The latest figures on population growth in Canada from Statistics Canada once more underscore the fraud and futility of the strategies against climate change recommended by mainstream environmental organizations and the corporations who support them financially. http://www.ottawasun.com/news/canada/2010/06/28/14542971.html
In the first three months of 2010, Canada grew by .26%, adding 88,449 consumers to its population, now exceeding the 34 million mark. If that growth rate persists, Canada will be home to some 353,788 more consumers at year’s end than it had the year before. This is only slightly less than the average 367,200 who were added each year between 2001 and 2006 when the country grew by 5.4% or 1.08% per annum. By the same measure, British Columbia, which grew by .37% from January to April this year, is on pace to add 66,760 people to its population, which represents some 13% of Canada’s. This will translate into about 24,000 extra households and 43,000 extra cars. Good news for the home building industry, the developers, the banks and the auto industry----but bad news for the environment.
So much for the much vaunted carbon tax that the British Columbia Campbell Liberals introduced two years ago, with applause from Tzeporah Berman and the environmental movement. According to the BC government website, that tax would reduce green house gas emissions equivalent to taking 787,000 cars off the road by 2020. But as mathematician Rick Shea observed at the time, our provincial population growth rate, which is exponential, would add 520,000 cars to the road by that time, and by 2026, wipe out all gains made by this tax. http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_printable&PAGE_id=3396&lay_quiet=1
Similar calculations could apply to the nation as a whole. The CBC and its trendy mouthpiece, George Strombopolous, boasted last year that its “Million Acts of Green” campaign to encourage “green” living by highlighting and celebrating the initiatives of ordinary Canadians succeeded in reducing carbon emissions equivalent to taking 10,000 cars off the road. But at least 350,000 people who jumped on board HMCS Ecological Titanic that year spurred the construction of 140,000 more housing units and the purchase of 252,000 automobiles. On average, each Canadian is emitting more than 20 metric tonnes of GHG annually, so the extra passengers we pick up burden the atmosphere by over 7 million metric tonnes of GHG each year. In the face of this growth, technological efficiencies are also of fleeting value. Analyst Brishen Hoff calculated that the energy supplied by the proposed wind farm in Sarnia, Ontario would be negated by just 22 days of “business-as-usual” immigration. http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_printable&PAGE_id=1976&lay_quiet=1
Oddly though, the “green living” evangelists make no mention of population growth and its impact on GHG emissions in Canada. Collectively, the BC Sierra Club, the David Suzuki Foundation and prominent environmentalist Guy Dauncey have offered some 121 “solutions” to climate change, but not one of them advises readers to practice birth control. Instead, we are exhorted to “change our behaviours”, but not our behaviour in the bedroom. And of course, the ugly “I” word----immigration---is left out of the discussion. That of course, is the most conspicuous omission of all. The environmental NGOs never tire of telling us that climate change is the result of human activity, but they leave the distinct impression that the number of humans has nothing to do with the scale of this human activity. David Suzuki, for one, feels qualified to lecture us about environmental responsibility despite having sired five carbon footprints from two marriages. In his “Penguin” commercial for Ontario power users, he told Ontarians that if they turned down their air conditioners by one degree, enough energy would be freed up to power another 36,000 homes. What he did not say, however, is that each annual crop of immigrants to that province requires the construction of 75,000 homes. Every Canadian with an air conditioner would have to turn it down by 3.5 degrees C just to offset the consumption of the new energy users who emigrated to Canada. Maybe Suzuki’s next energy conservation movie should be called “Sleepless in Toronto".
Two of three new Canadians, are foreign-born and immigrants on average, quadruple their GHG emissions upon their arrival in North America, thereby accelerating the timetable of our global demise. Stating this inconvenient truth is not to make immigrants the whipping boys for our profligate ways. Immigrants come to aspire to our lifestyle, not escape to the austerity they left behind. They were not responsible for our consumptive patterns, but they are eager participants in it. This is not an indictment but a statement of an understandable ambition, shared by all who came before us. But while it is our obligation to reduce our ecological impacts, that endeavour cannot be an excuse or rationale for importing more climate-changers and converting them to hyper-consumerism. Generosity to migrants can be a callous disregard for the world as a whole, as well as an imposition upon those who already live here.
It should also be noted that our carbon footprint is only a subset of our ecological footprint. Population growth is a critical variable in environmental degradation of all sorts---the loss of farmland, soil productivity, water, wetlands, species and biodiversity services. However much we conserve, recycle or reuse, reducing our footprint is futile if the number of feet coming through the airport or the maternity ward offsets those economies. Mother Nature takes no account of our acts of personal green abnegation----only our total consumption. While we are performing “one million acts of green”, there are 34 million acts of brown being committed every day in Canada merely by virtue of our existence. The very last thing the global environment needs is more Canadians---from wherever their source.
Tim Murray
June 28, 2010
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