards and working conditions rise in other countries. It means there is less chance of an employer in this country bailing out and going abroad to exploit cheap labour and poor working conditions, and there will be less of a migration push from these countries.

I can understand that if I can help the Mexican build a better economic system for his own country, then maybe in time there will be less incentive for the system to ship my next job out there, or to force his family over here.

In this sense, solidarity with workers internationally is an appropriate and fine thing, to be encouraged. Sovereignty carries a slogan on its back page, with every issue, which advocates "Solidarity with Farmers Internationally."

However, the idea of "solidarity" becomes a very bad thing if it is misused as a rhetorical device to neuter my opposition to having my living space invaded, or my work and wages undermined, or my environment destroyed, or when I'm expected to condone unlawful behaviour in its name.

For example, when we're expected to show "solidarity" with the massive influx of immigrants, especially the illegal ones – which the Left like to call "irregular" – and bogus asylum seekers, and to put from our minds the political, social, economic and ecological consequences of this immigration invasion – for the greater notion of "solidarity".

In that sense, "solidarity" is simply a slogan being used to undermine my rights and to prevent me articulating them and to stop me standing up for myself, and my group's interests. It is in this politically perverted sense that the Left today almost always use the term.

The driving ideology of ‘equality’

Why do the Left insist on doing this?

Why do they seek to geld opposition to neo-liberalism from the working class by misusing the idea of "international solidarity" when it is not appropriate to the circumstances, nor the interests, of the people to whom they are speaking?

The reason is because the Left's over-arching ideology of "equality" demands that they put "equality for all" before the interests of any specific element of the working class.

Therefore, if working class people in England are being displaced from apprenticeships, or jobs, by already qualified Eastern Europeans, or Somali refugees, then the Leftist will not stand up for the English indigenous working class because his doctrine of "equality" mandates that he cannot and must not "discriminate" between people in any way.

Therefore, he will argue that the Somali has a right to this job too and that the Englishman needs to see himself, not as part of a national citizenry, but rather as part of an amorphous "international working class" in which he is "equal" with this Somali and shares "solidarity" with this Somali "working class person". Viewed this way, the Englishman can only lose.

To promote "equality", the Englishman is expected to deny his interests, forfeit his rights and cede his space in the name of "solidarity" with someone he's never met, who is likely not a citizen, and is probably a law-breaker!

As a consequence of its ideological obsession with "equality", the Left cannot and will not oppose free movement of labour and so it must try deliberately to pervert and misuse the idea of solidarity in order to neuter any working class opposition to the open-borders of neo-liberalism.

The Left's obsession with "solidarity" can sometimes have its amusing manifestations.

I had a conversation with a Lefty in Buchanan Street this month. He was standing beside a stall and wanted me to sign a petition showing "solidarity" with some Cubans who, for reasons he was not able to explain clearly, had been thrown in jail in Miami!

Faintly amused, I smiled and said I didn't think that was of much relevance to people in Glasgow. Oh, but on the contrary, apparently, it was his group's aim to build "an international movement for working class solidarity".

I laughed out loud. "How are you going to do that," I asked, "when right here in Glasgow, we have the Scottish Socialist Party, who are now split right down the middle, and screaming hatred at each other. If they can't keep it together in Glasgow, how are you going to keep it together worldwide?" He didn't have much to say to that!

The Marxist bogus "greens"

The Leftist and Marxist "Greens" will point out that it is capitalism which drives immigration pressures.

Like all Marxists they will trace whatever it is they claim to be concerned about, to the economic system. They will try to claim that ecological crises are a product of social causes which themselves are products of the capitalist system and its injustices.

Of course, the economic system is often a factor, and one can recognize that without having to be a Marxist!

However, these people are Bogus Greens because the bottom line for them is not ecological sustainability, but like all other Leftists, the bottom line is their fundamentalist religion of "equality" which drives them on destructive routes.

Even if we work sincerely to correct the economic problems of which they complain, even if we work to ensure people want to stay where they are rather than migrate, even if the economics is changed for the better, they would still support ecologically damaging open borders and unlimited immigration – in the name of equality!

In this regard, compare the difference between genuine ecologically-aware advocacy, as found in Sovereignty (sovereignty.org.uk) with that of the Marxist Bogus "Greens":

Sovereignty challenges neo-liberalism. We campaign for economic justice for all. To those ends, we advocate building Self Reliance Worldwide (see for example, The Principles and Purposes of Foreign Aid, and Appendix to our Asylum Policy, we support the Cancellation of Third World Debt and we advocate thoroughly throughout this website, the economics of Localism not Globalism.

At the same time we advocate restricting immigration and asylum levels severely, and enforcing the immigration laws. We campaign for ecological sustainability and emphasise its central relevance to the issue of migration.

Marxist Bogus "Greens" on the other hand, put freedom of movement above economic justice and ecological sustainability because they are fixated on their religion of "equality" in every field of human life.

This ideology demands that there must be no laws which "discriminate" in any way towards any particular person for any reason whatsoever. Thus, immigration laws are inherently anti-equality and "racist" and must be torn down and there must be open-borders.

Moreover, they try to justify this in economic terms because they believe that freedom of movement is a necessary tool to achieve their economic goals in the first place.

They believe that only when we can all move about unimpeded will the world economy stabilise at a level which is the same for all. Only then, as a result of this economic equality will the social problems caused by inequality be sorted and ecological sustainability achieved.

Of course, in reality this free movement of people will be politically, socially, economically and ecologically damaging and unjust to many areas and peoples of the planet – but that is of little concern to them.

The Marxist Bogus "Greens" will destroy the planet in their efforts to achieve "equality".

sovereignty.org.uk

See also: How mass migration has devastated the social fabric of Britain.

"Nevertheless, just as I don't think the world's problems can be solved without addressing the population question, I also don't think they can be solved if we don't address the more traditional questions of wealth and political power."&emdash;James Sinnamon, in defending Naomi Klein against criticism

I agree with James on this issue. Yes, I am angered with the liberal/left's collusion with the neo-liberal agenda of open immigration, of its misuse of the hackneyed phrase "solidarity" to justify support for importing cheap migrant labour to crush the living standards of local workers and despoil our national environment and multiply the ecological footprint of the migrants themselves. But I am also frustrated by the blindness of the red neck wing of the American anti immigration movement that takes no responsibility for the factors which PUSH migrants out of their third world countries.

These countries have been ravished by decades of iniquitous trade agreements that have extorted resources from them at bargain basement prices, causing them to forfeit self-sufficiency, destroy natural capital, and strip social services to pay off debt charges that the IMF dictates must be paid. We need to look no further than Mexico to see what a trade agreement can do to destroy a rural economy. Where do these people go? Where do poor farmers and the ancillary small business workers destroyed by the US corporate invasion go? Where did the farmers of Britain go after the enclosure movement? We tend only to look at the "Pull" factor of better paying jobs in the factories of the Industrial Revolution, or the factories in America. But we conveniently forget that there is a whip behind these workers, who, if you interviewed them, never wanted to leave their families back home.

Stopping immigration successfully cannot simply be about keeping people "out". It has also got to be about giving people reasons to stay where they are. To me, that means scrapping these larcenous trade agreements, delivering restitution to developing nations for the ruin caused to their environments, and massive foreign aid tied to family planning. Closing our borders but not our backs, our eyes or our hearts to the world. Not for their sake. For our ours.

Because history shows that walls are at best a temporary remedy. We can't play King Kanute indefinitely to an unrelenting tide of desperate tens of millions. Currently, three percent of humanity is on the move, and we seem to have difficulty marshalling the resolution to deal with that traffic. Should that proportion rocket to even ten percent, it is doubtful that any border control will remain any more impregnable than the Maginot Line or the Great Wall of China was to the armies that by-passed them. Wake up, let's get realistic here.

Push, Pull. Two factors. Deal with both, or you are not dealing with the problem of immigration.

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island,BC

See also: Closing our borders can't mean turning our backs of 25 Oct 07

Almost invariably reporting of Australia's acute housing unaffordability crisis does not inform the public of its causes, nor help it to arrive at a solution. The ABC's report No relief in sight for Brisbane's renters of 20 June 08 is no exception.

See also: Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community of 8 Mar 08

Yet another article, this time on the ABC's online news service, No relief in sight for Brisbane's renters of 20 June 08 provides yet further confirmation that the polices promoting rapid population growth by all levels of government in Brisbane - local, state and federal - are recklessly harmful to many of Brisbane's existing inhabitants.

However, this obvious link is ignored by the article, and, in spite of its promising headline, the article, instead, turns out to be nothing more than another serving of propaganda in the service of the very people who caused the problem in the first place, namely the growth lobby consisting of property developers, land speculators, lenders, construction companies and others who profit from population growth at the expense of the rest of the community.

#SpeculatorsLobby" id="SpeculatorsLobby">Property speculators lobby for higher immigration

Record and escalating property values and the consequent high rents is precisely the intended effect hoped for by the property interests who have been lobbying for population growth behind the backs of the Australian public for decades. Indeed, this hope was openly expressed by an economist working, as I recall for the Real Estate Institute of Australia in 2004 on Radio National's Australia Talks Back program on 19 May 2004 (it is now called just Australia Talks). The topic of the day was the supposed ‘problem’ of a short-lived slump in housing prices, which caused land speculators momentarily not to be able to reap the normally high profits to which they had become accustomed . Several times, the REIQ economist stated that when immigration picks up, the woes of property investors would end.

At the time, I strongly doubted claims that high immigration was, in any way, in the interests of the current residents of this country. In the past I had naïvely accepted the view that the immigration program was undertaken for altruistic reasons, even if I believed them to misguided. Whilst I was becoming more skeptical about this over time, the open acknowledgement of sectional self-interest behind our immigration program was still a surprise to me. I did phone in and speak on Australia Talks Back to make the point that housing prices, even at the supposedly depressed levels, were still impossibly high on a remotely normal income, but I had not sorted out my thoughts on that other question sufficiently as to be able to speak to it coherently. Two days letter at mid-day on Friday 21 May, I sent a letter, in the hope that it would be read out during Friday's "Week In review" program. However that was a week in which an "Australia Talks Books" was scheduled on Friday instead, so it was not read out. The letter was:

Dear Sandy McCutcheon et al,

Firstly thank you for giving me a say on your show on Wednesday.

However, I forgot to comment on what one of your invited guests said, which I thought to be extraordinary and revealing.

He expressed his hope that further immigration will help the property market to 'recover', that is, presumably, that the crowding of further new arrivals into Sydney and Melbourne, will drive the already hyper-inflated housing prices even higher.

This confirmed my suspicion that the motivations of many advocates of immigration were not as altruistic as they had once led me to believe.

Those on the lower rungs of our society were not informed or consulted about the consequences of such an increase in our population, and so now they can no longer afford what was affordable to them a generation ago.

As a matter of urgency, the process of decentralising our economy needs to be commenced, so that everyone can once again find somewhere affordable to live and to work, and before we increase our population levels even further, there needs to be a full and open discussion.

Yours Sincerely

,

James Sinnamon

Housing hyper-inflation the direct consequence of the property lobby's successful lobbying efforts

Subsequently, land speculators and property developers got their wish. John Howard, the man who told the Australian public during the Tampa crisis of 2001, "We will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances under which they come," secretly ramped up Australia's immigration ever higher and, as a consequence, Australia has some of the least affordable housing in the world. Many, who could previously have hoped to take out a mortgage for a house if they made sacrifices, have been completely priced out of the market as a result, and have no choice but to rent.

Renters at the mercy of ruthless landlords and real estate agents

As the numbers of those seeking rental accommodation have greatly exceeded available rental stock, many tenants are now at the mercy of unconscionable landlords and real estate agents. In 2006, I witnessed the life of a neighbour destroyed during a six month period, as real estate agents and prospective buyers marched into her rented half-house almost at will. On one occasion, whilst the tenant was out, damp washing left hanging, which was considered an obstruction, was dumped on the ground. Eventually the house was sold and the new owners raised the rent beyond what the existing tenant could afford, so she had to move out.

More recently, another rental house occupied by a friend was put on the market. When my friend insisted upon being given adequate written notice by the estate agent before his floor of a two story house was inspected, the estate agent attempted to bully him over the phone. He, nevertheless, stood up to him, asserting his legal rights as a tenant. Fortunately, the landlord was more ethical than most and apologised profusely when he heard of this. The house was eventually taken off the market, and he was allowed to stay. Most tenants, of course, are not so lucky. The Courier Mail newspaper reported (will endeavour to obtain reference) in about two months ago that some Brisbane landlords are evicting their tenants without cause in order to replace them with other tenants able to pay higher rents.

Many who no longer can afford their own unit, let alone a free-standing home, now have no alternative but to share a roof with often incompatible strangers. Those who can't even afford that are resorting to living in cars or in tents in open spaces around the city. One prominent collection of tent dwellings is now to be found beneath the Story Bridge.

Small businesses are also paying the price. As reported in the story Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community of 8 Mar 08 sudden exorbitant rent increases imposed by landlords, with the active encouragement of a local real estate agent, destroyed the economic viability of a number business in a formerly cohesive retail community the inner-city suburb of Paddington.

How housing unaffordability scandal is spun to suit the purposes of land speculators

Now, almost invariably, whenever housing unaffordability is raised in the printed media, radio and television, the ‘experts’ whose views are sought are invariably the exact same people who brought about this this human tragedy in the first place. They now would have the public believe that they are all working with single-minded determination to bring housing affordability back to the Australian masses once again. This line is accepted unquestioningly be almost all the newsmedia and the supposedly independent ABC is no exception.

In this story, the ‘experts’ consulted included:

• an unnamed spokesperson from economic forecaster BIS Shrapnel,
• Steve Greenwood, executive director of the Property Council of Australia,
• Dan Molloy, the managing director of the Real Estate Institute of Queensland,
• the pro-developer pro-population-growth Lord Mayor of Brisbane Campbell Newman,

In spite of the fact that the ‘solution’ proffered by these people is hotly controversial in South East Queensland, including on the Sunshine Coast and in Redland City, where anti-development councils have been elected, no critical views were reported in the article. The closest thing to a critical view was from Councillor David Hinchliffe, who, as former Labor majority leader on the Brisbane City Council, notoriously surrendered to Campbell Newman on nearly every key policy question, with disastrous results for Labor, during the March 2008 Brisbane City Council elections.

Economic forecaster BIS Shrapnel tipped that house prices in south-east Queensland were likely to rise by 22 per cent over the next three years. The obvious fact that this was almost certainly the result of the Federal Immigration minister Chris Evans having announced that the annual immigration intake was to be increased to 300,000 on 14 May was, of course, not mentioned.

Another contributing factor was Lord Mayor Campbell Newman's sudden hike in council rates directly counter to a clear commitment he made prior to the election of 15 March.

Naturally the whole discussion was couched in terms of what or would not entice investors to invest in rental property.

Campbell Newman and Steve Greenwood differed over the effect that his rate increases would have, with Newman absurdly insisting that his rate increases would have no significant impact upon rents.

Steve Greenwood naturally supported the federal rent-assistance scheme which does nothing but fuel housing inflation at the expense of taxpayers.

Greenwood claimed, as the Property Council invariably states in these sorts of stories, that the solution to housing affordability lies with the release of more land for housing development. In his words:

"But we need other things done, and those other things are increasing land supply.

"At the moment we have a regional plan that is being reviewed."

Mr Greenwood says land will need to be unlocked across the south-east to boost supply sufficiently and take pressure off the housing market.

In one sense Steve Greenwood could be right, to a point.

It is hard to imagine how the supply of more land would not make it cheaper, even if we take into account the extravagant developer's margins and the way that developers, themselves, notoriously withhold the release to homebuyers of land sold wholesale to them by governments in order to maximise their own profits.

If all other things remained equal, we could still expect the affordability of housing to marginally improve. Of course, this ignores the fact that the housing on offer is likely to be distantly removed from any worthwhile amenities, public transport or employment opportunities.

But, of course, all things are not going to remain the same as the greater demand caused by increasing immigration will almost certainly more than wipe out any marginal improvements.

Furthermore, most existing residents strongly object to the loss of open spaces, bushland and agricultural land that will be entailed in the release of new land for housing. As well as degrading the quality of life for existing residents the fragile ecology of the region could be destroyed and, with that any prospect of local food self-sufficiency, vitally necessary when the effects of ever higher fuel costs are inevitably to be felt.

It is for such reasons that the Redland City Council and the Sunshine Coast Regional Council are opposing the Queensland Government's release of more land. In response, Steve Greenwood complained:

"Just outside of Brisbane we've got a number of claims coming from some of the local government areas that actually want to cap their population growth.

"That is very alarming, because basically what they're saying is they're going to … attempt to further limit supply, and for most of us who have even a basic understanding of economics, you limit supply and your costs go up.

Of course, the abovementioned efforts made by the Federal and State governments on behalf of the Property Council of Australia and the REIQ to increase demand are not to be even considered.

In recent months the Queensland branch of Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has rightly conducted publicity campaigns against policies of the Queensland Labor Government's which have been harmful to its members' interests. These include the corporatisation and privatisation of its power generation assets and the consequent neglect of vital infrastructure. The ETU has also conducted an industrial campaign for wage justice for its members and has been critical of the Federal Rudd Labor Government's delays in the repeal of the Howard Government's anti-worker “Work Choices” legislation.

In the Brisbane Times article Electricity, rail workers to picket Labor conference, ETU spokesman Peter Simpson complained of “over 12 months of frustrated negotiations” in which “the excesses of Work Choices" were used against state government employees.”

At a protest outside the Queensland Labor Party's conference on the Gold Coast on Saturday 21 June  the Brisbane Times, in its story QLD Labor stung by protests, poll, reported:

(ETU assistant secretary Peter Simpson) said the unions had received a slap in the face after supporting Labor through the November federal election.

“How have we been repaid? We have been screwed over and it is a dead-set disgrace,” Mr Simpson said.

However, whilst Simpson is correct to point this out, it would have been clearly suicidal for the Union movement not to have backed Rudd against the viciously anti-democratic, anti-trade-union John Howard government. Whatever can be critically said of the record of the Rudd Labor Government, it was absolutely necessary for the ETU to have campaigned with the rest of the trade union movement to remove the Liberal Party from office.

Peter Simpson continued:

“This may be the last ALP conference that we attend, because I don't think we'll be affiliated with them for much longer.”

Whilst their treatment at he hands of Labor governments is indefensible and the ETU's outrage is entirely justified, their threat to disaffiliate from the Labor Party begs the question of exactly how the ETU can expect better treatment at the hands of any alternative government. Clearly, it would be ludicrous for ETU to hold out hope for better treatment at the hands of a Coalition government whether at the Queensland state or Federal level.

This conflict calls into question the whole purpose of the Labor Party.

The Labor Party was originally formed in the 1890's to be the political representative of the trade union movement. Its purpose was to form Government in order to enact legislation in favour of workers upon whose vote it would have depended upon to obtain a majority in Parliament.

The conduct of the Bligh Government, including in its dispute with the ETU, is only the latest of almost countless illustrations of how far the Labor Party has drifted from this original propose. Far from representing workers or, indeed, any other ordinary members of the community, the Bligh Government, instead, serves a small minority of corporations, land speculators and developers and acts, above all else, to transfer the wealth of the rest of the community, including electrical workers, into their pockets.

What unions such as the ETU need to consider is how to attempt to rectify this unsatisfactory situation.

One way or another, unions such as the ETU should assert their right to have representatives, who are prepared to act in the interests of its members, elected to Parliament. If the ETU sees no prospect of this being achieved by using its voice within the Labor Party, then it should seek to initiate the formation of such a party outside the Labor.

However to simply disaffiliate, but do nothing else, is likely to do little to dissuade the Bligh Government from pursuing its current course.

As much as Labor politicians enjoy the fruits of office, many act as if they consider losing office a lesser evil to actually representing the Labor Party's constituency and standing up to corporate interests. They seem to act as if confident that other at least equally lucrative careers will be offered to them by a grateful corporate sector should they lose government. So even the threat of damaging Labor's electoral prospects may do little to change the mind of Rudd and Bligh and, in fact, could backfire on the ETU if it were to result in the election of Coalition governments in the mould of the former Howard Government.

The ETU and other unions, such as the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU), who are disaffected by the Bligh Government's policies should use what voices they have at the Labor Conference to loudly demand that the Bligh begin to act to serve its electoral constituency. If they did, it is hard to conceive how their voices would not resonate with the rank and file of the Labor Party and other trade unions, if not with other conference delegates. Whether or not they are able to persuade a majority of the conference, it could only help make more likely the re-establishment of an effective political voice for the trade union movement, whether it is to come from within or without the current Labor Party.

Were "Intact Aboriginal Cultures" really good "environmental custodians"? Not in North America Mate

james wrote:

Whilst I agree with nearly everything written by Tim, I have to take some
exception to what has been said of First Nations. Whilst one shouldn't overly romanticise aboriginal cultures, it needs to be acknowledged that, on the whole, these societies, where they have been left intact, have been good custodians of the environment. The fact that many North American Inuit, whose societies have been corrupted by our rampant 21st century free market growth capitalism, are now also engaging in ecological vandalism, does not negate this fact. James S. 18 June 08

Some myths just won't lie down and die. It doesn't matter how many facts are thrown at them. Facts like:

1. According to microbiologist Peter Salonious the agriculture of the North American indigenous peoples was not sustainable and a population crash would have culled them if a European conquest hadn't.
2. There are examples of how indigenous peoples wasted resources. Buffalo jumps, the stampeding of hundreds of animals over cliffs far in excess of tribal needs that strata examination shows were carried out centuries before European arrival. The extinction of horses before the Spaniards re-introduced them. The comment by David Suzuki that the only reason why the Haida did not chop down more Douglas Fir is that it took a full week to chop down a single tree with the axes they had. It was technology, not a spiritual reverence for nature, that constrained them.
3. Indigenous peoples in North America were tribalists like the Europeans. Go forth and multiply or a rival tribe will outbreed you and destroy you. Their numbers were limited by war, famine and shortage. But not by respect for limits.

Robert Whelan said it best. “We now know that native peoples can be as destructive of their environments as anyone else, and that historically aboriginal tribes often changed whole ecosystems by the repeated burning of forests and by hunting animal species to extinction. The noble eco-savage is a white , Western artifact. When policy issues, such as land rights, are decided on the basis of this misconception, it leads to disappointment…” (Wild in the Woods)

What it also leads to is a false sense of security. And this what makes this issue so important. So dangerous. Why? Because Aboriginals are being used. Just as environmental NGOs lead people to believe that the environment has a watchdog to look after it, Canadians believe that when Machiavellian logging and mining corporations name Aboriginals to their boards and form partnerships with them to strip the boreal forests that somehow the land will be protected because natives are genetically or culturally endowed with inborn wisdom to manage it. They believe this because they are taught by politically correct sociology professors and Green rhetoricians to think that is so. That is why it is important Anthropology 101 is not taught by Kevin Kostner, or that our image of natives is not conditioned by Hollywood movies like Little Big Man, Soldier Blue, and Dances with Wolves.

The repercussions of this romantic attachment to the myth of the noble eco-savage are the death of our planet. The boreal forest is being clear cut because these “noble wise stewards” are serving as PR front men for corporations who are doing it. The methane gas released by this logging will keep being released for the next 10 years and it is one of the worst GHG going. Must admit, it was a clever move for the companies to bring the natives on board. As Brishen Hoff shrewdly pointed out, it was very much the same as their trotting out Greenpeace founder Dr.Patrick Moore as a representative or spokesman to prove that their project is “green”. In British Columbia, Moore appeared for the big logging companies as a spokesman for the “Share the Stein Coalition”, and using the same formula, he has appeared as the token green voice for the nuclear industry.

To attack the native-corporate partnership is to also expose native complicity and greed. But political correctness will not permit us to do so. False anthropology has affixed a halo on their heads that we cannot knock off. The myth of their inherent ecological nobility is the political kryptonite which keeps the would be critics, the biologists and scientists of Environment Canada and maverick environmentalists at bay. Two attempts were made to challenge the myth. One was made in Canada by myself and Brishen Hoff in our article “The Myth of Wise Aboriginal Stewardship”. But the Thought Police saw to it that it was never published. Even conservative media ran for cover.

But in America, the First Amendment still prevails. And finally there is man who, I think, has knocked that halo clean off. A comment follows.

#FirstAmericans" id="FirstAmericans">First Americans, First Ecologists?

By Michael Medved, 18 Jun 08 (original at www.townhall.com)

Political correctness portrays untamed America before European invasion as a natural paradise, where Indians maintained an exquisite ecological balance, living in a harmonious, idyllic relationship to the natural world. According to conventional wisdom, this pre-Columbian Eden flourished for peaceful millenia until brutal disuprtion by thoughtless, menacing and mercenary white colonists. Stewart Udall, one-time Arizona Congressman and later Secretary of the Interior for President Kennedy, became an early advocate of this point of view in his influential 1973 article, “Indians: First Americans, First Ecologists,” urging modern citizens to follow the native example of treating the landscape with love and respect.

Udall's arguments received powerful support from the popularization of the moving speech of Chief Seattle, the Duwamish elder who addressed a meeting in 1854 in the raw settlement in Washington Territory that ultimately took his name. “Every part of this earth is sacred to my people,” Seattle supposedly told his listeners. “Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.” Later, the aged sage assaulted the insensitive ways of the new arrivals. “There is no quiet place in the white man's cities,” he lamented. “The clatter only seems to insult the ears…I've seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a train.”

Actually, it's unlikely that Chief Seattle ever saw even a single buffalo, either rotting or otherwise, or ever looked at a train for that matter, since buffalo never lived in his verdant corner of the Pacific Northwest, and railroads (along with “the clatter” of white the man's cities) only arrived several decades after the alleged speech. His poetic remarks (immortalized in a bestselling children's book, “Brother Eagle, Sister Sky”) represent an internationally influential hoax-- a more or less whole-cloth invention by a screenwriter named Ted Perry for a now-forgotten 1972 TV documentary, based very, very loosely on an account in a Seattle newspaper (twenty years after the kindly chief's death) of a real talk he may (or may not) have delivered in his largely indecipherable native language to the drenched but respectful pioneers.

In the same era that school kids learned to memorize the bogus words of Chief Seattle, another aged Indian emerged in the pop culture with the sacred purpose of protecting the North American environment, and cementing the widespread image of Indians as eternal guardians of the sacred landscape. In 1971, a brilliant “Keep America Beautiful” public service announcement offered an eloquent plea for ecological consciousness, with the tag line “people start pollution; people can stop it.” The commercial showed garbage thrown from a speeding car landing at the moccasined feet of an elderly native in traditional garb who looks toward the camera with a fat, glistening tear flowing down his weather-beaten cheek. The actor featured in the commercial, a Hollywood veteran with the marvelous name “Iron Eyes Cody,” became famous for those few seconds of video, which easily overshadowed his more than 200 films (including Indian roles in “The Big Trail” with John Wayne (1930), “A Man Called Horse” with Richard Harris (1970) and many more. Iron Eyes became an impassioned advocate for Native American causes and a regular on TV talk shows before his death at age 95 in 1999. Only with his obituaries did the truth emerge about the cherished Native American symbol “Iron Eyes Cody” – whose parents (Antonio De Corti and Francesco Salpietra) both immigrated to the United States from Sicily, and possessed no hint of Indian blood.

The cherished notion of Indians as ecologically enlightened protectors of the natural order actually carries no more authenticity than Chief Seattle's ruminations on rotting buffalo or the purportedly Cherokee identity of the Sicilian-American “Iron Eyes Cody.” In a densely researched 1999 monograph from Britain's Institute of Economic Affairs (“Wild in the Woods: The Myth of the Eco-Savage”) Robert Whelan blasts the popular but puerile proposition that before 1492, Native Americans lived as blissful stewards of pristine environments they cherished and protected.

The truth is that native peoples, like all other aboriginal societies on the planet, did anything and everything to their surroundings that might help them to survive. “There is now a very considerable body of research,” Robert Whelan writes, “which demonstrates conclusively that the Indians made a massive impact on their environment before the arrival of the white man, and that much of this impact was damaging and showed no conception of a conservation ethic.”

For example, to hunter-gatherers who lived in temporary structures, trees constituted an impediment that separated them from the animals they wanted to eat. As forests grow, “The open savanna that once supported bison, elk, deer, antelope, beaver, bears, birds and wolves becomes the closed boreal forest inhabited by squirrels, ravens, and pine martens, but little else.” So naturally, the Indians (particularly on the Eastern Seaboard) did whatever they could to get rid of the leafy interlopers. Early white settlers expressed surprise to see vast tracts of forest deliberately wiped out: “The Savages are accustomed to set fire of the Country in all places where they come, and to burne it twize a year, vixe at the spring and the fall of the leafe,” recorded the Puritan Thomas Morton (an outspoken admirer of the Indians) in 1637. Lewis and Clark reported in their 1805 diaries that “Indians in the Rocky Mountains would set trees alight as after dinner entertainment; the huge trees would explode like Roman candles in the night.” In response to a 1992 earth summit, BL Turner and Karl Butzer researched the environmental impact of Native Americans, and found that “Deforestation in the Americas was probably greater before the Columbian encounter than it was for several centuries thereafter.”

In fact, in their pursuit of succulent suppers, Indians did a great deal of collateral damage, even driving some species extinct. In 1998, our family accepted an invitation to spend a few days at an historic Wyoming ranch where the couple that owned it took us on an unforgettable tour of their property. They brought us to a red-earth outcropping that rose like a wedge from the surrounding terrain. “This was an Indian Buffalo Run,” they explained. The local tribes developed a means to frighten huge herds of buffalo and to direct their stampede &endash;right off the edge of the cliff into a heap of meat more than a hundred feet below. There, awaiting tribesmen could collect as much of the carcasses as they could eat and preserve. They left the rest to rot, creating a mountain of bones still visible (and formidable) below us. Continued…

In 1989, the Vore family donated a similar Buffalo Jump to the University of Wyoming, and scholars have been poring over the scene ever since. In the 1970s, during construction of Interstate Highway 90, “less than 10 percent of the site was unearthed at that time, but the analysis revealed at least 20 bone layers which extend about 100 feet across the sink hole and nearly 25 feet down.” Because the bones had been preserved by annual layers of sediment called varves, scientists can precisely date the Indians' feasts, and easily glean information about artifacts, weather, and their dining habits.

Shepard Krech III, professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Brown University, describes the Olsen-Chubbuck buffalo run excavation in southern Colorado where, five thousand years ago, two hundred bison “of a species one-third larger than today's” produced 50,000 pounds of meat&endash;and a total waste of the 25% of animals squashed in the bottom of the heap. “Archaeologists who excavated the site found skeletons massed on twisted skeletons, wedged in massive piles against piles and against the steep banks of the narrow gulch. The event probably happened in a flash.”

Tribes displayed neither tidiness nor restraint in harvesting various animals for food. University of Utah archaeologist Jack M. Broughton spent seven years sifting through the bird bones in a Native American dump near San Francisco Bay. “From 2,600 to at least 700 years ago,” a University press release announces, “native people hunted some species to local extinction,” and the animals only rebounded when the Indians became decimated by disease. Broughton's earlier research on Indians' quest for “anything big and juicy” turned up similar fates for fish such as sturgeon, as well as local varieties of elk, deer, geese, and ducks.

Anthropologist Paul S. Martin of the University of Arizona thinks the arrival of the first peoples to North America in prehistoric times meant the end for several big animals: “The basic facts are clear. People established themselves, colonized and spread into the New World at least by 11,000 years ago, if not earlier. And, at this time, large animals&endash;camels, and extinct species of horses, ground sloths, saber-tooth cats, in addition to mammoths and mastodons, and a dozen or two dozen more genera of large animals&endash;all go extinct at roughly the same time.”

Calvin Martin, in his fascinating Keepers of the Game: Indian-Animal Relationships in the Fur Trade, explains that Northeastern Native Americans (Objiwa, Hurons, Micmac, League Iroquois, Cree, Montagnais) developed religions that ascribed spiritual powers to all animals, including beavers, and held that each creature existed in a sphere parallel to that of man. The process of hunting, then, became far more than the physical mechanics of trapping and killing, but involved a spiritual interchange of consent and mutual respect. After fur trading began, when natives began to perish in great numbers due to disease, Indians assumed the beaver were exacting retribution against the humans for the plundering of their pelts&endash;leading to the conclusion that the natives could protect themselves only by securing the rodents' elimination. “By 1635, for example, the Huron in the Lake Simcoe area had reduced their stock of beaver to the point where Father Paul LeJeune, the Jesuit, could flatly declare they had none,” Martin writes. In a matter of several years, the beaver had been slaughtered to near extinction, as well as moose and other furbearers. Martin concludes, “The game which by all accounts had been initially so plentiful was now being systematically exterminated by the Indians themselves” with a desperate, cultic, religious fervor.

The baseless myth of indigenous peoples living in respectful balance with their natural surroundings and making no mark on the space they inhabited for thousands of years plays an important role in most allegations of Indian genocide, because it reinforces the image of Natve Americans as childlike innocents, no more capable of protecting themselves than the noble beasts they supposedly revered. This vision supports an image of explorers and colonists as intruders, despoilers and mass killers, with nothing to offer the pure, proud peoples of the New World except for disease and exploitation, corruption and decadence, and feeds the toxic argument that Americans should feel guilty about the very origins of our civilization.

Original at www.townhall.com

Michael Medved's article documents rather thoroughly that Native Americans as “stewards of the environment” is a useful myth. Worldwide, in fact, one has few examples of people becoming conservationists until their way of life is utterly threatened and conservation becomes a matter of survival. Some, such as the Easter Islanders, have not made the transition in time. The Pacific Island Yapese, by contrast, did begin to conserve and limit population size and fertility, but only after a long period of famine.

Europeans and European-Americans are as early as any to become low fertility conservationists. Indeed, in abolishing slavery and founding societies for the Protection of Animals they have gone farther, extending a level of compassion for all humans other species, that seems unique in world history.

I have one further observation. In my youth, I made contact with many members of the Communist Party of Canada. Some of them were former members of the American party who fled the United States during the McCarthyist persecution. I asked them why they became Communists, and they all talked about the obvious inequity and brutality of 1930s, and how socialism offered a superior alternative. I was very sympathetic to their attitude to life until I asked them about the Soviet Union as it was now (1970s). Surely it disappointed them. Not at all. They not extolled its virtues, but more than that, they denied any grave injustices under Stalin. And obviously, during the 1930s, they refused to entertain the notion that their utopian alternative was not entirely utopian. Malcolm Muggeridge wrote a lot about mentality. It finds its analogue among Christians who must believe in a paradise beyond this world. No criticism can touch this vision, for people have a desperate need to hold on to it. Michael Crichton spoke of environmentalists requiring a belief in an unspoiled “Eden” that existed before we corrupted it and will again exist once we have had our comeuppance. My thought is that the belief that Aboriginals were noble eco-savages falls into this same category. The Platonic need to believe in perfection. In greener pastures, a measuring stick against which we can hold this society to account. It is very demoralizing to learn, alas, that there are no greener pastures. We are oh so much alike. Every culture seems to be flawed. All of us programmed to push the limits. If you show me exceptions, they are far too inconsequential to matter. What humanity requires, perhaps, is a predator. I have never observed the local deer population standing around discussing how to effect Limits to Growth. They have delegated that task to the local wolves. Tim

A broadcast debate on the Canadian Broadcasting Commission between on the one hand Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which actively campaigns in the oceans of the world to preserve whales and other forms of endangered marine life and, on the other hand, Elizabeth May, now leader of Canada's Green Party showed two poles of North American environmentalism, one authentic and one counterfeit. Only the latter enjoys the hear of the official media and the patronage of the gullible who hand their dollars over in the belief that something is being ‘done’ about the environment. In fact, the purpose of environmental NGOs is to do nothing about the environment, to keep problems unsolved, so they have a raison d'etre. Watson is the only one who speaks the truth.

As always, the CBC gave the last word to the politically correct, soft green, growthist, Elizabeth May.

Paul Watson vs. Elizabeth May

The following is a transcript of a CBC interview conducted on May 17/06 with Paul Watson and Elizabeth May, now leader of Canada's Green Party. It was transcribed from a CD by Brishen Hoff.

Anna Maria Tremonte (host) : And the latest numbers show the population of the US grew by 2.8 million people from 2004 to 2005. Half of them identify themselves as hispanics. It is precisely those growth numbers that have some environmentalists raising concerns and raising hackles, arguing that immigration is central to the United States environmental problems. It's causing rifts among
environmentalists and raising lots of questions and that is where the current begins today.

[Theme music]

Well what began as a skirmish is looking more and more like an all out war. For months now an intense debate about immigration policy has been simmering south of the border. Earlier this month supporters of an open immigration policy upped the stakes as millions of people took to the streets in cities across the US. On Monday, President George Bush fired back announcing he was deploying the National Guard to the Mexican border, "We do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that. By the end of 2008, we will increase the number of border patrol officers by an additional 6,000. When these new agents are deployed, we'll have more than double the size of the border control during my presence."

#PaulWatson" id="PaulWatson">Interview with Paul Watson

Well as both sides dig in for a prolonged fight, those advocating less immigration have found an unlikely ally inside the environmental movement. Paul Watson, the one-time co-founder of Greenpeace, later the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has thrown himself headfirst into the debate by challenging the environmental movement to come clean about what he says are the links between immigration, population growth and resource depletion. And Paul Watson is on the phone from Seattle this morning.

Good morning.

Paul Watson:
Good morning.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Why are you convinced that immigration is a problem for the environment in the United States?

Paul Watson : Well you know the United States has got one of the fastest growth rates of
any country in the world, and immigration is a major contributor to that. At
a growth rate of 1.3% a year, that's going to give us a population of 1
billion in the United States by the end of the 21st century.

Anna Maria Tremonte : And why is that bad?

Paul Watson : [LAUGHS] Well the average American consumes much more than the average citizen of other countries, so everytime you have a new American you increase the consumption of resources considerably. The US is also responsible for 25% of all the greenhouse gases emissions in the world, so more Americans, more pollution, more sprawl, more problems.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Well, but new immigrants aren't really the big energy consumers in North American society. Why do you focus on immigrants and not the stereotypical
Hummer-driving air conditioning American?

Paul Watson : Well we do do that too, but the fact is is that every year almost 3 million people are added to the US population and most of that is from immigration. In fact, all we're advocating is that immigration numbers be reduced to levels to achieve stabilization of population. By birth rates alone in the United States, you don't have that increase. Immigration is solely responsible. Not only immigration but births by immigrants, because the birth rate amongst immigrants is far higher than the birth rate amongst non-immigrants.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Why is that?

Paul Watson : I don't really know except that people who enter the country have a higher birth rate than people who are already living here. That's just an established fact.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Are you looking at the US and looking at where there is ecological/environmental damage and attributing it to how many people are living there? Is that what you're doing?

Paul Watson : Well yes, because everytime people come into the US they greatly increase their rate of consumption of resources. The other problem we're concerned about is that there is terrific damage being done especially in the desert regions of the southwest because of people coming over that border everything from garbage to trampling of species and this is not only done by immigrants but also by the patrols against the immigration. So there's that consideration to be taken into account. You know the problem is is that if we don't control the numbers of the overall US population, we're headed for some very serious problems. The United States is already running out of valuable resources especially water.

Anna Maria Tremonte : So, but is it a point of you just have too many people in one place in the US? What if they all moved to Missouri or something?

Paul Watson : No, I think generally its right across the board. But the other problem is that we have an acceptable form of slavery in the United States. When I was recently a director of the Sierra Club I put forth a motion that one way to deal with this is to demand that farm and factory workers wages be increased and that they be given full benefits and that would discourage a lot of the illegal immigration. But you know people don't really give much thought to the fact that in the fields of California, people are working in very toxic conditions for long hours, for low wages and no benefits and that's just really intolerable, and the only reason it's going on is because big business and big agriculture benefit from cheap labour.

Anna Maria Tremonte : So you're saying that you think the US should curb immigration?

Paul Watson : Yes I think that they should reduce the numbers to achieve stabilization of the population.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Specifically over the Mexican border?

Paul Watson : Right across the board, I don't really discriminate against the origins of where the immigrants come from, it's right across the board.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Now this has been a divisive issue in the Sierra Club. You resigned from its board last month, in part over this issue. Tell us about that.

Paul Watson : Well I resigned in part because of that and also because of the Sierra Club's pro-hunting stance. But the Sierra Club, as is most major environmental organizations have taken a neutral position which means "We don't want to get involved &endash; We don't want to talk about this." You know back in 1972 at the UN Conference On The Environment the population issue was the number one concern on the environment. By the UN Conference in Rio in 1992, 20 years later nobody is talking about it.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Why is that?

Paul Watson : Well, it's become too politically correct. Nobody wants to talk about it. I much prefer to be ecologically correct than politically correct. We have to deal with the fact that it's a contributing factor and we have to deal with the fact that population is the single greatest source for all of our environmental problems. From diversity of species, to pollution, to greenhouse gas emissions. All of this is because there's more and more people. And also, the more people, that means that we have to steal the carrying capacity of other species. They have to disappear for our numbers to increase. And we're going to reach a point where we are going to run out of key species and everything is going to collapse because of the ecological law of interdependence.

Anna Maria Tremonte : You, yourself are an immigrant.

Paul Watson : Yes, I'm a permanent resident of the US. I'm a Canadian citizen.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Aren't you part of the problem?

Paul Watson : Oh yes, we're all part of the problem.

Anna Maria Tremonte : What are you suggesting? Are you suggesting sending people back?

Paul Watson : No, I'm just saying that we have to reduce the number of people coming into the United States to achieve stabilization. That is, there's already limits, there is no open borders. So, I'm saying lower those limits so we don't have an increase in the population of 2.8 million people every year.

Anna Maria Tremonte : You know, reducing immigration doesn't reduce the population on the planet, just the population of the United States. Why not focus on the global population?

Paul Watson : Well we do focus on the global population but by reducing the number of Americans you're actually addressing the issue of consumption because US citizens consume much more resources than other citizens so when somebody crosses that border they become a mega-consumer. You know, maybe not right away, but that's where they're heading and so the more Americans, the greater the level of consumption of resources, the greater the emission of pollution.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Well, it's the environmental footprint right?

Paul Watson : Americans have the biggest environmental footprint of any citizens on the planet.

Anna Maria Tremonte : At the same time, immigrants have smaller environmental footprints in their countries of origin often because they're poor. So how fair is it to condemn them to poverty by not allowing them to enter the US?

Paul Watson : Well then, what you're doing is condemning the United States to poverty in the future, which is where we're all heading anyway unless we curb population. The other problem is that other countries are trying to solve their population surplus problem by pushing people into the United States. Also it's a brain drain too. A lot of people who could be making a contribution to their countries of origin are coming to the United States. And that's not solving problems in countries like Guatemala and Honduras where people should be helping to make things better in their country.

Anna Maria Tremonte : To what extent do you think the same issues apply in Canada?

Paul Watson : I think Canada also has a problem too because our population is growing and that means more wilderness area is being taken up. And my big concern is that as people come in, the sprawl increases, there's more and more impact on wilderness. I mean for instance we have this situation in the United States where they don't understand why the alligators are attacking people. Well the reason the alligators are attacking is we're moving into their territory, we're taking their ecosystems and they're trying to survive and everybody's saying "It's amazing, why is this happening?" Well because we're invading.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Do you think President Bush's announcement this week calling for National Guard troop reinforcements on the US/Mexico border is a step in the right direction?

Paul Watson : Oh I think he's just posturing. I mean, 6,000 National Guard isn't going to make any difference at all. Really what they should be doing is enforcing US law against employers of illegal immigrants and the key to that is to make sure that people couldn't hire illegal immigrants in the farms and the factories, that would certainly go a lot further to discourage illegal immigration. I mean we're talking here of legal immigration of 2.8 million people every year. But the other factor is illegal immigration which is anywhere from 11 to 20 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

Anna Maria Tremonte : But you want to see them cracking down on both essentially. Not only illegal, but you want legal immigration to be reduced?

Paul Watson : Yes

Anna Maria Tremonte : Paul Watson, thanks for talking to us today.

Paul Watson : Thank you.

Anna Maria Tremonte :
Paul Watson is the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He was
also one of the founders of Greenpeace and he was on the phone from Seattle.
You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and on Sirius Satellite
Radio 137. I'm Anna Maria Tremonte.

#ElizabethMay" id="ElizabethMay">Interview with Elizabeth May

Anna Maria Tremonte (conitinuing) : Well not everyone in the environmental movement agrees with Paul Watson's argument about the links between immigration and environmental degradation. Elizabeth May is a candidate for the leadership of the federal Green Party. She's also the former executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, and she is in Syndey, Nova Scotia this morning.

Hello.

Elizabeth May : Good morning Anna Maria.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Well what do you think of what Paul Watson is saying? He says that anti-immigration opinion is something that environmentalists are afraid to talk about.

Elizabeth May : Well we've never been afraid to talk about it in Canada and as you mentioned I just recently stepped down as executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada and while I was there, we answered it across countries with a set of discussions and seminars and came up with what I think is a very good policy in relation to immigration and the interrelationships which are far more complex than Paul has suggested, between immigration, population pressures, consumption, militarism, women's rights. It's a very complex web, and to say that immigration is the problem is really to put the emphasis on something that is, when you really look at all the various factors, it's basically #trivial" id="trivial">trivial. I mean, only 3% of the world's population dies in a country other than that in which they were born and most of that migration is from developing countries to developing countries, not coming into North American consumptive societies, so the key factor here in environmental destruction, as Paul hints of course, is that North Americans consume far more than any notion of fair share and far beyond any sense of the carrying capacity of the planet. So when you have 4% of the world's population which is the United States, producing 25% of the planet's greenhouse gases, the answer isn't to make as George Bush seems to think, to make the United States a gated community and put guys with guns at the border so that we can protect, you know, the United States and protect a completely unsustainable and highly polluting and unnecessarily consumptive way of life to achieve the quality of life they want. There's other ways to do that and it means unhooking themselves from their extremely wasteful use of energy; it's not beating up on immigrants.

Anna Maria Tremonte : He says that global population growth used to be the global environmental movement's number one issue but it disappeared from the agenda in recent years. Why do you think that happened?

Elizabeth May : Well it's not quite like Paul &endash; it is true that I don't think there's any question that environmental groups are concerned about population increases. I mean, the doubling from 3 billion to 6 billion people occurred in my life time. The historic trend it is more than, you know, an astonishing reality that 2000 years ago the population on earth was 200 million people. It took 1500 years for that to double to 400 million, so there are exponential rates of growth. Population is a clear global issue of which immigration is merely a trivial factor, but when you look at the issue of population and why it is such a significant environmental threat, it's entirely linked to the question of how much is each person on earth consuming, and whether those rates of consumption are sustainable.

Anna Maria Tremonte : So where does global population growth rank then as a threat to theenvironment?

Elizabeth May : No, I think it's a huge issue, but it's very much connected to how much we're consuming. So if you figure what the carrying capacity of planet earth, maybe it's six billion people living like Ghandi or, you know, a couple hundred thousand living like Bill Gates. It's very much related to how much each person is consuming and how do we, you know, it's critical that North American society, because Canadians have just about as large an ecological footprint as the United States, it's critical that we reduce that enormous impact that we're having, otherwise the climate crisis is going to rather redress our standard of living for us.

Anna Maria Tremonte : So is it not true then that the one place that you don't want more growth then is a place like the US that already has such consumption?

Elizabeth May : The issue is really one that's far too complex to say the problem is more immigrants. If you look at Canadian environmental problems, our biggest increase in greenhouse gases and our biggest loss of boreal forest is happening in the Athabasca tar sands and that's not because of a mass migration of people from other countries rushing there and destroying the environment. That's immigrants like Shell and Exxon. So we have to look at what the real issues are and where we have increased sprawl which is a real problem, it's related to bad land use planning. It's related to bad policies that'll affect where immigrants settle and it'll affect where Canadian born settlement occurs. This is, actually, you know, everyone in Canada who isn't First Nations is an immigrant, we've got to deal with land use planning so that we're not building increased levels of suburban sprawl in areas which are critical wildlife habitat. That is happening in Canada. It is a problem, but curbing immigration is really focussing on the wrong, and rather trivial aspect of the overall problem.

Anna Maria Tremonte : How should countries then that rely on immigration for population growth balance that with environmental concerns?

Elizabeth May : Well it's really that for all of us we need to reduce the amount of energy we're consuming, the amount, and that's a basically a factor in increasing the efficiency of the way in which we use energy and raw materials. The global economy just to give you an example, produced in North America, achieved a revolution in productivity, in reducing the amount of labour per unit of good produced per unit of energy. It was just a huge efficiency in the number of people employed to produce goods. We need to do that again by reducing by a factor of ten, which is doable on the technologies that are available, the amount of energy we're using to get the same quality of life; the same lighting, the same heating, the same cooling can all be achieved at a fraction of what we're now consuming because we've underpriced raw materials and carbon and underpriced energy and we've overpriced labour, so we've skewed, it's all a question of responding to, really to, fiscal signals.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Paul Watson though is not alone in what he says. How much of a wedge issue is immigration amongst environmentalists in the US?

Elizabeth May : In the US it is and I think it's unfortunate because I know that Paul's motivations are completely honourable. People have attacked him as a racist or something. It's not the case at all. He's genuinely someone concerned particularly about the fate of non-human life on this planet and that is a critical concern. We're in a biodiversity meltdown. We're in an extinction crisis and by focussing on immigration I must say that's the most divisive and unhelpful way to approach the issue of what can humanity do to reorient ourselves on this planet so that we can both live in peace with each other and not destroy our life support systems.

Anna Maria Tremonte :Well how damaging do you think his line of reasoning is then to the image of the environmental movement?

Elizabeth May : Well it was fairly disastrous in terms of just the mere fact that Sierra
Club US was considering, because it's a democratic organization, by their constitution, they had to consider the referendum put forward by a minority of members to vote on an immigration policy. The immigration policyproposed, that Paul supported, was roundly seen by the membership of Sierra Club US, but I bet a lot of listeners right now are thinking "Oh yeah, I remember something about that, about Sierra Club US thinking that we should, you know, that we should, stop immigrants as if they were toxic waste". Well that is, you know, not an acceptable position but the mere fact that it was debated I think has done some long-term damage to the reputation.

Anna Maria Tremonte : If the US experienced a serious population decrease, how much would that relieve the pressure on the environment?

Elizabeth May : Well it depends on how much they're consuming. If the United States consumption of, particularly of fossil fuels, continues its current rate which, you know, if it's an advantage to reduce the population but if every family bought themselves an SUV or moved from an SUV to a Hummer, it would make no difference at all.

Anna Maria Tremonte : So what should US environmentalists who are genuinely concerned about population growth be doing to address this issue?

Elizabeth May : No, I think the key thing is to protect wilderness by having the kinds of laws that ensure that land use planning does not involve sprawl into areas which are critical and threatened ecosystems and at the same time we need to fundamentally re-examine the consumption patterns, our dependency on cheap and very highly polluting fossil fuels to improve and regulate vehiclestandards. You know, the Bush administration in addition to putting guards at the border to Mexico is in court fighting Arnold Schwartzenegger in California having these tougher laws to get better fuel economy from their automobile fleet. So, they're opposing those very simple straight-forward measures that would mean that every American driving would pollute less. So it's a really complicated web and I'm sorry I'm giving complicated answers but a simple solution is wrong when the answer is, when the question is complicated.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Elizabeth May, we have to leave it there. Thanks for talking to me today.

Elizabeth May : Thank you, Anna Maria.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Bye Bye

Elizabeth May : Bye.

Anna Maria Tremonte : Elizabeth May is a candidate for the leadership of the federal Green Party. She's also the former executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada and she spoke to us from Sydney, Nova Scotia this morning.

#Observations" id="Observations">Observations

May says that immigration, at 3% of the world's population, is “trivial”. Trivial to whom? To the workers whose jobs are displaced and whose wages are depressed? (Rubenstein, Briggs, Borgias). Trivial to the taxpayers who must pay for the social services of immigrants? (Robert Rector study, Heritage Foundation 2006, Grubel study, Fraser Institute 2006). Trivial to those who fight traffic gridlock, suffer pollution, housing shortages and inflated prices and loss of farmland? Is it trivial to the Israelis, the Spanish, and the Indians who have also resorted to building expensive walls to keep migrants out? Will the prospect of 300 million global environmental refugees be trivial?

May speaks of laws that ensure that land use planning will not involve sprawl into areas that are critical to threatened ecosystems. What kind of ironclad laws would they be? The kind that Portland, Oregon had? The kind that was supposed to keep Yosemite safe from mining companies? The kind that is supposed save the Steve Irwin Nature reserve? Bullshit. There is no sanctuary from human population growth. “Smart” Growth is a fraud and a snare.

May talks of vehicle standards and Bush's opposition to Schwartzenegger's fuel economy plans. The best fuel economy plan would be to reduce the number of drivers on the roads. With nearly 3 million of them entering the country every year by legal means alone, May's focus on tech efficiency is a joke.

“Everyone who isn't First Nations is an immigrant”. Give me a break. When is someone going to call May out on her racist self-loathing? The “First Nations” emigrated from across the Bering Strait, and one wave displaced another. Each tribe or band occupies land that was taken by the conquest or annihilation of a previous “First Nation”. I am a Caucasian but I was born in this damn country. That makes me as “native” as anybody. If there is to be a hierarchy of Canadianism based on seniority, then I am more Canadian than 80% of the aboriginal population of the country who are younger than I am. May continually makes reference to the inherent “wisdom” of First Nations peoples in matters of resource management, despite their appalling record. Would she make similar references to the inherent “cleverness” of Jews, or the inherent “rythym” of blacks, or the inherent parsimony of Scotsmen?

Tim Murray

See also: Sea Shepherd appeals for Greenpeace's cooperation in fight against whale slaughter
Were "Intact Aboriginal Cultures" really good custodians? of 19 Jun 08.

The Beginning

God himself
having that day planted a garden
walked through it at evening and knew
that Eden was not nearly complex enough.
And he said:
"Let species swarm like solutes in a colloid.
Let there be ten thousand species of plankton
and to eat them a thousand zooplankton.
Let there be ten phyla of siphoning animals,
one phylum of finned vertebrates, from
white-tipped reef shark to long-beaked coralfish,
and to each his proper niche,
and — no Raphael, I'm not quite finished yet —
you can add seals and sea-turtles & cone-shells & penguins
(if they care) and all the good seabirds your team can devise —
oh yes, and I nearly forgot it, I want a special place
for the crabs! And now for parasites to keep
the whole system in balance, let . . ."

". . . In conclusion, I want," he said
"ten thousand mixed chains of predation —
none of your simple rabbit and coyote stuff!
This ocean shall have many mouths, many palates,
many means of ingestion. I want
a hundred ways of death, three thousand regenerations —
all in technicolor naturally. And oh yes, I nearly forgot,
we can use Eden again for the small coral cay in the center.

"So now Raphael, if you please,
just draw out and marshall these species,
and we'll plant them all out in a twelve-hectare patch."

So for five and a half days God labored
and on the seventh he donned mask and snorkel
and a pair of bright yellow flippers.

And, later, the host all peered wistfully down
through the high safety fence around Heaven
and saw God with his favorites finning slowly over the coral
in the eternal shape of a grey nurse shark,
and they saw that it was very good indeed.

Mark O'Connor is an Australian poet, ecology writer and environmental activist. His website is www.australianpoet.com/poems.html

Posted by Sheila Newman on behalf of Mark O'Connor.

Tonight’s Insight program on SBS (June 17, 2008) –“Is Australia running out of workers” was very interesting about how we are now digging up and shipping out our minerals so fast, and so profitably, that other employers can’t compete with the wages paid by the mining companies. Employers are desperate for staff, but with unemployment currently low they can’t get workers at the wages, or the wages and conditions, they are able or willing to pay. (The most genuine case seemed to be the orchardist who had to leave several thousand dollars worth of mandarins unpicked because she couldn’t find pickers anywhere. Other employers seemed to be on the usual lurk of wanting the government to give them cheap workers.)

We are now so greedy that we want to ship abroad our mineral patrimony even faster than our existing workforce, with all the mechanical aids and vast machines now available, ­can manage. So the solution proposed by short-sighted business councils and some economists is to bring in ever more people to make up the shortfall in labor.

The result is of course that the extra workers will rapidly swell the population of Australia, so that the average Australian will own a steadily decreasing share of our mineral riches, which are themselves steadily decreasing. The future will be one of an unsustainable population in an impoverished continent –in a world beset by fuel shortages, climate change, and famines. And all for the short-term benefit of mining companies and those whose fortunes depend on a rising stock market.

Of course Jenny Brockie and her staff didn’t manage to see it in those terms. They took the reckless sell-off of our once-only mineral assets as a datum. Hence they also took as a given that there would not be enough workers in the country to service both the mining industry and the other more localized industries on which we depend for all sorts of supplies and services. And they also took as given that the mining industry would be able to pay rates other employers could not.

Granted all those unquestioned assumptions, they proceeded to examine quite rationally whether 457 visas (which it seems allow employers to pay about $10,000 on average less than they would have to pay Australian workers) were the best solution, or whether we should take in even more people as permanent migrants, or on the contrary run a guest worker system for Pacific migrants, or whether we needed to better train and motivate our own youth. The dishonesties and special pleading of employer organistions were fairly well exposed, and the CFMEU’s argument about it being no kindness to poor countries to take their skilled workers and doctors and nurses was respectfully examined.

But the underlying cause of the labor shortage, and the wisdom of selling off all your mineral assets as fast as possible, was not discussed.

Mark O'Connor

See also : Transcript of Insight program of 17 Jun 08 Labour Pains

The Australian Government is set to pass laws ending the single desk marketing of Australian wheat this week.

As reported by nineMSN, farmers have gathered in Canberra to protest the change. Wheat Growers Action Group chairman Peter Cannon, who helped organise the day of protests, said farmers were being dudded by the changes and wanted the public to know about it.

Wheat Export Market Alliance chairman Graham Blight also told the rally that growers' democratic rights were being ignored.

Without a single desk, "the weakest seller will determine the market", he said.

"The multinationals will come in and have a field day ... our government's given them a blank sheet".

Critics of single desk marketing have used the AWB/Iraq 'scandal' and one particularly heavy loss by Board to justify throwing out the whole single desk system. The opportunistic timing and predatory nature of their push for de-regulation is similar to the Disaster Capitalism modus operandi described by Naomi Klein in her book 'Shock Doctrine'.

The system preferred by many of these critics is - surprise, surprise - a free-market open-slather arrangement where the price of wheat can effectively be bid down to the lowest common denominator by the buyers. The buyers, in this case, would be the same sorts of multinational agri-business conglomerates that are lining up to market Australian wheat once the single desk is gone.

Not surprisingly, both Liberal (in the dubious form of Wilson Tuckey) and Labor (new Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke) fully support the changes. Both operate in the mind-space of free-market economics, where any Government 'meddling' with the purity of the market is considered heretical.

Even when it helps Australian wheat farmers.

If there are problems with the way that AWB's been run, fix the problem. Don't change a structure that's served Australian wheatgrowers well for decades.

This is is a call for help.
The University of Western Australia wants to bulldoze rare bushland in the middle of our city for future property development. The Minister for the Environment David Templeman is soon to make his decision on whether 60% of this pristine 36 hectare bushland will be destroyed to make way for offices and housing.

David Templeman's contact details are:
The Hon. David Templeman MLA
Minister for the Environment,
Climate Change, Peel
29th Floor
St. George's Terrace
PERTH 6000

email: david-templeman[at]dpc.wa.gov.au

Please open the website www.blackcockatoorescue.com.

Once in there have a look at the site and click on UWA link.
Watch the videos and then click on the link to protest, on each vision or just one.
Make your comments known to the ministers and send it off.
Remember the ministers have not made their decisions yet so be nice.
We need all your help.
click for video
WE NEED TO ACT NOW AS THE DECISION IS NEAR, VERY NEAR.

Glen Dewhurst of Black Cockatoo Conservation team

These are lovely, intelligent, sociable and long-lived animals. To lose them would be tragic - and the situation already is tragic. (Ed.)

Poet pens a plea to stop population push

By Mark Uhlmann Assembly Reporter

(Growth Concern: Mark O’Connor)

As the federal and ACT governments preach the virtues of high population growth a few individuals are prepared to put an alternative view.

One of those is Canberra poet Mark O’Connor, co-author of a book soon to be published by Enviro Books called Overloading Australia.

The Stanhope Government boasted this week of increases to interstate and international migration to Canberra, but O’Connor said, “Canberra’s going downhill rapidly."

“We have this mad pro-development Government that tries to push more and more people into it.”

He said most people wanted Canberra “kept more or less the way it is”, but could not get representation for this view in the ACT Legislative Assembly.

Canberra’s present population was more than enough and Government programs encouraging more people to come were irresponsible.

At the very least there should not be an open-ended commitment to ever more suburbs, which was the case at present, he said.
The economy was dependent on more suburbs being built. The result was a declining quality of life for those faced with higher population densities.

O’Connor said “citizen disobedience” was now appropriate. For example, that we should not conserve water.
This would “only be encouraging (Chief Minister) Jon Stanhope to push us further into a position where come the next drought we’ll have an even larger population”.

Until the Government had a plan to cap the population, it was counterproductive to conserve water.

Across the country, population growth was being demanded as a necessary part of economic growth, putting an increasing strain on the infrastructure of cities.

Australia’s annual population growth was 1.5 per cent.

“The UN Population Fund regards 1.1 per cent as too high in Asia.” O’Connor said.

The growth was about half natural increase and half immigration. Immigration was at record highs and all the pressure from government and industry was to be even more irresponsible.

There was recognition by governments that greenhouse gases had to be cut, but by some trick that had to be divorced from economic growth, and the economy just had to keep on growing. “That’s an unsustainable position, that will come unstuck before long,” O’Connor said.

There was a “selective deafness in the media” on the population issue.

The president of the Australian conservation Foundation, Ian Lowe, had tried to raise the population issue at the 2020 Summit, but had been up against a belief that population growth and economic growth were good.

O’Connor said, “Unless you win this (population) battle, in the long-run every environmental battle will be lost.”

(Reprinted with the author's permission from From The Canberra Times Saturday May 24 2008 page 15 News)

On Radio National's Breakfast Show of 16 June 2008, Canadian Maude Barlow author of "Blue Covenant - The Global Water Crisis And The Coming Battle For The Right To Water" (RRP AU$29.95), broke yet more alarming news of yet another aspect of humankind's combined problem of resources scarcity and overpopulation, that is, the rapid ongoing depletion of non-renewable underground water supplies on top of our large-scale interference with the earth's natural water cycles.

In the interview (the audio file not yet available, will be soon made available here for about 4 weeks) Barlow gave a sobering catalogue of unsustainable water practices across the globe. These included:

• Much of the US is literally running out of water, and that the Colorado
  River/Hoover Dam system is failing;
• Water tables underneath southern India are rapidly falling as bore water pumps are running literally 24x7 to supply water for agricultural, domestic and industrial use;
• The ground beneath Mexico City is sinking as water beneath it is pumped out to supply the needs of its population;
• China is diverting massive amounts of water at enormous ecological and social cost in order to supply the world with cheap plastic artifacts such as shower curtains;
• The biggest killer of children in the world today is not AIDS, war or traffic accidents, but, rather, water-borne diseases.

She strongly opposed water privatisation as a solution to the problem. Whilst being in favour of placing an appropriate monetary value on water, she said that giving control of water assets to private corporations would only lead to those corporations being able to charge exorbitant rates to the rest of us and would most likely lead to the poor missing out.

As a general rule, Maude Barlow opposes measures to divert natural flows of water such as the Victorian Government's planned North South Pipeline to diver water from the Goulburn River valley to supply Melbourne's project population growth by 1 million (see www.plugthepipe.com).

In regard to desalination which is being more widely adopted around Australia, Maude Barlow suggested that instead of relying on such energy-intensive and ecologically questionable technologies that Australia, instead urgently consider ceasing the growth of its population. Without sustainable water supplies it is folly for a country such as Australia to continue to erect ever more high-rise buildings without sustainable supplies of water to meet the needs of their occupants.

See also
Against the flow of 7 Jun 08 in the Melbourne Age;
Mother Jones interview about Maude Barlow's previous book, Blue Gold;
Maude Barlow on the Global Movement of 27 Feb 08;
About Maude Barlow in www.canadians.org;
Reviews of Blue Covenant by Readings and The New Press

"The unprecedented fuel prices we are facing at the moment is adding unimaginable hardship to many in the transport industry, add the new Registration charges, fuel excise increases and driving hours regulation which now come with unreasonable fines and demerit points and compliance regulations, it’s not hard to believe that we are heading in one direction…….Bankruptcy"
Industry spokesperson and Southern Cross Party spokesman, Mick Pattel, 4 December 2008

European truck drivers and farmers and fishermen have been demonstrating for weeks in the face of high oil prices. Now, finally, Australian truck owners are taking action. And it looks like there is a new political party supporting them, The Southern Cross Party.

At a meeting in Toowomba on Saturday, owners and drivers from three states said that they could not remain in business because of administrative costs related to increases in fuel excise and vehicle registration.

This supply interruption has been a long time coming, as perusal of Industry spokesman, Mick Pattel's blog will attest.

"If the government doesn't come to the party, deliveries of bread, fuel and milk will be affected," say spokespersons, Sheridan Steinohrt and Mick Pattel

They also complained about new rules for managing driver fatigue, anticipating problems with demerit points, and describing pettiness over log book infractions and excessive driving times. The truck owners and drivers are down on the National Transport Commission, the national governing body, which they say does not contain representatives from the industry.

Owners claim that they can no longer recruit drivers because of all the rules.

Mr Pattel was reported by the Toowoomba Chronicle to have stated that he thought the action might go on for two weeks, but he thought that the government might come to the table just before the truck owners take action.

According to Fairfax-owned paper, the North Queensland Register, on 29-5-2008, in Reg Burton, "National Truck stoppage go ahead", Mr Pattel had quoted said a spokesperson for Federal Transport Minister, Anthony Albanese, as saying that "he didn’t know why the operators were worried as all they had to do was pass the cost on to the public."

The truck owners hope that the public will understand their plight and support them. Mr Pattel said that the industry was warning the public so they can prepare for an interruption to supplies.

The Toowoomba Chronicle reported that the intuitive Bob Katter, Federal Member for Kennedy, was supportive to the industry, agreeing that they "have no alternative but to take direct action." The Chronicle reported that Vaughan Johnson, Member for Gregory, and Ray Hopper, Member for the Darling Downs, were also present at the Toowoomba Meeting.

The Chronicle, however, made no mention of the surely cogent fact that Mr Pattel is a spokesman for the Southern Cross [political] Party. The Chronicle is owned by APN News & Media Ltd. We have, unfortunately, come to expect this kind of omission from the mainstream press.

("All but seven of the 36 regional daily newspapers in Australia are owned by just four companies: News Corporation, John Fairfax Holdings, Rural Press and APM News and Media. And all but four of the 39 non-metropolitan commercial television stations in Australia are owned by just three operators: Prime Television, WIN, and Southern Cross Broadcasting. And it's clear if media ownership regulations are further relaxed, greater concentration is certain." - Dianne Jones from the University of Queensland, in a program about changes to media cross ownership rules, which featured Toowoomba, on 5 October 2006, at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2006/1754395.htm)

According to their website, the Southern Cross Party is against the traditional party structure per se; it is for independents. It aims to be a party of independents. It voices reasonable and valid concerns about lack of democracy and about corporatised government affecting the access to and use of land. It is suspicious of climate change agreements and the weakening of local democracy by the distancing of political control and the abstraction of issues.

This list of demands was passed by a meeting of truck owners in Townsville on the 24th of May 2008, the additions 16,17, were added at Toowoomba Meeting 14th June 2008. (Information from: http://southerncrossparty.com/blog/2/feed)

"Not Negotiable

1. Disbanding of the National Transport Commission immediately.

2. No electronic recording systems, or work dairies.

3. No changes in the present log book format.

4. No demerit points on log books, or driving hours regulations.

The full list, available at http://southerncrossparty.com/node/783 is

Road Transport Shutdown 2008 List of Demands
Sun, 05/11/2008 - 17:39 — Mick Pattel

This list of demands have been passed by the meeting in Townsville on the 24th of May 2008, the additions 16,17, were added at Toowoomba Meeting 14th June 2008
Not Negotiable

1. Disbanding of the National Transport Commission immediately.
2. No electronic recording systems, or work dairies.
3. No changes in the present log book format.
4. No demerit points on log books, or driving hours regulations.
5. Recoupment of demerit points for professional drivers who earn their living from their licence to be reduced to 12 months not the existing 36 months.
6. No penalty to drivers exceeding prescribed driving time when attempting to reach a vacant heavy vehicle rest area or when marginally over driving hours in compliance with defacto hours proposed under the new NTC ruling for all drivers irrespective of participation of fatigue management programs, and in any case ‘reasonable defence’ is to apply where compliance is not possible.
7. All fines for logbook breaches to be capped at an agreed fixed amount and relate to safety breaches only.
8. All fines and loss of demerit points for logbook breaches to be rescinded, fines and points to be reimbursed, all licences lost as a result of this legislation to be reinstated to previous status.
9. No increases or changes in registration charges for any truck or bus over 4 tonnes, charges to be set in concrete at current levels.
10. No increase or indexation of fuel excise.
11. No fuel based carbon charges or taxes.
12. No changes or variations to the Federal Fuel Energy Grants Scheme or to the State Bulk End User Rebates both of these are to remain in place indefinitely.
13. Authorities to endorse a driver intercept report sheet to create a reporting system to identify rude and unethical enforcement officers.
14. Main Roads Authorities in all States to construct and maintain all weather road train termination pads of adequate size.
15. A priority funded program to provide all weather heavy vehicle rest areas that are designed to provide adequate parking and amenities for the different truck trailer configurations according to truck traffic density.
16. That the log book period be changed from any 24 hour period to midnight to midnight on any calendar day.
17. That an inspection by an officer of either Queensland Transport or the Queensland Police Service of a drivers log book cannot be inspected past 14 days prior to the interception date.

5. Recoupment of demerit points for professional drivers who earn their living from their licence to be reduced to 12 months not the existing 36 months."

Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and allied groups have launched an ad campaign to draw attention to the environmental devastation caused by continuing population growth. The ads will appear in major publications across the nation.

"Loss of open space, increased traffic congestion, never-ending sprawl—these are all consequences of a growing population. Habitat loss due to population growth is, by far, the greatest threat to wildlife," said Diana Hull, the organization's President.

"Population growth is overwhelming the gains that the United States has made in energy conservation and protection of critical wild lands. Water shortages and energy shortages result, in part, from the increased demands of an increasing population, yet we are ignoring this half of the equation. Americans do not want the increased crowding and resource depletion, but it is being forced on them by politicians," Hull continued.

The United States now has a population of more than 300 million, and projections indicate that it will soar by another 100 million in 30 years. If no action is taken, the U.S. will face a population of at least 600 million people by the end of this century. While other developed nations have stable populations, the population in the U.S. continues to grow like that of India and China.

More than 80 percent of the nation's population growth results from immigration and births to immigrants. In California, immigration accounts for virtually 100 percent of the population growth.

This national ad campaign by CAPS and its partners in America's Leadership Team for Long Range population-Immigration-Resource Planning is part of a long-term plan to raise public awareness of the
extent of the nation's current population growth, the consequences of that growth on myriad environmental and social problems, and the policies that produce the growth.

The ad which shows a bulldozer as "one of America's best selling vehicles" can be viewed
here.

CAPS home page

Toll-road operator, ConnectEast, has only one asset, a 39km motorway running from Mitcham to Frankston, at the cost of $3.5billion. In "A testing time for ConnectEast," The Australian Financial Review on 12 June 2008 reports that ConnectEast's shares are at their lowest value ever, just as it is about to open the toll-way, five months early. AFR Journalist, Chanticleer, thinks this is part of the 'thrashing' handed out to the 'debt-laden infrastructure sector in general'.

This is yet another private-public pet State Government project. The Victorian State Government's bias for new roads is looking sillier and sillier in the light of peak-oil, yet it continues to ram these costly anachronisms through against all kinds of public protests.

We reported on this toll-way in "Roads to Wildlife Extinction", where a proposed route for a bypass threatens to cut through a major flora and fauna reserve and to bisect the Mornington Peninsula, ruining plans for wildlife corridors in the area.

Transurban, is also sinking fast on the share-market. This is the company behind the unpopular tunnels in the Victorian EastWest link, which includes an 18km road tunnel linking the Tullamarine and Eastern Freeways and a 17km rail tunnel linking Footscray to Caulfield. These enormous automobile-intensive and invasive works have sparked massive protests, despite the fact that the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, just 'kicked in' $12 million to help

Rudd's contribution comes under what everyone in the government and the mainstream press is referring to as
"nation building'. This quaint term is creepily colonial and one wonders why our leaders have accepted to mouth such clunky terminology, then one remembers that they are clunky leaders.

Anthropologist John Posthill has devoted an entire book to the term, and here is an apt quote for what's going down in Australia:

"The notion of nation building is no less problematic than that of nation. This term has long been marginalized from serious Western social theory for its association with modernization theory (Smith 2004:195, cf.Deutsch and Foltz 1963, Deutsch 1966). The latter had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s as the U.S. government recruited scores of social scientists in its efforts to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of Third World populations in rivalry with the Soviet Union and China. Modernisation became an elastic notion used by U.S. academics and policy-makers to explain the persistence of traditional ‘mind-sets’ and ease the transition to market-driven, ‘democratic’ regimes in the post-colonial world. In other words, it was used to promote a form of nation building modeled on an idealized United States (Latham and Gaddis 2000). In Vietnam, ‘the other war’, the propaganda war over hearts and minds, was fought and lost by American social scientists who failed to agree on a nation building strategy for that country (Marquis 2000). At present, the term is often used in the Anglophone media and popular scholarship with reference to America’s half-hearted attempts at ‘reconstruction’ in occupied countries such as Afghanistan or Iraq (e.g., Ignatieff 2003)."
Source: John Postill, Media and Nation Building: How the Iban Became Malaysian, Berghahn Books, 2005