BREAKING FAKE ECO NEWS.

PETER FOSTER FP9

There seems to be a radical disconnect between the claim — splashed breathlessly atop the front page of The Globe and Mail on Monday — that Canada is failing to protect its environment and the fact that securing approval for any piece of hinterland development these days amounts to a slog through an endless bog of regulation and review.

According to the Globe story, which was based on the annual report conveniently leaked in advance to it by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, CPAWS, Canada is lagging commitments made under the UN’s Convention on Biodiversity. Since 2010, its “protected” areas have increased from “only” 9.6 per cent to 10.6 per cent of the country, versus the commitment of 17 per cent by 2020 made by the Harper government.

The first question is why the Harper government would have allowed itself to be roped into such an exercise in subversive calculation. All such commitments really do is to provide a fundraising soapbox for radical environmental NGOs. Meanwhile, the concept of “protection” demands more thorough analysis. What it means is declaring great swaths of the country off limits for investment and job creation, on the ideologically skewed assumption that development and a healthy environment cannot coexist.

Alarmists play on the bogus assumption that since “only” 10 per cent of Canada has been sanitized, 90 per cent must be in danger of being turned into an oil sands Mordor. However, for some much-needed perspective, the amount of urban land in Canada is not much more than one-quarter of one per cent of its landmass. For that matter, oil sands development has been projected to disturb just 0.02 per cent of the boreal forest over 40 years. Claims that Canada is a “laggard” are dubious to say the least. According to the report, the leader of the pack is green-crazy Germany, which has protected 37.8 per cent of its lands and waters, but we might note that Canada’s 10 per cent is three times the size of all of Germany, so that means that Canada has “protected” close to 10 times as much land as the German “leader.”

CPAWS peddles the notion that nature “needs” 50 per cent of lands and waters to be put off limits if she is to survive, but this “half for nature” notion is entirely bogus and fundamentally anti-human.

Until recently, I lived in a house in Toronto that was 300 metres from the busiest highway in Canada. Well over 50 per cent of my lot was devoted to nature. I had abundant flora, dozens of beautiful bird species, and no shortage of raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, and possums. Meanwhile nature was constantly seeking to reclaim more of her domain by swallowing the house in ivy and creepers.

If you walk any part of the beautiful trail on Lake Ontario between the iconic industrial cites of Oshawa and Hamilton, you will find magnificent parks and wetlands. But, for the likes of CPAWS, the Greater Toronto environment has been raped and pillaged.

While people may feel uneasy about the hysterical claims and increasing power of alarmist ENGOs, they are reluctant to speak out, partly because anybody who criticizes ENGOs will immediately be screamed down as being “anti-environment,” and likely set upon by the ENGO jackal pack. Meanwhile wasn’t this piece of allegedly bad eco news on the front page of a national newspaper?

CPAWS knows a good deal about pack hunting because it was among the ENGO signatories of the mob-like 2010 Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, CBFA, whereby Canada’s leading forestry companies were bullied by do-not-buy campaigns to sign onto an agreement that sought a veto over future development. Governments, local communities and native groups played no part in this shakedown, which collapsed earlier this year.

Like “the environment,” “biodiversity” is a term where the ideological devil is in the details. As humanity has flourished and spread over the earth, it has inevitably converted wilderness. However, humans are unique in actually being concerned about their impact on nature.

The richer they become, the more concerned they are, but also the more likely not just to demand, and get, higher standards, but to donate to environmental extremism out of guilt and/or ignorance.

Radicals declare that we are responsible for a “wave of extinction,” and that thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of species are being driven out of existence annually. In fact, the recorded number is in the low single digits. But like the environment more generally, biodiversity is a useful weapon for those who seek global control of human affairs, a political thrust with the UN at its epicentre.

The Biodiversity Convention — like the climate policy fiasco — came out of the UN’s 1992 Rio Summit, which was masterminded by the late great Canadian eco-meister Maurice Strong.

Strong may be gone, but his sub-species of power-hungry environmental alarmists is growing like an invasive weed, choking development in the process. It is no coincidence that a key part of Strong’s strategy was to fund ENGOs and allow them into the UN and Davos processes to pressure governments and corporations to support “sustainability,” that is, green socialism.

The Harper government sought, with spectacular lack of success, to streamline the environmental approval process. The Trudeau Liberals have promised to make it even more unwieldy, not merely by incorporating “traditional” — that is, non-scientific — “knowledge” into the process, but also by “connecting” human no-go areas. But whatever the sock government does, we may be sure it won’t be enough for the radicals, or for their mainstream media handmaidens.

CLAIMS THAT CANADA IS A ‘LAGGARD’ ARE DUBIOUS TO SAY THE LEAST.