The greatest challenge facing Canada
and the United States in the 21st century: how do they change their “romantic”
notions of immigration as a positive into a more realistic understanding that
relentless growth ultimately causes collapse.
Canada imports in excess of 250,000 immigrants annually while the U.S.
imports 2.4 million annually. Those
immigrants arrive from a line that grows by 77 million annually.
Again, Murray brings it home:
“For those who recall the scene when
Neville Chamberlain stepped down on the tarmac of London’s Heston aerodrome on
September 30th of 1938 waving his piece of paper,” said Murray, “the
announcement by the British Columbia, Canada government on October 16, 2007
must have seemed like déjà vu. On both occasions, an announcement promising
‘peace in our time’ (for people or wildlife) was met with jubilant relief from
people who wanted to believe that the insatiable appetite of a monster can be
appeased with an hors d’oeuvre.
“In 1938 the monster was Adolf
Hitler and he was not to be believed or trusted. In 2007 the monster is
economic growth, and its need for lebensraum will not stop at greenbelts,
farmland, wetlands and nature reserves. It will devour what it needs to fuel
its momentum and bend governments and laws to serve its ends. The strictest
land use plans will fall before its armies. Even the home of ‘smart growth’,
Portland,
Oregon, stood helpless as growth
forced population to spill over tight urban boundaries into adjacent farmland.
British greenbelts are beginning to suffer the same fate. As planning
consultant Eben Fodor was moved to comment, “smart growth is merely the
planned, orderly destruction of our remaining environment.”
“Economic growth is a function of
population growth, driven in North America largely by immigration, coupled with
obscenely excessive consumption---and it is crowding out wildlife habitat. The
question is, can the dedication of conservation areas permanently shield wildlife
and flora from developmental pressures? Experience suggests that it cannot.
Canadian examples abound. Let me recite a few.
“In Banff National Park, roads were
expanded and tourist and campsite developments added, while in Lady-Evelyn
Smoothwater Provincial Park, ATV trails were cut for motorized fishermen. In
Lake Superior Park, natives built roads and bridges for resource extraction
while in Algonguin Provincial Park to serve clear-cut logging more kilometers
of roads were built than exist in Greater Toronto. In British Columbia,
the 1.8 million acre Liard River Park was virtually erased in 1949, and in
1955, 1.1million acres were deleted from Tweedsmuir Park, both for
hydroelectric flooding. In 1966, 2.3 million acres were shaved from Hamber Provincial
Park, and just two years and three months after the BC Sierra Club crowed about
its ‘victory’ of October 2007, when the BC government announced legislation to
set aside more than 2.2 million hectares for the endangered mountain caribou,
it was revealed that that same government had relaxed requirements for mining
companies operating in caribou habitat.
“ The new regulations, applicable to
about 500,000 hectares of mineral claims, would allow the felling of caribou
food-trees and the building of roads that posed an ‘acceptable’ risk to
caribou. My fears were vindicated. As I wrote just after the October
announcement, “even with 2.2 million hectares set aside, they (the Sierra Club)
would be advised to keep their powder dry.”
“But false hope springs eternal. The
Sierra Club reverted to its party mood when the provincial government relented
and announced a ban on mining, oil and gas development in the ‘Flathead River
Valley’. Now, flushed with pyrrhic victory, the Sierra Club coalition is
calling for the area to be declared a ‘World Heritage’ site. Do they expect
UNESCO to send a military strike force to defend it from future incursions? Do
they have any idea how quickly any legal arrangement that ‘protects’ a sacred
area can and will be cast aside in a heartbeat when our growth economy becomes
desperate for its resources---the lifeblood of industrial civilization?
“According to analyst Chris
Clugston, presently about 95 per cent of the material flow into the US economy
consists of non-renewable natural resources (NNRs), and global supplies of 14
of 20 NNRs are projected to peak by 2050, using the most conservative and
optimistic calculations. If the government of Queensland can permit bauxite
mining in a park recently named after a national hero, Steve Irwin, imagine
what will be politically possible when the going really gets rough. As Clugston
remarked, “We know that times are still relatively good when environmentalists
are still able to save parks from mining and drilling.” But come the frenetic
free-for-all to keep the industrial machine running, they will be brushed aside
like so many flies hovering over a picnic salad. Mark O’Connor warned that
“These parks have supposedly been created in perpetuity; yet there is a risk
that further shifts in ideology may leave a future government free to revoke
national parks. It would by then be able to plead the housing and resource
needs of a much expanded population.” I would argue that this is no risk.
Unless we radically change course, it is a certainty.
“What Steve Hoecker said of America
has universal application: “It does no good to preach that we should not
destroy habitat or that we should reserve more open space. When push comes to
shove, we are going to clear more land to build houses, plant more acres to
crops, build roads to carry an increased traffic load, create more jobs as well
as a host of other habitat-destroying activities in order to provide for an
ever-increasing number of people. Each year we convert more wildlands and open
space to human-dominated landscapes to provide for human needs. It can be no
other way as long as our populations continue to grow. We continue to attack
the symptoms, not the underlying cause.”
“Yet the conservation movement
persists in the strategy of designating land as “forever” protected in the face
of runaway growth, creating an illusion of achievement proven false by
historical trends. Nature Conservancy Canada boasts that it has saved two
million acres but many times that has been developed more intensively outside
park boundaries where a good number of endangered wildlife actually live, while
Ducks Unlimited Canada boasts that it has conserved nearly one million acres of
wetlands in Ontario though 60-90 per cent of wetlands in the more populated
southern region of the province has been lost. The longer these organizations
have been in business, the greater the net loss in habitat.
“Imagine if the Coast Guard bragged
about saving ten boaters this year but neglected to mention the one hundred who
had drowned. In their 2005 Report, the National Refuge Association of the
U.S. revealed that “many endangered or threatened species are not even found on
the refuges, including 40 per cent of all listed mammals, birds and reptiles,
75 per cent of listed fish and amphibians, and about 85 per cent of listed
plants and invertebrates.” The area outside refuges will be more and more a
killing zone. Much of the 40 per cent of all housing units that will exist in
America in 2030 will be built on previously open lands, and “lands within five
miles of fully 78 per cent of the western refuges have been mined, drilled,
offered to or otherwise controlled by mining, oil and gas interests.”
“And nearly 40 per cent of refuges
have greater than 50 per cent human-impacted landscape within 5 to 40 miles.
Particularly vulnerable are the 20 per cent of wildlife refuges smaller than
1000 acres, or refuges fragmented into small parcels that can’t adequately
defend the ranges of the species that need protection. Wildlife
conservation behind paper fortresses is a pathetically deficient stratagem. The
conservation movement needs to go on the offensive and attack the root cause of
habitat loss.
“Moreover, aside from their
displacement behavior, that is, their focus on saving habitat rather than
fighting development, the business model of conservation organizations is
flawed. To protect nature reserves, expensive on-going maintenance is needed.
Ducks Unlimited Canada, for example, requires $3.5 billion to restore over
700,00 acres of wetland to sustain waterfowl populations, not including the
many needs to replace water control structures, mend beaver fences and repair
dykes, while Nature Conservancy requires park wardens, maintenance crew and
legal funds to prosecute park violators. This assumes a ‘growing' economy to
supply funding to fight the consequences of growth, funding that must come from
government revenues and the portfolios of private donors. Ironically, this
growth drives up the value of adjacent land making the protected land more
attractive to developers and more costly to pay taxes for. Quite the bind.
“The hard truth is, as long as
economic growth runs loose like a mad dog, no land of any size is safe from
predation. Growing populations and growing development envelop pristine
sanctuaries, reach a tipping point, and then the resources that these
sanctuaries are harbouring will be ravaged. Just as the B.C. government set
aside this Mountain Cariboo habitat, the U.S. Congress once established
Yosemite
National Park. When
mining and logging interests came knocking at the door, with the stroke of a
pen, Congress released 1400 hectares of the precious park for their
exploitation. Any wildlife sanctuary made by law can be unmade made by law.
Overnight.
“One day soon, in a country near
you, when the price of oil is in triple digits and power down, there will be a
desperate and ruthless scramble to use up resources wherever they can be found,
even behind the sacrosanct walls of conservation lands. And government will
pave the way.
“First it was the tiny Sudetenland,
then it was Poland and then it was the vast steppes of Russia. Feed a crocodile
a morsel and he becomes stronger and bolder, coming back for more and more. The
only safety for nature is to slay the beast, not to hide from it within the
confines of a National Park. Economic growth must be stopped and a steady state
economy instituted. Now! Until then, remaining wilderness will soon be deemed a
luxury.”
##
Frosty
Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South
Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to
border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens,
Greece. He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what
you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges.
He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com He is the author of: America on the Brink: The Next Added 100
Million Americans. Copies
available: 1 888 280 7715
2 Comments in Response to IMMIGRATION: THERE IS NO SANCTUARY FROM ECONOMIC GROWTH
Stop putting up barriers to trade and immigration and hobbling the market with insane hamhanded schemes to "control land usage" and people will move where the resources and jobs are quite naturally. If an area "fills up" they'll go to another area. This already happens - immigration has nearly gone negative in the U.S. during the recession; the wrongheaded central control approach only slows down the market's ability to react. Less control and less power will give us a more agile market and we'll be just fine. Even birth rates decline naturally as resources become scarce - provided opportunities exist to do something besides eat, sleep, and reproduce.
This is totally ridiculous and without imagination. There is no limit to human creativity. Food and energy production have consistently outpaced population growth, do to advances in technology in discovery of new sources. Frankly, I'm surprised to see this crap on a pro-freedom website. It belongs on some Al Gore stroking website for the scientifically challenged. The world didn't end when whale oil became scarce. Just because you can't imagine how a larger population can thrive, doesn't mean it isn't possible. Doomsday people have been warning about overpopulation forever. Your observation about reductions in wildlife habitat are a result of government control of land, not too much freedom. If you don't understand this, Google "tragedy of the commons." Privately owned forest do just fine. The majority of land in the US and Canada is barely utilized. There is plenty of room for productive people. Try to snap out of the socialist mentality that people are a burden. Instead, realize that each person is a valued customer, problem solver and/or producer. Stop blaming freedom for problems created by statism.