pseudo-environmentalism

Vancouver’s young generation embraces higher density: “Micro suites” planned for Vancouver-area development.
Vancouver’s young generation embraces higher density.
News item: “Micro suites” planned for Vancouver-area development
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/canada-smallest-condominium-micro-suites-
proposed-vancouver-area-192915709.html

Janet and Bob (above) of Vancouver, BC--- a jurisdiction heralded around the world as “the model city” by planners and politicians from afar who drop in for two day visit of wining , dining and smoozing ---- represent the new generation of Canadians with a “green” vision. The same vision as their “green” Mayor Gregor Robertson. It is the vision of a sustainable future where citizens willingly choose to live more simply so that more and more billions of people can simply live. That means living “smaller” (and smaller and smaller and smaller). For many, like Janet and Bob who used to live as man and wife, it means living apart in separate cardboard 36 cubic foot boxes in order to save the planet and sustain Vancouver’s reputation as a “welcoming” city by making room for the unending parade of humanity wishing to make it their home.

At first, their move was a challenge, seeing that a 36 cubic foot box in Vancouver now sells for
$300,000, and making the payments is tough enough when a couple can share the cost, but since co-habitation is now environmentally irresponsible, it is even tougher for singles. But thanks to three
decades of ideological programming by the CBC , the universities and the media, it was a sacrifice that Canadians like Janet and Bob are eager to make. So they decided to “Take one for the Green Gipper” and separate.

At first they thought that eschewing meat, giving up their car, turning off the air conditioner and
thermostat, stringing a clothes line from their balcony on the 22nd floor, and recycling would suffice to prove that they were doing their bit. But then they succumbed to Green Party logic, and were made to realize that they were being selfish for taking up a whole 300 square feet in their micro suite while tens of millions of less fortunate people were queued up in Canadian consulates across the developing world for the opportunity to live in Vancouver which our politicians believe to be their divine right. So Janet and Bob traded their microsuite for a microbox.

In other words, as fully paid up Greens, they decided to walk the talk and follow Ghandi’s injunction to “be the person you want the world to be”, that is a sardine in a sardine can packed with zillions of other sardines.

Cynics might suggest that this is all a show. That it is only a matter of time that this young couple, or former couple, will get restless and decide to “move up”, or rather “back” to that spacious micro condo they used to call home. After all, they will probably want a family, and their kids can use some of that 300 square feet to run and play. Otherwise they would have to bused out of the metro area to a Provincial Park 50 miles away. Of course many Vancouverites—even those who struggle to make ends meet by working two jobs---cannot hope to financially qualify for a 36 cubic foot box these days. No worries, thanks to the initiative of Mayor Robertson’s ‘Vision’ team, and the promises of the upcoming NDP government-in-waiting in Victoria, the city is now offering social housing units like the one below:

Some discreet voices have called this trend toward densification “The Labour of Sisyphus” . A futile,
never-ending quest to meet perennial housing shortages. They have suggested that Vancouver does not have a housing supply problem, but a housing demand problem. They have argued that instead of trying to accommodate an infinite number of would-be residents, Vancouver should simply cap their
population, the same way a hotel or a theatre or a restaurant or a Cruise Liner would if they were full. And that the federal government, for its part, should adopt a Population Plan for the country as a whole, aimed at setting a population target that would allow Canada to recuperate from a two decade demographic onslaught that has made it the fastest growing nation in the G8 group.

Unfortunately, in order to consider this solution, politicians and planners and media pundits would have to think “outside the box”. Or at least think.

Tim Murray
October 17, 2012

The late Michael Crichton was partially right. The environmental movement in an increasingly secular society has assumed the mantle of Christianity. This is most particularly true, I would submit, in its obsession with motivations and intentions, as if nature gave a damn what we "intended". Too often those in the "environment justice" coalition choose politically correct pursuits and ignore their ecologically incorrect consequences.

"Noble intentions are a poor excuse for stupid actions. Man is the only species that calls some suicidal actions 'noble' ".
Garrett Hardin

Noble intention: Help the starving masses of Haiti, Central Africa, Afghanistan, Philippines, etc.
Stupid action: Sending them aid without making it conditional on birth control, thereby doubling their misery in a generation.

Noble intention: Encourage people to cut their personal waste and consumption.
Stupid action: Oppose effective measures to reduce the number of people who are doing the wasting and consuming.

Noble intention: To concentrate on ending income and wealth disparities within nations and between hemispheres.
Stupid action: To allow that focus to be exclusive of concerns about the total human footprint, which is largely unaffected by wealth redistribution. The equal distribution of rations on an overloaded lifeboat facing a Perfect Storm far off shore will not suffice to save it.

Noble intention: To fight racial injustice.
Stupid action: To assuage white guilt by assigning all responsibility for overshoot to the rich "North" and relieving the global poor of any responsibility for their irresponsible fecundity and its resultant environmental degradation.

Noble intention: To fight 'Islamophobia' and ensure that all Muslims are not categorized and treated as 'terrorists'.
Stupid action: To frame concerns about the impact of Islam on women's rights, democracy and most importantly, fertility rates, as "Islamophobic" and off the table.

Noble intention: Not to be sidetracked from the main task of reducing global population by religious or ethnic mud-slinging.
Stupid action: To let the Catholic Church in particular, and other denominations in general, off the hook for their criminal responsibility in pushing humanity to the brink of ecocide by fighting against birth control measures. Culture matters. And harmful cultural practices must be mercilessly attacked---whomever practices them.

Noble intention: To keep people focused on issues, not personalities or blame.
Stupid action: To let environmental organizations off the hook for their collusion with corporate donors who have paid them "not to understand" the role of immigration-driven population growth in environmental degradation. Ignorance is one thing, corruption is another. Nor is it smart or ethical to not to call green NGOs and fem-green left out for their despicable race-baiting, McCarthyist tactics in smearing and isolating those who try to put the "P" back into the IPAT equation where it belongs. Their tactics must not be rewarded with silence. Bullies thrive on passive non-reactions. I am from the east end of town. If Sierrans and Hartmanites push me, I push back. Only twice as hard.

Noble intention: To serve the interests of all humanity.
Stupid action: To frame the effort to restrict migration, control borders, and prevent national population overshoot as "parochial", "trivial", "selfish", "nativist", "xenophobic" or "racist" when open borders are a proven fertility stimulant to nations who treat North America, Australia and Western Europe as a safety valve for their burgeoning population and as a source of remittances. It is also supremely stupid to ignore the fact that migrants to North America---a major resource glutton----on average quadruple their GHG emissions upon arrival and similarly multiply their consumption to the cost of the whole world.

Noble intention: To worry about climate change.
Stupid action: To make climate change such a fixation that it hogs the stage so that more imminent catastrophes (overpopulation, Peak Oil, Peal Soil, water shortage, biodiversity collapse, atomic/chemical or biological war and terrorism) do not get the attention that they need. Systems collapse is consequence of all these disasters acting upon each other, but why nominate climate change as the only meaningful metric of overshoot when other unfolding disasters are poised to kill us first?

Noble intention: Foster women's rights.
Stupid action: Support only 'voluntary' family planning even though that alone won't get us to sustainability, and even though nothing is more coercive of women's rights than making women live in an overpopulated environment. That is, an environment of inadequate housing, inadequate water, inadequate food and nutrition, poor air quality, poor educational opportunities, and more violence. No Chinese Communist Party apparatchik could be as tough on procreative "rights" as the environment would be on us if there had been an extra 400 million Chinese people born because the Chinese government lacked the resolution to enforce a One-Child-Per-Family law. That's 1.8 billion metric tonnes of GHG emissions per year not added to the global atmosphere and billions of barrels of oil and tonnes of coal not consumed thanks to the OCPF law. Still wish that the Chinese government had not infringed on women's 'rights'? Would you prefer extinction to a curb on procreative rights? Species suicide is noble? And you call your position "ethical" while my prescriptions are "monstrous", "inhumane", "intrusive", "undemocratic" and "disrespectful of women's rights"?

Noble intention: To tell me how to write. To tell me to “tone it down a little”, not to be so “abrasive” or "caustic", to walk on egg shells and tip-toe around people’s sensibilities so that my message will be received by a wider readership.
Stupid action: To promote the idea there is a “one-size-fits-all” writing style that appeals to everyone. Wrong. It takes a variety of approaches to reach different people with the same message. One writing style may not be to your taste, but it may well be what grabs the attention of others. Instead of trying to drive one style off the stage, concentrate on getting the message out in a different way--- your way. There is room for all styles and approaches, and many are complementary. If you don’t like playing the “Bad Cop”, then by all means, be the “Good Cop”----but don’t pretend that we don’t need bad cops. There is a time and a season for being undiplomatic. Especially when the stakes are so high and danger so imminent.

Tim Murray
June 26, 2011

The latest figures on population growth in Canada from Statistics Canada once more underscore the fraud and futility of the strategies against climate change recommended by mainstream environmental organizations and the corporations who support them financially. http://www.ottawasun.com/news/canada/2010/06/28/14542971.html

In the first three months of 2010, Canada grew by .26%, adding 88,449 consumers to its population, now exceeding the 34 million mark. If that growth rate persists, Canada will be home to some 353,788 more consumers at year’s end than it had the year before. This is only slightly less than the average 367,200 who were added each year between 2001 and 2006 when the country grew by 5.4% or 1.08% per annum. By the same measure, British Columbia, which grew by .37% from January to April this year, is on pace to add 66,760 people to its population, which represents some 13% of Canada’s. This will translate into about 24,000 extra households and 43,000 extra cars. Good news for the home building industry, the developers, the banks and the auto industry----but bad news for the environment.

So much for the much vaunted carbon tax that the British Columbia Campbell Liberals introduced two years ago, with applause from Tzeporah Berman and the environmental movement. According to the BC government website, that tax would reduce green house gas emissions equivalent to taking 787,000 cars off the road by 2020. But as mathematician Rick Shea observed at the time, our provincial population growth rate, which is exponential, would add 520,000 cars to the road by that time, and by 2026, wipe out all gains made by this tax. http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_printable&PAGE_id=3396&lay_quiet=1

Similar calculations could apply to the nation as a whole. The CBC and its trendy mouthpiece, George Strombopolous, boasted last year that its “Million Acts of Green” campaign to encourage “green” living by highlighting and celebrating the initiatives of ordinary Canadians succeeded in reducing carbon emissions equivalent to taking 10,000 cars off the road. But at least 350,000 people who jumped on board HMCS Ecological Titanic that year spurred the construction of 140,000 more housing units and the purchase of 252,000 automobiles. On average, each Canadian is emitting more than 20 metric tonnes of GHG annually, so the extra passengers we pick up burden the atmosphere by over 7 million metric tonnes of GHG each year. In the face of this growth, technological efficiencies are also of fleeting value. Analyst Brishen Hoff calculated that the energy supplied by the proposed wind farm in Sarnia, Ontario would be negated by just 22 days of “business-as-usual” immigration. http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_printable&PAGE_id=1976&lay_quiet=1

Oddly though, the “green living” evangelists make no mention of population growth and its impact on GHG emissions in Canada. Collectively, the BC Sierra Club, the David Suzuki Foundation and prominent environmentalist Guy Dauncey have offered some 121 “solutions” to climate change, but not one of them advises readers to practice birth control. Instead, we are exhorted to “change our behaviours”, but not our behaviour in the bedroom. And of course, the ugly “I” word----immigration---is left out of the discussion. That of course, is the most conspicuous omission of all. The environmental NGOs never tire of telling us that climate change is the result of human activity, but they leave the distinct impression that the number of humans has nothing to do with the scale of this human activity. David Suzuki, for one, feels qualified to lecture us about environmental responsibility despite having sired five carbon footprints from two marriages. In his “Penguin” commercial for Ontario power users, he told Ontarians that if they turned down their air conditioners by one degree, enough energy would be freed up to power another 36,000 homes. What he did not say, however, is that each annual crop of immigrants to that province requires the construction of 75,000 homes. Every Canadian with an air conditioner would have to turn it down by 3.5 degrees C just to offset the consumption of the new energy users who emigrated to Canada. Maybe Suzuki’s next energy conservation movie should be called “Sleepless in Toronto".

Two of three new Canadians, are foreign-born and immigrants on average, quadruple their GHG emissions upon their arrival in North America, thereby accelerating the timetable of our global demise. Stating this inconvenient truth is not to make immigrants the whipping boys for our profligate ways. Immigrants come to aspire to our lifestyle, not escape to the austerity they left behind. They were not responsible for our consumptive patterns, but they are eager participants in it. This is not an indictment but a statement of an understandable ambition, shared by all who came before us. But while it is our obligation to reduce our ecological impacts, that endeavour cannot be an excuse or rationale for importing more climate-changers and converting them to hyper-consumerism. Generosity to migrants can be a callous disregard for the world as a whole, as well as an imposition upon those who already live here.

It should also be noted that our carbon footprint is only a subset of our ecological footprint. Population growth is a critical variable in environmental degradation of all sorts---the loss of farmland, soil productivity, water, wetlands, species and biodiversity services. However much we conserve, recycle or reuse, reducing our footprint is futile if the number of feet coming through the airport or the maternity ward offsets those economies. Mother Nature takes no account of our acts of personal green abnegation----only our total consumption. While we are performing “one million acts of green”, there are 34 million acts of brown being committed every day in Canada merely by virtue of our existence. The very last thing the global environment needs is more Canadians---from wherever their source.

Tim Murray
June 28, 2010