population

The end of economic growth is a message of hope

Mon, 2008-01-28 23:31 by tim

In this lecture Josh Farley tells us that we can't sell the Steady State economic model if we preach gloom and sacrifice. "Martin Luther King would have gotten no where if he had given a "I have a Nightmare" speech. Farley demonstrates that it is we who have the positive message and that it will be the ideologues of classical economics who will have to purvey gloom and doom once it is apparent to all that there are no more cookies in the cookie jar. Even with their greedy target of 3-4% annual growth, which results in a frightening doubling time of 28 years, the growthists haven't eliminated poverty, globally or nationally. They've tripled the economy since 1969 in the United States, but poverty levels are even higher. The world economy would have to grow twenty times its present size to achieve this goal, but as we know, there aren't even resources to feed an economy of that magnitude or one a fraction of that size. And if there were, ecological damage would shut off the engine before the runaway train left the station, as it is in the process of doing. Sadly, it appeared to be the consensus at the Bali Conference that economic growth was the pre-condition for solving third world environmental problems, an attitude pervasive in the parliaments of Europe and North America. But as Brishen Hoff put it, "every economic boom leaves an environmental bust". Farley mentions that 70% of oceanic fish have been harvested beyond sustainability. But here is how classical economic theory breaks down. As certain fish become scarce, they become more expensive, and hence more attractive to harvest. The feedback mechanism works in the wrong direction. So much for the magic of the price system. And on the subject of sustainability, he made this remark about fossil fuel agriculture: "It takes 10 calories of hydrocarbons to produce one calorie of food." Farley said that the new sustainable economy would detach property rights from property ownership, and he cited the example of the "Commons Trust" in his home state of Vermont. Since 80% of Vermont consists of forest, the state government thought it prudent to purchase eco-system services from owners as has happened in Costa Rica. Vermont assigns property rights to society as a whole-there is no "right" to pollute or to damage the commons. After all, hunter-gatherers had no property rights, and we spent more time in that role than in our present role as "future-eaters". To the economics of the dismal science Farley counterposes "The Economics of Happiness" and discusses the relationship between GNP and well-being. The United States consumes 30% of the planet's resources but are Americans substantially happier than others? Are there buckets of smiles on the faces of Americans walking the streets of New York or Sacramento, California? Research shows that relative wealth is more meaningful to people than absolute wealth---as long as they stand materially close to their neighbours they are reasonably content. An egalitarian society of lower material standing is happier than a wealthier one with great disparities. Farley says that Colombians making $5,000 a year are as content as most Americans. In 1969, he points out that the United States consumed one-third of what it does today, but consumed just 17% of the energy in doing so. I haven't equivalent Canadian statistics, but I can tell you this about 1969. We produce more than 155% more goods and services today than we did then, but we have not increased our production of fertile soil, clean water, clean air, spacious parks or wildlife by 155%. And like the United States, there are one-third more of us competing for these finite resources than there were then. In 1969 a musical instrument was just as pleasant to hear then as now, a novel was just as enjoyable to read then as now, a dog was just as companionable then as now, a sunset was just as beautiful then as now and my family gave me even more sustenance then as now because folks had more time to give each other then. In 1969 we had fewer toys and fewer choices but also had less crime, less traffic, less pollution and less stress. And its all down to growth. To paraphrase Albert Bartlett, it is difficult to identify a single part of one's life that growth has improved. It shouldn't be a tough sell: Let's slow down, lower our standard of living, but raise our quality of life. Josh Farley's lecture is a little over 56 minutes long. Stay with it. It's at www.themadisoninstitute.org/audio/Josh_Farley_final.mp3 Tim Murray January 27/08 Tim Murray January 27/08

Topic:

Triad of ecological ruin - The Royal Bank of Canada, Nature Conservancy and the Multicultural Industry

Wed, 2008-01-23 15:59 by tim

To read the Royal Bank's website, one might confuse this commercial goliath with the Sierra Club or Friends of the Earth. A bank that in 2006 had a net income of $4,6 billion presents itself as the Jolly Green Giant of corporate Canada. Its "Environmental Blueprint" is 12 pages in length and talks of RBC's commitment to climate change, biodiversity, forests, indigenous peoples and our water supply." And it boasts that it has been named one of the world's top 100 sustainable companies, the first Canadian bank listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and is Canada's most respected corporation for the fourth year in a row. President and CEO Gordon M. Nixon stated that RBC's corporate responsibility can be seen in, among other things (how we) "support environmental sustainability". One problem. Mr. Nixon is the same man who spoke in favour of an RBC report in October of 2005 to raise immigration levels from 260 to 400,000 immigrants annually. The environmental cost of our current level of a quarter million immigrants a year, not to mention the levels Mr. Nixon advocates, is manifest. Urban growth has devoured up to one fifth of the country's Class 1 farmland, threatened perhaps more than two thirds of its endangered species and paved over wetlands. What propels this urban growth was suggested by a $3 million federally commissioned report submitted in 1997 by UBC's Dr. Michael Healey entitled "Prospects for Sustainability". It called for an immigration moratorium and Population Plan to rescue the ecosystems of the Fraser Valley and similar regions across Canada from immigrant-driven growth. He pointed out the federal Department of Immigration and federal Department of the Environment were working at cross purposes. Today it is guesstimated that perhaps 70% of all housing units built in the sprawling extensions of Canada's major cities are occupied by immigrants, but in Greater Vancouver that figure is more like 85%. Inter-provincial migration cannot be the convenient scapegoat for sprawl that immigrationists contend it is if the facts are faced. 1.08% annual population growth, the highest of all G8 countries, clearly has Canada's biodiversity up against the ropes, while Kyoto targets simply cannot be met. Population growth and rising GHG emissions go hand in hand. The absurd hypocrisy of RBC's stated "environmental objective" can be found in the proclamation that it is "committed to continuing to reduce our environmental footprint," while lobbying to have the government import 400,000 additional "footprints" each year through Pearson and Vancouver International airports. In its "Environmental Blueprint" it states that it will "not engage in new financing activities with corporations operating unsustainably in tropical rainforests or High Conservation Forests (etc.)", and speaks of comprehensive environmental risk management policies. However, it doesn't say anything of deforestation in London, Ontario or any other of Canada's growing centres to build the new housing developments the bank finances. Apparently clearcuts are fair ball in Canada because they are not a cause celebre or in the media spotlight, but whether it is in the jungles of Borneo or a forest grove in the GTA carbon sequestration is equally important to the planet.. Nor does RBC invoke their vaunted "environmental due diligence" in stopping the sprawling subdivisions they underwrite from covering farmland. They talk only of their determination to "direct a significant portion of our philanthropic efforts to environmental causes." The Nature Conservancy of Canada is a perfect example of the Royal Bank's "philanthropy". By steering money to Nature Conservancy (NC) for each client who switches to electronic bank statements, NC provides RBC with ecological dispensation, the PR brownie points---or greenie points--- it needs to mask its raison d'etre. That is, of course, providing loans to developers and home buyers so that they can keep on building the sprawling subdivisions that are exterminating the wildlife that Nature Conservancy supposedly cares about. It is a symbiotic relationship. Nature Conservancy gets a big-time corporate bag man to collect donations and RBC buys credibility as an institution that cares about the environment. The Royal Bank would like to be seen as it sees itself, as the Dr. Jeckyll of corporate environmental responsibility, but its position statements are so much green window dressing, an archive of deception, for at night this "green" corporate citizen becomes a Mr. Hyde who wreaks havoc on biodiversity and the atmosphere by underwriting and pushing for rapid, unchecked economic and population growth. The benefits of runaway population growth to the major lending institutions are self-evident. More people, more demand. Demand for car loans, credit lines, and mortgages. Recently a credible argument was made that the Royal Bank was primarily interested in expanding its client base. (Canadian Immigration Reform, January 2/08) "Its about importing potential RBC clients.Canada's financial institutions realize that future client growth, thus profits, resides in immigration. No CEO wants to be in charge when share prices decline or remain stagnant." What is critical to the understanding of RBC's immigration politics is that the origin or complexion of immigrants is as important as their number. Canada must, CEO Nixon contends, "unleash the power of diversity if it wants to improve productivity and increase its standard of living." (The notion that one must have a diverse and heterogeneous society to achieve high productivity should come as news to the Japanese and Chinese.). Presently 80% of Canada's visible minorities are immigrants and almost 75% of them are visible minorities, who constitute 17% of the population. RBC wants to tap into this talent pool, hire and promote it and capture its business. It offers scholarships only to those born outside Canada. Most telling is that on the home page on Royal Bank Scholarships for New Canadians there is only a Chinese face presented to the reader, while on the Application checklist page, of the six young people pictured, three are "people of colour". Applicants are asked to write an essay on how "new immigrants have contributed to this country." No negative impacts are entertained. The underlying assumption of the literature is that due to its aging population, Canada will soon depend on immigration to grow its labour force and will have to compete for talented immigrants in the global marketplace. Unfortunately, few are talented as mass immigration is providing us with a superfluous population that generates GHG, crowds out wildlife habitat and , according to a Statscan report of May 2006, depresses wages and displaces jobs, including those of recent immigrants. And the so-called "skills shortage" is really, in the words of one 'Pax Canadiana', "a shortage in counter help at fast food restaurants," with Canadian engineering grads working them. One must also question the nature of the "diversity" that RBC champions. Just as it has co-opted the language of environmentalism with its liberal use of words like "sustainable", "footprint" and "green", the jargon of multiculturalism has been insinuated into corporate discourse. In a company committed to "building and maintaining an inclusive and respectful workplace", it is natural that every office needs a "Multicultural Calendar" like the one advertised in one of its links. In the month of January alone, 11 dates are set aside for equal commemoration, from Guru Gobind Singh's birthday on the 5th to "Pongal" on the 14th to the First of Muharramon on the 20th. But this kind of diversity is decorative. It is the fig leaf concealing a more calculating plan. RBC's diversity is much more focused than the United Nations. The kind of multiculturalism they have in mind is more like that of Richmond, B.C.---a monoculture. RBC, you see, is in pursuit of a more narrow, lucrative demographic---the South Asian population. Now 3% of the country, South Asians , as the fastest growing minority in Canada will double that percentage within the decade. By 2017, they will reach two million, equivalent to the number of Chinese-Canadians. The prospect of four million Canadians of South Asian and Chinese origin, augmented perhaps by even higher immigration levels, has RBC salivating. Clients of these cultural backgrounds save more, and take out more and bigger more mortgages than other groups. Bank branches located in Asian enclaves flourish. Simply put, Chinese and South Asians are a boon for the banking business. (cf. insideToronto.com Jan.17/08) It is not likely then, that the Royal Bank will be calling for a repeal of the White Paper of 1966 and a return to traditional immigration patterns. In a sense, RBC's immigration agenda is the inverse of the White Australia policy, but under a politically correct banner: "The Nearly All Asian Canadian Mass Immigration Policy" better expressed in code language: "Diversity". From this unflattering portrait a question emerges, what is the genesis of growth in Canada? It is not initiated by Ottawa. It is orchestrated by the big banks like RBC and big businesses who work with and pressure government to deliver population policy that will create the profits they want. A look at the political contributions made by the six biggest banks from 1982 to 2003 reveals just what they want from government. RBC really doesn't care a rat's backend for Official Multiculturalism. That's a smokescreen. Otherwise they wouldn't have contributed all that dough to the Reform Party and its successor, the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance. No, their bottom line is population growth (read economic stimulus) and low corporate taxes. A tax policy customized for Chartered Banks and not for Food Banks. And the Liberal and Conservative Parties they've paid off so generously have delivered with the Grafkin-Angus Report that recommends just that. Meanwhile food banks in Ontario have grown 14.3% since 2001. RBC and its corporate competitors are not beneficent enterprises. Chip off the green paint and the statements about corporate social responsibility and its still an organization that is about making profits for its shareholders and pursuing the obsolete and lethal paradigm of economic growth. But RBC does not work alone. It lobbies Ottawa for mass immigration at absurd levels and a growth rate which will accelerate the destruction of our environment, then cloaks its malevolence by green pronouncements, trivial green corporate practices and an unseemly arrangement with a high profile conservation group who lends the bank legitimacy in return for hush money. This group accepts the bank's money in return for saying nothing about the fact that immigration is eclipsing the wildlife it claims to be the guardian of. The collusion of big banks, environmental groups and the government's Multicultural Industry is a partnership in crime. RBC, Nature Conservancy, Multicultural-Immigration. A Triad of Ecological Ruin.

Topic:

Gillard right to rule out importing teachers

Sat, 2008-01-19 00:00 by admin

Sustainable Population Australia Media Release 18 January 2008 Julia Gillard is to be congratulated for ruling out the recruitment of overseas trained teachers to fill deficiencies in the training of Australian teachers, according to Sustainable Population Australia inc (SPA). SPA National President, Dr John Coulter, says Australia has been behaving immorally for too long relying on other countries to provide teachers for Australian schools. "These countries have been bearing the burden of education and training, only for us to poach their educated workers to fill our own skill gaps," says Dr Coulter. "We have been particularly unethical when we have poached doctors and nurses from third-world countries much poorer than Australia." Dr Coulter says that SPA also welcomes the Federal Government's move to encourage Australian nurses who have left nursing to come back to the profession through the payment of a bonus. "This is preferable to seeking to recruit overseas trained nurses," he says. Dr Coulter says another factor is that population growth is stressing so many aspects of life in Australia. "Population growth is environmentally unsustainable," he says. "It is another powerful reason why Australia should not be seeking short term and unsustainable 'solutions' to shortages in people with special skills or training but rather training our own citizens." Dr Coulter also says forced population growth through increased baby bonuses and higher immigration is also driving a 'shortage' of people in certain categories to service this larger population. "Take away the demand for services that is associated with population growth and many of these shortages will disappear," he says. Further information: John Coulter 08 8388 2153 jrpfc|AT|bigpond.com

The Australian newspaper backs environmental vandalism in the Mary Valley

Sat, 2008-01-05 23:03 by admin

The Australian newspaper, came out in its editorial of Tuesday 8 January in favour of the dam across the Mary River to be build at Traveston. This dam is fiercely opposed by the local community which faces destruction if its farms comprising some of the most fertile soil in South East Queensland were to become inundated with water. In the face of evidence of turtles and fish being mutilated by equivalent measures at the earlier failed Paradise Dam (see below), the editorial proclaimed that "the ingenuity of science and technology should ensure that the endangered Australian lungfish, the world's oldest vertebrate animal, can continue to flourish".

The editorial also cited the high rate of inter-state immigration into South East Queensland as a justification for the dam. Typically, it never posed the question as to whether the residents of the Mary Valley, or the rest of South East Queensland should have any say in the population growth which has been encouraged by both Federal and the Queensland state Government and The Australian itself.

This editorial prompted Cate Molloy, the former state member of parliament for Noosa who was expelled from the Labor Party for supporting her local community against the dam to write a letter to The Australian on 5 January to correct its misinformation. This letter is reprinted below.

Cate Molloy's Letter to The Australian

Dear Editor,

Could I have my letter published in your letters section please?

With reference to your article "New Dam Essential - Lungfish will flourish with plenty of water" your complete argument is false. The damming of the Mary River will only destroy the natural habitat of the Queensland Lungfish. These fish require a specific breeding habitat not found in dams. The dam will also destroy an agricultural food bowl, an economy of $40 million, displace whole communities with the inherent social trauma, impact negatively on the Great Sandy Straits, and the whale, dolphin, dugong and fish stocks. The dam will also see the extinction of many already endangered species despite such Government sweeteners as promises of research facilities to co-opt vocal academic critics. Moreover, the Qld government's misguided effort to protect endangered species by building fish ladders is also farcical. These are already proven failures on Paradise Dam. When such ladders operate, turtles and fish are only mutilated {evidence based observations}. When all is considered, the nature of changing rainfall patterns, the proposed dam's shallowness, the concomitant massive evaporation loss feeding Greenhouse gases, to say nothing of the environmental damage to the Great Sandy Straits, the dam will be a failure on every front. Instead of pursuing such environmental vandalism with outdated 1950's technology (Qld government's own words), Premier Bligh should instead focus on the industrial water guzzlers down in Brisbane and inform the community of the progress being made on that front since Premier Beattie announcing a Water Emergency in 2006.

Cate Molloy,
Former State Member for Noosa,
Peregian Beach, Qld
07 54483248
cate.molloy|AT|gmail.com
0408729499

Hasty decision by Garrett to the detriment of Port Phillip Bay says environmental group.

Sat, 2008-01-05 11:50 by admin

"Victorians, are in shock that the destructive act of channel deepening in Port Phillip Bay has been approved so easily by the Federal Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett after the considered, prolonged and justified opposition to this project over the past 3+ years by environmentalists" said the President of Sustainable Population Australia's Victorian branch (S.P.A. Vic.) Ms.Jill Quirk on Monday December 31st. "What a sad prospect for Bay swimmers and divers this summer if work starts as planned on the first of February 2007!"

"The risks to marine life, the underwater environment and the health of the body of water which is Melbourne's main recreation and environmental asset are huge and for no return at all as far as quality of life is concerned for Melbourne's citizens." Ms. Quirk said.

"SPA Vic. supports Ms. Jenny Warfe of the Blue Wedges coalition in asking Peter Garrett for the reasons for his approval of the Channel Deepening Project. S.P.A. Vic. also thanks the Blue Wedges for their responsible action in taking this case to the Federal Court. The position of SPA Vic is that this action is in the best interests of Melbourne's future and that of our beautiful Port Phillip Bay which is being placed in jeopardy by our elected and paid leaders."

"Peter Garrett should not have been so quick to please the Victorian Government and the Port of Melbourne Corporation. This approval was precipitate to say the least given the pending Federal Court case regarding this issue." Ms. Quirk said.

Contact: Jill Quirk 0409 7429 27
jillq|AT|optusnet.com.au

What You can do

Join the vigil to save Port Phillip Bay on 8 January. See www.bayvigil.org/how-you-can-get-involved.

Contact Blue Wedges.

Water fact sheet

Fri, 2007-12-28 19:24 by admin

Adapted from Watermark. December 2007

Australia is the driest continent on Planet Earth
Our rainfall patterns are the most variable on Planet Earth.
Water consumption per capita in our cities and suburbs is now the highest amongst all nations.
We are the highest exporter of embodied water in our exports amongst all nations - nearly 4000 GL net. The greatest proportion (nearly 50%) comes from Victoria!
Population is a major driver of domestic water consumption and use. Net immigration is now the major element in this population growth. The Victorian government wants high immigration numbers maintained so as to keep driving a 3-4% "growth economy"!
From this point onwards, energy use (and therefore carbondioxide emissions) and increased demand for water will be inextricably linked.
Cities along the eastern seaboard are very poorly placed to come with the predicted decline in available fresh water.
In many parts of the agricultural regions of Australia, freshwater and marine environments and the biodiversity that depends upon them, are now in free fall. As climate change spreads across Victoria, a substantial decline in surface water runoff is predicted for 28 out of 29 of Victoria's major surface water management areas by 2030 (average l5-20%). Without correction, these aquatic environments will decline further.
The Victorian government has signalled several times that any situation of future water scarcity can be responded to by simply increasing water supply. Given the predicted changes in Australia's climate and the expected worldwide focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, this approach is not sustainable.
The alternate approach is that Australia must start on a pathway to become a water-efficient nation and then move to super-efficiency with water use.
Simple technologies exist that will allow us to move in this direction.

Governments must decide to act, give the appropriate signals and initiate appropriate programs.

Governments across Australia have squandered nearly three decades in their failure to develop and embrace metropolis-scale water re-cycling programs. Each time this is proposed, public consideration is high-jacked by limiting discussion to a consideration of the use and consumption of treated human waste.

Some major national programs need to be initiated to better place and equip communities to deal with a water future that will be very different from that experienced over the past 50-60 years. The financial costs will be significant, possibly $40-50 billion over 20-30 years.

Population is not a front page issue

Fri, 2007-12-28 12:05 by admin

By Valerie Yule - Monday, 17 December 2007

This article was originally published on Online Opinion. It is reproduced here under the terms of the Creative Commons License.

Not openly discussed at the Bali Climate Summit 2007 is the one factor that will make it hardest to stop increasing greenhouse gas emissions - population growth.

Ironically, population growth was the main issue at an earlier Bali international conference 15 years ago. The issue has not gone away. Rather, it has become more pressing in the world, including in the Asia -Pacific region, and it is illustrated by the island of Bali itself.

The 1992 conference was organised under the auspices of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Its outcome was the Bali Declaration on Population and Sustainable Development, 1992. (See here and here.)

Thirty-six of ESCAP's 52 member countries participated, and they reached consensus at a ministerial level on the controversial issue of setting population targets in line with sustainable development goals.

The Declaration stated that the goals of population policy were to "achieve a population that allows a better quality of life without jeopardising the environmental and resource base of future generations ... taking cognisance of basic human rights as well as responsibilities".

This was the first international meeting at this political level that set an objective of attaining by the year 2010 replacement level fertility, which is equivalent to about 2.2 children per woman. In 1992 the countries in the Asia-Pacific region had a total population of about 3.2 billion. Although the annual growth rate has been steadily declining, an increase of 920 million people is still expected by 2010. This increase would be mostly in the less developed countries which have the most acute problems of poverty.

These enormous numbers contrast with Australia?s population growth, from 8 million in 1950 to 21 million now, and 24 million expected by 2050.

The location of the Climate Summit, Bali itself, illustrates the problem of growth. When I travelled around the island in 1969, the population of about two million had no tourist industry to speak of and needed none, although there were social stresses indicated by the violence of the massacres of up to 100,000 suspected communists in 1965.

By 2000, the Balinese population had increased by 50 per cent to over three million, and it continues to grow. The tourist industry and emigration are now essential to economic survival. Other countries in the region with high population growth have severe economic and social problems. They include Papua Niugini, grown from 1.4 million in 1950 to 5 million now and 10 million expected by 2050, other regions of Indonesia (growth 82 million to 224 million and predicted 336 million), and Pacific islands such as the Solomons, (106,000 to 466,000 and predicted 1.1 million) - all stressed by youth unemployment and resources destruction. How can they be expected to stop deforestation? Countries now carrying out family planning policies to restrain population growth include China, India, Thailand and even Pakistan.

Growth in population inevitably means increase in human contributions to greenhouse gases and resource shortages, even if most people still live far below the affluent level of the West that they aspire to. In developing countries, families seek to have sufficient children to ensure that some will survive, and provide for old-age. As security improves, family size can drop, unless pushed by religious or political influences.

However, for Bali Climate Summit 2007, population is not a front page issue, despite our world growth trajectory from 6 billion now to 9 billion by 2050 - almost paralleling how the proverbial lily doubles its size in the lily-pond.

The sticking points are the nations of the developed West, which also provide sticking points for other aspects of capping carbon emissions. Countries like Australia or France can hardly promote family planning in poor countries when they offer baby bonuses to persuade their own women to have more children.

Western countries have still not worked out how to maintain their prosperity with a stable population. They still fear lowered fertility, and have made a bogey of ageing populations, which need not be. Indeed, our increasingly healthy aged need less support than children. Almost every Western country in fact has a greater population than in 1950, and most are still growing. (US Census Bureau International Data Base population tables.)

Meanwhile European countrysides are filling up with housing. Water, oil and fish face future shortages. And millions of economic refugees in the world ensure that no country's population need shrink. Behind the beat-ups of fearing declining fertility rates and suppressing the real issue of world population growth is a different economic bogey. The paradoxical problems that are shaking the United States and hence the world are insufficient consumer spending and building construction in the world's richest country. Yet it is this type of economic activity that most boosts greenhouse gas emissions.

It is possible for our capitalist system, which has always continuously evolved, to develop and be able to sustain prosperity without constant increase in material production, which requires increasing numbers of people to consume it.

As things are, we can only observe. There may be no Bali declaration in 2007 about stabilising populations and thereby cutting the production of waste. Yet this, even more than carbon trading, would be a major strategy in cutting the human contribution to devastating our planet.

Overpopulation, immigration, multiculturalism and the White Australia policy

Tue, 2007-12-25 06:25 by Sheila Newman

The article below was originally a comment on webdiary

On December 4, 2003, Australia’s population was estimated at 20 million and projected to reach about 30 million by 2050. Slightly less than 50 per cent of this growth rate resulted from net overseas immigration. By 5 November 2007, Australia’s population had ballooned by more than one twentieth of itself (or 5.66 per cent) to 21,131,216 and was projected to reach 34 million by 2050.[i] In fact, with that growth rate of 1.5 per cent per annum, it is on course to double within less than 50 years. Annual immigration has been responsible for more than half this growth, even though the birth-rate had increased in a context of misleading pronatalist propaganda.

Before British colonization in 1788 the peoples of Terra Australis managed to conserve an almost exclusively hunter-gatherer nomadic lifestyle. Art[ii] but no written history, has been found, and reconstruction of their impact relies on anthropological, archeological and ecological studies. “Australia” was transplanted and adapted from a British society which was on the cusp of industrialisation. Pre 1788, Australia’s aboriginal population averaged continent-wide less than one person per 8.5 square kilometers – possibly as few as one person per 51 square kilometers.[iii] Numerous clans inhabited the continent at different population densities, reflecting regional rainfall, soils and climate.[iv] Also patterned by climate and soils, the fossil-fuel-era population distribution is similar, but much denser.

Early attempts to establish agriculture failed with some unintensive exceptions recently uncovered.[v] The British managed to gain an agricultural foothold using ‘white’ slaves in the form of convicts drawn mostly from the ragged army of their dispossessed. Their number was later supplemented by indentured labour, displaced aboriginals, and, until Federation, ‘black-birding’ – the practice of kidnapping Pacific Islanders and bringing them to work in Australia, principally for the Colonial Sugar Refinery Company. There is thus no history or tradition of an established pre-fossil fuel agricultural society. The gold-rushes of the 1850s attracted capital, finance and economic migrants, resulting in a rapidly morphing population and economy and formation of a working class. This class made a national wage-fixing pact with capital at Federation in 1904 and also obtained the agreement of CSR to outlaw black-birding [vi] and the importation of other 'non-white' labour, widely perceived as synonymous with slaving.[vii]

The economy intensified after World War II, but much land was cleared and divided up for development by land speculators from the time of the gold rushes of the mid 19th and early 20th century. When the gold ran out, there was a massive depression, which probably assisted the formation of the above industrial laws.

After WW2 business promoted a fear of population implosion among politicians and a policy for mass immigration came in. High immigration, combined with the unforeseen baby-boom that accompanied the petroleum era, made the newly privatized housing industry very powerful and consolidated an economic addiction to population growth. Although the ‘white-Australia’ policy was dismantled, wages and conditions legislation under the 1904 constitution protected workers and made it unprofitable to import labor simply to undercut wages. However, in 2006-7, the conservative government found a way around this - (Workchoices).[viii] At the same time net immigration was encouraged to increase from an average of around 75-80,000 per annum to upwards of 160,000 per annum,[ix] at the behest of the development, housing, mining and financial lobbies. All this took place in the context of a huge increase in mining and construction, including massive engineering projects in most states which have drawn angry but useless protests from Australians. These circumstances underpin Australia’s demographic and material overshoot.

The ideology of multiculturalism has been useful for suppressing protest against this massive population growth by tarring as 'racist' any protest against immigration for whatever reason. It is ironic that the White Australia policy, which was introduced to combat the kind of slavery which the USA was built on, has been replaced with a much nicer-sounding Multiculturalism, which allows the importation of low-wage labour and the flooding of the housing market to benefit speculators, in the context of rising land prices and rising homelessness.

Footnotes

[i] “Australia’s Population” (Population Clock), Australian Bureau of Statistics, www.abs.gov.au [5 Nov 2007]

[ii] Much of which functioned as maps of areas of land with markers for water, game, people and landmarks.

[iii] Total land stock is 770 million ha of 7,700,000 square km. Estimates of population range between 150,000 through 300,000 to 900,000.

[iv] Joseph B. Birdsell, “Australia: Ecology, spacing mechanisms and adaptive behaviour in aboriginal land tenure”, in Ron Crocombe, (Ed.), Land Tenure in the Pacific, OUP/MUP 1971, pp.334-361

[v] Jennifer Macey, “Vic bushfires uncover ancient Aboriginal stone houses”, The World Today, 3 Feb. 2006 12:45:00, www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1561665.htm

[vi] “With Federation, the Commonwealth Parliament became dominated by spokesmen for ‘White Australia’. In October 1901 legislation was passed prohibiting the introduction of Pacific Islanders after 31 March 1904.”, McKillop, R.F., referring to Bolton, G.C., A Thousand miles away: A History of North Queensland to 1920, ANU Press, 1972, p. 239, in “Australia’s Sugar Industry” on the Light Railway Research Society of Australia site, www.lrrsa.org.au/LRR_SGRa.htm

[vii] The Colonial Sugar Company aroused similar responses among indigenous Fijians who also objected to black-birding as well as to the importing of Indian indentured labour. “The Indian Connection”, Frontline, Volume 17 - Issue 12, June 10 - 23, 2000, www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1712/17120130.htm

[viii] “How low can you go?”, Colin Fenwick, Economic and Labour Relations Review,5; (2006) 16(2) www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ELRRev/2006/5.html

[ix] “Largest population increase ever: ABS,” Media Release, September 24, 2007, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Latestproducts/3101.0, “Net overseas migration contributed 54% (162,600 people) to this growth, which was more than the natural increase of 46% (138,100 people or 273,500 births minus 135,400 deaths).” This occurred with confusing changes to statistical methods plus new ease of transfer from temporary to permanent migrant (largely equivalent to European citizenship).

Topic:

Canadian Socialist and Green Icons contest multiculturalism

Mon, 2007-12-24 00:00 by tim

Multiculturalism is Canada's Ingsoc, a state ideology so powerfully pervasive that few in the media, in the educational institutions or the political parties would dare challenge it. One might think that the left would offer criticism, but apart from journalist and former socialist parliamentarian, Douglas Fisher, and columnist Larry Zolf, none come to mind.

The Liberal Party was able to steal the affections of working class voters earmarked for the social-democratic NDP by appealing to their cultural identities. Running candidates of the same ethnicity as the prevailing group in the riding, and granting federal money for the construction of ethnic centres was a classic Liberal formula for vote-buying. And it usually worked.

The NDP approach has always been to appeal to people's class identity above and beyond the language they speak and to their sense of solidarity to people who live similar lives but have different cultures. Multiculturalism has not been good for class solidarity.

J.S. Woodsworth, the father of Canadian socialism, founder of the CCF-NDP and described as the "Saint of Canadian politics", I think knew as much. Allen Mills in "Fool for Christ-The Political Thought of J.S. Woodsworth", wrote that during his leadership in the twenties and thirties he continued to evince a profound concern for " the social integration of the alien." Allen writes that Woodsworth talked "of uniting immigrants into a new Canadian type: he worried that the melting pot was not working and the country would become 'balkanized', there was a necessity to 'absorb', 'weld' and 'incorporate, immigrants into the Canadian way of life.'p.228

Although Woodsworth was an opponent of immigration in the 1920s and 30s because there were not enough jobs, he also recognized the need for more social cohesion. A higher proportion of newcomers of our own British traditions would mould these incoming armies of foreigners into 'loyal subjects'.

Greens have been among the most effusive champions of Ingsoc, with Green leader Elizabeth May justifying the country's absurdly high immigration levels as Canada's ongoing "multicultural project". Environmentalists claim that "cultural diversity" is the analogue to biological diversity, the necessary variation found in plant and animal forms. Trouble is, the immigration levels required to sustain these culturally diverse ethnic enclaves is fuelling urban sprawl and crowding out wildlife. Variety is the spice of life, but the human is flourishing at the expense of the non-human. Multiculturalism has not been good for the environment.

But there is a JS Woodsworth of Canadian greens. He is none other than the famous co-author of "Our Ecological Footprint", Dr. William E. Rees. This is taken from his "Globalization, Trade and Migration: Undermining Sustainability?"

"... there is sufficient evidence to hypothesize that multi-racial or multi-cultural countries are more likely to unravel chaotically in the event of rapid ecological change, resource shortages, or economic decline than are more homogenous societies. Because socio-political stability is a prerequisite for ecological sustainability, we thus have yet another reason for a pre-emptive cautionary approach to large-scale migration in coming levels and adopt explicit 'melting pot' strategies designed to facilitate the integration and assimilation of new-comers into the social and economic fabric of their adopted countries. They should also include ongoing public education programs that stress both the need for, and the national benefits of, limited immigration.

The main objectives of this approach are to discourage the development of persistent immigrant enclaves, to accelerate immigrants' development of a sense of identity with the larger society, and to improve public understanding of the modern role of economic and environmental changes that may be required for ecological sustainability. Immigration policies that favour multiculturalism and that apparently succeed during periods of growth and plenty may not be adaptive in the face of rapid global ecological change of economic decline."

So while the sheep continue to bleet "diversity", the wise old shepherds speak of the virtues of integration and cohesion.

Just as Central Asia exported the bubonic plague, and Central Africa exported the Ebola virus, Canada gave the world the ideology of Multiculturalism. It might be cautionary then to heed the words of our brave critics as they spoke them right in the guts of the ogre before the Thought Police could silence them.

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC
Canada
December 23/07

Topic:

Argument with a socialist zealot

Thu, 2007-12-20 01:44 by tim

I had quite the educational experience on Tuesday night (18 Dec 07). The phone rang at 8:30 pm and the call display read "Ontario". Who would be phoning me from Ontario at one half hour past 11 pm? Probably one of those persistent telemarketers. Yet it could be pertaining to a personal or environmental matter. Better take a chance. "Hello, Mr. Murray? I am calling on behalf of the New Democratic Party of Canada." Immediately I cut her off and launched into a rant that was broken only two minutes later by her strident objections. Everything I said flowed without a break from my lips as I knew all the statistics by heart: "The New Democratic Party, is that the party that favours 1% plus immigration for this country when there is clear evidence that population growth drives GHG emissions, when biodiversity in urban Canada is being destroyed by immigrant-driven growth , the party that pretends that something called smart growth will defend wildlife and farmland and somehow stop people from generating waste and pollution.?" "Wait, she interjected with sublimated anger, "you can't blame immigrants for these things ..." "You can blame population growth which is driven by immigration" and before she could get a word in edge-wise, I fired my three favourite correlations at her. "Did you know that since 1990 Australia's population grew by 30% and its GHG grew by 30%, that between 1970 and 2004 America's population and GHG emissions both grew by an identical 43% and that between 1990 and 2006 Canada grew by 19% and its GHG was up by 24%?" In an argument I heard last spring on the Internet, when a critic stated that a typical immigrant arriving at Pearson International consumed much less than the typical Canadian, this socialist lady, carrying an Indo-Canadian accent, vociferously denied that immigrants were doing anything to impact our environment negatively. "I don't see a problem with taking more", she said. She went on to say that claiming that population growth caused GHG emissions was simplistic and flawed. "Otherwise, why hasn't India more GHG emissions than us. You have got to be more holistic in your thinking." It was at that point I realized that I had taken the wrong tact in this debate. I should have begun my rant with an attack on economic growth, not population. So I had to make amends. "You are right. We have to take a holistic approach. But the NDP, the Greens and the Sierra Club aren't taking it. Our focus should be the damage that Economic Growth is causing the environment. But realize that economic growth is a function of population level and per capita consumption. If all you want to do is tell Canadians to reduce consumption, as do the Greens and the environmentalists, then we are going to have reduce to unbearably Spartan levels if you allow population to climb. If I freeze population, but permit Canadians to merrily consume at even greater amounts, then population will have to be reduced further." "So are you saying no more Economic growth?."she asked. "The planet is saying that and I am joining the chorus." "No one can get elected on that platform, besides, (and this is the classic cliché) we can have economic growth and a clean environment too. We couldn't promote our Climate Change strategy if people thought we were against economic growth." "Do you know there was a British study revealed on the 4th of this month that said that if we don't stop Economic Growth, we're finished, because we'll pass the 2 degree rise in global temperature threshold." "Oh, they have been saying things like that for years. They said they would never be able to feed the world and they were proven wrong." "Actually, just wait a while, and you will see what happens to modern agriculture without oil. Some say one-third of us will die." "You haven't thought of technology." At that I interjected, not that old song. Renewables are a joke. Maybe 3% of our needs so far. But if I am wrong on that, google "Jevons Paradox". Technological efficiences just promote more consumption, and more births too. "So who are you going to vote for then?" she challenged. "The Conservatives? They are worse than us surely." "I don't know that they are", I replied. " Premier Calvert left office with GHG emissions 60% higher than when he came in. I think a write-in ballot would be a good choice." At that she announced that it was midnight and she must sign off. My opinions, as filtered by the interviewer, would be relayed to someone higher up the chain of pre-fabricated thought. My conclusion? Again, if immigration is to be discussed, it must be discussed within the context of population stabilization. But the latter in turn should be discussed within the framework of a steady state economy. Immigration/population growth waves a lot of red flags and before a dialogue can get untracked the debate spirals into emotional outbursts. I think Neil Dawe has been right about this one from Day 1. Secondly, I doubt that much is to be gained from debating Socialists or Greens on population issues. Their minds are set in concrete and are unable to break free and think outside their tight box. We have to target people who don't think in clichés. Tim Murray Quadra Island, BC 18 December 2007

Topic:

Is it reactionary to oppose Immigration?

Mon, 2007-12-17 09:11 by tim

Note: This article was also published on webdiary on 19 December 2007. It had attracted 69 comments by 24 December 2007.

Andy Kerr, former president of Alternatives to Growth Oregon, posed these questions, "To those who support generous immigration, I ask you this: Why are you are on the same side as Microsoft and the other huge computer corporations and of Archer Daniel Midland and the rest of the agribusiness lobby? How can you support a policy that helps ensure that our existing poor will never be adequately valued for their labor."

Kerr's questions could well be asked of so many left-wing critics whose first reflexive response to closed border arguments are that they are "right-wing", "reactionary", "racist" or "xenophobic", despite the fact that historically the first beneficiaries of mass immigration to North America, and several other localities, have been cheap labour employers. Naomi Klein, in "The Shock Doctrine" blemishes her excellent analysis with this commonplace attitude.

If Klein wanted to probe the shock therapy applied by big capital by using immigration as a battering ram to break down the working class, she need only have looked to the history of British Columbia, where her brother Seth labours for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In the nineteenth century Chinese labour contractors imported labour to the point that perhaps one-third of the entire workforce had become Chinese. Working for half the wages, paying no taxes, they were prepared to ignore safety regulations, so the Dunsmuir Coal Company used them to break a pivotal miners' strike in 1883.The Miners Union then presented a resolution to government to restrict Chinese labourers from working underground, and another one stating that these labourers were a menace to underground safety, had lowered wages, deterred other Canadians from seeking employment in B.C., offered unfair competition and were provocative to public peace.

In 1907 five Tokyo immigration companies filled an order to bring 6,000 Japanese labourers to work for the Canadian Pacific Railway (C.P.R.) when the province was experiencing a recession. B.C. workers were against the ropes, so the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council met to form an "Asiatic Exclusion League". Two days later a Japanese ship arrived with 1177 labourers. The chemistry was right for the infamous Vancouver anti-Asian riot of September 7, 1907, an incident which has been retroactively depicted as a simple and despicable act of racism. In fact it was a reaction to B.C. businesses which were then using Japanese cheap surplus labourers instead of their Chinese counterparts. It should be known that Native Indians also seethed with resentment at the Japanese presence.

Chinese immigrant labour had finally been slapped by a "head tax" by the federal government in response to decades of lobbying by the B.C. to level the playing field with Canadian labourers. But they wouldn't they wouldn't follow suit with a similar tax on Japanese labour for fear of jeopardizing trade arrangements with Japan. Hence the end run by employers and the pogrom by B. C. workers. To demonstrate labour's outrage at the collusion between now Lieutenant-Governor Dunsmuir and the C.P.R.to orchestrate the Japanese influx, a Socialist legislator moved a motion in the B.C. House that Dunsmuir be impeached.

It should also be noted ---and this is always omitted by revisionists-the Oriental Exclusion Act was actually a misnomer. It was in reality, the Oriental Labourers Exclusion Act. Chinese merchants and their families continued to enjoy access to Canada. The purpose of the omission is obvious, to foster guilt and shame so that an agenda of "justice" an restitution can be pursued by Canada's immigration industry so that corporate Canada can have its labour requirements satisfied in the same way that robber baron Robert Dunsmuir's was. Just 30 miles from where he used Chinese labour to break the miners strike of 1883, the corporation I was working for used Chinese labour to try and break my strike a century later. As waves of Chinese, fresh from Hong Kong, passed through my picket line, escorted by police, it occurred to me that I was having a "multicultural" experience. I was so enriched. Like the miners were in 1883.

The same misrepresentation and spin was made of the "Komagata Maru" incident where East Indians were denied entry at the Port of Vancouver. Does this mean that racist antagonisms did not alloy with legitimate economic grievances? It would stretch credulity to argue that case, particularly in light of the outrageous internment of Japanese-Canadians in 1942, the fact that Chinese-Canadians were denied the vote until 1948, or the right to own property in the exclusive British Properties among other indignities. But should illegitimate motives discredit and invalidate the very cogent arguments of working people to defend their livelihood?

These arguments have been made by socialists and trade unionists not only in Canada but in America a century ago by Jack London, Socialist Party leader Victor Gerber, and the legendary Samuel Gompers. They were also made by the heroic Cesar Chavez who was committed to restricting immigration. Chavez even picketed the border and reported illegal aliens who served as strike-breakers against United Farm Workers.

Today leading labour economists have carried on the fight. Dr. George Borgias of Harvard University is most notably among them. It is his contention that native-born American workers lose $152 billion annually because of job displacement and wage depression caused by immigration. And yet, how does the labour movement respond? This is what the Carrying Capacity Network asks:

"The AFL-CIO, the biggest labor union in the country, is AGAIN urging Congress to give amnesty to as many as 13 million illegal immigrants. Result: depressed wages and lost jobs for Americans while rewarding lawbreakers with the right to work and potential citizenship. Isn't the AFL-CIO sanctioning lawbreaking by pushing for an amnesty?"

Where does the Canadian labour movement stand? You can guess. In a letter dated May 4/06 to Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day and Minister of Immigration and Citizenship Monte Solberg, Secretary Treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) Hassan Yussuf complained about the "zealotry" of the Canadian Border Services Agency. "(They) aggressively deported a number of undocumented residents, particularly those from the Portugese community as well as targeting members of the Asian, Chinese, Caribbean and Latin/Central-American communites. The manner in which those deportations were handled exposed a government acting with excessive zeal, hardness, and in some cases, an inexcusable lack of humanity.

I suppose the more "humane" course of action for the CLC would be just to let everybody who wants to come to Canada stay. Open borders. One world. John Lennon's dream. Just imagine. But that's globalism isn't it? Who will speak for the Canadian workers whose wages and working conditions are being hammered by this vision of brotherhood? Why, the CLC of course. Like its political arm, the NDP, it claims to represent them. Yussuf's letter concludes: "The CLC representing more than 3 million workers, joins with those calling for a moratorium on all CBSA deportation/detention activities."

How about a moratorium on immigration instead? That would do more for those 3 million workers. And more than a swift process, in the CLC's words, to "regularlize undocumented workers.whose skills are in need and who have been contributing to the economy." You have to love the CLC's politically-correct language. Calling an illegal immigrant an "undocumented resident" is like calling a drug-pusher an "unlicensed pharmacist". How does the labour movement like it when people call scabs "replacement workers"? And why doesn't the CLC just call "regularize" what it is---amnesty for law-breakers, or, as Geoffrey Blainey once put it, "an incentive for others to arrive, hoping to benefit from further amnesty."

Contemporary socialist and trade union affinity toward international solidarity even at the expense of national well-being can be traced to a Marxist legacy that sees class, not nationality, as the primary divide. Even social democracy taps into this tradition which combines as one strand in a muddled xenophilia with Christian and environmental thought. The latter mutation is expressed quintessentially in the Canadian Green Party line that since global warming is a global problem requiring global cooperation, to obtain this we must not send out an unfriendly message of "fear" by closing our borders, but on the contrary drop them instead. Presumably a radically downward adjustment in consumption habits and greener technology will compensate for all the extra millions who would swarm in. Instead of "workers of the world unite", the Greens offer us a new rallying cry: "more and more people, consuming less and less".

What is interesting is that American icon, Ralph Nader, Green Party candidate for President, does not share this Canadian love affair with the world. He had this to say in 2000: "We cannot have open borders. That's a totally absurd proposition. It would depress wages here enormously, and tens of millions of people from all levels, including scientists and workers, would be pouring into this country."

Australian political scientist Frank Salter had this to say about the socialist attitude to nationalism. "The Left, as it has evolved over the course of the previous century, looks down on the ordinary people with their inarticulate parochialisms as if the were members of another species. since they care nothing for the preservation of national communities. Ethnies are considered irrelevant to the welfare of people in general. It would be understandable to Martians to be so detached from particular loyalties. But it is disturbing to humans doing so, especially humans who identify with the Left."

Such is the European Left's identification with the Other at the cost of the resident national that, in the name of anti-racism, it was possible for left-wing novelist Umberto Eco to declare his hope that Europe would be swamped by Africans and third world emigrants just so to "demoralize" racists. And such is the identification of the AFL-CIO with 13 million illegal immigrants as potential recruits that it supports amnesty and essentially a corporate welfare program that reduces wages for the lowest of American workers. A scheme which advocates call "liberalism" but American workers call an invasion. The CLC (Edgar Bergen) and its social-democratic parliamentary arm, the NDP (Charlie McCarthy), sing the same tune. Crocodile tears are shed for "undocumented" workers who allegedly make great contributions to the economy, according to their hire-a-left-wing-think-tank. But Statistics Canada's conclusions about the effect of immigration on the Canadian work force echo those of Dr. Borgias for American workers. Except the May 2007 Statscan report showed that in Canada, it was the educated workers who were really taking a hit. Between 1980-2000 their wages dropped 7%. And in Britain, careful analysis revealed that the Trade Union Congress was wrong in its contention that amnesty would net the Treasury one billion pounds annually. Rather it would cost taxpayers 1.8 billion pounds a year.

But alas, socialist thought is not monolithic. The Leninists were wrong. For the working class, national identity was as important as class identity, or as Orwell put it, "in all countries, the poor are more national than the rich." If they can't find a voice on the Left, in desperation they will look to the Populist right, as they did recently in Switzerland. But just when it looked like the field was left entirely to globalists, maverick social-democratic and socialist leaders in the tradition of Berger, London, or Canada's J. S. Woodsworth are staking a claim for national, as opposed to international, solidarity. They are doing so after their constituents have been battered by one of the greatest migratory waves in history, that saw the United States for example import the equivalent of three New Jerseys in the 1990s alone, or 25 million people. One would have thought that Naomi Klein, a Canadian, would have known that the Father of Canadian democratic socialism, the Saint of Canadian politics, the Rev. J. S. Woodsworth steadfastly opposed immigration throughout his leadership in the 1920s and 30s. Woodsworth understood that his constituency was in Canada, not overseas. His motto was no doubt that of Vancouver Rev. Edwin Scott: "We are not universal nations yet. Universal nationality and universal brotherhood are two different things."

The Democratic Socialist Senator of Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has begun to make some noise about the disaster that is the illegal immigration invasion in the United States. His voting record in reducing chain migration, fighting amnesty and unnecessary visas rates B-, B-, and A+ respectively from Americans for Better Immigration. "If poverty is increasing and if wages are going down, I don't know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are now." To Sanders the American working, middle class is caught in a squeeze. "On the one hand, you have large multi-nationals trying to shut down plants in America, move to China and on the other hand you have the service industry bringing in lower wage workers from abroad. The result is the same-the middle class gets shrunk and wages go down." Five million people have left the middle class during Bush administration, Sanders observes.

Other social-democratic leaders have spoken out against open borders. Former Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt now admits that immigration under his government was excessive and damaging to Germany. In a book published in 1982 he confessed that "with idealistic intentions, born out of our experiences with the Third Reich, we brought in far too many foreigners." Dutch Socialist leader Jan Marijnissen is strongly opposed to the practice of importing East European workers to undermine the position of Dutch workers. East Europeans are hired as "independent contractors" to circumvent labour law. Marijnissen wrote "It is unacceptable that employers pay foreign workers 3 euros per hour and have them live in chicken coops as they were in competition in the nineteenth century of Dickens. The unfair competition and displacement of Dutch workers and small business is intolerable. Therefore we shouldn't open the borders further, but set limits instead."

Setting limits. Acknowledging limits. That is the great divide. In the past those limits have been perceived to be economic by those with the sense to perceive them. Now, some on the left are beginning to realize that the more unforgiving and immutable limits are set by nature. Former Labor Premier of NSW , Bob Carr, and his fellow Laborite retired veteran MP Barry Cohen joined environmental leaders Tim Flannery and Ian Lowe in exposing the myth of Australia as a big empty land begging to be filled up with people. Said Carr, "our rivers, our soils, our vegetation, won't allow that to happen enormous cost to us and those who follow us." Carr and Cohen call for severe immigration cut-backs and a population policy put in place.

In Klein's Canada, meanwhile, the phrase "carrying capacity" is as unknown in the socialist lexicon as it is the corporate. Biologists and ecologists might as well be speaking ancient Aramaic to leftists to make them understand that their human rights agenda cannot be built on an environment that will not sustain it. Canada cannot become the soup kitchen to tens of millions of refugees, nor can vital biodiversity services coexist with a population of 50 million Canadians. In economic jargon, its called "diseconomies of scale". In the language of real science, its called a "limiting factor".

This essay began with two questions from Andy Kerr. It will end with six or seven of mine.

Why? Why has opposition to a policy of mass immigration, a policy that drives down the wages of marginal workers, middle-income workers and professional workers been characterized and vilified as "right-wing" and "reactionary". Why has earlier socialist and trade union understanding of the negative consequences of this policy been overtaken by "love thy neighbour" zeitgeist of the post-war era? Why is the "Left" on the same side as the "Right"? The same side as Microsoft, ADM, the real estate developers and the cheap labour employers?

It is high time to challenge this labeling and to challenge those who use it to prevent thoughtful discussion. The question that needs to be posed today is not the conventional one, is it Left or is it Right? But rather, do we accept that there are Limits, or do we continue to persist in the fantasy that this country, and others, is a massive treasure trove of boundless resources waiting to be unlocked by an endless number of people who can exploit them without ecological consequences?

History shows, sadly, that the latter delusion is shared equally among the devotees of both Adam Smith and the Communist Manifesto and its derivatives.

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, B.C.
Canada
December 16, 2007.

Topic:

THE SIERRA CLUB AND THE NDP: A MARRIAGE OF THE BLIND

Tue, 2007-12-11 17:56 by tim

Like they used to say about marriage, the NDP and the Sierra Club (social democrats in hiking boots) go together like a horse and carriage. A horse with blinkers on that is. In matters environmental, both believe that the ecological consequences of population growth can be steered out of harms way by thoughtful planning, or simply ignored. “Growth is good”, declared deposed NDP Premier Lorne Calvert, so long as it is “shared”. Others are not so necessarily sanguine. They merely say that it is “inevitable”—so lets make the best of it. One local NDP President articulated this attitude quite well when he said that “there is always going to be growth as long as the population keeps growing and cheap land is available but that doesn’t mean it cannot be planned or channeled. City councils and regional districts have a lot of clout with zoning by-laws. They can ensure that the true costs are paid, that certain areas are a ‘no-go’.” Of course the notion that the tap of population growth could be turned off by the federal government by the simple expedient of turning down immigration is not considered, for that would strike at the heart of NDP policy of a yearly “1% plus” immigration quota. A Sierra Club spokesperson echoed the above prescription, for in environmental and planning parlance, it falls under the rubric of the famous, or infamous, “Smart Growth” recipe. It is emphatically not an anti-growth position. It is a managed-growth position. The problem is, we don’t manage growth, growth manages us. Smart growth failed in its birthplace of Portland, Oregon, and across the United States. Tight zoning laws cannot indefinitely defend farmland, wetlands, nature reserves or parks from relentless population growth. And the people who live in strictly defined, dense neighbourhoods still have a footprint, they still generate wastes and green house gasses to the tune of 20 metric tones annually for each Canadian. The GHG reduction policies of the NDP in Western Canada and federally are flawed by the same assumption that the Sierra Club makes. Namely, that political timidity, outmoded technology, and poor energy choices by industry and households are responsible for our poor record. When asked by CTV News why Canada was failing so badly, John Bennett, a senior policy advisor with the Sierra Club of Canada, said there were three key reasons: A surge in carbon energy exports, especially oil and gas, a loss in nuclear generating capacity in Ontario in the mid-1990s and its replacement with coal-generated electricity, and a lack of political will to force action on the issue of cutting emissions. What neither Bennett, nor any NDP or Green politician mentioned was the fact that since 1990, the Kyoto base line year, Canada’s population grew by 19%, which one might think would account for a good portion of the 24% increase in GHG emissions since then. Similar correlations can be found elsewhere. Between 1970 and 2004, America’s population and its GHG emissions both rose an identical 43%, while Australia saw its population and GHG rise almost identically at 31% and 30% respectively between 1990 and 2006. In fact, per capita emissions have remained stable in Canada, so it is only population growth that can be held responsible for the country’s last place standing in carbon emissions growth. Yet it is to the individual consumer, the “per capita” rather than the volume of “per capitas”that Sierra Club officials direct their appeals. After all, it was Saint Al Gore who said that “each and every one of us can make changes in our lives and become part of the solution.” The watchword is personal responsibility. But oddly, the choice not to have children is never listed among the several steps to fight climate change. After all, it is more cost-effective to avert a birth than to attempt contain that human’s C02 emissions after the fact. A non-consumer has a smaller footprint than a green one. This past fall, in welcoming Al Gore to British Columbia, the Sierra Club launched CERCLes (Carbon Emission Reduction Clubs) and invited me to join them in “making a personal commitment to meaningful and measurable change.” But I already did that when I resigned myself to a life of celibacy. Was the Sierra Club handing out condoms? I was then invited to find out how I could “take action to reduce my carbon footprint.” Well, the best climate change strategy for me I think is to ensure that there is no “pitter-patter” of little carbon footprints running around the house. And the person best able to most effectively “take action” is Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley by subtracting 250,000 “footprints” from the quota she had slated to bring into Canada. Then to persuade her cabinet colleagues to end any “baby bonus” that would serve as an incentive to have children here. Whether a consumer enters this country of profligate waste through the maternity ward or through the airport is of no concern to the biosphere. Both are burdensome. It is no wonder that Sierra Club endorsed the NDP as Canada’s most environmentally-friendly party. It is a marriage of eternal covenant, a tag team of denial. Tim Murray Quadra Island, BC December 10, 2007

Topic:

Premier Calvert's Big Lie

Sun, 2007-12-09 16:38 by tim

The autopsy on the 17 year reign of Saskatchewan premier Lorne Calvert must conclude the he lived and died a liar. Like his colleagues across Canada, he promised us that we could have our cake and eat it too. After seeing his province’s greenhouse gas emissions grow more than 60% since 1990, he still had the cheek in 2006 to promise his audience that “while continuing to grow the Saskatchewan economy, we will stabilize the absolute level of green house gas emissions by 2010.” It is doubtful that even Houdini could accomplish that feat, as no jurisdiction in the world has contained or reduced GHG emissions while experiencing population and/or economic growth simultaneously. Like so many politicians today, Calvert was master of oxymoronic dualities. A “Green Strategy” in tandem with the “Saskatchewan Action Plan for The Economy”. A “healthy” environment that can coexist and indeed proceed through our economy. Calvert was like the quack doctor of a fast buck diet centre that promises you that you can lose 50 pounds a month and still enjoy a litre of ice cream every day. But then, it’s a proven marketing recipe these days, isn’t it? Who doesn’t promise an economic boom with a Green agenda? A “clean” environment with a “robust” economy? Two solitudes. Matter and anti-matter, can come together in wedded bliss. All it takes is green Newspeak and spin. Lorne wasn’t shy about his promises. He said that thanks to his initiatives Saskatchewan would reduce GHG 80% by 2050, by various conservation and efficiency measures from industry, business and homeowners. Trouble with efficiencies though, is that they tend to get wiped out by the very growth that Lorne promoted. During the time that the efficiency of air conditioners improved by 17%, for example, the number of air conditioners grew by 36%. It’s called Jevon’s paradox, or if you prefer, the Khazoom-Brooke postulate. Then he promised more natural carbon sinks from Saskatchewan’s boreal forests. Too bad he presided over the logging of so much it so that he could reap the royalties of the growth is craved so much. Calvert made similar promises about eradicating child poverty. When he was ejected from office in November, Saskatchewan still had the third worst child poverty rate in the country, 2.4% above the national average. Second worst was the neighbouring fellow NDP province of Manitoba, at 4.1% above the national average, where 49% of residents of the capital city of Winnipeg in a recent poll complained that their growthist, social-democratic government also failed to solve poverty. It is as Dr. Peter Victor of the University of York observed, growth is not particularly effective at eliminating poverty, creating full employment, or safe-guarding the environment. Since 1976, as both the GDP and the greenhouse gas emissions have gone up consistently, levels of unemployment and poverty have bounced around. Lorne Calvert believed in social and environmental alchemy. He believed that population and economic growth could be sequestered from ecological consequences, and even if it couldn’t, he was on record as saying that it was acceptable as long as its benefits were equitably distributed. A social democrat of the 1960s vintage, he’s now been relegated to the dustbin of history. But lamentably, his place has been quickly taken up by ten equally myopic and deceptive premiers and a Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who just took the John Howard award for Global Miscreant in Germany by postponing our Kyoto target 13 precious years. Taking the classic cake-and-eat it approach, Harper is proposing a so-called “intensity-based” reduction plan which would allow countries like China and India to join in climate change efforts “without having to sacrifice their economies.” Go on a diet, but keep eating your ice cream. Harper et al obviously haven’t been apprised of the latest terrifying research. It appears that Chanceller Merkel’s prescriptions or that of the IPCC’s are far too moderate. A paper in Geophysical Research Letters finds that even a 90% global cut in emissions by 2050 will see the fatal 2 degree temperature rise threshold broken. We need a 100% cut. The total decarbonization of the economy. But the news is even more shattering than that. Professor Rod Smith of the Royal Academy of Engineering reveals that each period of economic growth that it takes the economy to double causes the economy to consume as many resources as all previous doubling periods combined. Says journalist George Monbiot, “in other words, if our economy grows at 3% between now and 2040, we will consume in that period economic resources equivalent to all those we have consumed since humans first stood on two legs.” Translation: we must halt growth. Using these guidelines, if Canada continues to grow at 3.6% annually as it has since 1990, its economy will double in a mere 20 years. It would stretch credulity to the extreme for Canadian politicians to perpetuate the pretence that this kind of economic growth can happily coexist with an effective climate change strategy, or that a nation that grew its population by 19% since the Kyoto base line year could expect to meet a 6% GHG reduction target by 2008. Little wonder Harper backed out of his commitment. Reducing immigration, of course, is an option outside Ottawa’s imagination. It ‘s time for politicians to stop telling us The Big Lie. The lie that there is no correlation between economic and population growth and environmental degradation. It is no accident that in the United States, between 1970 and 2004, both GHG emissions and the population rose by 43%, and that between 1990 and 2006 the increase in GHG emissions in Australia almost exactly matched that of population. Population levels coupled with per capita consumption, produces economic growth. The imminent ecological crisis makes it clear. It is showdown time in the OK Corral. It’s us facing Growth. Our own Frankenstein. We won’t walk out of the corral together. Tim Murray Quadra Island, BC Canada December 8/07

Topic:

Economic Growth Fails to Eliminate Child Poverty - Are you surprised?

Thu, 2007-11-29 15:16 by tim

ECONOMIC GROWTH FAILS TO ELIMINATE CHILD POVERTY
Are You Surprised? November 28/07

Once again, the report card is in, and our Great God, Moloch, aka Economic Growth, has failed to deliver on its promise of eliminating poverty. Child poverty that is. Despite a pledge made two decades ago to see that it would come to an end, Statistics Canada recently revealed that 17% of Canadian children live in impoverished conditions, along with just under 10% of adults.

Topic:

Queensland Greens candidate calls for population stability

Sun, 2007-11-18 00:16 by admin

The following was printed in the Wynnum Herald of 29 August 2007. Ther Herald used the title "Growth not Ncessary" whilst the writer submitted title was Quality not quantity" Congratulations on your lead story last week linking population growth with shortage of key resources such as water. How does an increasing population add to quality of life in terms of water shortage, traffic congestion, housing affordability, crowds and pollution? Responsible Governments at all levels need population policies to ensure growth can be accommodated sustainably. The idea that population growth is necessary for economic growth is a fallacy as research has shown that areas with population caps enjoy the highest standard of living and quality of life. Lets wake up and recognize that population growth is not something inevitable that we should celebrate. Rather, it is a root cause of many of our problems. Dr David Wyatt Greens candidate for Bonner

The Senescence of Civilization

Fri, 2007-11-16 09:08 by denis

Introduction

This essay concentrates on what the development of civilization has done to its host, the ecosystem, which is now commonly called Gaia. There is no attempt to describe how this development has been managed or why society has gone down this path. It just examines what has happened, so is indicative of the consequences. Civilization is now aging. It has irreversibly used up so much of the available natural capital that it will find it increasingly difficult to operate whilst using some of the remaining natural resources to maintain the build of civilization, adapt to climate change and remedy some of the damage done to the ecosystem by an excessive population.

The growth of civilization

The body of civilization has grown rapidly in the past century by feeding voraciously on what Gaia has had available, especially those exhaustible fossil fuels that largely provide the driving force, energy, and, unfortunately, the global warming. Capitalism was effective for building up the standard of living in some regions to a moderately affordable level but it became conducive to obesity, as it does not have the degree of self-regulating ability found in nature. Money has been the intangible governing the decisions, wise and unwise. The body of civilization has, consequently, grown too much so is running into a range of predicaments like over population and over consumption even as the available resources decline markedly.

What ‘clever’ people have managed to do

They have implemented a means of controlling the operations of society, money, that is intangible and has now been produced to such an extent that it bears little relation to what constitutes the real wealth of civilization. It is like a tumor. It enables a small minority to feed ravenously on their fellows and natural resources.

They have created the belief that economic growth is a good to be pursued regardless of the cost, the irreversible degradation of the eco system. This encourages the wasteful draw down of the remaining irreplaceable natural capital, so leading to eventual bankruptcy.

They have devised means to extract some of the limited stock of fossil fuels to provide the electricity and fuels that enabled the temporary high standard of living for many whilst irreversibly changing the climate and degrading civilization’s life support ecosystem. Vast amounts of carbon that natural processes had stored underground for eons has been irreversibly released into the atmosphere and oceans by industrial civilization in little over a century. The eco system has found it difficult to cope with this rapid adjustment to its checks and balances.

They have implemented a means of providing and supplying food to the populace that is very largely dependent on the temporary availability of the fossil fuels. Now there are too many people to be properly fed even as many elsewhere are over fed.

They have managed to do this by using the fossil fuels to synthetically produce food while degrading soil fertility and depleting groundwater.

Some of the ‘achievements’ of civilization

It has the enabled the affluent to become addicted to carmania and flymania without providing the means to maintain this insidious ravaging of the ecosystem.

It has created a glittering city, La Vegas, in the desert. It has created a horrendous water supply problem as Lake Mead drops because the eco system has been unable to cope with the blatant misuse of the limited resources, particularly water, available. Civilization’s need to use the exhaustible fossil fuels to provide the energy to drive its excesses ensures their early demise.

It built the Aswan Dam to control the flow in the Nile. Egypt is now using some of the depleted flow to irrigate market gardens created out of desert to feed its teeming urban population, much to the chagrin of other countries aiming to use more of the Nile’s water .

It installed means to extract a large amount of the flow in the Murray-Darling River system to irrigate Australia’s food bowl. This has been a faustian bargain. It has irreversibly devastated this eco system to an unsustainable extent. It has produced a dependence on local food production that cannot be continued as the climate change drought bites hard. It is also robbing Adelaide of an adequate water supply.

It has done a remarkable job of de-forestation in the Amazon Basin and various regions of Asia for the purpose of feeding the gluttons and of agro fueling carmania in the over developed countries. This activity has managed to contribute to climate change, disrupt biodiversity and devastate the agricultural practices of many indigenous communities. This irreversible process has been quite an amazing lose-lose achievement for all save those who make money from it.

What happens every day to our life support system

We wastefully use copious amounts of exhaustible natural resources, like oil, that it took natural forces eons to store underground.

We throw out tons of trash, much of which ends up in places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, to the everlasting detriment of bird and marine life and to the shame of well-off humans.

We lavishly use water in our swimming pools and on our lawns. We use large amounts of energy in our slavish homes. So we have problems supplying enough energy to desalinate water and enough water to cool our power stations as our past demeanors make these processes harder to maintain.

We cut down forests to grow plants to produce fuel for cars, ships and airliners to spew out gases that speed up climate change that affects forest growth.

What happens as we pursue growth

We foster procreation so there will be more people to consume more stuff even as the ecosystem is robbed of its ability to sustainably provide the necessities of life.

We continue to pave over arable land to provide housing for the exploding population, so reducing the ability to feed them.

We delight in the growth of eco tourism even as we destroy many of the wonders we seek.
Why do we do this?

As ever, the powerful manipulate their minions in the pursuit of illusionary economic growth whilst ignoring the fact that all are dependent on what is available from the declining ecosystem. They hide the fact this is not growth of real wealth to protect their outstanding ability to ravage while the masses, and other species, pay the price.

Many of the masses go along with this illusion because they enjoy the easy ride that they have been conditioned to believe is the right they have earned by playing their part in the ravaging. They do not know that they are contributing to the demise of their life support system. They are robbing their descendents of a fair share of the legacy provided by nature.

Scientists and technologists strive to show their cleverness by devising and implementing the means for irreversibly exploiting natural resources, often with unintended consequences and often for dubious purposes.

We have been deluded to believe we can earn the right to a pleasant retirement by rushing around in cars and planes encouraging the masses to consume stuff to build up the wealth of the wealthy while devastating the environment and robbing future generations of their rights.

We have the belief that we can enjoy a high material standard of living whilst ignoring the fact that nature provides all the material. We still believe in the free lunch. We are blind to the ecological costs .

Now the consequences

Many in society, particularly in the developed countries and in the cities will have to adapt to using less of the remaining natural bounty capital. They will have to learn some wisdom and how to be frugal . The material standard of living, particularly amongst the well off, will have to drop significantly as there will be insufficient available natural resources. This will bring home by a major depression the fallacy of a rich society. Many people will learn the hard way that money is no substitute for real natural resources. The rich, however, will be largely immune to these trepidations so will have little incentive to help mitigate the decline. But the emerging people power can sustain an Earth Revolution.

The powerful doubtless believe they will continue to have the leverage to maintain their lavish life style at the expense of the masses and the ecosystem. They will have to learn in due course and the hard way that they are also dependent on having the fundamentals like food and water as the trickle up effect hits home. And they are not immune to the health problems rampant consumerism has unwittingly created, nor to other natural disasters.

All will have to adapt to a changing climate and the associated uncertainties . Those who did not ravage the fossil fuels are likely to be the hardest hit. Businesses are endeavoring, naturally, to make a profit out of what is deemed necessary to combat it. Politicians are endeavoring, naturally, to pass the buck. The ardent consumer is endeavoring, naturally, to turn a blind eye to what is going on while the rich blithely ignore the inconsequential, to them, of nature’s rampages.

‘The Road Well Travelled - Are we already shutting our minds to the consequences of climate change? Posted 30 Oct 2007 by George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 30th October 2007. Monbiot summarizes some of the consequences of civilization’s impact on the ecosystem. He then ponders on why little is being done to mitigate the devastation. He is looking, without success, for an arising to meet the challenge of wisely using the remaining natural bounty capital. Doubtless, he would be a strong supporter of the Earth Revolution when it peers out of the chaos.
.

What can we do?

The best we can do is rise to the challenge of providing means of more wisely use the remaining natural bounty to support the operation of a powering down society while remedying some of the damage already irreversibly done to the ecosystem. We cannot turn back the clock! We, and our ancestors, will have to live with what went wrong due to our lack of understanding of the Dependence on Nature Law. We had the silly belief that the intangible, money, could substitute for the reality of what only nature can provide.

Denis Frith
Melbourne
Australia

[email protected]

http://users.bigpond.net.au/jaymz/download/Gaia_and_Us-Denis_Frith-jun07.doc (Microsoft Word Document)

‘The Usufruct Delusion’

‘The Dependence on Nature Law’

How will Australians be coping in five years time

Wed, 2007-11-07 10:07 by denis

I decided it may well help to get the coming situation into perspective to speculate on what will happen here in Oz in a hypothetical, optimistic behavioral scenario. So I am looking at what may be the situation in say five years time assuming a number of premises, namely: 1 There is not a major war as this could make nonsense of the speculation 2 The vulnerable American financial market does not crash so rapidly that the resulting global Greater Depression makes nonsense of the speculation. 3 There is no major global reduction in the rate of GHG emissions because of the continuing emphasis on economic growth in China, India and Brazil, the intransigence of the US and the muted response of the EU. This means that the level of GHG will continue to climb at a rapid rate. Policies adopted in Oz with respect to GHG emissions will have no impact on climate change. 4 Federal, state and community governance responds to the developing scenario as best they are able in a sound fashion, stimulated by the attitudes and suggestions of many community groups like ROEZ. Remember, this is an optimistic speculation with no pretence of being realistic! 5 Taxation is varied to make the essentials like food, water, sanitation, housing, education and care affordable to the poorer in the community while providing the necessary money for infrastructure development and maintenance and some environmental remedial action. This would mean that the well off would have their ability to consume stuff reduced. 6 There is growing recognition that the first priority should be to try to maintain a sound fundamental structure for the operation of society. This includes fostering the skills in farming, sound resource utilization, nursing, teaching, policing and caring. There is a consequent trend away from advertising, marketing, development and real estate. There is a growing demand for adult education of many of the past, useful skills without dependence on diminishing resources. 7 the growing appreciation of the importance of sound water supply and treatment requirements for the cities and for the rural areas is leading to appreciable debate but little action, largely because of the interdependence of water supply and energy availability, compounded by the claims that GHG emissions should be reduced. 8 There is emerging widespread appreciation of the problems that will develop due to the oil supply limitations causing an ever-increasing cost of transportation fuels. 9 Measures are put into place to encourage changing from agricultural crops and methods that are inappropriate because of their heavy water usage or damage to the environment. This trend is seen to be appropriate due to climate change and the declining export market for grains. 10 There is growing recognition that Australia’s sustainable population is limited by our paucity of the crucial natural resources, fertile soil and useable water. There is the realization the natural population growth increases the ecological debt so is to be discouraged as we have a moral obligation for some immigration due to the global over population problem. Taxation is used to discourage large families. 11 The growth of mining of our mineral wealth to obtain money by exporting is seen to be against the long-term good of the community. The mining giants show some overt signs of responsibility to the community while they hide the declining ability to ectract the lower grade ores. 12 The real cost of owning and operating cars has had a major impact in both the cities and the rural areas, particularly amongst the less well off. The rising cost of fuels has encouraged the trend to smaller and fewer cars. Growing transportation costs have had a significant influence on the standard of living of all except the well off. It has had the beneficial effect of fostering bike riding. 13 The push for ‘renewal’ energy measures has grown amid misinformation and disinformation about the need and the capability but this has not matched the growth in the requirement for electricity despite some movements towards more efficient use in homes and industry. 14 The failure of many investment funds has decimated the superannuation of many, so increasing the load on social benefits as well as fostering the decline in social morale. 15 The continuing recession has reduced the ability of many people to partake of international tourist trips. This has resulted in only a limited boost to local tourism because of the recession. 16 This, together with the trend for business people to reduce overseas trips because of the increasing security measures and pressures to reduce GHG emissions has had a major impact on the airline and airport businesses. 17 De-urbanization is another growing trend due to the increasing accent on the need to sustain food production and the impracticalities of living in the outer city suburbs. 18 Some businesses focusing on energy efficient houses, the manufacture of simple, durable tools and other measures to manage the new realism are booming. These changes in attitudes and methods are expected to foster society adjusting to the reality of having to live with what is available from the ecosystem. However, these adjustments cannot occur over night. It is quite likely that: 1 There is difficulty in adapting to climate change particularly with respect to food production and water supply due to the intrinsic uncertainties as well as embedded conditioning. There is widespread community resentment that Australia, with other countries, is suffering as the consequence of the misjudgment in the large industrial nations. There is little recognition that we are, in principle, just as blameworthy. Many are upset that they have modified their energy usage at the suggestion of governance for no useful purpose. The appreciable uncertainty about how climate change will affect Australia is clearly having a major impact on governance and business. 2 The right to have a large family is a very controversial subject although there is growing acceptance of the view that Earth is not coping with the current population level and a decline is inevitable. The developed countries are trying to come to terms with their declining birth rate coupled with the needs of their aging population. Governance in Australia still has to allow for an increasing population, particularly in regional cities. 3 Many in the community, especially business people, find it difficult to accept a lowering standard of living is becoming the norm. They still have the belief that technology will provide solutions to the depletion problems and that market forces will correct the emerging problems. This misperception amongst the powerful is still being fostered by unsound claims for proposed substitution technologies. 4 There is growing acceptance amongst some of the young that there is a major challenge to make the best possible use of what is still available from the ecosystem but there is still widespread resentment that their forebears have wasted so much. The inability to realize on their plans for overseas travel does not help. 5 Community confidence in governance is clearly declining. Questions are being asked about why Peak Oil was not recognized by the ‘authorities’ at the time so that some appropriate remedial measures put in place. The continuance of building more freeways is now seen as sheer stupidity by those supposed to know better. 6 The car revolution has caused much angst with the beneficial effects being largely forgotten in the perceived loss of ‘freedom’. The reduced congestion in the cities is accepted but governments are blamed for building freeways rather than public transport. 7 The necessary increased dependence on public transport, particularly in the cities, has not been matched by implementation of improved capability, so adding to community worries and criticism of lack of foresight by governance. 8 The increased popularity of using bikes has not been matched by the modification of roads and the provision of bike trails. 9 Competition in the airline business grows bitterly as the ordered A380s and Dreamliners come along as passenger levels fall drastically. Cheap fares are a boon to those who can still afford it but many in the industry are being put off with a loss of entitlements as numerous airlines go bankrupt. 10 ‘Globalization’ has become a dirty word in business. Localization is emerging in an endeavor to reduce fuel costs. The proposal to deepen Port Phillip Bay has been dumped; to the delight of the environmentalists and also businesses that have had to re-align their business plans to cope with the emerging reality that importing is becoming too costly. There is widespread resentment in Tasmania that the pulp mill built at Bell Bay has caused harm to environment in the Tamar while not helping the local economy because the market for pulp has collapsed. 11 Many of the well off privately welcome this trend as it means they do not have to cope with crowds and congestion in satisfying their indulgences. Nevertheless, they actively resist the usurping of their ‘rights’ to a luxuriant life-style. 12 The limited trend towards acting as communities has been more than offset by the growing sense of resentment and bewilderment amongst the working class. Civil disruption has grown, particularly in the suburbs. 13 The slowness of the education system at all levels to adapt to the changing operation of society is inhibiting adaptation by the populace at large. The universities have been loath to abandon research advancing the frontiers of knowledge for improving the understanding of fundamentals, like the maintenance of soil fertility. Improvements like home cooking, permaculture and organic farming are still having little impact because so much as to be re-learnt. 14 there is growing recognition amongst the knowledgeable that the best that can be done is to adopt measures that will mitigate the decline of many aspects of civilization. They accept that the elite will be able to pursue business as usual to the detriment of the community as a whole. The current adulation by the masses of the ’achievements’ of the rich, powerful celebrities will be replaced by abhorrence at their greedy ravaging of society and its life support system. 15 The farming communities are doing their best to adjust to the changing circumstances but the transformation is being inhibited by pragmatic and financial constraints compounded by increased uncertainty. Renewing widespread recognition by urbanites of the real worth of the farmers does help, however. Those in the cities like to be fed! 16 The attempt to remedy the dire situation in the Murray-Darling Basin has made little progress because of its impact on scarce resources, particularly the fuels used in transportation and the machines. The ecological and irrigation processes have continued to deteriorate despite some progress in the farming revolution. 17 Governments face a difficult situation due to the heavy demand on social security due to blossoming unemployment and the crash of some superannuation finds. They have to prioritize their reduced taxation income to meet these demands while implementing measures to cope with the growing environmental and urban problems. 18 Manufacturers and retailers are having difficulty in adapting to a reduced demand for throwaway stuff and an increasing demand for simple, durable tools and materials. 19 The housing market, particularly for large, energy in-efficient homes in outer suburbs, has collapsed. Developers have largely disappeared from the large cities and have adopted a more pragmatic approach in the developing regional towns. It seems to be quite clear that even with the most optimistic view of what will happen in the near future, most in Australian society will have to face up to a dire, traumatic power down at a disconcerting rate. It is to be hoped that emerging people power will rise to the challenge of easing the process as much as possible. What happens, however, will also be very dependent on overseas developments. Denis Frith

So you want to fight global warming? Wear a condom.

Fri, 2007-11-02 13:59 by tim

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.

"If we had the population level we did in the eighteenth century, it wouldn't matter what energy source we chose." James Lovelock

"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.

Topic:

African philanthropic population disasters

Wed, 2007-10-31 16:55 by James Sinnamon

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)

population

How will Oz handle the ecosystem predicaments?

Mon, 2007-10-29 21:58 by denis

I decided it may well help to get the coming situation into perspective to speculate on what will happen here in Oz in a hypothetical, optimistic behavioral scenario. So I am looking at what may be the situation in say five years time assuming a number of premises, namely: 1 There is not a major war as this could make nonsense of the speculation 2 The vulnerable American financial market does not crash so rapidly that the resulting global Greater Depression makes nonsense of the speculation. 3 There is no major global reduction in the rate of GHG emissions because of the continuing emphasis on economic growth in China, India and Brazil, the intransigence of the US and the muted response of the EU. This means that the level of GHG will continue to climb at a rapid rate. Policies adopted in Oz with respect to GHG emissions will have no impact on climate change. 4 Federal, state and community governance responds to the developing scenario as best they are able in a sound fashion, stimulated by the attitudes and suggestions of many community groups like ROEZ. Remember, this is an optimistic speculation with no pretence of being realistic! 5 Taxation is varied to make the essentials like food, water, sanitation, housing, education and care affordable to the poorer in the community while providing the necessary money for infrastructure development and maintenance and some environmental remedial action. This would mean that the well off would have their ability to consume stuff reduced. 6 There is growing recognition that the first priority should be to try to maintain a sound fundamental structure for the operation of society. This includes fostering the skills in farming, sound resource utilization, nursing, teaching, policing and caring. There is a consequent trend away from advertising, marketing, development and real estate. There is a growing demand for adult education of many of the past, useful skills without dependence on diminishing resources. 7 the growing appreciation of the importance of sound water supply and treatment requirements for the cities and for the rural areas is leading to appreciable debate but little action, largely because of the interdependence of water supply and energy availability, compounded by the claims that GHG emissions should be reduced. 8 There is emerging widespread appreciation of the problems that will develop due to the oil supply limitations causing an ever-increasing cost of transportation fuels. 9 Measures are put into place to encourage changing from agricultural crops and methods that are inappropriate because of their heavy water usage or damage to the environment. This trend is seen to be appropriate due to climate change and the declining export market for grains. 10 There is growing recognition that Australia’s sustainable population is limited by our paucity of the crucial natural resources, fertile soil and useable water. There is the realization the natural population growth increases the ecological debt so is to be discouraged as we have a moral obligation for some immigration due to the global over population problem. Taxation is used to discourage large families. 11 The growth of mining of our mineral wealth to obtain money by exporting is seen to be against the long-term good of the community. The mining giants show some overt signs of responsibility to the community while they hide the declining ability to ectract the lower grade ores. 12 The real cost of owning and operating cars has had a major impact in both the cities and the rural areas, particularly amongst the less well off. The rising cost of fuels has encouraged the trend to smaller and fewer cars. Growing transportation costs have had a significant influence on the standard of living of all except the well off. It has had the beneficial effect of fostering bike riding. 13 The push for ‘renewal’ energy measures has grown amid misinformation and disinformation about the need and the capability but this has not matched the growth in the requirement for electricity despite some movements towards more efficient use in homes and industry. 14 The failure of many investment funds has decimated the superannuation of many, so increasing the load on social benefits as well as fostering the decline in social morale. 15 The continuing recession has reduced the ability of many people to partake of international tourist trips. This has resulted in only a limited boost to local tourism because of the recession. 16 This, together with the trend for business people to reduce overseas trips because of the increasing security measures and pressures to reduce GHG emissions has had a major impact on the airline and airport businesses. 17 De-urbanization is another growing trend due to the increasing accent on the need to sustain food production and the impracticalities of living in the outer city suburbs. 18 Some businesses focusing on energy efficient houses, the manufacture of simple, durable tools and other measures to manage the new realism are booming. These changes in attitudes and methods are expected to foster society adjusting to the reality of having to live with what is available from the ecosystem. However, these adjustments cannot occur over night. It is quite likely that: 1 There is difficulty in adapting to climate change particularly with respect to food production and water supply due to the intrinsic uncertainties as well as embedded conditioning. There is widespread community resentment that Australia, with other countries, is suffering as the consequence of the misjudgment in the large industrial nations. There is little recognition that we are, in principle, just as blameworthy. Many are upset that they have modified their energy usage at the suggestion of governance for no useful purpose. The appreciable uncertainty about how climate change will affect Australia is clearly having a major impact on governance and business. 2 The right to have a large family is a very controversial subject although there is growing acceptance of the view that Earth is not coping with the current population level and a decline is inevitable. The developed countries are trying to come to terms with their declining birth rate coupled with the needs of their aging population. Governance in Australia still has to allow for an increasing population, particularly in regional cities. 3 Many in the community, especially business people, find it difficult to accept a lowering standard of living is becoming the norm. They still have the belief that technology will provide solutions to the depletion problems and that market forces will correct the emerging problems. This misperception amongst the powerful is still being fostered by unsound claims for proposed substitution technologies. 4 There is growing acceptance amongst some of the young that there is a major challenge to make the best possible use of what is still available from the ecosystem but there is still widespread resentment that their forebears have wasted so much. The inability to realize on their plans for overseas travel does not help. 5 Community confidence in governance is clearly declining. Questions are being asked about why Peak Oil was not recognized by the ‘authorities’ at the time so that some appropriate remedial measures put in place. The continuance of building more freeways is now seen as sheer stupidity by those supposed to know better. 6 The car revolution has caused much angst with the beneficial effects being largely forgotten in the perceived loss of ‘freedom’. The reduced congestion in the cities is accepted but governments are blamed for building freeways rather than public transport. 7 The necessary increased dependence on public transport, particularly in the cities, has not been matched by implementation of improved capability, so adding to community worries and criticism of lack of foresight by governance. 8 The increased popularity of using bikes has not been matched by the modification of roads and the provision of bike trails. 9 Competition in the airline business grows bitterly as the ordered A380s and Dreamliners come along as passenger levels fall drastically. Cheap fares are a boon to those who can still afford it but many in the industry are being put off with a loss of entitlements as numerous airlines go bankrupt. 10 ‘Globalization’ has become a dirty word in business. Localization is emerging in an endeavor to reduce fuel costs. The proposal to deepen Port Phillip Bay has been dumped; to the delight of the environmentalists and also businesses that have had to re-align their business plans to cope with the emerging reality that importing is becoming too costly. There is widespread resentment in Tasmania that the pulp mill built at Bell Bay has caused harm to environment in the Tamar while not helping the local economy because the market for pulp has collapsed. 11 Many of the well off privately welcome this trend as it means they do not have to cope with crowds and congestion in satisfying their indulgences. Nevertheless, they actively resist the usurping of their ‘rights’ to a luxuriant life-style. 12 The limited trend towards acting as communities has been more than offset by the growing sense of resentment and bewilderment amongst the working class. Civil disruption has grown, particularly in the suburbs. 13 The slowness of the education system at all levels to adapt to the changing operation of society is inhibiting adaptation by the populace at large. The universities have been loath to abandon research advancing the frontiers of knowledge for improving the understanding of fundamentals, like the maintenance of soil fertility. Improvements like home cooking, permaculture and organic farming are still having little impact because so much as to be re-learnt. 14 there is growing recognition amongst the knowledgeable that the best that can be done is to adopt measures that will mitigate the decline of many aspects of civilization. They accept that the elite will be able to pursue business as usual to the detriment of the community as a whole. The current adulation by the masses of the ’achievements’ of the rich, powerful celebrities will be replaced by abhorrence at their greedy ravaging of society and its life support system. 15 The farming communities are doing their best to adjust to the changing circumstances but the transformation is being inhibited by pragmatic and financial constraints compounded by increased uncertainty. Renewing widespread recognition by urbanites of the real worth of the farmers does help, however. Those in the cities like to be fed! 16 The attempt to remedy the dire situation in the Murray-Darling Basin has made little progress because of its impact on scarce resources, particularly the fuels used in transportation and the machines. The ecological and irrigation processes have continued to deteriorate despite some progress in the farming revolution. 17 Governments face a difficult situation due to the heavy demand on social security due to blossoming unemployment and the crash of some superannuation finds. They have to prioritize their reduced taxation income to meet these demands while implementing measures to cope with the growing environmental and urban problems. 18 Manufacturers and retailers are having difficulty in adapting to a reduced demand for throwaway stuff and an increasing demand for simple, durable tools and materials. 19 The housing market, particularly for large, energy in-efficient homes in outer suburbs, has collapsed. Developers have largely disappeared from the large cities and have adopted a more pragmatic approach in the developing regional towns. It seems to be quite clear that even with the most optimistic view of what will happen in the near future, most in Australian society will have to face up to a dire, traumatic power down at a disconcerting rate. It is to be hoped that emerging people power will rise to the challenge of easing the process as much as possible. What happens, however, will also be very dependent on overseas developments. Denis Frith

Mayor urges protest against population growth at election

Fri, 2007-10-26 12:16 by admin

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.

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

Fri, 2007-10-26 11:41 by tim

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 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 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

Topic:

Closing our borders can't mean turning our backs

Thu, 2007-10-25 14:10 by tim

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.

Topic:

Illegal aliens burn precious forest while Sierra Club is mum

Mon, 2007-10-15 14:04 by tim

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC

Topic:

Bush's legacy

Mon, 2007-10-15 13:54 by tim

Here are some startling immigration numbers from the US since George Bush took office, according to Edwin S. Rubenstein of www.vdare.com The illegal alien population grew by 5.3 million or 79% The legal immigrant population grew by 20% The proportion of foreign-born grew from 10.9% to 12.4% of the total population Well over half of new Jobs under Bush went to immigrants The proportion of total employment accounted for by immigrants went from 12.5% to 15.4% Deporting illegal aliens would effectively cut taxes by $60 billion or more than $5000 for every American citizen Immigration has reduced the average wage of native born high school drop-outs by 7.4% according to Harvard economist George Borjas. Immigrant workers reduce native wages by an average of 5.4% (Borjas) According to official estimates, illegal aliens account for about 4% of the US population. But 27% of all prisoners in Federal Bureau of Prison facilities are criminal aliens, two thirds of these Mexican. Notice the pace and momentum of these changes, all of which occurred in just 6 years. A government friendly to mass immigration and oblivious to the plague of illegal immigration can usher in a massive make-over to a society over-night. In a matter of four short years, the Irish government permitted the foreign-born content of its workfoce to grow from 6% to 10%. Before the public could catch its breath, Irish society had been transformed forever---without their consent. And now for some bad news. The number of illegal aliens in the United States maybe more than twice the official 12 million figure. It maybe 25 or even 38 million.

Topic:

Growth is OK if it is shared?

Fri, 2007-10-12 14:36 by tim

Premier Lorne Calvert, New Democratic Party (NDP) Premier of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, in calling an election for November 7, declared that growth was a good thing, so long as it was "shared". This fascinating concept is meant to stake out a distinctive position for social democrats on the ideological spectrum. Whereas the Saskatchewan Party and the Liberals---the "right"---follow the old formula that growth of any kind is to be promoted because of an alleged "trickle-down"effect whereby even the poorest citizens feel its benefits, the New Democrats are so much more enlightened. While their opponents are campaigning from a 1925 policy book, the NDP is way ahead of them waving their 1961 ideas. Some choice. 1925 or 1961, as environmental Armageddon looms on the horizon. Calvert's thesis evokes interesting logic. His manifesto would read: It's OK to rob a bank so long as the proceeds of the robbery are shared among the fashionably oppressed constituency of the NDP. The 'working people' (Businessmen don't work). First Nations. The handicapped. Seniors. Single Moms. Transexual Dwarfs, whatever. It's OK to clear-cut old growth forests if timber revenues are equitably shared. It's OK to develop farmland if the sale of homes in new subdivisions reaps sales tax revenues for the provincial treasury and they are equitably shared. It's OK to generate radioactive waste if the nuclear plant provides power for low-income people. It's OK to wipe out an endangered species if the housing built on its habitat provides affordable options for low-income people. Growth is OK so long as it is shared. And if you still feel uneasy about it, go to the NDP website for Saskatchewan or Manitoba , and you will find that growth becomes "sustainable". Sustainable growth? Virgin birth! Whether these snake oil salesmen represent the left or the right, or the environmental movement, they can't make growth palatable to discerning taste by sugar-coating it with these oxymoronic neologisms that attempt to cloak the fact that economic expansion in a finite environment cannot be sustained. Calling it "shared", "sustainable", "managed" or "smart" will not rescue it from this ironclad law. Get real Calvert. Tim Murray, Quadra Island, BC Canada V0P 1N0

Topic:

Greenpeace Diesendorf: Carbon emissions reflect population numbers - Reduce immigration

Thu, 2007-10-11 21:02 by Sheila Newman

see: http://www.greenpeace.org.au/blog/energy/?p=90 and http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/australia/resources/reports/climat... for the full report. 3.2.4 Reducing business and professional immigration Australia's population is expected to grow from its 2001 level of 19.4 million to 23.3 million by 2020. This represents a population growth of 20 per cent over this period (2001-2020). The average growth rate for total emissions is higher, about 1.3 per cent per annum. Population growth is a signifi cant driver of residential emissions growth, for both stationary energy and transport. Regardless of their country of origin, immigrants tend to adopt Australia's energy-intensive lifestyle on arrival. Since Australia has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world, immigrants will on average tend to increase their emissions. Thus this report proposes a measure to reduce business and professional immigration by 50 per cent, without reducing refugee and humanitarian immigration. See Appendix A for details on assumptions and calculations. Appendix A: Details of some calculations A.1 Population growth & emissions The following is a rough estimate of the impact on 2020 greenhouse gas emissions of changing the immigration rate. The calculation has a number of assumptions (e.g. that population and emissions grow exponentially). Population component: In 2005-06, permanent immigration into Australia was 180,000, comprising the following categories: * Family 46,000 * Skill (business and professional) 91,500, * Humanitarian 17,000, * Non-migration (mostly New Zealanders) 25,000 and Special 310 (DIMA 2006). Permanent departure was 68,000. Therefore, net permanent addition from migration was 112,000, or about 0.54% per annum. Australia's overall population growth rate is 0.95% per annum. By halving the Skill (business and professional) category of immigration, population growth would be reduced to (0.95 - 0.22)% = 0.73%. Then total population growth 2008-2020 would be about 10 per cent. Thus the projected population in 2020 is reduced from 23.3M to 22.8M; ? = 0.5M (reduction). Emissions component: The calculation now focuses on emissions from the Energy category (excluding fugitive emissions), which, to a good approximation, are directly proportional to Australia's population. The AGO's projected growth in emissions from stationary energy and transport over 2004-2020 is about 29.3% (Table 1), corresponding to an annual growth rate of 1.62%. Assume that emissions are proportional to population (as well as to "affl uence" and "technology"). Then rate of emissions growth from Energy (excluding fugitive emissions) after cutting Skill migration, equals (1.62 - 0.22)% p.a. = 1.4% p.a., giving a growth factor over 2004-2020 of 24.9% instead of AGO's BAU "with measures" growth rate of 29.3%. BAU emissions in 2020 from Energy (excluding fugitive), with reduced Skill immigration, become 444.6 Mt instead of AGO's 460.5 Mt, ? = 16 Mt (reduction). However, about one-quarter of these emissions would be for export from manufacturing and mining; these emissions are largely unaffected by population, and so the emissions savings are deemed to be reduced to 12 Mt. Conversely, parts of emissions from Agriculture, Fugitive, Land Use and Waste can be attributed to domestic use and hence Australia's population. However, this report has already pointed out that AGO's projected emissions from these categories could be slashed by other actions. Provided these suggestions are implemented, the additional benefi ts of immigration reduction on emissions from these categories will be small and are therefore ignored here.

Queensland Min for Sustainability - prepare for peak oil - demographic, travel, work and living

Thu, 2007-10-11 20:30 by Sheila Newman

Oil Vulnerability Task Force Hon. AI McNAMARA (Hervey Bay-ALP) (Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation) (10.26 am): Yesterday the member for Burdekin asked me for a copy of the report on Queensland's vulnerability to rising oil prices that I was involved in preparing before becoming a minister. I was happy to provide her with a copy this morning, and I now table a copy for the benefit of honourable members. Tabled paper: Report, dated 5 April 2007, by the Queensland Oil Vulnerability Taskforce titled 'Queensland's Vulnerability to Rising Oil Prices'. It will be available on my departmental web site later today now that some of the formatting glitches have been ironed out. I chaired the task force as the member for Hervey Bay, along with the assistance of the member for Ipswich, which I acknowledge. I am now in the unique position, as the Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation, of having to coordinate a whole-of-government response to my own report. Obviously, as one of the authors of the report, I have some ideas on what needs to be done based on what I found in the process of preparing the report. Indeed, the report does contains a range of recommendations which members can read for themselves. However, the most important thing I would emphasise is that, while further analysis needs to be done, this issue is both real and imminent. Peak oil is the point at which maximum world oil production is reached. If nothing changes in our energy mix and demand patterns after that point, we can expect to encounter significant liquid fuel price increases and price increases in those things that are made from oil such as petrol and plastics, and those things that rely on oil such as agriculture and transport. The task force sought to present the most likely time frame for peak oil, to assess its impact on the mining, transport and primary industry sectors and then recommend options to minimise the impact on Queensland. The report concludes that the overwhelming evidence is that world oil production will peak within the next 10 years. The recommendations are preliminary and more detailed analysis, including detailed modelling of the downstream impacts and substitution effects of the various proven and evolving alternative energy technologies, will be a necessary next step. The future availability of fossil fuel and alternative energy supplies is one of the main sustainability issues facing society today. The report recommends that a prudent risk mitigation approach requires a mix of initiatives such as reduction in consumption of liquid fossil fuels; encouraging the development and use of alternative fuels, technologies and strategies; and preparation for demographic and regional changes as Queenslanders change travel, work and living habits in response to rising fuel prices. I commend the report to the House.

Do Greens believe that sufficient water can be found for 1.1 million more South East Queenslanders without the Traveston Dam?

Wed, 2007-10-10 14:13 by James Sinnamon

A Media Release from the Queensland Greens is reproduced below. Whilst it commendably opposes the building of the ecologically and socially destructive Traveston dam, it astonishingly omits to address Queensland's enforced population growth, which is the principle driver of South East Queensland's water crisis. Given that the Queensland Labor Government, at the behest of the developers and land speculators upon which it depends for political donations, intends to increase the population of South East Queensland alone by 1.1 million by the year 2026, it is difficult to understand how the Greens can maintain that it is possible to find sufficient water for the additional population without building dams such as 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.

For more information contact:
Larissa Waters www.larissawaters.net
0421 844 280
larissa.waters|AT|qld.greens.org.au

Topic:

New technology won't save us from the population bomb

Sat, 2007-10-06 19:36 by tim

Researcher Brishen Hoff of Massey, Ontario made some interesting calculations. He found that the benefits of much touted 900 acre solar panel "farm" planned near Sarnia, Ontario would be wiped out by the normal flow of immigrants admitted to Canada in just 22 days. Hoff laid out his case this way: "Let's assume that its purpose is to serve domestic Ontario needs, to relieve the pressure on Ontario's finite electricity-generating capacity, and be part of a plan to replace current environmentally-unfriendly power generation." "The solar farm would generate 40 megawatts, enough electricity to power 6,000 homes. As of 2002, there were about 2.6 people per household in Canada. That means that those 6,000 homes shelter roughly 15.600 people. If Canada takes 262,000 immigrants per year (as it did in 2006), it takes 717 immigrants per day. Within about 22 days of immigration, it has taken close to 15,600 new people. In that time, the benefits of the solar power marvel near Sarnia are used up." "In other words," Hoff concludes, "in less than one month of business-as-usual immigration, if we are to satisfy the assumptions we have made, Canada will need another solar farm or some other energy source to supply the needs of the other newly-arrived." It should be noted that immigration drove 74% of Canada's population growth over the last census period. But the problem doesn't end there. The 15,600 immigrants who are added in those 22 days will have an additional negative environmental impact, which Hoff lists in point form:

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.

Hoff's analysis seems to validate Kenneth Boulding's Second Theorem: ".technical improvement will enable population to grow, and soon enable more people to live in misery than before." Hoff observes fatalistically, "Whatever energy humans have been able to exploit, has been accompanied by growth in their population. Unfortunately, this only makes them more dependent on new energy sources. If humans did stumble upon a new source of energy more abundant than oil, it is probable that there would be a corresponding population explosion that would rapidly wipe out the benefits of the new energy source." Studies done in other countries have made similar correlations between immigrant-driven population growth and increased energy use and pollution. Professor Mark Diesendorff of the University of New South Wales warned that Australia would not be able to reduce its GHG emissions if it continued its mass immigration policies. It is no coincidence that while Australia's population has grown 31% since 1990 its GHG emissions have increased 30%. Immigration currently accounts for 54% of the country's growth, or one net immigrant every 3 minutes and 15 seconds. Leon Kolankiewicz of Numbers USA demonstrated that since 1970, 88% of America's increase in energy use was due to an increase in population, mostly driven by immigration. Only 12% was attributable to an increase in per capita energy consumption. In other words, it's not so much that people are driving SUVs rather than fuel efficient cars. It is just that there are 3 million more drivers on the road out there. In the UK, government statisticians reveal that of the 11 million new houses that will need to be built before 2050---much of it on formerly sancrosanct Greenbelt land---59% will be built to accommodate Britain's growing population, nearly 70% of that driven by immigration. More immigrants means more people, more houses, more energy consumption, more emissions in one form or another. Since the publication of Dr. William Rees watershed book, "Our Ecological Footprint", the Green mantra has been to reduce our individual footprint. But as these studies show, it is the sum total of individual footprints that matter. Not just the per capitas. The number of per capitas. Ultimately, it's a numbers game. As always, Garrett Hardin said it best. "The population problem has no technical solution." Tim Murray Quadra Island, BC October 5/07

Topic:

Topic:

Cate Molloy's Letter to The Australian

What You can do

Footnotes

Topic:

Topic:

Topic:

Topic:

Topic:

Topic:

Topic:

Introduction

The growth of civilization

What ‘clever’ people have managed to do

Some of the ‘achievements’ of civilization

What happens every day to our life support system

What happens as we pursue growth

Now the consequences

What can we do?

Topic:

Peace in our time, Habitat forever?

Topic:

Topic:

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

Topic:

Topic:

Topic:

Conservation centre poor substitute for Mary River

Queensland Greens Media Release - 10 October 2007

Topic:

Topic:

Pages

Tags in Topic

Help save injured wildlife

Recent comments