To Build a Wall or NOT to Build a Wall—THAT is the Ecological Question
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/7/illegal-immigrants-overrun-us-national-parks
“It’s phony to say that I’m for the environment and I’m for immigration at the same time.” Wisconsin Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day.
As I have long said, if Trump builds a wall, he will become the greenest President the United States ever had.
Oh, but look at who he appointed to head the EPA, I hear you ask. And oh, what about his plan to de-centrallize predator protection to state governments? Hardly the actions of a “green” President.
Well, all of that would be offset by the effects of a border wall. Yes a border wall would interfere with the migratory patterns of some species, as do highways in the Canadian Rockies. But there are measures to ameliorate the problem. On balance, a border wall would PROTECT wildlife. And since each immigrant on average quadruples his GHG emissions upon arrival in the United States (Kolankiewicz-Camarota study), he will offset anything thing his EPA appointee will do. It should also be pointed out that the “multiplier” effect of illegal, mostly poor migrants is much higher than that of legal immigrants or VISA overstays.
As is the case in Canada, mass immigration is the biggest cause of environmental damage in America. In terms of species at risk, in farm acreage loss, and in GHG emissions. In Canada, for example, since Kyoto, mass immigration has been responsible for TWICE the GHG emissions of the Alberta Tarsands project. And four times as much land.Not boreal forest, but farmland. Gotta put people somewhere…..
No wonder Green NGOs have nothing to say about it! To do so would alienate their corporate donors, donors who want cheap imported labour, more homebuyers, more mortgages, more home building, more growth. Growth did you say? The environmental orgs want growth??? Yes they do, because you see, they will call it “smart growth” and that will make it OK. And they will say that urban sprawl is caused by “bad” planning. Immigration has nothing to do with it. Actually, it has a LOT to do with it. The Kolankiewicz-Beck study of the 100 biggest cities in America showed that half of all sprawl is caused by population growth, not dumb land-use planning.
Moreover, to say that mass immigration could be rendered ecologically benign if sensible planning was in place is intellectually dishonest. Land-use planning is largely in the hands of local government, and local government councils are controlled by you know who. Developers York University Professor Robert MacDermid—in his study of how donation money affected voting behaviour in a dozen GTA councils—showed that even the smallest donations had an impact on voting behaviour. There is no reason why that that is not the case with other town councils across Canada.
Try this experiment. Phone up the BC Sierra Club or the Suzuki Foundation and ask them to reveal the names of their big donors. Ask the BC Sierra Club why it has accepted money from the TD bank and the Van City mortgage empire. Ask the Suzuki Foundation why they accepted money from RBC and the Encana, the natural gas corporation. Be prepared for excuses as to why they won’t tell you. But don’t despair. If you persevere you can get to the truth. You can, after a lot of work, take a look at their books. Of course, when you get back to them, they will say that only a relatively small part of their donor base are corporations. Good old grassroots members supply most of the money. But again, if that is the case, the “MacDermid” effect applies. A little bit of money talks.
Would it make a difference if their membership knew that they were on the corporate take? Not a bit. As a spokesman for the Dogwood Institute confessed, he would accept bags of money from Martians if he could.
One must remember that while Leftists think of themselves as morally superior beings, the opposite is the case. They have no problem, for example, with using taxpayer money to pursue politically partisan work. Come election time the Sierra Club (the NDP in hiking boots) for example, gives each political party a grade for its environmental performance, while complaining that the past government threatened to have the Canadian Revenue agency scrutinize their activities. Green groups howled that “the government is trying to silence us.” Absurd. The Sierra Club and its clones are free to say anything they want to say. The issue is, why should taxpayers pay for it? And why should they subsidize the CBC, which is like America’s NPR, is a blatant platform for growthist open borders Left wing ideology? If the green orgs get tax deductions, then why are there is no tax deductions for Population Canada? Or Immigration Watch Canada? Silly question. They don’t get tax deductions because they failed the Leftist political litmus test.
We are going to see a lot more walls, fences and barriers in the coming years. Not just here but everywhere. And not just between countries but regions within countries. Germany has a fence to protect wildlife, and the Indian government built a $1.2 billion fence to keep Bangladeshi migrants from trampling over their northern wilderness. (see Footnote). Good on all of them. Just as theatres, restaurants, motels and hockey arenas have a carrying capacity, nations and regions have a carrying capacity too. Even British Columbia’s Provincial parks have a carrying capacity. That is why both the West Coast Trail and Bowron Lakes were at one time shut down. Voters have a moral right to see that we don’t exceed carrying capacity—in parks, cities, regions and the nation as a whole. And mark my words, one day they will assert that right. When they do, the CBC will call it a populist movement of the “far right”. What crap.
As an environmentalist, I have but one prescription.
Build a wall! A great big beautiful, long wall! Compared to the ecological cost of not building a wall, and the $300 billion annual net fiscal burden imposed by immigrants, such a wall would be Trump change.
Footnote: When I told a German friend that the Sierra Club claimed that walls, barriers and fences harm wildlife, he replied: “This argument is bull and it can be very easily refuted by pointing atthe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Green_Belt which is today oneof the most biodiverse regions in Germany just because this area wasfenced off and relatively inaccessible to human trespassing.”
Tim Murray
Quadra Island,
British Columbia, Canada
March 7, 2017
— “There’s nothing more dangerous than a shallow-thinking compassionate person.” Garrett Hardin