Finite resources

Re: More help for more newcomers — Nov. 13

Our ever-increasing immigrant intake ignores the fundamental reality of finite resources.

As 15,000 scientists from 184 countries noted in their warning to humanity, inviting more people to live our marketing-driven consumerist lifestyle brings huge environmental costs.

These include global warming, increasingly extreme weather, rampant wildfires, deforestation, intractable waste, biodiversity loss, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification.

We sprawl over farmland, then hide the loss with more chemicals and genetically modified organisms. Each techno-solution brings more problems, including soil depletion, water contamination, and songbird declines. Farm use of antibiotics erodes their health-care value.

The federal government invites newcomers, but the logistical problems fall at the provincial

and municipal levels.

Vancouver journalist Douglas Todd notes that Canada has been welcoming so many rich newcomers that ordinary people are being priced out of the housing market.

Housing speculation extends beyond Toronto and Vancouver. Immigration to the Prairies triggers more sprawl there, bringing the same hidden costs that we see here.

Todd also notes that our universities, in courting foreign students, have become citizenship gateways. This devalues the merit of higher education.

Author Daniel Stoffman recommends an annual immigrant intake of 150,000. This would already be sufficient to ensure that our population does not die out. Michael Frind Waterloo