Canadian Greens

Reflecting upon the events of the past year (2011) in Canada, the travesty of our democracy remains salient. Mother Nature was not allowed on the ballot, and none of the five major parties were prepared to support her cause. None of them---not even the Green Party----were prepared to say that Canada's runaway population was killing biodiversity, paving farmland or raising carbon emissions. Why? Quite simply, the environmental movement had failed to create a large constituency of support for population reduction in Canada. Nothing underscores that failure better than a look at Nature Canada and its campaign to encourage supporters to ask the Harper Consevative government what it thought were penetrating questions about protecting the environment.

What is wrong with Nature Canada is what is wrong with Canada's environmental movment

Take a look at Nature Canada's website http://www.naturecanada.ca/election2011.asp, and their "questions to ask " politicians in this federal election, and then you will understand what is wrong with Canada's environmental and conservation movement. They have taken the "P" out of the IPAT equation---the foundational formula of the environmental movement in the 1970s. Nature Canada, Nature Conservancy, the David Suzuki Foundation and the Sierra Club, the Green Party of Canada and the fake greens in the NDP all would have you believe that we can add 350,000 consumers to our population every year, year after year----in other words, one metro Toronto every decade---without negative ecological impacts! And if challenged, they will tell you that we can shoe-horn tens of millions more into this country by strict land use planning--- aka "smart growth",----preserve greenfield acreage and minimize their energy use. Aside from the fallacy of this contention, it is intellectually dishonest. Land use planning is in the hands of local government, and as Professor Robert MacDirmid of York University has documented in "Funding City Politics", local governments are controlled by developers.

Here are some questions to ask Nature Canada and their politically correct clones:

1. Why won't you---Canada's green NGOs---- make public your corporate funding sources? Why do you hide your sordid corporate benefactors from your own members?
2. Why do you---Canada's green NGOs------ accept money from corporations like RBC, the Toronto Dominion Bank, the Walton Group, Encana, Atco etc etc? What do they want from you? What have you not said or advocated in return for their patronage? What is the going rate for your silence? Does not the stench of the corporate money that Big Green accepts rank with the "dirty subsidies" that governments provide Big Oil?
3. Can you explain the 'coincidence' that you have not taken on immigration-driven population growth in Canada when that is a major goal of corporations like RBC who fund you?
4. Can you seriously argue that we can "decouple" population growth in Canada from environmental degradation, from farmland and habitat loss and carbon emissions?
5. Why have you not pushed for an environmental assessment process for the government's immigration and pro-natalist policies? Do you honestly believe that renewable energy can be "scaled up" to meet the demands of a Canadian population that grows at over 1.08% per annum? Do you understand what exponential growth is? If you think a population level of 34 million is for Canada is sustainable, at point would you concede that it isn't? 44 million? 54 million? 84 million? At what point along the road to ruin would you be prepared to call for a Population Plan for this country? Hello?

Nature Conservancy's Silence on Species Loss At the Edge of Urban Canada

Canada's environmental movement sure smells like a movement. Their population-myopia is an outrageous omission that smacks of political correctness and outright corruption. Species loss is not something that only happens in some distant wilderness. The real killing fields are right here on the perimeters of Canada's growing urban centres. That is why Walton International---a land banking corporation, finds that it makes good business sense to give donations to Nature Conservancy for high profile land acquisitions far away from the farmland that Walton likes to purchase at the edge of cities like Calgary. When that land is rezoned to 'urban' use and housing development---Nature Conservancy stays mute, as it has when other patrons like RBC underwrite urban sprawl or bankroll the tar sands. Then, when Nature Conservancy "saves" a wetland or valley 500 miles away, these corporate donors can share the bragging rights. The new parkland is then declared parkland "forever". Forever, that is, until oil hits $250/barrel or minerals critical to our economy are in desperate shortfall. Until then, however RBC, the TD bank and Shell Canada can show off their credentials as good green citizens and paragons of corporate social "responsibility".

Suzuki Brave In A Foreign Land

Nature Canada implores us to "vote for nature" in this election. But where, on any federal election ballot in any constituency, can "nature" be found? The counterfeit "Greens", along with the NDP and the Liberals, actually want to hike Canada's immigration quota from its current 285,000 to 340,000!!!! Canada already vies with Australia for the dishonour of having the highest per capita immigration intake in the world, and has the highest population growth rate in the G8 group! Privately, David Suzuki has called this process of converting third world immigrants to "hyper consumers" in Canada as "madness", but will not say so on a major media outlet. He has, however, bravely gone on ABC radio in Australia to tell Australians that Australia is overpopulated. But Australia already had Tim Flannery and the Australian Conservation Foundation to tell them that. Will we have to invite an Australian environmentalist here to say the same thing about Canada? In what way has Canada not overshot its carrying capacity to the same degree as Australia? Why the silence, Dr. Suzuki? Why be frank 'down under' but be seized with demographic lockjaw in your own country? Does the DSF customize its policies to suit its benefactor, RBC, whose Chairman Gordon Nixon has lobbied for an immigration intake of 450,000?

So Why Is Nature Canada Ignoring Population Growth

Nature Canada is right in one important respect. In their words, "we cannot afford to allow nature and the environment to be ignored." So why are they ignoring population growth?

Tim Murray
April 7, 2011

Nature Canada's statement:

During this year’s election, we cannot afford to allow nature and the environment to be ignored.

Ask the Candidates:
Canada is not enforcing its own laws to protect wildlife, according to several Canadian and international investigations. What will you do to make sure Canada does a better job of enforcing our laws to protect wildlife like caribou, whales, and migratory birds?
I am concerned about plans to allow oil and gas drilling in national wildlife areas, marine protected areas and other places that should just protect nature, period. How will you make sure nature is really protected in all federal parks and protected areas?
I am concerned that we are losing so much of Canada’s unique wild lands, waters, and oceans. What will you do to protect more lands, waters, and oceans for nature and future generations?
I worry about environmental disasters like oil spills and mining waste accidents. How will you do a better job of using federal regulations and environmental assessments to prevent environmental disasters?
I am angry that my hard-earned tax dollars are going to subsidize big oil and gas companies and our Canadian lakes are being handed over to mining companies to dump their waste. What will you do to end these dirty subsidies?
Everyone says that Canada is not doing its fair share to fight climate change. What is your party’s plan to really move Canada to a green economy powered by renewable energy?
Canada urgently needs an ambitious national plan to protect nature for wildlife, for us to enjoy, and for future generations. What will you do to show national leadership and give Canada an ambitious vision and a plan to protect nature for all?

Tell Canada’s leaders where you stand – vote for nature in 2011!

How ironic. A party that poses as the vanguard of democratic reform denies its own membership the chance of greater democratic participation. Why?

An Apparent Contradiction

What’s this? A political party that has always claimed to be the spear-head for the democratic reform of Canada’s electoral system junking an experiment in internal party democracy? A political party that has argued for proportional representation in parliament but has abandoned a process that would ensure proportional representation of all strands of opinion within its own ranks as reflected in party policy? A political party that prescribes more democracy for Canada but not for itself?

Welcome to the Green Party of Canada (GPC). A party that in 2004 set up a participatory Web-based process for broad-based policy development that would invite and permit rank-and-file members to determine party policies. Forget stacking meetings and microphones, forget slate voting for convention delegates, forget the standard sordid trademarks of traditional party politics. At long last, here was a political party that would give ordinary party members a direct say in choosing the policies which their party would run on. The initiation of this “Wiki’” process---as it was called----was a de-facto declaration by the GPC of trust in democracy, of faith in its own members, best summarized by Chairman Mao’s famous invitation to members of his Chinese Communist Party. “Let a hundred flowers bloom and a thousand thoughts contend.”

The trouble was, when the people spoke, the leadership didn’t like what they heard----so they pulled the plug on democracy. Obviously the people need to be “educated” before they can be trusted. The party leadership knows best.

The Trouble With Encouraging Democracy Is That Party Members Take It Seriously

In 2004-5, the Green Party brass discovered that “empowered” members can use their new-found power to vote for politically incorrect and inconvenient policies. And none was so politically incorrect and inconvenient than a policy that was articulated in a position paper entitled “A Strategy for a National and International Canadian Population Policy”. It was a policy that would have required the GPC to “provide the strong political leadership needed to create a credible population policy” for the country “and undertake an initiative to educate Canadians about the acute dangers of overpopulation and to build public participation and support for a population policy.” Particularly incendiary was “Position 5”, which stated that:

“The Green Party of Canada should advocate steps to slow the growth of population in Canada pending the development of the information base on carrying capacity and the completion of public consultations, and press for measures to increase international aid to those overpopulated countries that have or are willing to adopt policies to lower fertility but need assistance to develop and implement such policies.”

The paper also offered the view that It went on to argue that “As Canada will have a very slow natural population growth rate without immigration for about the next fifteen years (Statistics Canada), one measure to slow population would be to bring immigration to levels in place prior to 1989” when “Canada adjusted its intake of immigrants according to its ability to absorb and provide suitable employment.” The paper noted that since 1990, when the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney aspired to match the Liberal Party target of one percent annual population growth for the country, immigrants fared significantly worse than other Canadians, while prior to that, the reverse was true. “This”, the authors observed, “may suggest that Canada has reached its carrying capacity. For as long as an ecological surplus exists, additional population seems to increase wealth, but when carrying capacity has been exceeded added population causes a rise in poverty levels.”(William Catton).

Bottom line: “Canada needs to develop a population policy that links human numbers in Canada to the long-term carrying capacity of Canadian lands and boundary waters taking into consideration the needs of other species and the biodiversity required for a healthy ecosphere.”

The People Have Spoken--- Don't Let It Happen Again!

This was dangerous stuff to the party hierarchy----but apparently not to the majority of participating party members, who voted 56% for its inclusion into party policy. It was that fact, rather than the policy proposal itself, which scared the pants off those who feared that their career prospects would be sunk by a democratic torpedo from their own membership. As Tony Cassils, the chief architect of the collaborative effort to formulate this policy, recounted,

“Recommendation 5 caused some unease, especially among the members of the GPC who were candidates in ridings because they feared, probably correctly, that they might be pilloried by other parties for seeming to favour a slowing of immigration. By early April 2005, fearing that the population plank might win approval, they came up with an idea to sever the population plank and make a separate one on immigration. ....Eventually , the GPC simply shut down the Wiki process for policy development. I fully understand the anxiety that Recommendation 5 engenders in GPC candidates and I believe that this is the reason that any thought of population stabilization in Canada is suppressed by the GPC. ...Elizabeth May shuns any mention of limiting population growth.”

Anti-Immigration Views Must Be Quarantined

In retrospect, this suffices to explain why in November of 2008, following the federal election, Eric Walton, Erich Jacoby-Hawkins and others in the ruling GPC clique reacted with reflexive alarm when they learned that all those who had stood as GPC candidates were recipients of a questionnaire sent out on behalf of Biodiversity First ---an organization (of which I was ‘Vice President’) that challenged mass immigration-driven population growth in Canada for its negative ecological impacts. They were quick to advise these candidates not to answer the questionnaire nor to communicate with BF, interpreting it as a classic “divide and conquer” strategy. But given recent history, when a majority of GPC members had indicated support for BF’s aims in the Wiki experiment, it would probably be more accurate to say that party heavyweights were desperate to quarantine our views because they perceived them as a deadly virus that might infect their membership should they be exposed to our perspective. After all, the fact that just three years earlier 56% of grassroots participants approved of a plank to limit population growth---including immigration, was proof enough to them that our ideas would have traction in the Green Party at large.

Elizabeth May A Perfect Fit For A Party Phobic About Population Concerns

This fear pre-dates May’s ascension to the GPC leadership, but her arrival certainly gave it impetus. It is clear that May’s leadership fits perfectly with the ruling clique’s determination to make political expediency and political correctness---rather than ecological correctness---the priority of the party. Elizabeth May was tailor-made for this crew of fake greens, as she auditioned for the role when she lead the Sierra Club of Canada and passed the screen test with flying colours. When Paul Watson and a group of dissident Sierrans threatened to restore the goal of sustainable population for America to the policy books of the Sierra Club of the United States, May threatened to change the name of her sister organization in Canada if they were successful. Since then she has consistently characterized immigration concerns as "trivial" in importance and maintained that urban sprawl fed by exploding population growth can be cured by good "land-use" planning, despite the fact that local zoning is under the jurisdiction of local governments bought and paid for by developers, as Professor Robert McDermid has documented in "Funding City Politics". She remains oblivious to the fact that mass immigration has, in the past two decades, accounted for four times as much GHG emissions as the Tar Sands development, and clings to the delusion that population growth can be 'de-coupled' from carbon emissions and ecological degradation.

The Futility Of Fighting From Within The GPC

Despite May’s make-over of the GPC, it still is not a cohesive and monolithic bloc. Large pockets of the party are not afflicted by population-denial and the opportunism of their leaders. Nevertheless the ruling clique have succeeded in enveloping the party with a cordon sanitaire of filtered information and are slowly but surely creating a party in their own image, much like the Pods in the sci-fi classic “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” succeeded in replicating the form and shape of human victims. It looks like a Green Party and walks like a Green Party, but when you look into its eyes no one is home. Its policy pronouncements give the game away. This party is Green in name only. Those who would reveal themselves as unassimilated by the governing ideology, who would attempt to play the population card, are destined to be marginalized and driven out with discouragement. As Erich Jacoby-Hawkins told one of them on March 6th of 2008, “...you’ll find the existing progressive consensus (beyond the Green Party) is towards more open immigration, not tighter, so you are bucking the trend on this issue----so to follow your own Lakoffian advice, you would need to be the one to acquiesce at this point.” Translation: Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.

A National Tragedy

The hijacking of Canada’s Green Party by population-denialists is more than a tragedy for the GPC. It is a tragedy for Canada. For if the Green Party will not be truly green, who will?

As that policy position paper of 2005 stated, “Canada needs leadership for the age of ecology from the green parties, not the myopic managers of the old-line parties who act like it is “business as usual “, while paying lip service to the notion of sustainability and to other environmental issues.”

Tim Murray
November 25, 2011.

In the TV debate of April 12, 2011, the leaders of Canada's four parties with parliamentary seats demonstrated that beneath the phony left-right dichotomies, parliament is ideologically monolithic in the most important sense. All of them believe in the necessity, desirability and possibility of continuing economic growth, and that immigration-driven population growth is its necessary concomitant and driver. But how could it be otherwise? Politicians do not effect change, they respond to it. And the environmental movement---and its political arm in the NDP and the Green Party, has done nothing to create a constituency of awareness that population growth in Canada is unsustainable, an awareness that if widely shared, would compel political parties and their leaders to address it. Most culpable is David Suzuki, who could move mountains if he would publicly say what he has said of Australia: that in relation to our resources, we are in serious population overshoot.

Protecting Nature While Ignoring Immigration?

Take a look at Nature Canada's website http://www.naturecanada.ca/election2011.asp, and their "questions to ask " politicians in this federal election, and then you will understand what is wrong with Canada's environmental and conservation movement. They have taken the "P"( for population) out of the IPAT equation, the foundational formula of the environmental movement in the 1970s, essentially, environmental impact is a function of population levels and average consumption of each individual. Nature Canada, Nature Conservancy, the David Suzuki Foundation and the Sierra Club, the Green Party of Canada and the fake greens in the NDP all would have you believe that we can add 350,000 consumers to our population every year, year after year--- one metro Toronto every decade----without negative ecological impacts! And if challenged, they will tell you that we can shoe-horn tens of millions more into this country by strict land use planning (aka "smart growth"), preserve greenfield acreage and minimize their energy use. Aside from the fallacy of this contention, it is intellectually dishonest. Land use planning is in the hands of local government, and as Professor Robert MacDirmid of York University has documented in "Funding City Politics", local governments are controlled by developers.

Here are some questions to ask Nature Canada and their politically correct green clones:

1. Why won't you, Canada's green NGOs?make public your corporate funding sources? Why do you hide your corporate benefactors from your own members?
2. Why do you accept money from corporations like RBC, the Toronto Dominion Bank, the Walton Group, Encana, Atco etc etc? What do they want from you? What have you not said or advocated in return for their patronage? What is the going rate for your silence?
3. Can you explain the 'coincidence' that you have not taken on immigration-driven population growth in Canada when that is a major goal of corporations like RBC who fund you?
4. Can you seriously argue that we can "decouple" population growth in Canada from environmental degradation, from farmland and habitat loss and carbon emissions?
5. Why have you not pushed for an environmental assessment process for the government's immigration and pro-natalist policies? Do you honestly believe that renewable energy can be "scaled up" to meet the demands of a Canadian population that grows at over 1.08% per annum? Do you understand what exponential growth is? If you think a population level of 34 million for Canada is sustainable, at point would you concede that it isn't? 44 million? 54 million? 84 million? At what point along the road to ruin would you be prepared to call for a Population Plan for this country, as did Dr. Michael Healy and his UBC research team in their federally commissioned report, “Prospects for Sustainability”. As the Science Council of Canada warned in 1976, Canada must limit and stabilize its population.

Population Myopia Is An Outrageous Omission

The population-myopia of Canada's environmental movement is an outrageous omission that smacks of political correctness and outright corruption. Species loss is not something that only happens in some distant wilderness. The real killing fields are right here on the perimeters of Canada's growing urban centres. That is why Walton International, a land banking corporation, finds that it makes good business sense to give donations to Nature Conservancy for high profile land acquisitions far away from the farmland that Walton likes to purchase at the edge of cities like Calgary. When that land is rezoned to 'urban' use and housing development, Nature Conservancy stays mute, as it has when other patrons like RBC underwrite urban sprawl or bankroll the tar sands. Then, when Nature Conservancy "saves" a wetland or valley 500 miles away, these corporate donors can share the bragging rights. The new parkland is then declared parkland "forever". Forever, that is, until oil hits $250/barrel or minerals critical to our economy are in desperate shortfall. Until then, however RBC, the TD bank and Shell Canada can show off their credentials as good green citizens and paragons of corporate social "responsibility".

Where can nature be found on the ballot? Why won't Suzuki speak out against Canadian population growth?

Nature Canada implores us to "vote for nature" in this election. But where, on any federal election ballot in any constituency, can "nature" be found? The counterfeit "Greens", along with the NDP and the Liberals, actually want to hike Canada's immigration quota from its current 285,000 to 340,000!!!! Canada already vies with Australia for the dishonour of having the highest per capita immigration intake in the world, and has the highest population growth rate in the G8 group! Privately, according to some sources, David Suzuki has called this process of converting third world immigrants to "hyper consumers" in Canada as "madness", but will not say soon a major media outlet. He has, however, bravely gone on ABC radio in Australia to tell Australians that Australia is overpopulated. But Australia already has Tim Flannery and the Australian Conservation Foundation to tell them that. Will we have to invite an iconic Australian environmentalist here to say the same thing about Canada? In what way has Canada not overshot its carrying capacity to the same degree as Australia? Why the silence, Dr. Suzuki? Why be frank 'down under' but be seized with demographic lockjaw in your own country? Does the David Suzuki Foundation customize its policies to suit its benefactor, RBC, whose Chairman Gordon Nixon has lobbied for an immigration intake of 450,000?

Nature Canada is right in one important respect. In their words, "we cannot afford to allow nature and the environment to be ignored." So why are they ignoring population growth?

Tim Murray

Nature Canada Asks Us To Ask the Candidates

:

What will you do to make sure Canada does a better job of enforcing our laws to protect wildlife like caribou, whales, and migratory birds?

How will you make sure nature is really protected in all federal parks and protected areas?

What will you do to protect more lands, waters, and oceans for nature and future generations?

How will you do a better job of using federal regulations and environmental assessments to prevent environmental disasters?

My hard-earned tax dollars are going to subsidize big oil and gas companies and our Canadian lakes are being handed over to mining companies to dump their waste. What will you do to end these dirty subsidies?

What is your party’s plan to really move Canada to a green economy powered by renewable energy?
Canada urgently needs an ambitious national plan to protect nature for wildlife, for us to enjoy, and for future generations. What will you do to show national leadership and give Canada an ambitious vision and a plan to protect nature for all?

Tell Canada’s leaders where you stand – vote for nature in 2011!

Suzuki says Australia is overpopulated:

David Suzuki - Interview with radio station 6PR, 22 Sept 2006:

Suzuki: You know I was shocked to find that you have got a Minister in the Federal Cabinet here (Treasurer Peter Costello) who is encouraging Australians to have more and more children. Why? Because everybody thinks that in order to keep the economy growing forever you have got to have a growing population to keep that economy growing.

And so no one ever asks what is the cost of adding more people to Australia, a country as far as I am concerned that is already overpopulated because the demand of each Australian is so great?

Journalist: So you are saying Australia is overpopulated?

Suzuki: You bet.

Postscript: The National Leaders Debate of April 12, 2011

Last night a TV debate was held between the leaders of Canada's 4 main parties. All of them proceeded on these assumptions:

1. Continual economic growth is necessary, desirable and possible.
2. A growing population is necessary to fuel economic growth.
3. Continued high levels of immigration are necessary to replace and increase our existing population level.

The only difference between them was whether a higher or lower proportion of those immigrants should be drawn from the "family class" category. And even here, Prime Minister Harper argued that his government had remained faithful to the concept of "family reunification". Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe joined the chorus in favour of more and more immigration, but stated that multiculturalism "does not fit Quebec", which has a duty to ensure that immigrants be fully integrated into a francophone society that represents only 2% of North America's population.

Needless to say, none of the leaders questioned the justice or the sense of pro-natalist policies and child-benefits packages, or the lunacy of the Quebec government subsidizing couples' IVF treatments to the tune of $7,000 a piece.

And it should be added, that Green Party leader Elizabeth May would have been in emphatic agreement with these leaders had she participated in the debate.

We are passengers on the HMCS Ecological Titanic led by a captain and aspiring captains who believe that we should pick up more passengers, and remain ignorant about the perils ahead. Has anyone one of them read James Howard Kunstler, or Richard Heinberg, or Michael Ruppert, or even one article in the vast archive of material that is available on overshoot?

Tim Murray
April 13/ 2011

The Canadian federal election cries out for an alternative to BAU growthism. It cries out for a party which would present a coherent and distinctive alternative to the system of economic growth. Canadians need a place on the ballot where they can mark an "X" beside "no more growth". In fact they need an opportunity for vote for "de-growth". But the Green Party of Canada is not providing them with that opportunity or alternative. Instead, what they are providing is meaningless rhetoric and platitudes. Shall we lend credence to their approach by voting for them? Shall we allow them to say that they have our support for their direction? Shall we allow them to say, after receiving our vote, that they have a mandate to push for hyper immigration and a foreign aid policy that would continue to promote global overpopulation? I say no. I say that casting a vote can sometimes be worse than spoiling a ballot. There are many things one can do to promote change that voting in a sham election. Writing, petitioning, demonstrating and educating the grassroots come to mind.

The Canadian federal election is upon us and the Green Party claims to offer a "significantly different approach to governance" (see below). Really? Let's take a look:

1. "Growth is fine--as long as it doesn't foreclose future options". What kind of growth doesn't? What kind of growth does not involve the consumption of non-renewable resources? Growth in knowledge? Human brains need energy and sustenance. More humans need more resources, no matter what they do. Doesn't knowledge involve capital investments? Computers? Printers? Books? Classrooms? Laboratories? Lab equipment? Or is this knowledge to be imparted by ESP? Can we have science without technology? And if not, what technology does not require material inputs? Are MRI machines, electric cars and solar panels to be made out of thin air? How can the metals and minerals required for such technology be extracted without "plundering the earth”?

2. "We can have nutritious food forever---so long as we look after the soil" Food for how many people? 7 billion? Without fossil fuel inputs? If soil requires 15 years to regenerate naturally, then how many people could be fed? Do the math. 1/16 of 7 billion is what? Does the Green Party have a plan to shrink the human population down to fit that soil capacity? Do they have any plan that involves the "P" in the IPAT equation? Do they even know what the IPAT equation is?

3. "We could have a well fed, comfortably housed, well educated, healthy and employed population, without plundering the earth" Again, the Green don't tell us how many people could be "well fed, comfortably housed, well educated, healthy and employed" using the resources that are affordably accessible---and for how long.

4."Political parties of every stripe are mesmerized by the mantra to grow, grow, grow---every party, that is, except the Green Party". The Green Party does not believe in growth? Hmm. How would Canada NOT grow when it adds 350,000 people to its number each year? How does the Green Party intend to put an end to growth by advocating an immigration level 25% higher than it is now (285,000 per year)? How does it propose to end growth in a world that sees 80 million additional humans each year? Are they telling us that we can have population growth without economic growth? Will those extra people not demand resources? Where will the material to build "comfortable" houses for those extra people come from? Will no energy will be expended in providing it? Where will the resources for education and health care for those extra people come from? Will people in Greendom be disembodied spirits without a footprint?

What the Green Party offers is shallow trendy rhetoric without substance. Long on kumbaya and short on logic and math.

Some lament the federal court decision upholding the media's right to exclude them from the televised national debate. I would too---if indeed they really did offer "a significantly different approach to governance". But the truth is, the only thing truly "Green" about this party is its name.

Nonetheless, I am told that I have no other choice--as if voting for one faction in a one-party state is morally mandatory. Wrong. I can register my disgust with this sham democracy by returning my ballot unmarked to the electoral officer. And you can do the same. Imagine a million spoiled ballots. Now that would send them a message.

Tim Murray
April 5, 2011
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Green "Vision" message:
Greetings:

Once again Canada is looking for direction and once again Greens
across the country are trying to explain that there is a real and
important change in our circumstances that requires a significantly
different approach to governance. I've tried to capture the key point
here. Of note is that by referring to the underlying issue of having
reached a physical maturity as societies (ie. our activities fill our
planet), our message of change needn't be blocked due the spin that
has brought so many to deny issues like climate change.

If this is of any use, feel free to use it in whole or in part, as is,
or edited in any way that suits your purposes. No attribution
necessary.

Wishing you strength and inspiration for the weeks ahead.

Yours, Mike N.
(Mike Nickerson, http://www.SustainWellBeing.net)
================================

Our changing times require a new approach.

Change is essential, not because food and fuel prices are rising
faster than we can afford, tho for many this is true. We need the new
approach because our governments are dedicated to an economic model
that seeks to expand regardless of the impacts that expansion has on
our planet and on the other peoples with whom we share it.

Food, fuel, forests, fish, fresh water, soil fertility - even the
ability of the environment to absorb our waste - are all being
stretched. Yet, political parties of all stripes are mesmerized with
the outdated mantra to grow, grow and grow.

Every party, that is, except the Green Party.

The Green Party was founded because the others wouldn't take planetary
limits seriously. Growth is fine, as long as it doesn't foreclose
future options. We can grow nutritious food forever - if we look
after the soil. Shelters can be developed to capture sunshine and
cool themselves without requiring large amounts of energy. Education
and preventative health care are essentially boundless because they
are composed mostly of the unlimited resources: knowledge and good
will. All these steps will require that people work at them.

We could have a well fed, comfortably housed, well educate, healthy
and employed population, without plundering the Earth, if that was the
goal of our society. It is the goal of the Green Party and we are
inviting Canadians to take the step with us toward a sustainable future.

The human family has been expanding the volume of our activities for
thousands of years. Now that we are stretching the Earth's limits,
rather than expanding consumption and waste, it's time to adopt a
mature approach and to focus more on creating a sustainable future.

Join with us to build a future that our children can look forward to.

Climate Change Obsession A Justification for An Open Borders Agenda

Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May has frequently said that immigration has had a "trivial" impact on Canada's environment. The real damage is being done by the Alberta Tar Sands, she claims, and the only immigrants that we should worry about are immigrants like Royal Dutch Shell. This is the tack taken by the Green-Left and Eco-"socialist" groups like the ones that are connected to blogs like "Climate and Capitalism" and the "Green Left Weekly" : Focus almost exclusively on climate change, because it is in, May's words, "the most urgent problem of our time". A global issue that requires a global solution and global cooperation, something that could be hampered by all this 'divisive' talk about tightening the borders to stop a population tsunami from destroying our environment. We mustn't send our unfriendly signals to those nations we need to work with, mustn't we? We can't lock our front door and close the gate or our neighbours might not love us.

So while the Green-Left has declared war on the free and unfettered trade of capital and goods, it supports the corporate agenda of promoting the free and unfettered movement of cheap labour across borders. The workers, after all, have no country, do they? Thus the open-borders, corporate-friendly stance of the Green Globalists is marketed as a gesture of "international solidarity". Solidarity with migrants but not solidarity with the indigenous labour force whose jobs are displaced or wages suppressed by their incoming foreign comrades. The native-born proletariat can surely take a hit in the cause for "Climate Justice", can't they? Climate change is public enemy number one.

Whose carbon footprint is larger---immigration or the tar sands?

For the sake of argument, let's say it is. Let's say that overpopulation, the collapse of biodiversity services, Peak Oil, Peak Soil, and the prospect of running out of the minerals and fuel vital to our industrial civilization is small potatoes compared to the environmental damage wrought by hydrocarbons. OK. If that is the field of battle that the Green-Left wants to play on, then let's join them. The question then is, what impact has hyper-immigration of the kind that Canada and the United States have been subjected to in the past two decades had on GHG emissions? American analysts Leon Kolankiewicz and Steve Camarota already established some time ago that each immigrant to the United States, on average, quadruples his GHG emissions upon arrival. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mOpEnQvD1Y While that figure would approximate the impact that immigrants to Canada have had, another question arises. In the Canadian context, how does the carbon footprint of immigrants compare to the carbon footprint of the Albert tar sands project?

Economist John Meyer has done the math. His calculations rest on the fact that post-1990 immigration has been responsible for an additional 7 million people in Canada, and that per-capita emissions have risen very little in that period. He asserts that if a “zero-net” immigration policy (immigrants accepted equaling emigrants) had been in effect in the past two decades, the country’s population would have stabilized at 27 million. “The 7 million (inclusive of children born to immigrants) is just the difference between the 27 million ceiling that was achievable 20 years ago and the 34 million we have now.”

Nevertheless, to be conservative, Meyer works with a figure of 5 million:

"In 2006 tar sands emissions were 27 million tonnes (mt) and emissions attributed to the 5 million extra people (about 2+ Toronto's) were 120mt. Canada's Kyoto target is 556mt. By 2012, we will probably hit 714mt - over by 28% - the worst performance of any Kyoto signatory save Saudi Arabia. We will be #57 out of 58. The top countries will have cut their emissions by close to 40%. They have stable populations. Canada has the fastest growing population in the western world courtesy of mass immigration. Saudi Arabia's population is growing even faster, naturally."

"Oil sands emissions are growing faster than immigration-based emissions. By 2012, oil sands emissions will be 75mt. Immigration's will be 154mt. Although oil sands emissions grow rapidly, they will never quite catch those from immigration-based population growth because oil production will level off and immigration policy calls for an exponential grow-forever rate of 1%."

"So in 2050, oil sands emissions will be 350mt and immigration's will be 414mt. That is as close as it gets. Tars sands flatten after that but immigration-based emissions keep on climbing to 879mt in 2100. (If post-1990 immigration levels continue), Canada's population will then be 66 million.”

Immigrants did not invent our lifestyle, but they aspire to it

Meyer acknowledges that his analysis does not differentiate between the emissions of rich Canadians and those of immigrants, most of whom are relatively poor, and take a decade to climb up to the average Canadian income level. Meyer speculates that the GHG emissions of immigrants is perhaps 20% lower than the Canadian per capita average. But this is hardly an argument in favour of mass immigration, because even at 80% of the Canadian level, immigrants still generate GHG emissions, and at a rate many times higher than they did in their former countries. While immigrants did not invent our higher ecological footprint (lifestyle), they nevertheless aspire to it, as our parents or great grandparents once did in coming here. Improving one’s lot, after all, is the major and fully understandable motive for those who choose to settle here. The point is not to blame immigrants but to cite immigration as the major driver of population growth, which, contrary to green perceptions, has a demonstrably negative impact on our environment. Arguably, much can be done to mitigate that damage by more efficient technologies, more conservation measures and better planning, but it must be expected that citizens of a country with an average year round temperature of little over 5 degrees centigrade will of necessity make higher energy demands than those who live in warmer climates. Energy efficiency and conservation cannot offset population growth indefinitely.

Mass immigration has despoiled at least as much land as the Tar Sands

Mass immigration rivals the tar sands development in environmental damage in another important respect as well. Aside from thwarting the attainment of Kyoto targets, Meyer also makes the point that the land area despoiled by the tar sands development is matched or exceeded by the land area despoiled to accommodate the immigrant-driven population growth of the last twenty years---and will vastly outstrip it in the decades to come. Furthermore, Meyer notes, “... this urban sprawl has taken place on Canada’s best agricultural land---not in remote boreal forest.” He continues, "We are trained to see shopping malls and subdivisions as signs of progress but seen through an environmental filter, they are even uglier than strip mines and tailing ponds because they are huge resource consumers for their entire lives. Mass immigration creates more energy overhead and reduces the environmental base both in total and in per capita terms when we should be cutting overhead, conserving resources and expanding green energy production.”

To curb carbon emissions, we must break the taboo against talking about immigration

What is most worrisome to Meyer is that the taboo against an open and public discussion of immigration and population policy has rendered our response to a range of challenges ineffective.

“As a result of the immigration no-go zone, Canada's policy formation process has, for decades, been unable to deal effectively with a host of issues from child poverty to productivity to land use to income polarization. And now immigration is short-circuiting emissions planning.”

Meyer adds that the tar sands may be the poster pariah, but if real solutions are to be found to curb our appalling carbon emissions, "the cloak of invisibility will have to be pulled from immigration”. Immigration should be the focus of corrective action duly proportionate to its crucial impact.

Tim Murray,
October 12/2010