Earth Day Founder Had Strong Immigration Message
by Dan Murray, Immigration Watch – April 20, 2019
http://immigrationwatchcanada.org/2019/04/20/14098/
Most people who celebrate Earth Day know little, if anything, about the person who founded Earth Day which is celebrated every April 22. Here are seven key points about the founder and his reasons for elevating the Environment to the level of one of the highest of all public concerns.
(1) Earth Day was founded in 1970 by the late Gaylord Nelson (1916-2005). Nelson was a Wisconsin State Senator (1946-1959), Governor of Wisconsin (1959-1962) and a U.S. Democratic Senator (1962-1981). Long inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, he started Wisconsin’s Outdoor Recreation Action Program (ORAP), a wildly popular 1961 proposal for Wisconsin land purchase and conservation. By 1981, ORAP had spent $93 million for land conservation, wildlife management, recreation, and pollution control that would benefit all constituents and public uses. The innovative ORAP program set a new standard for natural resource planning, and established Nelson as a national environmental leader in the U.S.
(2) Gaylord Nelson was a giant among environmentalists. “Refusing to accept the notion that economic prosperity is at odds with environmental protection, Nelson pushed programs like Operation Mainstream, which appropriated millions of dollars for the creation of conservation jobs and skills training for the poor and the elderly under the Green Thumb project.” His Earth Day was a watershed moment for environmental politics, kicking off what is now termed the “Environmental Decade” (1970’s) of radical legislative reforms. “After struggling to pass legislation through the 1960s, Nelson was…deeply involved in many of the most important (pieces of) environmental protection legislation: the Clean Water Acts, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Federal Pesticides Act, the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Education Act, the National Hiking Trails and the National Scenic Trails Acts….” See http://www.nelsonearthday.net/nelson/
(3) He was a forceful leader in attempting to convince environmental organizations that they could never achieve their long-term goals unless the U.S. achieved population stabilization. He stated that in order for the U.S. to stabilize its population, it had to dramatically cut legal immigration and enforce its laws to stop illegal immigration.
(4) On Earth Day’s 30th anniversary in 2000, Nelson said : “Population, global warming and sustainability would be my suggestions for the three most urgent environmental challenges…. Stabilizing U.S. population is a challenge that could be resolved in a relatively short period resulting in significant economic and environmental benefits. At the current rate of population growth, the population of the US will (rise)… to some 530 million within the next 65 to 70 years. If that happens, the negative consequences will be substantial if not, indeed, disastrous. To stabilize our population would require a dramatic reduction in our immigration rate….”
(5) “The hard fact is that while the population is booming here and round the world, the resource base that sustains the economy is rapidly dwindling. It is not just a problem in faraway lands, it is an urgent, indeed, a critical problem here at home right now. We are talking about deforestation, aquifer depletion, air pollution, water pollution, and depletion of fisheries, urbanization of farmland, soil erosion and much more….”
(6) “The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become…. We have to address the population issue. The United Nations, with the U.S. supporting it, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population. It can be done. But in this country, it’s phony to say ‘I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration.’ “
(7) To those economists whose only concern is maximizing GDP, thereby disregarding environmental concerns, Nelson would thunder that, “These people refuse to recognize that the economy is the wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.” If the environment collapses, so will the economy which depends on it.
All over the world, most environmental organizations, media and governments will celebrate Earth Day, but they will seldom mention Gaylord Nelson’s name or the very important reasons he had for establishing Earth Day.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Foolish Trudeau and his mindless “Diversity” supporters should take special note.
COMMENT
Please take note of Item #6 above: “The United Nations, with the U.S. supporting it, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population.” Now the United Nation’s have taken an opposite stand in its Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration otherwise known as the UN Immigration Pact. A total of 164 countries out of 193 UN members approved the agreement by acclamation December 10, 2018. That equates to 85% in favour. Among the 29 countries who did not sign were Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia and the United States.” https://globalnews.ca/news/4747488/un-migration-pact-signed/ Russ Cooper of Candian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms wrote this summary about the compact on November 22, 2018.
- is rooted in the U.N 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and is therefore affiliated with related initiatives such as the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC);
- affirms the pre-eminence of international law in areas that include national migration policy, protocols that distinguish between regular and irregular migration status, due process, labour mobility and recruitment and initiatives that deal with discrimination and associated redress mechanisms;
- requires a “whole of government” approach to eliminating discrimination and intolerance of migrants and their families;
- seeks to minimize factors that drive migration through elimination of socioeconomic factors such as poverty, failing infrastructure and climate change while funding sustainable development at local and national levels in originating states;
- sees border management as an internationally coordinated and integrated affair;
- requires laws that see provision of basic services to migrants absent grounds of discrimination that include “political or other opinion”;
- requires the incorporation of national health and education plans and policies that accommodate all migrants without discrimination in a “lifelong” fashion;
- requires the minimization of disparities between migrant and host populations;
- calls for migrant access to decent work and employment opportunities and safe, welcoming school environments for their children that are absent all forms of discrimination;
- requires passage of laws that penalize hate crimes directed at migrants and the training of law enforcement and other public officials to respond to such occurrences;
- demands the cessation of funds to media outlets that promote intolerance against migrants and the provision of national and regional complaint and redress mechanisms;
- calls for the provision of labour-matching and skills development programs for migrants;
- requires the promotion of safer, cheaper and easier means of remittance corridors to originating states; and
- calls for the facilitation of return and readmission to originating states including financial support and the portability of social security benefits and earned benefits from host states.
Make no mistake, this Global Compact, with its promotion of available and flexible “pathways” of migration, means supranational coordination of international border controls. This will not be the first time the world has witnessed such developments as they are resident within the European context of the past few years. I speak, of course, of EU migration policy that saw European borders opened to mass Muslim migration from the Middle East and North Africa. The results in areas of security, violent crime, individual rights and finances has been, and continues to be, startling. Is there any reason that similar, supranational efforts at the U.N. level will produce different outcomes for Canada?