Addressing this post about immigration and the environment, Brishen Hoff comments:
Canada’s environmental integrity is inversely correlated with its population growth. Canada is grossly overpopulated based on what we believe to be a healthy balance between human numbers and biodiversity. Canada’s natural environment is being damaged at an unprecedented rate. Since immigration is main agent of Canada’s population growth, we advocate a complete moratorium on immigration to Canada. We also support an end to: child birthing incentives, natural resource exportation and economic growth.
Curtailing immigration and reducing Canada’s already-low birthrate further will intensify Canada’s future demography-driven problems. However, some of these problems — reduced economic growth, more constrained consumption — Hoff would seemingly view instead as solutions. This is a values-driven question that cannot be resolved rationally, as it depends on the arbitrary weight given to humans or the rest of nature.
Such policies are also at odds with Canadian opinion: most Canadians favor immigration.
An alternative approach might acknowledge that richer countries are better able to protect the environment than poorer ones. Canada is projected to be a great deal wealthier in a few decades: if that were the case, it could dedicate much more money to preserving and restoring the environment while maintaining standards of living.
Military interest in security implications of climate change is growing, the Post reported yesterday.
As part of this interest, the Center for Naval Analyses has commissioned a report on the topic. According to the Post, the report says that:
- “global warming could destabilize vulnerable states in Africa and Asia and drive a flood of migrants to richer countries”
- “climate change ‘can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world,’ in part by causing water shortages and damaging food production”
- “‘Many developing nations do not have the government and social infrastructures in place to cope with the type of stressors that could be brought about by global climate change.’”
The generals responsible for the report also told the Post that “changing climatic conditions will make it harder for weak nation-states to address their citizens’ basic needs.”
In other words, climate change could intensify pressure on states already in danger of failing.
The WP reported today that the leaders of California (an American state) and British Columbia (a Canadian province) are discussing cooperation in alternative energy and climate change initiatives, with BC talking about pursuing ambitious green goals.
This is interesting from a couple of angles:
- It is an example of regions having more in common across borders than within them — evocative of the “Nine Nations of North America” concept.
- It reinforces the concept that the US and now perhaps Canada will be led forward on certain environmental issues by sub-national units. As the premier of BC put it, “If you wait for a whole continent to come along together, sometimes it takes too long.”
On “Charlie Rose” last week, Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute noted that China is projected to be the largest carbon emitter in 3-4 years. This will “lead to a huge change [in] American politics,” he said.
When China is the largest emitter, the Americans are going to say, ‘the Chinese are wrecking our climate.’ All of sudden its going to be nationalism here. ‘How dare they wreck our climate. What are they doing about it?’ And of course that’s how the rest of the world has viewed us all this time. We’re going to see it finally from the others’ perspective.
The National Arbor Day Foundation has produced a series of maps that shows how climate zones are on the move due to warming. About half the US has undergone a full “hardiness zone” change, meaning that plants are dealing with significant change in their environment.
Rapid climate change has the potential to outrun the ability of ecosystems to shift and plants to adapt, potentially causing large-scale disruption and even extinction.
(Via Social Technologies)
Endangered: the Amazon forest
Danger level: medium
Time frame: 50-100 years
Causes: climate change, deforestation
A new study of the effects of climate change suggests that without significant action to reduce the phenomenon, rising temperatures and falling rainfall could destroy the ecosystem completely, transforming the rain forest into savanna and wiping out vast amounts of biodiversity.
A Google Maps-powered mash up depicts the effects of up to 14 meters of sea-level rise.
Users can select the region at different scales, choose 1 to 14 meters of rise, and see the results in map or satellite image form.
As expected, many regions — such as Florida, the Netherlands, and Bangladesh — do not do well in many scenarios.
The CSM examines a collision of issues that many find disturbing: high rates of immigration to the United States are at odds with many aspects of environmental preservation.
As an environmentalist puts it, “Immigration is one of the leading contributors to population growth. All we’re saying is, those numbers should be reduced to achieve population stabilization.”
The article also reports some intriguing findings that suggest that immigrant women’s fertility actually rises when they come the US, further amplifying the impact of their increased wealth on the world’s environment.
How a society balances immigration and the environment is a matter of priorities and values, but environmentalists should at least take note that reducing immigrant inflows might prevent a lot more pollution and sprawl than most other “green” policies.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers has released a study of potential growth in the world’s 17 largest economies out to the year 2050.
The study forecasts the eclipse of the current developed economies. The E7, largest emerging market economies (China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey), were only 20% of the size of the G7 economies at market exchange rates in 2005, but would be 25% larger than the G7 by 2050. By purchasing power, the E7 economies were only 75% as large as the G7 in 2005, but would be 75% larger by 2050.
In purchasing power terms, the shifts in relative GDP would be stark:
COUNTRY — relative econ size 2005 / 2050
US — 100 / 100
Japan — 32 / 23
Germany — 20 / 15
China — 76 / 143
UK — 16 / 15
France — 15 / 13
Italy — 14 / 10
Spain — 9 / 8
Canada — 9 / 9
India — 30 / 100
South Korea — 9 / 8
Mexico — 9 / 17
Australia — 5 / 6
Brazil — 13 / 25
Russia — 12 / 14
Turkey — 5 / 10
Indonesia — 7 / 19
Note that the values are relative within their respective years, but not across them; all economies are projected to be larger in 2050 than at present.
Purchasing power suggests, among other things, the military power the economy can afford to buy, suggesting that the realignment of power toward Asia will have substantially occurred. It will no longer be possible for the US to massively outspend all potential rivals.
The study also offers some startling numbers for per capita income. The figures suggest that the developed countries could have universal prosperity, and the emerging markets could achieve levels of wealth like those of developed countries today, eliminating dire poverty.
COUNTRY — 2005 / 2050 purchasing power GDP per capita (constant 2004 dollars)
US — $40,339 / $88,443
Japan — $30,081 / $70,646
Germany — $28,770 / $68,261
China — $6,949 / $35,851
UK — $31,489 / $75,855
France — $29,674 / $74,685
Italy — $28,576 / $66,165
Spain — $25,283 / $66,552
Canada — $31,874 / $75,425
India — $3,224 / $21,872
South Korea — $21,434 / $66,489
Mexico — $9,939 / $42,879
Australia — $31,109 / $74,000
Brazil — $8,311 / $34,448
Russia — $10,358 / $43,586
Turkey — $7,920 / $35,861
Indonesia — $3,702 / $23,686
These numbers suggest massive value shifts: countries reaching these wealth levels have shifted toward democracy, social freedom, and humane governance.
There is an underlying problem in these hopeful figures: sustainability will be strained with far more of the planet living at developed levels of wealth.
A new study examines future risk of mammalian extinction, mapped here by Nature. Human population growth is one of the chief future threats.