(We) can do better

"If the federal Government fails to hold a full Royal Commission and to declare a State of Emergency to save Australia's dying Murray Darling system, the Federal Government will be remembered as the regime which oversaw the greatest preventable environmental catastrophe thus-far encountered by this country," warns Dr Ian Douglas of Fair Water Use (Australia).

Here is the data short and sweet. How the green house gasses generated by each yearly crop of immigrants to Canada accumulates to equal the GHG emitted by the ecologically monstrous Alberta tar sands development over a four year period. And yet the Greens, the social democrats, and the liberals are saying nothing about the environmental costs of immigration.

Those who shout "carbon tax" , green shifting, reduced consumption and green living are like carnival barkers playing a shell game. They want to take your attention away from the fact that with a slight of hand they have removed the "immigration" pea from the table. And thus, an important variable in the generation of greenhouse emissions is not on the table of discussions or the agenda of politicians or green politically correct hypocrites.

Soft green Canadian activists are under the false impression that there exists some enormous gulf between the environmental record of the hated right wing ogre Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his centre left opponents. Wrong. Objectively, if anything, I would submit, Harper is marginally less atrocious, if all things are condsidered. Small consolation, granted. but soft green thinking is hypocritical.

Led by State Government Policy, VCAT has been a force for injustice on matters of democracy, population and planning for years. Join other Victorian Community Groups to talk with VCAT.

Concerned about environment, water, democracy?

Humans live in and from the biosphere. But in the first decade of the 21st Century, 85 percent of the primary energy consumed by the 6.7 billion humans comes from the lithosphere.

"The State Government has [...] turned the EES [Environment Effects Statement] process on its head and undermined the value and integrity of the EES process itself. The process has been
manipulated to achieve a pre-determined outcome [...]"

Herald Sun journo, Andrew Bolt wrote today, "Even on the day it was announced, the Rudd Government's plan to import a million extra people in just three years seemed stupid.
Now, as stock markets melt and shares shrivel, it's positively dangerous."

There persists in North America and Australia a frontier myth that economic prosperity can only be fuelled by constant and massive immigration, as if vast tracts of land still needed to be opened up by homesteaders or our economies were still dominated by smokestack industries that needed millions of workers on the shopfloor with little more than a high school education. Well the truth is out. There are countries with falling populations and no almost no immigration doing relatively well thank you very much.

According to a report in today's Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney has grossly under-estimated the population explosion that will squeeze its resources over the next 20 years. But the cash-strapped Premier admits it is "pointless" to promise the billions of dollars in extra spending the city will need.

Issue 23 of Cosmos magazine (Oct/Nov 2008) features an article by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki entitled 'A new bottom line'. Suzuki ponders the problem of exponential population growth and asks 'what is the collective impact of 6.7 billion human beings on one planet?

(Photo:Justin Madden, Victorian Planning Minister)
Victorian Planning dictators aim at iconic Macedon Ranges (Hanging Rock region). Where will it end? Call to Victorians and the world ....

Those who recently demanded the privatisation of NSW's electricity assets against the wishes of the NSW public would have us forget how much of NSW's publicly owned wealth has already been privatised and for no apparent benefit for its rightful owners.

See also: "Media contempt for facts in NSW electricity privatisation debate" of 19 Sep 08.

Canadian social democratic NDP leader Jack Layton proposed a real vote getter at a party rally this week. A generous "Child Care Benefit" . This for a country this already suffering the fastest population growth rate in the G8 group, and losing precious farmland to subdivisions as a result. My question, why not a tax subsidy for NOT having kids?

Canadian mass immigration apologists would have us believe that the frightening loss of farmland to development is simply a matter of poor land use planning, and that absurd levels of immigrant can be jacked up even further without ecological cost if "smart growth" strategies are followed. History has proven that claim a delusion and a lie.

It is a triumph when finally a Canadian parliamentary committee when consider that foreign aid be made conditional on meeting human rights conditions. But what is meant by human rights? According to the right, it is respect for "property rights". According to the left, it is respect for the rights of people to protest without disappearing or being found dead on the road. There is another more fundamental right, however. The right not to have nine children and see them starve competing for food in a nation of runaway growth.

In 1845 the Mornington Peninsula was thick with wildlife: herds of kangaroos, wombats, wallabies, many echidnas and koalas and glorious birds, all unused to man and quite tame and inquisitive. ...wonderful trees, abundance of silver wattles, when in blossom, gilded the country and filled the air deliciously with their sweetness. Now population growth is turning the Peninsula into a desert. Research and graphs by Malcolm Legg and Hans Brunner.

James Sinnamon's open letter to the Premier of Victoria received no direct response from the Premier. Wildlife biologist and international hair expert, Hans Brunner, sent a copy via his Victorian Member of Parliament, to the Premier, and received this disturbingly inadequate and obdurate response. Here is confirmation that narrow ideology and the corporate sector now dominate science and democracy in Victoria.

The Queensland Government has threatened to fine the owners of the heritage listed "Keating House" $75,000 for allowing it to fall into disrepair, yet when large parts of historic Yungaba House, the responsibility of the Queensland Government itself, have been condemned as unsafe due to its own negligience, the problem was 'solved' by selling it off to a Singapore-based developer to be turned into a gated community, against heated community objections.

What you can do: attend Virtual Inaugural meeting of Immigrants' Memorial Association to be held 19 Oct 08.
What has been done: Protest at Community Cabinet at 12:45PM on Sunday 14 Sep at Belmont State School, Old Cleveland Road, Carindale to protest Minister Paul Lucas's decision to disallow the appeal.

Greens flag legal loophole and aim to ensure coal multinationals don't privatise profits and socialise risks with geosequestration.

The CBD Residents' Associations are inviting people all over Melbourne to a serious pow-wow tonight (Wednesday 24th) 6pm, the Bluestone Room, Coopers Inn (cnr Exhibition and Little Lonsdale Streets)

James Bissett, former head of Immigration Services and former career diplomat, hopes that the parties contending for Government at the national elections scheduled for 31 October, most of whom are attempting to out-bid each other in promises to increase Canada's already record high immigration rate, don't keep their promises.

Original article Published in Ottawa Citizen on 18 Sep 08.
See also by James Bissett: "Immigration must be an election issue" of 13 Sep 08.

In Australia both major political parties support record high immigration. This ensures that it is rarely questioned in Parliament or in the news. In Canada, the situation is even worse₁. Dan Murray reports that Canadians face a 'choice' at the Federal elections scheduled for 31 October of four out of five major parties which see nothing wrong with Canada's record high and growing immigration rate and none which are campaigning to reduce it.

Originally published on Immigration Watch Canada (www.immigrationwatchcanada.org) on 14 Sep 08.
See also: "Truth and immigration" by James Bissett former Head of Canadian Immigration Service in the Ottowa Citizen of 18 Sep 08.

Ian Douglas of Fair Water Use (www.fairwateruse.com.au) shows how the 'reform', commencing in 1994, which promised to rectify the Murray-Darling's chaotic piecemeal water management structure by making water allocations a marketable commodity separate from the land titles, has, instead, only help bring the Murray-Darling system to the brink of collapse . In accord with our national constitution's provisions for such national crises, he calls for the declaration of a state of emergency.

Originally published as Ending Australia's water torture on the ABC News web site on 16 Sep 08

See also: Environmental group calls for declaration of State of Emergency to save dying Murray-Darling system, Water stolen from dying Murray-Darling by technicality.

NSW Greens leader John Kaye warns NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal that 'buying high, selling low' is not a winning formula.

Federal Environment Minister Garrett is to allow water savings predestined to revive the dying Murray-Darling system to be used by the Brumby government for the yet-to-be-completed North South Pipeline. At some yet-to-be-determined future date that water is to be handed back to the Murray-Darling system at the discretion of the Brumby Government.

See also: Coalition pledges to shun pipeline in the Age of 19 Sep 08, www.plugthepipe.com.

Current economic difficulties are largely caused by failing global ecosystems and resource scarcity, and are not an excuse to reduce environmental commitments, warns Ecological Internet.

Originally published on 15 Sep 08 on www.ecoearth.info.

As the economy of the United States, a country with one of the highest rates of population growth, collapses, Vatican propagandist Ettore Tedeschi argues that Europe can only achieve material prosperity by resuming population growth.