The influential writer, George Monbiot’s position on population belies a fundamental detachment from environmental reality. And reality, specifically biophysical reality, is what the green movement and work to assure the survival of sophisticated human societies are all about.
The world doesn’t feel like it’s unfolding as it should right now. Inflation is painful; the invasion of the Ukraine is unjustified and cruel; the climate has cost tens of billions of dollars; the pandemic refuses to go away. The word “unprecedented” gets thrown around a lot when events today are described. It pays to look back a few decades, though. In fact, in 1973, the world looked startlingly familiar.
Here is my submission to the June 28, 2022, statutory MCR meeting, thank you for the opportunity. (For those unfamiliar with the MCR process, let me explain what it is and how I view it. The MCR or Municipal Comprehensive Review is a process in Ontario, mandated by the province of Ontario, to delegate minimum population growth for municipalities in Ontario. It is a response to population growth that is premised on unprecedented levels of immigration into Canada and Ontario.
In a Le Devoir op-ed article “Century Initiative project Should be Rejected” , Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay exposed the implausibility of the endless growth argument upon which Canada’s current immigration policy is based. This policy is designed to triple our population by adding 60 million immigrants by 2100.
To understand why food costs are increasing, it is important to separate the inflation caused by money printing by banks and governments from the real cost increases occurring in the real economy. Real cost increases in energy production (see “ Why Gas Prices are High ) make everything more expensive as energy is the prime resource. Food production is quite energy intensive and therefore very sensitive to energy costs. Also, nitrogen chemical fertilizer is largely an energy transformation process while the natural mined potash is a slowly depleting resource. On top of that, Russian supplies of potash may be reduced given the long war on-going in Ukraine.
Money printing by banks and governments has generated a great deal of inflation but looking beyond that, real cost increases have driven up many prices. Monetary policy will not affect the real cost increases driving a substantial portion of what we term “inflation”. Energy cost increases cause all prices to rise as energy is the primary resource. Energy is an increasingly more expensive commodity however as we deplete the richest resources and move on to less dense and smaller sources.
Sustainability must be built into our national conversation as a core goal. Please link, like, tweet, post and mention this website and the issues it deals with in posts to your friends and on commentary boards. Use our cartoons and logos to drive your points home.
