So you want to fight global warming? Wear a condom.
18,000 years ago Canada was covered with a three-kilometre thick ice-sheet. That's a mere blink in geological time. Millions of years ago the Arctic was a tropical swamp with crocodiles and 200-foot high redwoods. Has anyone thought about that? Come what may, there is climate change ahead. Some of us actually believe that this global warming may trigger the next Ice Age. Wouldn't that be cool. (And ironic?)
Regardless of our best efforts, the pendulum is going to swing away from the comfortable range that we now enjoy. I'd get used to that idea and not sweat it so much. We might just adapt. But we won't adapt to biodiversity loss. That's the one that will finish us, but it's not sexy enough to talk about.
And speaking of sweating, if you really would like to cut CO2 emissions then wear a condom. It's the ever-increasing population of humans on the planet that threatens our future. Them's the facts. You can't have it both ways. More people means more consumption of both energy and material. Pollution follows right behind.
Over-population is not a global problem. It is the sum total of 194 national problems. You can't grow your population by 18% over 17 years and expect as Canada does to cut GHG emissions by 6% over that same period. Tony Blair failed to meet his GHG target for much the same reason. When Australia increased its population by 30% since 1990, its GHG emissions increased by 31%. Now the Diesendorf report released by Greenpeace warns that Australia must severely restrict immigration to fight global warming. The Australian Conservation Foundation concurs. Does its North American counterpart see the light? Not in your life.
As with all of its environmental preoccupations, the Sierra Club misses the point on climate change. By focusing on "personal commitments" and personal "choices", on greener lifestyles and renewable technologies, they ignore the largest factor in environmental degradation: population growth. By taking the "P" out of Paul Ehrlich's time trusted "IPAT" formula they make nonsense out of a comprehensive understanding of the issue. To understand why they have done so, one need only google "David Gelbaum, Carl Pope, Paul Watson". They don't understand because billionaire Gelbaum has paid them NOT to understand. Sierra Club members are only dupes.
There is no technological solution to population growth. For example, all the energy gains made by a 900 acre solar panel farm near Sarnia, Ontario will be wiped out by the increased consumption brought on by just 22 days of immigration. Technical improvements and/or reduced consumption are the Labour of Sisyphus in the face of runaway population growth that makes Canada the fastest growing nation of the G8 group. What sense does it make to cut our energy consumption in half but turn around and double our population? The futile enterprise recalls Kenneth Boulding's Second Theorem: technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, then it will enable population to grow, and simply allow more people to live in misery than before. Yet that seems to be the Green-environmentalist slogan: "let's have more and more people consuming less and less."
Al Gore was wrong. We don't need more "green" consumers. We need "fewer" consumers. And the greenest consumer is the one who doesn't get born or arrive here at the airport to dump 23 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. Fewer consumers consuming less must be our goal.
"I have no doubt the fundamental problem the planet faces is the enormous increase in the human population" Sir David Attenborough
"Population growth is the principle cause of environmental damage." Jacques Cousteau
Tim Murray
Quadra Island BC
Canada V0P 1N0
October 22, 2007.
See also www.immigrationwatchcanada.org
Topic:
African philanthropic population disasters
How could so much go wrong so swiftly? In the 1960s and '70s a strong consensus operated among intellectual leaders in the United States and other developed countries that the best way to help alleviate starvation and poverty in the less developed countries was to assist those poor people to limit their fertility to family sizes truly desired, improving their lives according to the basic social equation, resources divided by population equals the human condition.
Outstanding visionary leaders overcame religious opposition, and with the help of Congressional earmarking of funds the United States Agency for International Development led the charge to make the most effective means of fertility control readily available in many less developed countries - oral contraceptives, IUDs, condoms, and the surgical means for voluntary sterilization and pregnancy termination; resulting in achievement of great fertility control progress in Chile, Panama, Columbia, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Philippines, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya, Ghana.
But the family planning surge led by USAID assistance in many countries during the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jerry Ford, was truncated by Catholic control of White House population policies under Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush I and II; leaving most of Africa and the Muslim Middle East impoverished and endangered by ongoing disastrous excessive fertility.
Perversely, philanthropic child death control programs providing immunization, antibiotics, potable water, and food - without balancing control of births - have caused such rapid population increases that they have aggravated the resources vs population disparity, generating killing fields and pogroms in dozens of countries. Surely, all organizations and agencies moving to prevent child deaths in Africa must ensure that comparable numbers of births are prevented - in the same time frame - or be justly accused of philanthropic malpractice. Without far more effective birth control there is no sound basis for expecting durable improvement in the inhuman conditions of Africa, as in Darfur.
The millions of desperately poor and starving women in Africa deserve access to legal abortion at least equal to that afforded wealthy American and European women. With respect to abortion morality, most
abortions done in this world are done not by physicians but by Nature's God: canceling embryonic flaws. Pregnant African women must be enabled to apply their God-given intelligence to improve their reproductive lives and the health and well-being of their families and nations. We can achieve higher moral ground by enabling African women to protect the well-being of their families by limiting child bearing to those truly desired. Religious organizations immorally opposing abortion, and philanthropic malpractice by increasing populations beyond available resources, have actually caused millions of child and adult deaths in Africa from starvation and hunger-induced warfare.
R.T. Ravenholt, MD, MPH
3156 E Laurelhurst Dr NE, Seattle, WA 98105, 206-525-0503,
ravenrt|AT|oz.net
(This writer directed the USAID Population Program, 1966-1979)
Mayor urges protest against population growth at election
From ABC online news of Posted 25 October 2007
The Mayor of Naracoorte and Lucindale in south-east South Australia, Ken Grundy, wants voters in the federal election to write the words "reduce immigration" on the top of the ballot papers, to pressure political parties to restrict population growth.
Mr Grundy says Australia cannot handle a massive influx of people because of scarce water resources, increasing pollution and stressed electricity supplies.
He says he recently heard a target of having 50 million people in Australia by 2030 and says that is unrealistic.
"The other day we saw somebody over in Britain and Ireland begging people to come here," he said.
"I just think at the moment we just need to look at sustainability. We look at it in every other field, why don't we look at it with population?"
The Australian Electoral Commission says writing on top of the ballot paper will not make it invalid, as long as it does not obscure any other important information on the ballot form and no name which could identify the voter is written.
#MayorsStatement">Mayor's remarks: A sustainable level of population for Australia
Wherever I go and the subject of our population arises, without exception, people are concerned at the present numbers in Australia, let alone the massive expansion predicted for the future. Everyone is puzzled as to why our parliamentary representatives do not reflect this grass roots feeling. Surely that is their job!
There is a scarcity of water in practically every corner of this nation and every extra person exacerbates the crisis before us now.
Even when more normal rainfall resumes, other resources such as electricity will be inadequate for the masses. Calls to protect the environment seem hollow when for example; more people require more vehicles which create more pollution.
Clearly, we need to stand back and determine a level of population which is sustainable and reflective of the community desire.
How will we get this message to our representatives?
The major parties need to get the message and across my desk the other day came a simple plan which may do the job.
The Australian Electoral Commission has agreed that a vote will not be invalid if writing on the ballot paper does not obscure the names of candidates or the numbers in the squares.
There is sufficient space at the top of both voting slips to neatly write "REDUCE IMMIGRATION". This unofficial voting will be noticed by all scrutineers and if sufficient people act this way, the impact could be huge. It is likely to be the only easy way to have a say on Australia's future population.
Authorised by Ken Grundy
Martins Rd
Naracoorte SA 5271
October 2007
There is No Sanctuary from Economic Growth
Peace in our time, Habitat forever?
For those who recall the scene when Neville Chamberlain stepped down on the tarmac of London's Heston aerodrome on September 30th of 1938 waving his piece of paper, the #announcement">announcement by the government of the Canadian province of British Columbia (B.C.) on October 16, 2007 must have seemed like déjà vu. On both occasions, an announcement promising 'peace in our time' (for people or wildlife) was met with jubilant relief from people who wanted to believe that the insatiable appetite of a monster can be appeased with an hors d'oeuvre.
In 1938 the monster was Adolf Hitler and he was not to be believed or trusted. In 2007 the monster is economic growth, and its need for lebensraum will not stop at greenbelts, farmland, wetlands and nature reserves. It will devour what it needs to fuel its momentum and bend governments and laws to serve its ends. The strictest land use plans will fall before its armies. Even the home of 'smart growth', Portland, Oregon, stood helpless as growth forced population to spill over tight urban boundaries into adjacent farmland. British greenbelts are beginning to suffer the same fate. As planning consultant Eben Fodor was moved to comment, "smart growth is merely the planned, orderly destruction of our remaining environment."
Economic growth is a function of population growth, driven in North America largely by immigration, coupled with obscenely excessive consumption---and it is crowding out wildlife habitat. The question is, can the dedication of conservation areas permanently shield wildlife and flora from developmental pressures? Experience suggests that it cannot.
In their 2005 Report, the National Refuge Association of the U.S. revealed that "many endangered or threatened species are not even found on the refuges, including 40% of all listed mammals, birds and reptiles, 75% of listed fish and amphibians, and about 85% of listed plants and invertebrates." The area outside refuges will be more and more a killing zone. Much of the 40% of all housing units that will exist in America in 2030 will be built on previously open lands, and "lands within five miles of fully 78% of the western refuges have been mined, drilled , offered to or otherwise controlled by mining, oil and gas interests." And nearly 40% of refuges have greater than 50% human-impacted landscape within 5 to 40 miles. Particularly vulnerable are the 20% of wildlife refuges smaller than 1000 acres, or refuges fragmented into small parcels that can't adequately defend the ranges of the species that need protection.
Of course, the #announcement">announcement on October 16 by the B.C. government offers habitat protection on a vastly larger scale. An area twice the size of Jamaica of old growth cedar, pine and spruce, and a buffer of forest that is to be harvested with sensitive care. The coalition of ten environmental groups who fought for the habitat are sanguine. But even with 2.2 million hectares set aside, they would be advised to keep their powder dry. Especially when you look at the province's barren mountainsides and remember the government slogan, "Forests Forever".
The hard truth is, as long as economic growth runs loose like a mad dog, no land of any size is safe from predation. Growing populations and growing development envelop pristine sanctuaries, reach a tipping point, and then the resources that these sanctuaries are harbouring will be ravaged. Just as the B.C. government set aside this Mountain Cariboo habitat, the U.S. Congress once established Yosemite National Park. When mining and logging interests came knocking at the door, with the stroke of a pen, Congress released 1400 hectares of the precious park for their exploitation.
Shocking betrayals of this kind by government have and will be made when the economic chips are down, as the Plains Indians will attest. The solemn Treaty of Laramie guaranteed the sacred Black Hills to the Lakota people in perpetuity, but when white prospectors found gold, all bets were off and the monster was let loose. Miners flooded the area and in just eight years the Dakota territory was a white colony and the sacred hills a hub of activity.
One day soon, in a country near you, with the oil the price of gold and power down, there will be a desperate and ruthless scramble to use up resources wherever they can be found, even behind the sacrosanct walls of conservation lands. And government will pave the way.
First it was the tiny Sudetenland, then it was Poland and then it was the vast steppes of Russia. Feed a crocodile a morsel and he becomes stronger and bolder, coming back for more and more. The only safety for nature is to slay the beast, not to hide from it within the confines of a National Park. Economic growth must be stopped and a steady state economy instituted. Now.
Tim Murray, dirrector of Immigration Watch Canada
Quadra Island, BC
Canada
October 25/07
Closing our borders can't mean turning our backs
To many, George Bush's $2 billion border fence will be but another testament to the futility of walls. In the face of persistent adversaries and technological advances, each of history's more notable barriers have proven obsolete over time. The 1500 mile Chinese wall was penetrated at least three times, most famously by the Mongols in the 13th century. The 300 mile Roman barrier of Limes was useless against the mass migration of Huns and Goths after the late 4th century, while only Hadrian's wall could claim some efficacy, until its garrison withdrew abruptly for the defence of Rome. And of course, the Maginot and Siegfried lines were spectacular failures.
That barriers can nevertheless be somewhat effective, however, is a reason that they continue to be built. The Moroccans built a 1600 mile wall to control Western Sahara in the1980s, and Israel has built a 120 mile barrier in the West Bank, and is planning to extend it by 140 miles. More pertinent perhaps to our interest, India is about to complete a 3034 mile $1 billion fence against Bangladesh to protect its precious Northern wilderness from 150 million Bangladeshi, many of whom have been displaced by the flooding that Indian deforestation of the Himalayas has caused.
The question is, though, how effective can barriers of any kind be in the long run. Bush's border fence, which could cost as much as $30 billion, not $2 billion, will not stop the one third of people who did not walk across the border illegally, but rather just entered on tourist, student or work visas and over-stayed. As for the other half million who come illegally each year, one has to realize that American corporations are so addicted to cheap labour, and smuggling is so lucrative, that come hell or high water ways will be found around the Tortilla Curtain, by land, sea or air.
What is troubling about most of the immigration-reduction movement---of which I am a part---the conservative wing particularly, is that they don't look at problems like the negative impact of immigration on the North American working class, and on the environment, and ask questions which go to the root causes of those problems. Questions like: "Why do people from very poor countries like Mexico want to leave their families and homeland all behind so badly that they take so many risks to move here and work for miserable wages?" American Republicans against amnesty don't ask these kinds of questions because they really don't know much about NAFTA and its impact on the Mexican people, nor do they care. Nor do they know anything about the IMF and Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs), and their impact on the people of the Third World. They take no responsibility for Mexican poverty or the hardship and misery of the billions who will never even catch a glimpse of the Californian dream. They have no questions. Only answers. One answer. Send them home and slam the door shut behind them.
Well I agree that the door must be shut. And so does Ralph Nader, Presidential nominee for the Green Party in 2000, who said that open borders "is a totally absurd proposition." The environment must be allowed time to recuperate from the demographic onslaught it has suffered in the past two decades. Immigration-driven population growth is killing biodiversity and thwarting Kyoto targets. Each immigrant costs America one acre of farmland every minute and generates 23.8 tons of GHG annually. Canada has lost 18% of its best farmland to urban sprawl from immigrant-propelled growth, which is also threatening 70% of its endangered species. But shutting the door is one thing, keeping it shut is another. To do that we must relieve the population pressure that is coming from the outside.What is generating that pressure? The tautological answer would be population growth. But it is not just a fertility issue. It is an issue of economic justice, unequal distribution of wealth, and greed---institutionalized by larcenous trade agreements.
NAFTA, by allowing heavily-subsidized US corn and other agra-business products to compete with small Mexican farmers, drove two million Mexicans off the land and many of those that remain are living in desperate poverty, and attempt to cross the US border to feed their families. NAFTA's service sector rules also permitted large companies like Wal-Mart to sell Chinese-made goods so to bankrupt 28,000 small and medium-sized Mexican businesses. Mexican wages, not surprisingly, have fallen under NAFTA. It is considered the province of corporate lobbyists, not a "human" issue, and why not? Desperate conditions in Latin America and Mexico produce lower wages, pressure to reduce environmental protection, and help union-busting prospects.
If Mexico's plight is desperate, that of the global proletariat is worse. In Planet of Slums, Mike Davis reports that one-third of the world's urban population live in 250,000 slums, half of them people under 20, and 100 million of them street kids. In a decade nearly half of all city dwellers will be poor. Davis makes it clear. The IMF put those people in those slums and made it their "implacable future", by using the leverage of debt to restructure the economies of most of the Third World, and force the retreat of the state and its social safety net. The gap between rich and poor nations widened by century's end to a Gini coefficient level of 0.63.
SAPs forced developing countries to dump their raw unprocessed commodities for cheap prices in an effort to pay off the debt and pay for expensive imported goods from developed countries which often barricaded their agricultural products. Fifty third world countries depend on three or fewer commodities for over half of their export earnings. Some spent more on debt servicing than on education. Observing this relationship it might be said that the First World preaches free trade but practices good old fashioned mercantilism.
In describing the IMF program of slashing social services and infrastructure, escalating resource extraction to generate hard currency, re-orientating farm production from serving local needs to serving global markets, and increasing dependence on imported capital-intensive technologies---all in the name of debt-servicing---Raj Patel compared IMF policy to a weapon of mass destruction:
A fertilizer bomb that kills hundreds in Oklahoma. Fuel-laden civil jets that kill 4000 in New York. A sanction policy that kills one and half million in Iraq. A trade policy that immiserates continents. You can make a bomb out of anything. The ones on paper hurt the most.
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, author of the seminal book, Eating Fossil Fuels, put the case eloquently and cogently in his article Energy Depletion and Immigration:
Closing our borders alone will not stop the flow of illegal immigrants. It will only leave them more at the mercy of their employers within this country. As long as there is such a disparity in wealth and well-being between the US and other countries, there will be people attempting to flee to the US no matter what abuse they are met with on this side of the border. If we truly want to solve the immigration problem, then we must start by addressing the reasons why people would rather slave in the US than remain in their homelands. To solve the immigration problem, we must first face the fact that the US has built itself up on the riches of other nations (and) stop the flow of illegal immigrants into this country, then we must raise up the living conditions in their homelands. If these people could make a decent living in their own countries, they would not want to leave everything that is dear to them in order to slave in the US.
Unfortunately, Pfeiffer is among the vast army of environmentalists whose environmentalism is trumped by their laudable human rights agenda. Like many others, he has catalogued not only the appalling economic cost of the Bush border fence, but its cost to the wildlife whose viability is dependent on cross-border mobility. But he doesn't consider the countervailing cost to wildlife on the whole continent that the population growth from out-of-control immigration will cause. Indeed, the prime focus of any critique of world trade arrangements should not be there effect on global wealth distribution, but the fact that unfettered trade permanently reduces carrying-capacity. Ecological considerations supersede all others.
As Dr. William Rees has noted, trade only appears to increase carrying capacity because each trading country or region is treated as if it is a separate open system, and not integrated into a closed global system. Many wealthy nations have ecological footprints vastly in excess of their bio-capacities. For the UK, Holland and Japan, it is four, five and six times larger respectively, and the United States burdens the global commons with an ecological load twice its biophysical limit. Why?
Trade allows consuming populations in ecological overshoot (eg. the UK, the US) to feel insulated from their stressed local ecosystems, and without negative feedback they feel little need to curb their over-population or material growth and confine it within carrying capacity. Developing countries too, who receive remittance payments from expatriates in wealthy countries are somewhat buffered from the harshest reality of natural capital depletion.
So while open-borders advocates argue that is unjust to allow goods, services and finances to flow unhindered across borders but not people, Rees counters that "merely liberalizing migration to match the free-flow of goods/capital, the world should rather seriously consider re-regulating both to help achieve sustainability. On a planet in ecological overshoot, achieving sustainability will demand lower levels of material consumption, reduced movement of goods and people, and the rehabilitation of ecosystems." ( Globalization, Trade and Migration: Undermining Sustainability?")
Like a 21st century enclosure movement, global capitalism has chased third world farmers off the land into the lap of the cheap labour employers of North America and Europe. To open the doors ever wider would only serve its interests, it would only further depress the wages and displace the jobs of low-income native residents, further despoil the environment, not relieve world poverty but cripple our ability to alleviate it.
But not accepting immigrants or refugees makes it a moral imperative, and a matter of urgent self-interest, to aggressively redress trade agreements and SAPs or abolish them, and vastly increase foreign aid conditional on family planning. Building walls, figuratively or materially, is but an interim complement to these measures, a necessary but not a sufficient step to protecting our environment. An immigration moratorium, and a population plan that provides for population stability within our national carrying capacity as determined by that plan, can only buy us time.
Ultimately, we cannot build a wall against global warming, peak oil, peak grain or the tsunami of humanity that one day will sweep over us if we don't get the IMF and the World Bank off their backs and turn back the clock on globalization.
In closing our borders, we must not turn our backs.
Tim Murray
Quadra Island BC
Canada V0P 1N0
October 22, 2007.
Liberal Party succession concerns
Sleeping uneasily Tonight ..
.
This letter was sent to a number of newspapers on 23 October
PM Howard continuously extols the Howard-Costello partnership; a vote for Howard - a vote for the Liberals - is effectively a vote for Costello as the next PM.
Costello, who cannot show proper decorum in a public debate ... "making faces" during "the entire leaders' debate"; Costello being "reprimanded" on-air for inappropriate behaviour. [The Australian, 23 October]
Costello, who knowingly made/makes false assertions about Labor front benchers; obstinately refusing to accept objective evidence; arrogantly, rudely shouting over the interviewer; arguing that there's no big difference between 70% and 60%.
10% - that's the difference between 70% and 60%.
According to my calculations, 10% is enough of a swing to defeat the Liberals, including Howard (4% needed) and Costello (8.8% needed). [Mackerras Pendulum]
But ... what's give-or-take 10% to a Treasurer and PM-wannabe?
Judy Bamberger,
O'Connor ACT
Topic:
Purchase properties for people and koalas
Media Statement , 14 October 2007
disclaimer: The opinions of Councillor Henry are not necessarily those of Redland Shire Council
In a move to address plummeting koala numbers in urban areas, Redland Shire Councillor Debra Henry is asking State and Local Governments to rethink why and where they purchase particular properties.
The Redland Planning Scheme's 'infill' development means that many urban properties have the ability to 'double up' creating two homes where once there was one. It's an undeniable reality that this will mean the loss of koala food trees and severing of vegetation 'corridors'.
Research data released by the Environmental Protection Agency last month at the Wildlife Preservation Society's Threatened Species Day Forum, revealed a 47% decline in urban koalas over the last seven years.
It is obvious that koalas are having a tough time making it through our urban areas now. A reasonable conclusion is that this will only be made more difficult as infill occurs.
Despite loss of habitat and dogs being well-known threats, planning documents and Local Laws still fail to adequately address these matters.
Often trees are felled because of the 'fear of falling' or 'leaf nuisance' factors; and dogs are not restrained when owners feel they have the 'right to roam'.
Council currently uses the Environment Levy to purchase vacant land that has habitat or linkage values. But if Council were to consider purchasing urban properties that were part of a defined corridor, that also contained houses, there could be multiple benefits.
In a landlord-tenant arrangement, Council could effectively manage koala food trees and through a tenancy agreement, condition restraint of dogs which under Council's current Local Law only applies to properties larger than 2000sq m in koala management areas.
These council-owned and managed residential properties could stand as examples of how people, koala food trees, dogs and koalas can co-exist when effective maintenance programs and animal management practices are in place.
The State Government could do likewise, by including 'koala preservation' as criteria for the purchase of public housing.
Redland has .5% less public housing than the State average and with all the recent concerns about 'housing affordability' it's not unreasonable to ask the State and Local governments to come to the negotiation table on this.
It is hoped that the upcoming Redland Shire Council Koala Summit will give this proposal consideration.
Councillor Division 3
Cleveland South - Thornlands
Redland Shire Council
crdebrah|AT|redland.qld.gov.au
07 3829 8618
0439 914 631
Mining giant gets free ride from Bligh
Growth is OK if it is shared?
Greenpeace Diesendorf: Carbon emissions reflect population numbers - Reduce immigration
Queensland Min for Sustainability - prepare for peak oil - demographic, travel, work and living
Do Greens believe that sufficient water can be found for 1.1 million more South East Queenslanders without the Traveston Dam?
Conservation centre poor substitute for Mary River
Queensland Greens Media Release - 10 October 2007
The Queensland government's proposal to build a $35 million conservation centre for threatened species at the site of the proposed Traveston Dam is a poor substitute for allowing these creatures to flourish in their natural habitat, said the Greens today.
"Building a conservation centre for a species you are sending towards extinction is laughable," said Greens lead Senate candidate for Queensland, Larissa Waters.
"Leaked studies by the Queensland government on the Burnett River's Paradise Dam show that dams irrevocably destroy lungfish breeding habitat, and that lungfish aren't successfully using the fish ladders to travel up and down the river.
"Traveston Dam would be the death knell for the 110 million year old Queensland lungfish, one of our iconic fish species.
"The state and federal governments cannot approve Traveston dam in reliance on a fish ladder to save the lungfish, in the face of evidence showing they don't work. That would make a mockery of our federal threatened species laws and of the environmental impact statement under state laws.
"Risking this iconic species for a dam that won't even solve the current water crisis is ludicrous.
"The dam wouldn't be built until 2011, climate change will mean rainfall patterns ensure the dam is even less likely to ever fill up, and it is a tragic waste of good quality farming land so close to a city centre.
"The Mary Valley community don't want this dam, and nor do the majority of Brisbane residents that I speak to. It would be a social, economic and environmental disaster.
"Building Traveston dam would be like noticing your wallet is empty so deciding to buy a new wallet. They don't come full.
"Government should be proposing sustainable solutions to the water crisis, like water recycling, rainwater tanks for every home, stormwater harvesting and demand management," concluded Ms Waters.
Larissa Waters www.larissawaters.net
0421 844 280
larissa.waters|AT|qld.greens.org.au
The slippery slide to slave labour
How illegal immigration into the US harms poor US Hispanic citizens
This is from an e-mail sent to me by an immigration reform activist from the US. The cause of the right of immigrants from Mexico and other Third World nations to emigrate into the US is one very dear to the hearts of many human rights advocates in both Australia and the US. In Australia this theme is frequently discussed between ABC Radio National's Phillip Adams and his regular US commentator Bruce Shapiro. As an argument supposedly for further migration whether legal or illegal they will argue that if middle class US citizens need live-in nannies, cheap fast food and cheap construction costs then they have not moral right to oppose immigration. However, this ignores the fact that it is not ordinary poor Americans who need these supposed benefits from migration. In fact the evidence is that poor Americans, including Hispanic US citizens are gravely harmed by the influx of illegal immigrants.
While I refuse to do what many journalists do, and imply or assume that Hispanics all walk in lockstep, a huge number of New Mexico Hispanics, at least, are furiously loyal to the United States, and there is some level of xenophobia against Mexicans. There is a reality among Hispanic "elites" that is not grasped. I'll give you an example. My ex-husband and I had a big landscaping project to do at our place in Los Alamos. I'd saved up my salary to hire someone to do it, since we were both too busy and lacked the tools needed. I ran a classified in the Espanola paper trying to hire someone to do the work. I got a huge number of calls, but one guy in particular impressed me, so I asked him to come up and quote me the job. Well, the quote was ridiculous (as in low!) Always the soul of tact, I blurted out, "Are you nuts? That's five days work and that's all you want to charge me? You can't pay for your gasoline on that!" He looked me square in the eye and said, "I have several kids. We're running low on groceries, I need this job, and I can't risk you giving it to an illegal. If it means I work for almost nothing per-hour, that's what I'll do." Needless to say, I hired him and paid him a decent wage, but it was a dramatic illustration of what's happening here, especially when Sear's, whom we hired to put a new roof on our house, turned up with an all-immigrant crew!
Orange City Northern distributor benefits from pork barrel
Peter Andren media release 9 October 2007
Orange City Council has reaped the benefit of the government's desperate pork barrelling in this phoney election campaign with $10M to complete the Orange Bypass' northern distributor, according to Peter Andren Member for Calare.
"Funding for vital national infrastructure such as this should never be tailored to meet the electoral needs of any government and should be distributed according to the greatest need and priority of that need," Mr Andren said.
"I was pleased to support Council, along with other members and candidates such as local independent Gavin Priestley.
"The Member for Parkes continues to operate outside his electorate and I wonder how his constituents in Dubbo feel about his taking credit for all the federal money being showered on Orange.
"It is imperative that the actual money is received by council before, and not after, the election and that it is not bound to Mr Cobb or any other candidate being elected member for Calare. This is a much needed infrastructure project that should not be tied to political goals.
"I am concerned that the government may be bringing forward a lot of money budgeted for future years under AUSLINK II and that this might undermine the long term strategic planning of the program for short term electoral gain.
"This is a good result for road safety in Orange and again I congratulate Council for making its case so strongly," Mr Andren said.
For further information: 02 6332 6229 or 0427 480 825, www.peterandren.com
Topic:
New technology won't save us from the population bomb
- The construction of this solar electricity plant will consume large quantities of fossil fuels and produce a large amount of GHG.
- The farm land that the solar panel site has taken over will be lost forever, thereby increasing our reliance on our areas, either on Canadian farm land whose supply is very limited or on nearby foreign farm land whose supply is decreasing because of population demands.
- The immigrants will consume much more than the household electricity produced by the solar farm. They will consume water, electronics, paper products, air travel, etc. Increases in human population inevitably lead to the expropriation of other areas for the use of the new people.
Population growth:where is the environmentalist community?
Senate Economics Committee pseudo inquiry into Energy Efficiency
Alice in Wonderland Australian Senate Committee on Regional Affairs and transport jokes about the real agenda
Pulp mill decision is litmus test for Traveston Dam
Book Review: Immigrants: your country needs them by Philippe Legrain
Book Review: Immigrants: your country needs them by Philippe Legrain (Little Brown Book Group, UK, 2006) A$35.00 review by Mark O'Connor.
Some angst was caused in February 2007 when Philippe Legrain (with this book in tow) was featured at Perth Writers Week. The problem was not that a debate on migration was irrelevant to a literary festival but that there was no debate--and that the supposed expert (Legrain) seemed ignorant of Australian conditions.
I am struck by how little and how selectively Philippe Legrain has read in the area on which he claims to be an expert. Despite his Australian publicists' claim that he offers a lucid and enlightened account of "Australian policies, facts and statistics" the facts he states are frequently incorrect or slanted. His index is barren of references to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which perhaps explains his bizarre claims that Australia's population is 19 million, that its net migration is some 90,000 a year (see p. 9), that births are not keeping pace with deaths (p. 108, in fact they are twice deaths), that immigration was slashed from 1996 by the Howard government (see p. 53) and so on. In fact we have never had such a high-immigration government as Howard's. Only in the immediate post WWII period, when most of our migrants were war refugees, has immigration been so high.
Australia, along with Canada and the USA is one of Philippe Legrain's three best examples of countries which have sought and accepted what is by world standards a bizarrely high level of immigration. For Australia, he seems to have relied on interviews with a couple of high immigration advocates (Stepan Kerkyasharian and Abdul Rizvi). The rest of his figures on Australia could have been gained from half-an-hour's googling---some time ago. Of critics of high immigration in Australia he seems ignorant. There are no references in his index to CSIRO's Ecumene project, to People and Place, to Sustainable Population Australia or even to the numerous publications of the Bureau of Immigration Research, which at least attempted a certain objectivity.
On the UK and the USA (his main market target) he seems only a little less ill-read. When referring to critics of high immigration he concentrates on Peter Brimelow and Samuel Huntingdon, but seems unaware of such important players as Britain's Migration Watch Committee or America's Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Centre for Immigration Studies. All of these have websites that could have provided him with an encyclopedia's worth of articles and information on relevant issues of which he seems ignorant. But I get the impression that Philippe Legrain is a gentleman who likes to make up his mind and then not disturb it by looking at inconvenient facts or contrary opinions.
A crucial document is the 1994 plenary resolution of the Australian Academy of Science on Australia's population options. This specified that our population should probably have been capped at 19 million, but must in any case be capped at no more than 23 million, and that net migration must therefore be kept below 50,000 a year.
1994 was also the year of the Cairo Conference on Population, in which the nations of the world pledged (with only a few selfish exceptions) to hold their populations in check, and not to use emigration as a way of unloading their population problems upon others. Needless to say, Cairo also is missing from Legrain's index. Nor does he mention the way in which the USA's immigration-fed increase has prevented its population stabilizing and made it dependent for its life-style upon a risky pursuit of foreign oil.
Nor does he mention the issue of the vast increases in greenhouse effect caused by migration from the low GHG to the high GHG producing countries. Most telling of all, against Legrain's irresponsible vision of open borders, is the fact that the two large-population countries that have had spectacular success in reducing their population growth (Iran and China) did so precisely because they had quarreled with the West and could not lean on it to take their emigrants. By contrast, those countries like Mexico and the Philippines, where families could hope that an extra child might be the lucky or talented one that would get to the US and bring in the rest of the family, have neither solved their own problems nor ceased to drive up population in the wealthier countries. Legrain complacently notes that the Philippines relies on remittances from its emigrants for something like 40% of its economy. (And still the babies keep coming.) By contrast, Legrain asserts (p. 20) that "freer migration is one of the best ways to help poor countries." For a capitalist economist Legrain is oddly naïve about the problems of population socialism. A visit to www.garretthardinsociety.org might trouble--yet expand--his mind considerably.
Legrain seems to share the common economist's delusion that growth can go on for ever, that there are no other species or environments to be considered, and that almost the only thing we lack (to fuel an eternal bonfire of growth) is more people.
Overall, this book, despite its parade of academic references, is not a serious attempt to examine the issues. It should be read as a piece of rhetoric: a first speech for the government in a student debate "That this house believes the world should have open borders". Legrain's 'lucidity', which some foolish reviewers have praised, is largely a reluctance to explain his economic modeling. He simply asserts. He claims at one point (p. 64, cf. p 19) that studies show freer immigration could 'potentially' make us all far richer--which is code for saying he won't explain the assumptions behind the calculation. [ revised: He offers no refutation--only an ad hominem put--down but no adequate refutation --of the detailed calculations of the Harvard economics professor George Borjas, a much more eminent economist, who draws the opposite conclusions. Legrain's calculations of the economic effect of immigration in the USA seem based on the assumption that one need only make sure that the supply of capital increases in proportion with the workforce. Then more immigrant workers simply make everyone better off. The inconvenient issues of resources, space, greenhouse emissions, and environmental degradation are ignored by Legrain (and one suspects by those economic studies he cites on his side). Perhaps Legrain knows he is writing for people who want a feel-good sense of moral superiority, and don't want to be bothered with inconvenient details. ]
Yet if Legrain can get us used to using cheap immigrant servants and cooks and nurses, he will then try to make us feel guilty about "the anonymous people whose existence you barely acknowledge . . . We just never bother to ask" (pp. 26-27). It doesn't make much sense. But as I say, Legrain is a rhetorician, not a thinker.
Perhaps most irritating is Legrain's glib sense of moral superiority--backed by his publisher's predictable assertion that he is offering an original "challenging and powerful" version of the open borders case. Not so. If the facts were as Legrain claims, and if the only issues to be considered were the ones he propounds, then everyone would come to his conclusions. Intelligence and moral superiority don't enter into it. Naivety and ignorance do.#
American Unions and their about-face on Immigration
AWAs and non-core promises
As of 6 September, merely 10% of AWAs lodged were vetted for fairness (about 12,700 of 123,000). After four months and (supposedly) 600
additional inspectors, there's a backlog of about 110,000 AWAs to vet, with about new 30,000 AWAs submitted monthly. Some assert it
will take 10 months to work-off this backlog.
Pity the poor workers waiting many months to have their AWAs vetted, while continuing to work under unfair conditions!
And the workers with one of the 45,000 AWAs for which "further information" is requested, and not forth-coming ... And their company is one of the 8,000 companies not responding to requests for "further information" ...
Will these workers regain their entitlements, recover lost pay? How will their companies - or the government - compensate them for the
unfair conditions they endured all their months of waiting?
Thousands of companies cannot be so inherently incompetent; IR laws this complicated should be scrapped for something simpler!
"Under a Howard Government you cannot be worse off, but you can be better off. I give this rock solid guarantee our policy will not cause a cut in the take home pay of Australian workers." [PM Howard, 7 July 2005, ABC]
The voters will demonstrate, soon, just how "better off" they are under this Howard Government.
Great system, PM Howard. Must be yet another "non-core promise."
Judy Bamberger,
O'Connor ACT
The Usufruct Delusion
Ground level view of Melbourne 2030 in action
Victoria, like the rest of Australia, is becoming a concrete desert, reflecting, producing and absorbing heat. Melbourne 2030 and all population growth and development intensification, intensive or sprawl, is a recipe for cooking our planet. We are turning our environment into a frying pan. Please send to smnaesp|AT|alphalink.com.au your short observations on what is happening around you as our leaders allow democracy and ammenity to be over-ridden by development for the enrichment of a very few.
Later, as the (helicopter) pilot angled northward, Joey heard her brother gag in revulsion at the sight of the Western Broward County, where new subdivisions were erupting like cankers in all directions: thousands upon thousands of cookie-cutter houses, jammed together so tightly that it looked like like you could jump from roof to roof for miles on end. Where there were no homes stood office parks, shopping plazas and enormous auto malls--acres and acres of Toyotas and Chryslers, cooking in the sun. Only a slender dirt levee separated the clamorous tide of humanity from the Everglades.
From "Skinny Dip" (2004) p337 by Carl Hiaasen
Observations on the destruction of Melbourne and democracy made by Jill on Saturday 29 September at 8:22 AM
This what I have noted in the past few days:
- One brick Edwardian House on generous but not huge block round the corner from me demolished along with all garden which included tall cypress trees. 3 two storey town houses, minimal garden to be built.
- One demolition in the next street- all garden gone, Expecting high density replacement amidst normal sized houses.
- Another house and garden demolished within walking distance of my house in Wattletree Rd. What look to be 3 storey apartments taking their place.
Was in Camberwell last night. Modest Californian bungalow demolished and humungous Neo Georgian edifice with 5 bathrooms replacing it . All garden areas will be concreted except for the swimming pool which will be tiled.
At Burke Rd end of same street on the corner - Normal sized house demolished replaced by deep excavation I believe to accommodate 7 cars. Concrete retaining wall being constructed on the boundary at present at least 3 metres high but going higher. The neighbour on the side with retaining wall sold up before this happened but in anticipation of it.
That's what I saw yesterday, and I wasn't even looking for it.
Nothing is being considered in this terrible process except the accommodation and totally introspective comfort of more and more people.
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