TO: consultations@cic.gc.ca; finley.d@parl.gc.ca; finled1@parl.gc.ca
SUBJECT: Consultation On Immigration Priorities
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Dear Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration:
I understand that you are interested in attaining some feedback/criticism from the public on Canada's immigration policy.
As a true environmentalist, I don't see how the Minister of Immigration can work separately from the Minister of The Environment.
The more immigrants that are let into Canada, the greater the environmental impact as roads are widened, subdivisions are built, land is logged, mined, polluted, etc in proportion to the number of people.
I will not dispute that population growth via immigration grows the economy. But is an increase to the total GDP something that is desirable given that it often occurs in tandem with a decline in per capita GDP? There is a finite amount of natural resources in Canada so the more people depending on them for their income, the lower the income per person.
The more people the more jobs, but not necessarily jobs per person and not necessarily quality jobs.
I think it is false to say that we have a labour shortage. Canadians can and will do any job that exists in Canada if they are paid fairly for it. Flooding our country with workers just lowers labour standards and wages to the detriment of Canadians and Canadian wildlife.
Worst of all, as Canada's population grows, the amount of space and natural resources per person continues to decline and our species at risk are pushed closer to extinction.
Many say that cultural diversity (or multiculturalism) is valuable, but because cultures assimilate, it requires large injections of new people (unsustainable population growth) and therefore comes at the cost of Canada's biological diversity.
I believe that Canada's biodiversity is our natural heritage and the protection of it must be top priority. To me, it is our native wildlife such as wolves, moose, frogs, elk, bears, salmon, snakes, salamanders, etc that best define our Canadian culture and identity. But these creatures are suffering decline due to Canada's population growth (which is 70% due to immigration). We simply cannot protect our wildlife habitat and grow our population at the same time, because our land is finite and each person has to consume resources, occupy space, and produce waste in order to survive. The more people, the less wildlife. There is no such thing as a form of "smart growth" or "managed growth" that can protect our biodiversity alongside population growth.
Historically, mitigation of the effects of population growth using per capita conservation and greener technologies has been overwhelmed by the sheer number of people, ensuring that environmental quality worsens. For example, environmental scientist Leon Kolankiewicz demonstrated that from 1970 to 2000, 87% of USA’s increase in energy use was due to an increase in population (mostly from immigration), while only 13% was attributable to an increase in per capita energy consumption. (SOURCE: "Population Growth – The Neglected Dimension of America’s Persistent Energy/Environmental Problems" http://www.numbersusa.com/about/bk_popgrowth.html)
There are far more refugees and immigrants who want to move to Canada than what Canada's land could ever sustain. Already our population is far to high for us to be self-sufficient in a post-fossil fuel world. Did you know that if the present population growth rate of 1% annually continues, Canada's population will double in only 70 years? In 70 years there won't be any fossil fuels left. No alternative energy sources can produce as much energy as what we are getting now from fossil fuels. It seems to me that we are committing a crime against the younger generation of Canadians. If we try to max out, the living conditions in Canada will become so poor that many Canadians will become environmental refugees looking to emigrate to other countries.
Instead of immigration, Canada should be putting its money into birth control and teaching other countries how to manage their populations. As long as there are homeless people on the streets of Canadian cities, shouldn't we take care of them first as loyal Canadians before letting in more foreign people?
Also, if we care about total environmental impact (eg: Habitat Loss, Overfishing, Climate Change, etc) is it really a good idea to be moving more people into the cold-climate, highly consumptive North American lifestyle? The last thing this planet needs is more Canadians.
Would you please consider lowering your immigration intake to protect quality of life for Canadians who are already here?
Sincerely,
Brishen Hoff
President of Biodiversity First
http://biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com/index.htm
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
News And Views In July (World Overpoppulation Awareness Month) 2008
David Suzuki's Recent Quotes
=============
"Shanghai residents use 2.5 times more energy per head than their rural cousins" - David Suzuki narrating China series on The Nature of Things July 13, 2008
Since Shanghai is so densely populated, this contradicts Jeb Brugmann and Mathis Wackernagel on The Agenda when they both agreed that densification was good for the environment.
(It's kind of hard to use a clothesline instead of a dryer on the 70th floor of a highrise apartment.)
"If there's anyone equipped to solve environmental problems on a huge scale, it's China, with their vast human resources, and its political control." - David Suzuki narrating China series on The Nature of Things July 13, 2008
So apparently Suzuki believes overpopulated dictatorships are best positioned to be free of environmental problems.
Philippines President
=============
On "Final Jeopardy" there was a question about which country elected two female presidents (I think it said in 1986 or so and again in 2001) and the answer was the Philippines. I wonder if this could debunk the old theory that if women in a country are educated, empowered, etc that country will be guaranteed to not have a problem with unsustainably high fertility.
The fertility rate in the Philippines is 3.64 children per woman. http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/country.cfm?country=PH&indicatorid=0
That URL also shows that there are more women than men in secondary and tertiary education in the Philippines under the "Gender Equity" section.
It is obvious that in many male-dominated societies where women don't have equal access to education, the fertility rate is way too high. But Philippines is not a male-dominated society, and they have the exact same problem. I think the only way to guarantee a country does not have an unsustainably high fertility rate that causes population growth is for a population policy to be issued by the government that rewards those who don't have children and punishes those who have excessive numbers of children.
Canadian Geographic Story on New MB Power Corridor
=============
In August 2008 Canadian Geographic there is a story about a major new hydro corridor being built from the north tip to south tip of Manitoba that will either have to go W of Lake Winnipeg or E of it. The eastern area is largely a wilderness with behaviourally unique populations of woodland caribou, wolves, moose, etc. The article said that the First Nations in the Eastern part of the province are keen to strike a deal with the Manitoba power corporation which is going to get this power from damming an arctic river and plans to sell it to the USA.
Dalton McGuinty's ON Boreal Forest Protection Plan
=============
Dalton McGuinty announced this week that he will be protecting thousands of hectares of Ontario's boreal forest, but he didn't say how and then when they mentioned the upshot, it was that local First Nations would be consultued before any new mining / logging development. (As though that means that the land is protected)
Quirks and Quarks on Ocean Overfishing
=============
A couple of nights ago CBC Radio host Bob McDonald from Quirks and Quarks interviewed an author of a new book that talks about how rapidly ocean life is being decimated by overfishing. He said how remarkably unproductive the oceans are today relative to the past. He said how the large desirable fish are nearly wiped out. His theory was that we can have way more productive fisheries if we set aside 20-40% of the ocean as off limits to humans/fishing. Only then, he says, can the ocean sustain much higher catches than what we are getting now. Unfortunately it is not that simple because that would involve starving and killing millions of people. He doesn't acknowledge that it is impossible to let the fisheries recover when there are so many people (6.7 billion) demanding seafood for their survival. Therefore, he must acknowledge that reducing the human population is the key to any effective plan for ocean fisheries rehabilitation.
Etc
=============
And as if that wasn't bad enough news, CTV Northern Ontario announced today that a recent mineral discovery means that a huge new diamond mine in NE Ontario that is even bigger than the one in Attawapiskat, ON will be constructed.
=============
"Shanghai residents use 2.5 times more energy per head than their rural cousins" - David Suzuki narrating China series on The Nature of Things July 13, 2008
Since Shanghai is so densely populated, this contradicts Jeb Brugmann and Mathis Wackernagel on The Agenda when they both agreed that densification was good for the environment.
(It's kind of hard to use a clothesline instead of a dryer on the 70th floor of a highrise apartment.)
"If there's anyone equipped to solve environmental problems on a huge scale, it's China, with their vast human resources, and its political control." - David Suzuki narrating China series on The Nature of Things July 13, 2008
So apparently Suzuki believes overpopulated dictatorships are best positioned to be free of environmental problems.
Philippines President
=============
On "Final Jeopardy" there was a question about which country elected two female presidents (I think it said in 1986 or so and again in 2001) and the answer was the Philippines. I wonder if this could debunk the old theory that if women in a country are educated, empowered, etc that country will be guaranteed to not have a problem with unsustainably high fertility.
The fertility rate in the Philippines is 3.64 children per woman. http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/country.cfm?country=PH&indicatorid=0
That URL also shows that there are more women than men in secondary and tertiary education in the Philippines under the "Gender Equity" section.
It is obvious that in many male-dominated societies where women don't have equal access to education, the fertility rate is way too high. But Philippines is not a male-dominated society, and they have the exact same problem. I think the only way to guarantee a country does not have an unsustainably high fertility rate that causes population growth is for a population policy to be issued by the government that rewards those who don't have children and punishes those who have excessive numbers of children.
Canadian Geographic Story on New MB Power Corridor
=============
In August 2008 Canadian Geographic there is a story about a major new hydro corridor being built from the north tip to south tip of Manitoba that will either have to go W of Lake Winnipeg or E of it. The eastern area is largely a wilderness with behaviourally unique populations of woodland caribou, wolves, moose, etc. The article said that the First Nations in the Eastern part of the province are keen to strike a deal with the Manitoba power corporation which is going to get this power from damming an arctic river and plans to sell it to the USA.
Dalton McGuinty's ON Boreal Forest Protection Plan
=============
Dalton McGuinty announced this week that he will be protecting thousands of hectares of Ontario's boreal forest, but he didn't say how and then when they mentioned the upshot, it was that local First Nations would be consultued before any new mining / logging development. (As though that means that the land is protected)
Quirks and Quarks on Ocean Overfishing
=============
A couple of nights ago CBC Radio host Bob McDonald from Quirks and Quarks interviewed an author of a new book that talks about how rapidly ocean life is being decimated by overfishing. He said how remarkably unproductive the oceans are today relative to the past. He said how the large desirable fish are nearly wiped out. His theory was that we can have way more productive fisheries if we set aside 20-40% of the ocean as off limits to humans/fishing. Only then, he says, can the ocean sustain much higher catches than what we are getting now. Unfortunately it is not that simple because that would involve starving and killing millions of people. He doesn't acknowledge that it is impossible to let the fisheries recover when there are so many people (6.7 billion) demanding seafood for their survival. Therefore, he must acknowledge that reducing the human population is the key to any effective plan for ocean fisheries rehabilitation.
Etc
=============
And as if that wasn't bad enough news, CTV Northern Ontario announced today that a recent mineral discovery means that a huge new diamond mine in NE Ontario that is even bigger than the one in Attawapiskat, ON will be constructed.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Green Party Endorses Oxymoronic "Smart Growth" Dogma
I wrote this letter to Ben West, the Green Party of Vancouver's Chairperson in response to his idiotic claim that smart growth and densification will "prevent the devastation" of agricultural and wilderness lands. See his letter here: http://westerneye.googlepages.com/whatshappening
If I get a reply from him, I will post it here on my blog.
To: westerneye@gmail.com
CC: sinkinglifeboat@topica.com
Subject: Re: Densification/"Smart Growth"
Dear Ben West, Chairperson of The Green Party of Vancouver,
A friend has alerted me to a quote you have made in a letter you wrote to the Mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan:
"Densification is of course environmentally positive in so far as it prevents the devastation of agricultural lands or wilderness areas but this initiative if not part of an overarching smart growth land use plan would not accomplish this goal."
I have some questions for you.
How is it "environmentally positive" to concentrate people into highrise apartment complexes where it takes massive energy inputs to treat their drinking water and sewage, run their elevators, maintain their multi-story parking garages, power their artificial indoor fitness club environments, and bring them food and resources from distances that grow in proportion to their population, giving them no hope of growing their own food to survive the new end-of-cheap-energy era?
Isn't it more environmentally friendly for people to live in the country where their water needs no chlorine or UV treatment and their sewage requires no chemical treatments and their septic tank uses less energy per person in its lifecycle than urban waste treatment facilities? Just because people own no land doesn't mean they don't require resources from land in order to survive. Wouldn't it make more sense for people to live on the same land where their food comes from, work this land with their own muscle instead of with machines, and find wood for heating and building materials from their own land instead of importing it from far-away industrial clearcuts? Of course, for this ultra low footprint lifestyle (rural, not urban) to work really well, there would have to be few enough people that each person could have enough quality and quantity of land that they could be self-sufficient without breaking their back.
In the upcoming era of depleted fossil fuels whereby the only oil, coal, wood, and natural gas remaining will take more energy to extract than what you get out of it, we simply will not have a use for so many urban bureaucrats living densely in highrise apartments. The earth's carrying capacity will be drastically reduced due to lack of energy resources. Finding a new unprecedentedly abundant source of energy with zero impact on the environment is not only impossible, but it is also undesirable as it would enable humans to further grow their population, which would displace even more other species, destroy biodiversity services, and therefore lower quality of life on earth for humans.
Would you agree that it is not just the average consumer's consumption level that is relevant, but also the number of consumers?
Whether population growth occurs in the city, in the suburbs, or in the country, is there such a thing as "Smart Growth" when it still involves population growth, which guarantees that environmental damage will increase no matter what conservation measures are imposed? (HINT: Each person must consume finite resources and produce waste just in order to survive. If the number of people keeps growing, it is only a matter of time before the total environmental damage increases even if the theoretical minimum for average per capita consumption is achieved.)
Are you one of those people who uses cliches like "You can't stop progress" or "Growth is inevitable" as a cop-out excuse for letting our environment get worse, while lying at the same time by telling people that our environment can get better alongside continued population growth so long as this growth is "managed/contained/smart/densified/steered/deflected"?
How long will Canada's protected areas be protected if our 1% annual population growth trend continues (doubling our numbers every 70 years); how many National and Provincial Parks will relax legislation to allow agriculture, road expansions, power corridor easements, mining, native hunting, increased camp sites and recreational development, etc to meet this growing demand? How many Parks will incidentally fall victim to air and groundwater pollution as well as poaching and alien species infestations caused by Canada's population growth?
Would it not be prudent for the Green Party of Canada to advocate lower immigration to Canada so that Canada can set a good example in an overpopulated world by reducing its population to a sustainable level to avoid mass species extinctions and human deaths due to the downside of Peak Food caused by fossil fuel depletion?
Thanks and I look forward to your reply,
Brishen Hoff
President of Biodiversity First http://biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com
If I get a reply from him, I will post it here on my blog.
To: westerneye@gmail.com
CC: sinkinglifeboat@topica.com
Subject: Re: Densification/"Smart Growth"
Dear Ben West, Chairperson of The Green Party of Vancouver,
A friend has alerted me to a quote you have made in a letter you wrote to the Mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan:
"Densification is of course environmentally positive in so far as it prevents the devastation of agricultural lands or wilderness areas but this initiative if not part of an overarching smart growth land use plan would not accomplish this goal."
I have some questions for you.
How is it "environmentally positive" to concentrate people into highrise apartment complexes where it takes massive energy inputs to treat their drinking water and sewage, run their elevators, maintain their multi-story parking garages, power their artificial indoor fitness club environments, and bring them food and resources from distances that grow in proportion to their population, giving them no hope of growing their own food to survive the new end-of-cheap-energy era?
Isn't it more environmentally friendly for people to live in the country where their water needs no chlorine or UV treatment and their sewage requires no chemical treatments and their septic tank uses less energy per person in its lifecycle than urban waste treatment facilities? Just because people own no land doesn't mean they don't require resources from land in order to survive. Wouldn't it make more sense for people to live on the same land where their food comes from, work this land with their own muscle instead of with machines, and find wood for heating and building materials from their own land instead of importing it from far-away industrial clearcuts? Of course, for this ultra low footprint lifestyle (rural, not urban) to work really well, there would have to be few enough people that each person could have enough quality and quantity of land that they could be self-sufficient without breaking their back.
In the upcoming era of depleted fossil fuels whereby the only oil, coal, wood, and natural gas remaining will take more energy to extract than what you get out of it, we simply will not have a use for so many urban bureaucrats living densely in highrise apartments. The earth's carrying capacity will be drastically reduced due to lack of energy resources. Finding a new unprecedentedly abundant source of energy with zero impact on the environment is not only impossible, but it is also undesirable as it would enable humans to further grow their population, which would displace even more other species, destroy biodiversity services, and therefore lower quality of life on earth for humans.
Would you agree that it is not just the average consumer's consumption level that is relevant, but also the number of consumers?
Whether population growth occurs in the city, in the suburbs, or in the country, is there such a thing as "Smart Growth" when it still involves population growth, which guarantees that environmental damage will increase no matter what conservation measures are imposed? (HINT: Each person must consume finite resources and produce waste just in order to survive. If the number of people keeps growing, it is only a matter of time before the total environmental damage increases even if the theoretical minimum for average per capita consumption is achieved.)
Are you one of those people who uses cliches like "You can't stop progress" or "Growth is inevitable" as a cop-out excuse for letting our environment get worse, while lying at the same time by telling people that our environment can get better alongside continued population growth so long as this growth is "managed/contained/smart/densified/steered/deflected"?
How long will Canada's protected areas be protected if our 1% annual population growth trend continues (doubling our numbers every 70 years); how many National and Provincial Parks will relax legislation to allow agriculture, road expansions, power corridor easements, mining, native hunting, increased camp sites and recreational development, etc to meet this growing demand? How many Parks will incidentally fall victim to air and groundwater pollution as well as poaching and alien species infestations caused by Canada's population growth?
Would it not be prudent for the Green Party of Canada to advocate lower immigration to Canada so that Canada can set a good example in an overpopulated world by reducing its population to a sustainable level to avoid mass species extinctions and human deaths due to the downside of Peak Food caused by fossil fuel depletion?
Thanks and I look forward to your reply,
Brishen Hoff
President of Biodiversity First http://biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com
Sunday, June 22, 2008
What Can You Do?
HOW TO SAVE QUALITY OF LIFE ON EARTH
SPECIFIC IDEAS FOR TAKING ACTION AGAINST OVERPOPULATION:
1. Put bumper stickers on your vehicle to raise awareness of overpopulation.
2. Make your own custom T-shirts with slogans like "More people = More pollution"
3. Write "Letters to The Editor" on how biodiversity is declining due to overpopulation, which forces down our quality of life and how no environmental problem can be solved when human numbers are rising.
4. Contact TV and radio show producers and tell them that you want to see more discussion on our overpopulation problem. This topic is far more important than any other. Until the problem is solved by reducing our population to a sustainable level (about 5% of the current population), there has not been enough media coverage of the problem.
5. If you live on a highway, put up an overpopulation awareness sign.
6. If you're a millionaire, run some TV ads on overpopulation encouraging a population reduction plan for Canada that involves stopping overimmigration (which is our present practice of more immigrants than emigrants). THIS DOES NOT INVOLVE BUILDING A GIANT FENCE ON OUR BORDER, but will involve heavy fines for employers hiring illegals.
7. Encourage yourself, your spouse, your friends, your family, etc to spend their time and money ON helping to solve this local, national and global problem (namely overpopulation), not ON having additional children.
8. Start your own Internet blog (which is free if you have Internet access) and document the media's incompetent coverage of environmental issues resulting from their convenient avoidance of overpopulation.
9. Attend your town council meetings and tell them that you are fed up with growth and how it lowers quality of life in your community. Tell your politicians that you don't want economic growth and the population growth that comes with it, because in the short term it makes our lives worse and in the long term it threatens our very survival. Do not accept their rhetoric that growth is inevitable or that you can't stop "progress". Those are just cop-out excuses for repeating the same mistakes.
10. Write letters to your politicians demanding a population reduction policy and post their replies on the Internet. (your website, a blog, a friend's blog)
11. Talk about why you think overpopulation is the most important problem with everyone you know. Tell them that we need to redefine what "progress" is, because more human expansion is no longer in our best interests. Tell them how only extremely rich people at the top of the pyramid scheme (from central bankers to Royal Bank of Canada's CEO) profit from population growth, and the rest of us just suffer the environmental degradation that invariably results.
12. Complain to the environmental organizations that ignore the need to stop population growth in their home country. (David Suzuki Foundation, Nature Conservancy of Canada, The Sierra Club of Canada, etc) Immigration is easy to reduce through a simple policy change and doing so could eliminate the majority of the population growth for Canada, USA, Australia, Britain, France, Spain, South Africa, New Zealand, Italy, etc.
13. Complain to humanitarian aid organizations and our government that supports them for not making foreign aid conditional on reduced fertility rates.
14. Educate others that high immigration does worsen global overpopulation by removing barriers to human expansion into new territory, thereby allowing humans to convert biodiverse ecosystems into more and bigger human settlements. Also tell them how immigration drives down labour standards and wages in the destination country. Be prepared for their primitive reactions. Explain to them that A POPULATION REDUCTION POLICY WOULD BE HUMANE AND DOES NOT INVOLVE RACISM OR KILLING PEOPLE! A POPULATION REDUCTION POLICY IS IN OUR BEST INTERESTS. WE SHOULD ALL WANT A POPULATION REDUCTION POLICY IF WE DON'T WANT INCREASED WAR, STARVATION, DISEASE AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS.
15. Tell the government to pay people to not have children and fine people that do until our population is at 5% of present levels. Then tell government to maintain a steady-state population.
16. Sign the Biodiversity First petition. http://biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com/petition.htm
17. Donate money or volunteer your efforts to an organization that is committed towards helping establish public will for population reduction such as Negative Population Growth (http://www.npg.org/) or Population Institute of Canada (http://www.populationinstituteofcanada.ca/) or Population Media Center (http://www.populationmedia.org/) or The Rewilding Institute (http://www.rewilding.org/).
18. Tell others that technology and conservation are not the answer to this unsustainable nightmare of 7 billion people by 2012.
The answer to our unsustainable nightmare is:
A) PEOPLE HAVE TO WANT THE LEGISLATION REQUIRED TO REDUCE THE POPULATION TO A SUSTAINABLE LEVEL IN ORDER FOR IT TO BE PUT IN PLACE
B) THE LEGISLATION: It is easy to reduce our population humanely with the legislation once it is in place.
Exclusively telling individuals to consume less is failing to reduce total consumption because the number of consumers is increasing, and each person must consume a substantial amount of resources just in order to survive and an even bigger amount just to have a decent life. The average person on earth doesn't consume enough resources to have a decent life, so redistributing wealth equally is not a solution. Expropriating more resources from other species is also not a solution. Reducing the human population to a sustainable level is the only sensible choice, and a complete solution.
Brishen Hoff, President of Biodiversity First
June 22, 2008
SPECIFIC IDEAS FOR TAKING ACTION AGAINST OVERPOPULATION:
1. Put bumper stickers on your vehicle to raise awareness of overpopulation.
2. Make your own custom T-shirts with slogans like "More people = More pollution"
3. Write "Letters to The Editor" on how biodiversity is declining due to overpopulation, which forces down our quality of life and how no environmental problem can be solved when human numbers are rising.
4. Contact TV and radio show producers and tell them that you want to see more discussion on our overpopulation problem. This topic is far more important than any other. Until the problem is solved by reducing our population to a sustainable level (about 5% of the current population), there has not been enough media coverage of the problem.
5. If you live on a highway, put up an overpopulation awareness sign.
6. If you're a millionaire, run some TV ads on overpopulation encouraging a population reduction plan for Canada that involves stopping overimmigration (which is our present practice of more immigrants than emigrants). THIS DOES NOT INVOLVE BUILDING A GIANT FENCE ON OUR BORDER, but will involve heavy fines for employers hiring illegals.
7. Encourage yourself, your spouse, your friends, your family, etc to spend their time and money ON helping to solve this local, national and global problem (namely overpopulation), not ON having additional children.
8. Start your own Internet blog (which is free if you have Internet access) and document the media's incompetent coverage of environmental issues resulting from their convenient avoidance of overpopulation.
9. Attend your town council meetings and tell them that you are fed up with growth and how it lowers quality of life in your community. Tell your politicians that you don't want economic growth and the population growth that comes with it, because in the short term it makes our lives worse and in the long term it threatens our very survival. Do not accept their rhetoric that growth is inevitable or that you can't stop "progress". Those are just cop-out excuses for repeating the same mistakes.
10. Write letters to your politicians demanding a population reduction policy and post their replies on the Internet. (your website, a blog, a friend's blog)
11. Talk about why you think overpopulation is the most important problem with everyone you know. Tell them that we need to redefine what "progress" is, because more human expansion is no longer in our best interests. Tell them how only extremely rich people at the top of the pyramid scheme (from central bankers to Royal Bank of Canada's CEO) profit from population growth, and the rest of us just suffer the environmental degradation that invariably results.
12. Complain to the environmental organizations that ignore the need to stop population growth in their home country. (David Suzuki Foundation, Nature Conservancy of Canada, The Sierra Club of Canada, etc) Immigration is easy to reduce through a simple policy change and doing so could eliminate the majority of the population growth for Canada, USA, Australia, Britain, France, Spain, South Africa, New Zealand, Italy, etc.
13. Complain to humanitarian aid organizations and our government that supports them for not making foreign aid conditional on reduced fertility rates.
14. Educate others that high immigration does worsen global overpopulation by removing barriers to human expansion into new territory, thereby allowing humans to convert biodiverse ecosystems into more and bigger human settlements. Also tell them how immigration drives down labour standards and wages in the destination country. Be prepared for their primitive reactions. Explain to them that A POPULATION REDUCTION POLICY WOULD BE HUMANE AND DOES NOT INVOLVE RACISM OR KILLING PEOPLE! A POPULATION REDUCTION POLICY IS IN OUR BEST INTERESTS. WE SHOULD ALL WANT A POPULATION REDUCTION POLICY IF WE DON'T WANT INCREASED WAR, STARVATION, DISEASE AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS.
15. Tell the government to pay people to not have children and fine people that do until our population is at 5% of present levels. Then tell government to maintain a steady-state population.
16. Sign the Biodiversity First petition. http://biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com/petition.htm
17. Donate money or volunteer your efforts to an organization that is committed towards helping establish public will for population reduction such as Negative Population Growth (http://www.npg.org/) or Population Institute of Canada (http://www.populationinstituteofcanada.ca/) or Population Media Center (http://www.populationmedia.org/) or The Rewilding Institute (http://www.rewilding.org/).
18. Tell others that technology and conservation are not the answer to this unsustainable nightmare of 7 billion people by 2012.
The answer to our unsustainable nightmare is:
A) PEOPLE HAVE TO WANT THE LEGISLATION REQUIRED TO REDUCE THE POPULATION TO A SUSTAINABLE LEVEL IN ORDER FOR IT TO BE PUT IN PLACE
B) THE LEGISLATION: It is easy to reduce our population humanely with the legislation once it is in place.
Exclusively telling individuals to consume less is failing to reduce total consumption because the number of consumers is increasing, and each person must consume a substantial amount of resources just in order to survive and an even bigger amount just to have a decent life. The average person on earth doesn't consume enough resources to have a decent life, so redistributing wealth equally is not a solution. Expropriating more resources from other species is also not a solution. Reducing the human population to a sustainable level is the only sensible choice, and a complete solution.
Brishen Hoff, President of Biodiversity First
June 22, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Paul Watson Vs. Elizabeth May
These are the two poles of North American environmentalism. One authentic and one counterfeit. Only the latter enjoys the hear of the official media and the patronage of the gullible who hand their dollars over in the belief that something is being "done" about the environment. In fact, the purpose of environmental NGOs is to do nothing about the environment, to keep problems unsolved, so they have a raison d'etre. Watson is the only one who speaks the truth.
Tim Murray
PAUL WATSON VS. ELIZABETH MAY
The following is a transcript of a CBC interview conducted on May 17/06 with Paul Watson and Elizabeth May, now leader of Canada’s Green Party. It was transcribed from a CD by Brishen Hoff. I highlighted those portions that best illustrated their attitudes. As always, the CBC gave the last word to the politically correct, soft green, growthist, Elizabeth May. Her clichés are now commonplace. The problem is not population growth, but sprawl, which can be dealt with by land use planning. And of course over-consumption, that great mea culpa of western culture.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE (host)
And the latest numbers show the population of the US grew by 2.8 million people from 2004 to 2005. Half of them identify themselves as hispanics. It is precisely those growth numbers that have some environmentalists raising concerns and raising hackles, arguing that immigration is central to the United States environmental problems. It's causing rifts among environmentalists and raising lots of questions and that is where the current begins today.
[THEME MUSIC]
Well what began as a skirmish is looking more and more like an all out war. For months now an intense debate about immigration policy has been simmering south of the border. Earlier this month supporters of an open immigration policy upped the stakes as millions of people took to the streets in cities across the US. On Monday, President George Bush fired back announcing he was deploying the National Guard to the Mexican border, "We do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that. By the end of 2008, we will increase the number of border patrol officers by an additional 6,000. When these new agents are deployed, we'll have more than double the size of the border control during my presence."
Well as both sides dig in for a prolonged fight, those advocating less immigration have found an unlikely ally inside the environmental movement. Paul Watson, the one-time co-founder of Greenpeace, later the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has thrown himself headfirst into the debate by challenging the environmental movement to come clean about what he says are the links between immigration, population growth and resource depletion. And Paul Watson is on the phone from Seattle this morning.
Good morning.
PAUL WATSON
Good morning.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Why are you convinced that immigration is a problem for the environment in the United States?
PAUL WATSON
Well you know the United States has got one of the fastest growth rates of any country in the world, and immigration is a major contributor to that. At a growth rate of 1.3% a year, that's going to give us a population of 1 billion in the United States by the end of the 21st century.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
And why is that bad?
PAUL WATSON
[LAUGHS] Well the average American consumes much more than the average citizen of other countries, so everytime you have a new American you increase the consumption of resources considerably. The US is also responsible for 25% of all the greenhouse gases emissions in the world, so more Americans, more pollution, more sprawl, more problems.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Well, but new immigrants aren't really the big energy consumers in North American society. Why do you focus on immigrants and not the stereotypical Hummer-driving air conditioning American?
PAUL WATSON
Well we do do that too, but the fact is is that every year almost 3 million people are added to the US population and most of that is from immigration. In fact, all we're advocating is that immigration numbers be reduced to levels to achieve stabilization of population. By birth rates alone in the United States, you don't have that increase. Immigration is solely responsible. Not only immigration but births by immigrants, because the birth rate amongst immigrants is far higher than the birth rate amongst non-immigrants.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Why is that?
PAUL WATSON
I don't really know except that people who enter the country have a higher birth rate than people who are already living here. That's just an established fact.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Are you looking at the US and looking at where there is ecological/environmental damage and attributing it to how many people are living there? Is that what you're doing?
PAUL WATSON
Well yes, because everytime people come into the US they greatly increase their rate of consumption of resources. The other problem we're concerned about is that there is terrific damage being done especially in the desert regions of the southwest because of people coming over that border everything from garbage to trampling of species and this is not only done by immigrants but also by the patrols against the immigration. So there's that consideration to be taken into account. You know the problem is is that if we don't control the numbers of the overall US population, we're headed for some very serious problems. The United States is already running out of valuable resources especially water.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
So, but is it a point of you just have too many people in one place in the US? What if they all moved to Missouri or something?
PAUL WATSON
No, I think generally its right across the board. But the other problem is that we have an acceptable form of slavery in the United States. When I was recently a director of the Sierra Club I put forth a motion that one way to deal with this is to demand that farm and factory workers wages be increased and that they be given full benefits and that would discourage a lot of the illegal immigration. But you know people don't really give much thought to the fact that in the fields of California, people are working in very toxic conditions for long hours, for low wages and no benefits and that's just really intolerable, and the only reason it's going on is because big business and big agriculture benefit from cheap labour.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
So you're saying that you think the US should curb immigration?
PAUL WATSON
Yes I think that they should reduce the numbers to achieve stabilization of the population.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Specifically over the Mexican border?
PAUL WATSON
Right across the board, I don't really discriminate against the origins of where the immigrants come from, it's right across the board.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Now this has been a divisive issue in the Sierra Club. You resigned from its board last month, in part over this issue. Tell us about that.
PAUL WATSON
Well I resigned in part because of that and also because of the Sierra Club's pro-hunting stance. But the Sierra Club, as is most major environmental organizations have taken a neutral position which means "We don't want to get involved -- We don't want to talk about this." You know back in 1972 at the UN Conference On The Environment the population issue was the number one concern on the environment. By the UN Conference in Rio in 1992, 20 years later nobody is talking about it.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Why is that?
PAUL WATSON
Well, it's become too politically correct. Nobody wants to talk about it. I much prefer to be ecologically correct than politically correct. We have to deal with the fact that it's a contributing factor and we have to deal with the fact that population is the single greatest source for all of our environmental problems. From diversity of species, to pollution, to greenhouse gas emissions. All of this is because there's more and more people. And also, the more people, that means that we have to steal the carrying capacity of other species. They have to disappear for our numbers to increase. And we're going to reach a point where we are going to run out of key species and everything is going to collapse because of the ecological law of interdependence.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
You, yourself are an immigrant.
PAUL WATSON
Yes, I'm a permanent resident of the US. I'm a Canadian citizen.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Aren't you part of the problem?
PAUL WATSON
Oh yes, we're all part of the problem.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
What are you suggesting? Are you suggesting sending people back?
PAUL WATSON
No, I'm just saying that we have to reduce the number of people coming into the United States to achieve stabilization. That is, there's already limits, there is no open borders. So, I'm saying lower those limits so we don't have an increase in the population of 2.8 million people every year.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
You know, reducing immigration doesn't reduce the population on the planet, just the population of the United States. Why not focus on the global population?
PAUL WATSON
Well we do focus on the global population but by reducing the number of Americans you're actually addressing the issue of consumption because US citizens consume much more resources than other citizens so when somebody crosses that border they become a mega-consumer. You know, maybe not right away, but that's where they're heading and so the more Americans, the greater the level of consumption of resources, the greater the emission of pollution.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Well, it's the environmental footprint right?
PAUL WATSON
Americans have the biggest environmental footprint of any citizens on the planet.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
At the same time, immigrants have smaller environmental footprints in their countries of origin often because they're poor. So how fair is it to condemn them to poverty by not allowing them to enter the US?
PAUL WATSON
Well then, what you're doing is condemning the United States to poverty in the future, which is where we're all heading anyway unless we curb population. The other problem is that other countries are trying to solve their population surplus problem by pushing people into the United States. Also it's a brain drain too. A lot of people who
could be making a contribution to their countries of origin are coming to the United States. And that's not solving problems in countries like Guatemala and Honduras where people should be helping to make things better in their country.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
To what extent do you think the same issues apply in Canada?
PAUL WATSON
I think Canada also has a problem too because our population is growing and that means more wilderness area is being taken up. And my big concern is that as people come in, the sprawl increases, there's more and more impact on wilderness. I mean for instance we have this situation in the United States where they don't understand why the alligators are attacking people. Well the reason the alligators are attacking is we're moving into their territory, we're taking their ecosystems and they're trying to survive and everybody's saying "It's amazing, why is this happening?" Well because we're invading.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Do you think President Bush's announcement this week calling for National Guard troop reinforcements on the US/Mexico border is a step in the right direction?
PAUL WATSON
Oh I think he's just posturing. I mean, 6,000 National Guard isn't going to make any difference at all. Really what they should be doing is enforcing US law against employers of illegal immigrants and the key to that is to make sure that people couldn't hire illegal immigrants in the farms and the factories, that would certainly go a lot further to discourage illegal immigration. I mean we're talking here of legal immigration of 2.8 million people every year. But the other factor is illegal immigration which is anywhere from 11 to 20 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
But you want to see them cracking down on both essentially. Not only illegal, but you want legal immigration to be reduced?
PAUL WATSON
Yes
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Paul Watson, thanks for talking to us today.
PAUL WATSON
Thank you.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Paul Watson is the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He was also one of the founders of Greenpeace and he was on the phone from Seattle. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and on Sirius Satellite Radio 137. I'm Anna Maria Tremonte.
Well not everyone in the environmental movement agrees with Paul Watson's argument about the links between immigration and environmental degradation. Elizabeth May is a candidate for the leadership of the federal Green Party. She's also the former executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, and she is in Syndey, Nova Scotia this morning.
Hello.
ELIZABETH MAY
Good morning Anna Maria.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Well what do you think of what Paul Watson is saying? He says that anti-immigration opinion is something that environmentalists are afraid to talk about.
ELIZABETH MAY
Well we've never been afraid to talk about it in Canada and as you mentioned I just recently stepped down as executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada and while I was there, we answered it across countries with a set of discussions and seminars and came up with what I think is a very good policy in relation to immigration and the interrelationships which are far more complex than Paul has suggested, between immigration, population pressures, consumption, militarism, women's rights. It's a very complex web, and to say that immigration is the problem is really to put the emphasis on something that is, when you really look at all the various factors, it's basically trivial. I mean, only 3% of the world's population dies in a country other than that in which they were born and most of that migration is from developing countries to developing countries, not coming into North American consumptive societies, so the key factor here in environmental destruction, as Paul hints of course, is that North Americans consume far more than any notion of fair share and far beyond any sense of the carrying capacity of the planet. So when you have 4% of the world's population which is the United States, producing 25% of the planet's greenhouse gases, the answer isn't to make as George Bush seems to think, to make the United States a gated community and put guys with guns at the border so that we can protect, you know, the United States and protect a completely unsustainable and highly polluting and unnecessarily consumptive way of life to achieve the quality of life they want. There's other ways to do that and it means unhooking themselves from their extremely wasteful use of energy; it's not beating up on immigrants.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
He says that global population growth used to be the global environmental movement's number one issue but it disappeared from the agenda in recent years. Why do you think that happened?
ELIZABETH MAY
Well it's not quite like Paul -- it is true that I don't think there's any question that environmental groups are concerned about population increases. I mean, the doubling from 3 billion to 6 billion people occurred in my life time. The historic trend it is more than, you know, an astonishing reality that 2000 years ago the population on earth was 200 million people. It took 1500 years for that to double to 400 million, so there are exponential rates of growth. Population is a clear global issue of which immigration is merely a trivial factor, but when you look at the issue of population and why it is such a significant environmental threat, it's entirely linked to the question of how much is each person on earth consuming, and whether those rates of consumption are sustainable.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
So where does global population growth rank then as a threat to the environment?
ELIZABETH MAY
No, I think it's a huge issue, but it's very much connected to how much we're consuming. So if you figure what the carrying capacity of planet earth, maybe it's six billion people living like Ghandi or, you know, a couple hundred thousand living like Bill Gates. It's very much related to how much each person is consuming and how do we, you know, it's critical that North American society, because Canadians have just about as large an ecological footprint as the United States, it's critical that we reduce that enormous impact that we're having, otherwise the climate crisis is going to rather redress our standard of living for us.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
So is it not true then that the one place that you don't want more growth then is a place like the US that already has such consumption?
ELIZABETH MAY
The issue is really one that's far too complex to say the problem is more immigrants. If you look at Canadian environmental problems, our biggest increase in greenhouse gases and our biggest loss of boreal forest is happening in the Athabasca tar sands and that's not because of a mass migration of people from other countries rushing there and destroying the environment. That's immigrants like Shell and Exxon. So we have to look at what the real issues are and where we have increased sprawl which is a real problem, it's related to bad land use planning. It's related to bad policies that'll affect where immigrants settle and it'll affect where Canadian born settlement occurs. This is, actually, you know, everyone in Canada who isn't First Nations is an immigrant, we've got to deal with land use planning so that we're not building increased levels of suburban sprawl in areas which are critical wildlife habitat. That is happening in Canada. It is a problem, but curbing immigration is really focussing on the wrong, and rather trivial aspect of the overall problem.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
How should countries then that rely on immigration for population growth balance that with environmental concerns?
ELIZABETH MAY
Well it's really that for all of us we need to reduce the amount of energy we're consuming, the amount, and that's a basically a factor in increasing the efficiency of the way in which we use energy and raw materials. The global economy just to give you an example, produced in North America, achieved a revolution in productivity, in reducing the amount of labour per unit of good produced per unit of energy. It was just a huge efficiency in the number of people employed to produce goods. We need to do that again by reducing by a factor of ten, which is doable on the technologies that are available, the amount of energy we're using to get the same quality of life; the same lighting, the same heating, the same cooling can all be achieved at a fraction of what we're now consuming because we've underpriced raw materials and carbon and underpriced energy and we've overpriced labour, so we've skewed, it's all a question of responding to, really to, fiscal signals.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Paul Watson though is not alone in what he says. How much of a wedge issue is immigration amongst environmentalists in the US?
ELIZABETH MAY
In the US it is and I think it's unfortunate because I know that Paul's motivations are completely honourable. People have attacked him as a racist or something. It's not the case at all. He's genuinely someone concerned particularly about the fate of non-human life on this planet and that is a critical concern. We're in a biodiversity meltdown. We're in an extinction crisis and by focussing on immigration I must say that's the most divisive and unhelpful way to approach the issue of what can humanity do to reorient ourselves on this planet so that we can both live in peace with each other and not destroy our life support systems.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Well how damaging do you think his line of reasoning is then to the image of the environmental movement?
ELIZABETH MAY
Well it was fairly disastrous in terms of just the mere fact that Sierra Club US was considering, because it's a democratic organization, by their constitution, they had to consider the referendum put forward by a minority of members to vote on an immigration policy. The immigration policy proposed, that Paul supported, was roundly seen by the membership of Sierra Club US, but I bet a lot of listeners right now are thinking "Oh yeah, I remember something about that, about Sierra Club US thinking that we should, you know, that we should, stop immigrants as if they were toxic waste". Well that is, you know, not an acceptable position but the mere fact that it was debated I think has done some long-term damage to the reputation.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
If the US experienced a serious population decrease, how much would that relieve the pressure on the environment?
ELIZABETH MAY
Well it depends on how much they're consuming. If the United States consumption of, particularly of fossil fuels, continues its current rate which, you know, if it's an advantage to reduce the population but if every family bought themselves an SUV or moved from an SUV to a Hummer, it would make no difference at all.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
So what should US environmentalists who are genuinely concerned about population growth be doing to address this issue?
ELIZABETH MAY
No, I think the key thing is to protect wilderness by having the kinds of laws that ensure that land use planning does not involve sprawl into areas which are critical and threatened ecosystems and at the same time we need to fundamentally re-examine the consumption patterns, our dependency on cheap and very highly polluting fossil fuels to improve and regulate vehicle standards. You know, the Bush administration in addition to putting guards at the border to Mexico is in court fighting Arnold Schwartzenegger in California having these tougher laws to get better fuel economy from their automobile fleet. So, they're opposing those very simple straight-forward measures that would mean that every American driving would pollute less. So it's a really complicated web and I'm sorry I'm giving complicated answers but a simple solution is wrong when the answer is, when the question is complicated.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Elizabeth May, we have to leave it there. Thanks for talking to me today.
ELIZABETH MAY
Thank you, Anna Maria.
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Bye Bye
ELIZABETH MAY
Bye
ANNA MARIA TREMONTE
Elizabeth May is a candidate for the leadership of the federal Green Party. She's also the former executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada and she spoke to us from Sydney, Nova Scotia this morning.
======================
Observations on this radio debate by Biodiversity First's Vice-President, Tim Murray:
May says that immigration, at 3% of the world’s population, is “trivial”. Trivial to whom? To the workers whose jobs are displaced and whose wages are depressed? (Rubenstein, Briggs, Borgias). Trivial to the taxpayers who must pay for the social services of immigrants? (Robert Rector study, Heritage Foundation 2006, Grubel study, Fraser Institute 2006). Trivial to those who fight traffic gridlock, suffer pollution, housing shortages and inflated prices and loss of farmland?. Is it trivial to the Israelis, the Spanish, and the Indians who have also resorted to building expensive walls to keep migrants out? Will the prospect of 300 million global environmental refugees be trivial?
May speaks of laws that ensure that land use planning will not involve sprawl into areas that are critical to threatened ecosystems. What kind of ironclad laws would they be? The kind that Portland, Oregon had? The kind that was supposed to keep Yosemite safe from mining companies? The kind that is supposed save the Steve Irwin Nature reserve? Bullshit. There is NO sanctuary from human population growth. “Smart” Growth is a fraud and a snare.
May talks of vehicle standards and Bush’s opposition to Schwartzenegger’s fuel economy plans. The best fuel economy plan would be to reduce the number of drivers on the roads. With nearly 3 million of them entering the country every year by legal means alone, May’s focus on tech efficiency is a joke.
“Everyone who isn’t First Nations is an immigrant”. Give me a break. When is someone going to call May out on her racist self-loathing? The “First Nations” emigrated from across the Bering Strait, and one wave displaced another. Each tribe or band occupies land that was taken by the conquest or annihilation of a previous “First Nation”. I am a Caucasian but I was born in this damn country. That makes me as “native” as anybody. If there is to be a hierarchy of Canadianism based on seniority, then I am more Canadian than 80% of the aboriginal population of the country who are younger than I am. May continually makes reference to the inherent “wisdom” of First Nations peoples in matters of resource management, despite their appalling record. Would she make similar references to the inherent “cleverness” of Jews, or the inherent “rythym” of blacks, or the inherent parsimony of Scotsmen?
Tim Murray
Vice-President of Biodiversity First
CBC Ignores Link Between Overpopulation and Biodiversity Loss
I saw a TV segment on "The National" last night about the mass extinction of amphibians currently underway.
The CBC's Chief of Thought Police, Wendy Mesley dispatched Constable Kelly Crowe for this assignment. CBC National detatchment's Constable Crowe reported that 1/3 of the world's remaining amphibians are critically endangered and 1/2 are in steep decline.
Crowe's report showed how attempts were being made to artificially breed the last specimens of many endangered amphibians in expensive energy-intensive indoor environments. One such species on the ropes is a giant "Hellbender salamander" (up to 30 inches in length) native to Sw. New York to N. Alabama, Georgia, Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River whose last wild specimens existed in Missouri but now exclusively exists in captivity. Crowe also showed a Panamanian Golden Frog (pure bright yellow) and some irridescent blue frog among many others that are headed to extinction.
Another scientist artificially breeding the "Spotted Frog" said that in its native BC there only remains 3 small ponds with the right habitat to support it. With these small vestiges being the only habitats remaining for the Spotted Frog, he remarked "If someone dumped a can of oil in one of the ponds they'd be down to two ponds. If a train derailed they'd be down to one pond."
Constable Crowe failed to point out that captive breeding of the last individuals of a species without freeing up more habitat never works. Even if breeding in captivity succeeds, there is not enough habitat for the species to re-establish itself in the wild due to increasing human numbers. The last Tazmanian Tiger (a marsupial) for instance died in captivity in a zoo. Likewise, the last individual of Australia's "Gastric Breeding Frog" (which raises young in its stomach while suppressing stomach digestive acids, and was new to science only months before it went extinct) of course, died in captivity, as no additional habitat was reallocated for them. Apparently, our society believes that scientists in labcoats playing zookeeper are more effective at saving a species than giving that species back its wild habitat by reducing human numbers -- well society was wrong and we continue to repeat this same mistake. Aren't we supposed to be the species with the large brain capable of superior logic and reasoning? Australia is also suffering from exponential population growth induced by mass immigration -- a fact that the CBC chose to sidestep.
A scientist that Constable Crowe interviewed got warmest when he said that the biodiversity meltdown was due to a plethora of causes from water pollution from pharmaceuticals, to deforestation, to sprawl, and many others "but that they were all human induced". Unfortunately, that's as close as they got to the truth, as he did not mention that the more humans there are, the less other species there will be. Further to my disappointment, he did not conclude that it is in our best interests to launch national laws that will reduce human populations, including right here in Canada which means a drastic reduction in immigration, critical to saving biodiversity.
Constable Kelly Crowe, predictably as an employee of the dogmatic Canadian Broadcasting Corporation regime (what I call the "Thought Police") failed to attribute habitat loss and therefore amphibian extinctions to it's sole cause, namely overpopulation and of human beings. We have a choice: Reduce human population or lose biodiversity. It's that simple; such is the reality of a finite world. If the CBC wasn't so corrupt with their pro-immigration growth, pro-multiculturalism dogma, they would take away Constable Crowe's badge and force her resignation for scientific illiteracy. But unlike Paul Watson, CBC would rather be politically correct than ecologically correct.
Brishen Hoff, June 18, 2008
President of Biodiversity First
The CBC's Chief of Thought Police, Wendy Mesley dispatched Constable Kelly Crowe for this assignment. CBC National detatchment's Constable Crowe reported that 1/3 of the world's remaining amphibians are critically endangered and 1/2 are in steep decline.
Crowe's report showed how attempts were being made to artificially breed the last specimens of many endangered amphibians in expensive energy-intensive indoor environments. One such species on the ropes is a giant "Hellbender salamander" (up to 30 inches in length) native to Sw. New York to N. Alabama, Georgia, Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River whose last wild specimens existed in Missouri but now exclusively exists in captivity. Crowe also showed a Panamanian Golden Frog (pure bright yellow) and some irridescent blue frog among many others that are headed to extinction.
Another scientist artificially breeding the "Spotted Frog" said that in its native BC there only remains 3 small ponds with the right habitat to support it. With these small vestiges being the only habitats remaining for the Spotted Frog, he remarked "If someone dumped a can of oil in one of the ponds they'd be down to two ponds. If a train derailed they'd be down to one pond."
Constable Crowe failed to point out that captive breeding of the last individuals of a species without freeing up more habitat never works. Even if breeding in captivity succeeds, there is not enough habitat for the species to re-establish itself in the wild due to increasing human numbers. The last Tazmanian Tiger (a marsupial) for instance died in captivity in a zoo. Likewise, the last individual of Australia's "Gastric Breeding Frog" (which raises young in its stomach while suppressing stomach digestive acids, and was new to science only months before it went extinct) of course, died in captivity, as no additional habitat was reallocated for them. Apparently, our society believes that scientists in labcoats playing zookeeper are more effective at saving a species than giving that species back its wild habitat by reducing human numbers -- well society was wrong and we continue to repeat this same mistake. Aren't we supposed to be the species with the large brain capable of superior logic and reasoning? Australia is also suffering from exponential population growth induced by mass immigration -- a fact that the CBC chose to sidestep.
A scientist that Constable Crowe interviewed got warmest when he said that the biodiversity meltdown was due to a plethora of causes from water pollution from pharmaceuticals, to deforestation, to sprawl, and many others "but that they were all human induced". Unfortunately, that's as close as they got to the truth, as he did not mention that the more humans there are, the less other species there will be. Further to my disappointment, he did not conclude that it is in our best interests to launch national laws that will reduce human populations, including right here in Canada which means a drastic reduction in immigration, critical to saving biodiversity.
Constable Kelly Crowe, predictably as an employee of the dogmatic Canadian Broadcasting Corporation regime (what I call the "Thought Police") failed to attribute habitat loss and therefore amphibian extinctions to it's sole cause, namely overpopulation and of human beings. We have a choice: Reduce human population or lose biodiversity. It's that simple; such is the reality of a finite world. If the CBC wasn't so corrupt with their pro-immigration growth, pro-multiculturalism dogma, they would take away Constable Crowe's badge and force her resignation for scientific illiteracy. But unlike Paul Watson, CBC would rather be politically correct than ecologically correct.
Brishen Hoff, June 18, 2008
President of Biodiversity First
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Absurdity of Powerwise.ca TV advertisements on TVO
Letter To TVO's The Agenda producers:
Are you willing to do a show about the great efficiency paradox that occurs when: despite major achievements in technology, conservation and legislation... total environmental impact continues to increase due to population increase?
More info:
http://ecologicalcrash.blogspot.com/2008/06/canadian-governments-powerwise-pr.html
http://ecologicalcrash.blogspot.com/2008/06/going-green-efficiency-paradox.html
Are your hands tied at TVO's "The Agenda" because you are already taking money from Powerwise.ca for broadcasting their TV commercials? (with David Suzuki and his penguins telling us to turn up our ACs by 1 degree to save enough electricity to accommodate another 38,000 new homes)
I don't think our greenbelts need another 38,000 new homes. Why does someone with a scientific background like David Suzuki not understand that increasing the number of people eventually results in increasing the total energy consumption no matter how much each person lowers his/her energy consumption?
What is the point of reducing per capita energy consumption in Canada when mass immigration guarantees that total energy consumption will increase?
Is quantity of life more important than quality of life? Should Canadians make themselves uncomfortable by not showering more than once a month, or bathing in cold water so that they can help meet the energy needs of 250,000 new immigrants each year?
Consider this letter from environmentalist Tim Murray:
SAVING ENERGY TO ACCOMMODATE 300 MILLION ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES
Dear Powerwise,
As a typical soft-green bleeding heart Canadian, like you, I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want to reduce energy consumption but turn a blind eye to the growing number of energy consumers. That is, I want to diminish per capita energy consumption and ignore total energy consumption. Frantically bail water out of a boat called HMCS Canada that is rapidly taking on too much water (people) because of a gaping hole (immigration) instead stopping to tell the captain to plug the hole before any more bailing proceeds. But doing that is just not politically correct, is it? And any comment to Power-wise to that effect had better be deleted, just like a letter to Pravda critical of Brezhnev would have been in the good old days of the Soviet Union.
So instead, we will just have to have another one of those Suzuki-sense commercials. Try this scenario. David is in “Norm’s” house again. This time Norm’s living room is full of pigs. But they are too clean. “Hey Norm,” David says, “pigs don’t need to be that clean! If they and every Canadian had one fewer shower per week then we could supply enough energy so that 300,000 immigrants, the annual target intake in coming years, could have hot showers.” But of course that immigration growth is cumulative. So in year two David would be back to tell Norm that the pigs should forgo another shower. Then another. And another. Very quickly Canadians would never bathe again. That is just with immigration. But bleeders always tell us that “refugees” don’t count as immigrants. As if they don’t have a footprint. Unfortunately they do, and according to Al Gore, the conurbation of Shanghai alone will give up 40 million of them from rising sea waters. Multiply that times ten across the globe, and add in water shortages, food shortages and all the other environmental earthquakes ahead, together with the people displaced by the wars fought over them, and good Christmas you have 300 million environmental refugees.
How much “Green Living” and conservation will it take to compensate for the demands of even a fraction of these desperate people when they make it to our shores? In the face of rapid population growth, conservation of any kind is at best just treading water. At worst it is a PR hoax that is deflecting people from the major task at hand. Cutting total consumption, not per capita consumption. You cut total consumption by slowing the economy, that is, by halting economic growth. Economic growth is a function of population growth times per capita consumption. We have to work on ALL variables in that equation, not play Mary Poppins with one called “energy efficiency” or power-wise.
Surprise me and print this.
Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC
=========================
So Dunseath, Kitts, Szemberg, etc... what's the call?
Do you have intellectual freedom to challenge fundamentally flawed ineffectual feelgood environmentalism which results in increased total environmental impact?
Or have you already been bought out by the big corporations who fund Powerwise.ca and are hellbent on growing their profits through more immigration induced population growth?
Sincerely,
Brishen Hoff
President of Biodiversity First
Are you willing to do a show about the great efficiency paradox that occurs when: despite major achievements in technology, conservation and legislation... total environmental impact continues to increase due to population increase?
More info:
http://ecologicalcrash.blogspot.com/2008/06/canadian-governments-powerwise-pr.html
http://ecologicalcrash.blogspot.com/2008/06/going-green-efficiency-paradox.html
Are your hands tied at TVO's "The Agenda" because you are already taking money from Powerwise.ca for broadcasting their TV commercials? (with David Suzuki and his penguins telling us to turn up our ACs by 1 degree to save enough electricity to accommodate another 38,000 new homes)
I don't think our greenbelts need another 38,000 new homes. Why does someone with a scientific background like David Suzuki not understand that increasing the number of people eventually results in increasing the total energy consumption no matter how much each person lowers his/her energy consumption?
What is the point of reducing per capita energy consumption in Canada when mass immigration guarantees that total energy consumption will increase?
Is quantity of life more important than quality of life? Should Canadians make themselves uncomfortable by not showering more than once a month, or bathing in cold water so that they can help meet the energy needs of 250,000 new immigrants each year?
Consider this letter from environmentalist Tim Murray:
SAVING ENERGY TO ACCOMMODATE 300 MILLION ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES
Dear Powerwise,
As a typical soft-green bleeding heart Canadian, like you, I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want to reduce energy consumption but turn a blind eye to the growing number of energy consumers. That is, I want to diminish per capita energy consumption and ignore total energy consumption. Frantically bail water out of a boat called HMCS Canada that is rapidly taking on too much water (people) because of a gaping hole (immigration) instead stopping to tell the captain to plug the hole before any more bailing proceeds. But doing that is just not politically correct, is it? And any comment to Power-wise to that effect had better be deleted, just like a letter to Pravda critical of Brezhnev would have been in the good old days of the Soviet Union.
So instead, we will just have to have another one of those Suzuki-sense commercials. Try this scenario. David is in “Norm’s” house again. This time Norm’s living room is full of pigs. But they are too clean. “Hey Norm,” David says, “pigs don’t need to be that clean! If they and every Canadian had one fewer shower per week then we could supply enough energy so that 300,000 immigrants, the annual target intake in coming years, could have hot showers.” But of course that immigration growth is cumulative. So in year two David would be back to tell Norm that the pigs should forgo another shower. Then another. And another. Very quickly Canadians would never bathe again. That is just with immigration. But bleeders always tell us that “refugees” don’t count as immigrants. As if they don’t have a footprint. Unfortunately they do, and according to Al Gore, the conurbation of Shanghai alone will give up 40 million of them from rising sea waters. Multiply that times ten across the globe, and add in water shortages, food shortages and all the other environmental earthquakes ahead, together with the people displaced by the wars fought over them, and good Christmas you have 300 million environmental refugees.
How much “Green Living” and conservation will it take to compensate for the demands of even a fraction of these desperate people when they make it to our shores? In the face of rapid population growth, conservation of any kind is at best just treading water. At worst it is a PR hoax that is deflecting people from the major task at hand. Cutting total consumption, not per capita consumption. You cut total consumption by slowing the economy, that is, by halting economic growth. Economic growth is a function of population growth times per capita consumption. We have to work on ALL variables in that equation, not play Mary Poppins with one called “energy efficiency” or power-wise.
Surprise me and print this.
Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC
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So Dunseath, Kitts, Szemberg, etc... what's the call?
Do you have intellectual freedom to challenge fundamentally flawed ineffectual feelgood environmentalism which results in increased total environmental impact?
Or have you already been bought out by the big corporations who fund Powerwise.ca and are hellbent on growing their profits through more immigration induced population growth?
Sincerely,
Brishen Hoff
President of Biodiversity First
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