Australia & Canada Have Limited Space

From Immigration Watch Canada

Two nations, Canada and Australia, are like siblings. Yet their very similarity only serves to highlight an important difference.

Since European settlement, Australia and Canada have shared a common self-image: that of a vast, empty and fertile land–begging to be filled with people. Politicians, land developers, corporations and– lately– ethnic lobbyists have all led the charge for growth. Ethnic groups, encouraged by multiculturalism to think potential immigrants have a right to go to the countries they choose and that those countries have an obligation to take them, have become even more aggressive. To some, immigration has become the national religion in both countries and, in the more sycophantic media, the foreign-born have achieved almost cult-status.

But this self-image, the image nurtured by economists and growth advocates, does not conform to the environmental reality of either country. 70% of Australia’s soils are degraded. They are a fossil resource millions of years old, the least fertile in the world. Australia is currently experiencing its seventh year of drought. If some Australians couldn’t grasp the idea that a large land mass cannot necessarily support unlimited numbers of people, the country’s water shortage is teaching them that lesson now. Similarly in Canada, as John Meyer of Zero Population Growth pointed out years ago, Canada’s agricultural lands are only half as productive as America’s, and a third as productive as those of Britain and France. Only 7% of its land surface is suitable for agriculture but a significant part of Canada’s best land has fallen prey–particularly recently– to an inflow of people.

But now comes the difference. In Australia, its most celebrated environmentalist, Dr. Tim Flannery, (climate guru, author of “The Weather Makers” and a recipient of the title “Australian of the Year”) was at one point bold enough to point out the reality that Australia has a limited carrying capacity. Australia, he said, should not see itself as “the lucky country”, but rather, “the fragile country”. He estimated that it could sustain only 6-12 million people and that substantial immigration cuts would have to be the way to reduce the population from its current size, now 22 million.

Like the canaries our forefathers used to detect toxic gases in coal mines, Flannery has become the canary not only for the entire country of Australia, but for all countries–especially those like Canada with naive and potentially suicidal self-images.

(According to a study presented in 1999 at the Australian Institute by H. Turton and C. Hamilton, a high immigration policy will result in Australia’s energy-related emissions becoming 16% higher than they would be with zero net immigration. If the government were to restrict its immigration intake until 2012, it could reduce energy-related emissions by up to 6% of 1990 levels. They conclude, conversely, that even modest increases in immigration will require more severe and costly economic restrictions.)

Lately, Flannery has been eclipsed by Professor Ian Lowe (emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University in Brisbane) who has identified population growth in Australia, now at about a quarter million a year (and driven by immigration), as a key factor in land clearance, species endangerment, declining river health and more GHG emissions. Growing numbers and growing consumption work in tandem to degrade the environment.

What comments, then, do Canada’s environmentalists have to make about immigration (and the immigration/environment connection)?

Read the balance of this story here.

ALSO READ:

Two Countries NOT Up For Grabs