 Caveat:
This is a grim post. I've put it off because I knew it would be, but
this issue is tearing the environmental movement apart, so I had to
write about it. If you want something more upbeat, yesterday's post was much more hopeful.
If
there's a political quagmire for environmentalists, it's the
immigration issue. Most environmentalists are progressives, and there
is no question that immigration allows both political and economic
refugees an opportunity to make a better life in a country with less
repression. What's more, you have to cheer the demonstrators in
American and European streets who are fed up with immigrants being
treated as second class citizens, and who remind the rest of us that
civil disobedience has a long and distinguished tradition of bringing
about social change that would never occur otherwise. Immigration
brings diversity of thinking. And if you dare to question whether
immigration is good for your country, not only are you likely to be
labeled a racist, you are likely to get put on mailing lists of
objectionable racist organizations who mistake your cause for theirs.
On
the other hand, the natural environment in many struggling nations has
been largely destroyed, due to a combination of extreme overpopulation,
corruption in the enforcement of environmental laws, and theft and
poisoning of these struggling nations' resources, land, soil and water
by opportunistic and reckless global corporatists, largely based in,
and benefiting, the very nations refugees are flocking to. Importing
rapid population growth merely globalizes and accelerates environmental
degradation in the few nations where there is some functioning
regulation of environmental damage. And it contributes heavily to urban
sprawl. If immigration continues at current levels it is quite
conceivable that the US will host a billion people by the end of this
century, and Canada 100 million. And as social and environmental
catastrophes accelerate in the struggling nations in coming years,
Europe will have no choice but to reluctantly open its doors to a
comparable flood of new immigrants, and expect a tripling of their
national populations by the end of the century. That essentially means
every square mile of inhabitable land in these countries will be given
over to housing these teeming billions. There is no hope for the
environment anywhere under such conditions.
The inevitable
'compromise' is to allow as many 'legal' immigrants as possible but to
crack down on 'illegal' immigrants. The probability of this actually
working is about the same as it would have been five centuries ago if
the First Nations of the Americas had tried to control European influx
on the same basis. It is simply foolish to believe that, when billions
of people would sooner risk death than stay in their country of birth,
any kind of functional constraint on immigration is viable. So the
'compromise' is nothing more than cynical political posturing. The flow
of people can no sooner be stemmed effectively than the flow of goods
(including drugs and other contraband) or the flow of information.
Attempts to control any of them simply increases the demand and price
of workarounds, wasting resources trying to control the flood,
encouraging organized crime and creating massive hardship in the
process.
And although the UN Population Bureaus don't want to
point it out, historically when people move from a struggling nation to
an affluent one, they bring their propensity for large families with
them, and it takes at least a couple of generations for that to change.
And voilà -- one billion Americans, cheek to jowl, in an ecologically
devastated land.
The dark side of the current immigration
debate, of course, is the xenophobia and racism that underlies the
nonsensical 'war on terror'. Right now that hysterical xenophobia is
directed at Arabic peoples and others with 'swarthy' complexions, but
it's only a matter of time before cascading ecological catastrophes and
civil war in China will add the rest of the Asian continent to the
feared list.
So I believe the current debate on immigration is
a waste of time, because it amounts to a debate on whether to put one
finger or two in a dyke with a million holes in it. Better to prepare
for the flood. And since it is largely corporatist theft and dumping of
poisons, imperialist adventures, puppet governments, scientific and
cultural invasions and shameless exploitation of struggling nations by
affluent nations that has caused the crises that have billions wanting
to leave their homes and countries of birth -- leave their homes and countries of birth! -- for an uncertain, frightening future in another unimaginably strange land -- can you imagine being that desperate?
-- perhaps the onus is on us to make reparations for the damage we have
done by sharing some of the spoils of our pillaging with the people of
the nations we've pillaged.
Suppose we were to give up on
immigration control entirely (and while we're at it, also give up
trying to control the flow of goods and information). Suppose we
declared that everyone in the world is now a global citizen, free to
travel, live, work and vote wherever they want. And while we're at it,
let's give the 'free' trade advocates what they want and allow free
movement of goods and services as well. No more regulations. Take
whatever drugs you want. Oh, and no subsidies either -- sorry
corporatists, you're going to have to try to figure out how to live
without massive government handouts -- good luck! So we tear down the
borders, and with them, the need for national governments -- how are
you going to launch a war when the enemy just moved in next door
instead of joining the army to attack you? What's the point of Iran
having nukes (and us worrying about them) when all the Iranians have
left?
This plan would not work, you say -- our global footprint
is already more than twice what the planet can sustainably produce, and
accelerating. Level the playing field and we would surely have a global
civil class war between rich and poor, until, as the song goes, there
would be no rich left. We would open the floodgates to the exploitation
of the last of the world's forests, oil, minerals, and arable land, so
instead of running out over a century they would run out in a decade or
two. We would be left with a desolated world with a debt to Earth that
could not possibly be repaid, so we would quickly freeze, starve,
broil, perish of thirst, succumb to the poisons we have produced, or
die from a stab or gun wound from a neighbour coveting our last loaf of
bread.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps instead we would face the yawning
chasm that lies in front of us, behind the wall of self-delusion, and,
as rich and poor did in the Great Depression, ratchet back our
lifestyles and consumption, drastically and voluntarily reduce our
birth rate, share generously, and start to take care of ourselves and
our communities.
My point is that the only thing standing
between us today and the horrific scenario above is inequality and
time. The 'haves' are using up all the Earth's resources by suppressing
and exploiting the 'have nots' -- politically, economically, and
through limits to immigration. And they perpetrate the myth that, with
hard work and discipline and technological innovation, all 6, 7, 10, 14
billion people on Earth can live well too. But they cannot. We have
already stolen the wealth of most of the planet to provide for a
dwindling number in the world's affluent nations. We are now stealing
from our children, poisoning their world with our garbage and
chemicals, using their share of resources, and saddling them with the
debt, and with global warming. If we don't tear down the walls now
between rich and poor, struggling nations and affluent nations, and
take responsibility for all life on Earth, including that of future
generations, we will just produce a pressure cooker that will
eventually, inevitably, and catastrophically blow up in our faces. And
then we'll have billions more people in the same desolate level playing
field, and the chances of recovering will be diminished even further.
So
for environmentalists, immigration is not only a dilemma, it's a
Hobson's Choice -- pay me what you don't have now, or pay me much more
later. Encourage wide-open immigration now, so that perhaps it will
dawn on us just how far beyond our means we are living, at the
immediate cost of desolating affluent nations as horribly as we have
devastated struggling nations, and of accelerating the rape and
poisoning of the Earth and our debt to future generations. Or continue
to encourage some kind of futile 'pressure-valve' immigration
restrictions, and sustain our delusion that the way most of us in
affluent nations live today is not excessive, obscene, massively
destructive, ultimately unsustainable, and an impossible dream for most
of the world's people even at today's population levels. And
those restrictions will also allow us to keep a few more species from
becoming extinct for a few more years, a few small pieces of dwindling
wilderness intact a little longer, so we can show our children before
it's gone. Isn't all that worth a few billion people's suffering? |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
