natural environment

Waleed Aly ("A Rhetorical State of Emergency," Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 2019,) has dressed up banality as insight and has been very long-winded about it. His focus is climate change and he laments the fact that we have so "engineered a lack of [political] consensus" that Australia is never likely to successfully address it.

But there is a sense that Waleed believes his unique understanding sets him apart from the problems he describes ... I would like to help him find his feet of clay.

That we worry about climate change is because of the harm it is doing and will do to the natural environment; Waleed's focus, therefore, ought to be environmental decline from any cause, and not just climate change.

The two key drivers of environmental decline are the growth in human population and ever rising levels of consumption. Remarkably, the two key components of Australia's particular economic model are: more people -- population growth via high immigration -- consuming more and more ... forever.

If Australia wishes to address environmental decline -- as Waleed believes we ought -- we must address our levels of consumption and the growth in our population. The latter will require a substantial reduction in immigration -- the principal driver of our population growth.

There is a popular consensus for this measure. What stands in the way? Well, among other things, pundits like Waleed and his occasional employer, the ABC, who refuse to go anywhere near the immigration issue.

For all his posturing and puffing over our dysfunctional politics, Waleed is part of the problem he describes.

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!