Immigration and climate change

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Aug 21

The reference to Wayne Poole is to a letter of his published in today's Hamilton Spectator.

When Wayne Poole of Dundas says, in respect of fighting climate change, “…we have no choice but to fight.  It doesn’t help that we have to fight against ignorance and stupidity.” he doesn’t know the half of it.

Take Canada’s carbon footprint.  It’s the accumulation of the all the little climate footprints of individual Canadians.  The more Canadians, the bigger the Canadian footprint.  So why are we adding to the problem of reducing the size of the Canadian carbon footprint by adding more Canadians via immigration?  If you’re concerned about climate change and Canada’s contribution to it, you have no choice but to be opposed to immigration.  Who says ‘A’ must say ‘B’.

It is particularly stupid to take immigrants from underdeveloped or tropical countries.  People from these countries have small carbon footprints compared to Canadians, either because of lack of development or they don’t need to heat their homes in winter.  Moving people from low carbon footprint countries to Canada increases the size of the world carbon footprint, besides making Canada’s problem more difficult.

Likewise, it is stupid and ignorant to move Canadian primary steel manufacturing to India or China.  Canadian steelmakers are among the most efficient in the world, and make a ton of steel with half the coal that Chinese makers do.  Taking Canadian primary steel making off-line simply creates more room in the market for inefficiently made steel produced with twice the CO2.  Yet taking Canadian primary steel making off-line is precisely what is being celebrated by those supposedly most concerned with climate change.  Ignorant and stupid, indeed!

Who says ‘A’ must also say ‘B’.

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