Reducing Carbon “Pollution” – A Modest Proposal

It is easy to make fun of the Liberals and Catherine McKenna’s remarkably ill thought-out price on carbon “pollution” but what might work better? Well, obviously nuclear, especially given the advances in small, safe reactors; but that is a ten year program at minimum and would cost a lot of money. How can we cut Canada’s carbon pollution by over 2 million tons this year and for years into the future?

Here is a rather crappy looking spreadsheet which will, no doubt, break my blog. No matter.

It lists Canada’s top ten source countries for immigration, their per capita carbon footprint and the effect of having these people become Canadians without 15.1 tonne per year per capita carbon footprint. You will probably have to scroll sideways to see the totals but, by brining in 165,000 extra people who, with the exception of our american friends, have lower carbon footprints than we do, we are adding 2.1 million tonnes of carbon a year to the load. Simply by closing the immigration door we would be saving that 2.1 million tonnes this year and for years afterwards.

Rank	Country	Number	Percentage	Carbon emissions per capita				Total	As Canadians		Net Carbon Pollution
1	Philippines	50,846	18.70%	1.1				55,931	788,113		732,182
2	India	39,530	14.50%	1.9				75,107	612,715		537,608
3	People’s Republic of China	19,532	7.20%	7.7				150,396	302,746		152,350
4	Iran	11,669	4.30%	8				93,352	180,870		87,518
5	Pakistan	11,329	4.20%	0.9				10,196	175,600		165,403
6	Syria	9,853	3.60%	1.6	WB 2014			15,765	302,746		286,981
7	United States of America	7,522	3.00%	16.1				121,104	116,591		-4,513
8	France	5,807	2.00%	4.6	WB 2014			26,712	90,009		63,296
9	United Kingdom and Colonies	5,451	2.00%	6.5	WB 2014			35,432	84,491		49,059
10	Nigeria	4,133	2.00%	0.5				2,067	64,062		61,995
		165,672			Canadian Emissions		15.5	586,061	2,717,941		2,131,879

Can’t wait for Minister McKenna to announce the cessation of immigration from all countries with per capita carbon emissions less than Canada’s.

SCOTUS is filled with lawyers, who knew?

After the absurdities of the lower divisions of the Federal Courts inventing new and better ways to ignore the law to thwart Trump, the Supreme Court rightly went back to, er, the law and the Constitution.

The merits of the case will be argued in the Fall but today’s decision suggests that the Justices take an expansive view of the President’s powers to make Executive Orders for national security purposes and a very dim view of claims to First Amendment protection advanced on behalf of unidentified foreign nationals.

The Court was, correctly in my view, silent on the question of what legal weight to give Trump’s campaign statements or tweets. I would hate to be the lawyer who has to argue before the SCOTUS that they need to be taken as determining the basis upon which the law and the Constitution should be applied.

Score another win for Trump and, hey, the rule of law.

London

And here we go again.

I keep thinking the light will go on and the great and the good will say, “Hey, we have a bit of a jihadi problem and, well, near as we can tell, most jihadis are Muslims so we may have a Muslim problem and, perhaps, we might take a look at actually doing something about that Muslim problem.” They might think about taking a break from Muslim immigration. And they might look at rounding up the 23,000 Muslims deemed to be radicalized and have a bit of a chat. And they might take a look at closing some of the mosques these radicalized people have been known to attend.

But, most of all, I keep hoping they ban teddy bears, tea lights and flowers.

France and Terror

Ignored in news coverage of the Paris massacre is the single most pertinent piece of background: A 2014 opinion poll found that ISIS had an approval rating in France (at 16%) almost as high as President Francois Holland (at 18%). In the 18-to-24-year-old demographic, ISIS’ support jumped to 27%. Muslims comprise about a tenth of France’s population, so the results imply that ISIS had the support of the overwhelming majority of French Muslims (and especially Muslim youth), as well as the endorsement of a large part of the non-Muslim Left. Spengler

Spengler suggests that France will do nothing in the wake of the Paris attrocities. His logic is that to do something involves putting pressure on the French Muslim community which, in turn, will likely cause a great deal of trouble. The French don’t want the trouble so they will do nothing.

I am not sure Spengler is right but the numbers and the concentrations of Muslims in France suggest he may be.

I don’t live in France but the takeaway for Canada is that at a certain point a Muslim population becomes unmanagable. Canada is not at that point. Yet.

Realistically, Canada needs to take a hard look at immigration from Muslim majority countries. A trickle is one thing, a serious flow quite another. By eliminating, or vastly reducing, immigration from those countries we have the chance to avoid the truly awful consequences of a large, unassimilated and potentially hostile group within our borders.

I suspect if you were to ask the average Frenchman or Englishman or German whether, given the chance of a “do-over”, they would have welcomed quite so many Muslims to their nations, you would hear a chorus of Nein, Non and No. We have the opportunity to reduce our future regrets with, initially, a moratorium and then, after a decade or so, a re-examination of the question of Muslim immigration.

Smart and Dumb

I, along with a lot of Canadians I suspect, have spent much of the past week not reading about Justin Trudeau as either the Second Coming or Chief Rider of the Apocalypse. He’s neither.

Smart people, regardless of party, are intrigued with how Trudeau is going to set about governing. He has a lot of choices, a fairly vague set of election promises and 39% popular support. Dumb people are foaming at the mouth and finding ever more scathing things to say about the Liberals, Premier Wynne, marijuana legalization and Canada’s international commitments. (Given the farcical nature of Obama’s feckless non-commitment to wiping out ISIS we are well out of any combat role in that fiasco.)

I have no doubt that Trudeau will have to throw some red meat to his base and, unlike Harper, he might be bright enough to do that at the outset of his term. He also has a lot to actually do with assorted international conferences to attend and a Cabinet to appoint and priorities to set.

Smart people will wish Trudeau well as he embarks on his Prime Ministership. Dumb people are going to try to stoke the 24 hour outrage machine and hysterically nitpick the guy.This is dumb because it is so patently partisan. Smart people want Trudeau to be ready and to be the best Prime Minister he can be. The Liberal Party and Trudeau himself are likely to be wrong about any number of things and, as those errors are made, it will be time to point them out and suggest better alternatives. But Trudeau has to make the errors first.

Smart conservatives, after they have been annoyed at losing and after they have realized that it was not just Harper’s fault – a realization which seems to be taking a bit longer than is reasonable – need to get to work considering where they lost the 8% of the electorate who swung over to the Libs. What was it about the Harper government’s approach which alienated so many people? It will be a lot more useful to think about where modern conservatism is going in Canada than it will be to fire spitballs at Trudeau.

Enter the Dragon

The French language debate – a rite in which each leader demonstrates his or her grasp of French and Quebec issues – turned up something interesting. Mulcair and Trudeau think the niqab is perfectly suitable attire for taking your citizenship oath: Harper and Duceppe don’t.

Neither, it turns out, do 80% of Canadians and 90% of Quebecers. There’s a fine old fight going on at Dawg’s blog in which Dawg himself says,

The niqab, after all, is just synedoche for the Muslim presence in Canada. In the service of hatred and fear, articles of ethnic clothing are completely interchangeable.

The electorate has become a mob. And how easy it was. dr.dawg

While I certainly don’t agree that the electorate has become a mob, I think Dawg is exactly right when he says that the niqab has become “synedoche for the Muslim presence in Canada” (synedoche means a part which represents the whole (yes, I had to look it up too)).

All of a sudden the people of Canada have the opportunity to express their views about Muslim immigration. Perhaps not directly – after all the niqab is not a particularly good proxy for Islam as it is not required religiously and not all Muslim women feel compelled to wear it – but far more overtly than the topic has ever been broached before.

Dawg ascribes all manner of sinister motives to Harper, his Aussie advisor and the CPC in bringing this up at all. For all I know this may very well be an exercise in wedge politics. If it is then it is about time that this wedge be tested.

Immigration policy in Canada has never really been put to any sort of popular test. Nor has the ruling class’s conviction that the only thing which matters about Islam is Islamophobia. Dawg lines up nicely with the ruling class and, in the lively comments, states,

There IS no legitimate debate about the degree a government should be prepared to extend human rights to minorities. Rights should never be up for debate, and frankly I don’t give a damn what Chantal (Hebert) says to the contrary. dr dawg

Apparently, well over 80% of Canadians disagree with this position.

Partially, I think, the debate turns on whether one sees Muslim immigration as just another instance of immigration or if one sees such immigration, particularly from the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia, as potentially more problematic than other sorts of immigration.

There are thousands of Muslim immigrants to Canada who lead rich, full integrated lives as Canadians. I am thinking particularly of the several hundred thousand Ismailis who arrived as refugees in the 1970s and have gone on to build vibrant, integrated communities all over Canada.

However, there is a growing minority of Muslims who have moved to Canada but who seem incapable of leaving their old countries, customs and culture behind. The burkas at Walmart are one thing, the demand for segregated swimming times another, the terrorism and support for Sharia law yet another.

Over at Dawg’s the argument seems to be that even noticing that there are Muslim immigrants who do not integrate well into Canadian society is bigoted or racist. Which it may well be; but Canadians have the right to at least discuss how they would like their country to evolve. Should we welcome immigrants from parts of the world where anti-Semitism is matter of fact? Where women are treated as chattels? Where support for the barbarity of Sharia law is a religious duty?

Harper – perhaps by design, perhaps by accident – has given Canadians the opportunity to discuss and, maybe, vote based upon their particular answer to the question of whether, in general, we should accommodate the religious, cultural and political demands of Islam.

I suspect he has won the election by giving Canadians that choice.

[And, as a bonus, I rather doubt that there are any Canadians other than the editorial board of the Globe and Mail, who don’t take a certain satisfaction when convicted terrorists are stripped of their Canadian citizenship. Just as few Canadians lamented when various Nazi war criminals lost their citizenship.]

New Charlie Cover

(h/t bcf)

This should be on the front page of every paper in the world that has run “Je suis Charlie” graphics of any sort. Because either you are willing to print an image that might well be Mo or you are not. If you are then you support free speech. If not, then shut up and cower.

UPDATE: The Lying Jackal has a smarmy post up on the topic he says (and I screen shotted it):

Almost a decade ago, a global debate raged about cartoons depicting the prophet Mohamed as a terrorist – and my colleague Ezra Levant’s decision to display them in the magazine he then published. The cartoons set off a wave of emotional protests and threats on a global scale – and fostered a vigorous debate about what constitutes free speech. Was the publication of those cartoons satirical, or was it hateful?

When we attempt to answer that question – honestly, diligently, impartially – we will quickly ascertain the difference between an act of mischief (say, spray painting a graffiti artist’s tag on the doors of a synagogue), and an actual expression of actual hatred (say, spray-painting “DEATH TO THE JEWS” on the doors of a synagogue). Certain words and images can stir up actual fear and pain and hate. Others don’t, or shouldn’t. the lying jackal

Of course the Jackal does not let me comment, but you cannot help but admire the sheer finesse with which the scumball avoids answering the question of whether or not Ezra’s decision to publish the cartoons all the news was about was right.

UPPER DATE: Daily Mail runs the cover story – doesn’t show the cover.

Telegraph – story no picture, just the title.

Order-Order.com – Loud and Proud

Guardian – not a splash but it is there – Good for them. “The Guardian is running this cover as its news value warrants publication.”

New York Times – No…

Washington Post – Yes

CBC – no mention of cover at all

The Australian – Yes – full image

UPDATE #2 – Boris Johnson shows the Jackal how it’s done:

London Mayor Boris Johnson said Charlie Hebdo had “no choice” but to print the cover it had, following the unity marches in France and defences of press freedoms in the wake of the attacks.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “You cannot have a march through the streets of Paris attended by 46 world leaders, four million people, climaxing with a shout of ‘We are not afraid’ and then not print the central object of contention.

“Of course they are right to do that and I am afraid it is absolutely vital now that everybody stands up and defends their right to publish.

“You may not agree with what they have done, you may be offended by what they have done, but you should defend their right to publish it.” Daily Mail

Another March

How now Frau Merkle?

As expected the PEGITA rally in Dresden tonight attracted a record crowd,

A record 25,000 people have joined an anti-Islamisation rally in Dresden, Germany, called in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.

The protesters defied calls from German politicians to stay away from the Pegida organisation’s rally.

Elsewhere across Germany, tens of thousands of people joined anti-Pegida rallies. bbc

If the BBC is saying 25,000 I have to bet closer to 35,000 actually marched. Likely a doubling. And not much of a surprise.

The ordinary people have had it with Islam’s rise in Europe. Charlie Hebdo was a horrible, violent, incident. As such it was a, as I put it, Useful Horror. It underscored how desperately wrong the present immigration, asylum and multicultural policies in Europe – and Canada – have gone wrong. We have too many of the wrong people arriving and then excluding themselves from our societies for political/cultural reasons.

The demonized “far right” politicians recognize and address this fact. The bien pensant political leaders of the left, centre and right are flailing in the face of a problem they created and the anger of their citizens that this should be so.

The mainstream media demonstrate a combination of cowardice and confusion in the face of the anger of their public. Their craven refusal to print the cartoons their fellow journalists were killed over demonstrates just how badly we are served by the press whose freedom we have sought to enshrine. Their willingness to go along with the line that CH had nothing to do with Islam and not to call politicians on this nonsense shows how completely they have been captured by the political class.

The question which now confronts us all is whether the collapse of the political elite and their lapdog media is going to be allowed to matter. The thousands of pro-Farage comments, the presence of 30,000 plus Germans in the streets of Dresden, suggests ordinary people have had enough.

And that is a start.

What is to be Done?

So, the parade is over. The political class and a lot of white French people have expressed their solidarity with the dead. Now what?

Western leaders have pledged to increase security and surveillance of the “tiny minority” of extremist Muslims which is nothing less than what you would expect in the circumstances. There has not, however, been much chat about what to do about things like “No go” areas.

Nigel Farage was rude enough to point out that having a fifth column in your country is a poor idea. British politicians fell all over themselves explaining what a bad fellow Nigel was for making a political statement about a tragedy. The British public was delighted that at least one politician was willing to say what many were thinking.

But identifying the problem – “a fifth column”, “too many Islamists”- is not the same as trying to solve it. And a lot of the solutions ranging from outreach to outright deportation are dangerous because they fail to protect Western values while almost certainly failing to actually solve any of the underlying issues.

Fixing a decades old problem is not going to be done in a day or a month but starts can be made on a number of fronts.

First, suspend immigration and indeed travel from parts of the world where there is a significant Islamist presence. This would have two immediate effects: it would prevent the current problem from getting significantly worse and it would say to the Islamists and their supporters that actions really do have consequences.

Second, retake the no go areas. Canada does not have this problem yet but France, the UK, Holland, Sweden and German do. Retaking the areas should begin with a well re-enforce police presence. It should simply assert the sovereignty of the state throughout the state.

Third, make the promotion or enforcement of sharia a serious, prosecuted, criminal offence with serious jail time for citizens. This is nothing more than the assertion by the state that there is only one law of the land. Hardly a controversial position.

Fourth, make the promotion of sharia or violence by non-citizens an offence leading directly to deportation after a fair, but expedited process. The standard of proof should be administrative rather than criminal as such non-citizens are present by way of administrative leave.

Fifth, look for ways to encourage people who are unhappy or unsuccessful in their new country to go back to their old country. Frankly, French level benefits go much further in Algeria than Paris. For France to pay generous benefits to encourage people to leave is likely to reduce France’s costs in the long run.

None of these steps will solve the problem of I mass Islamic immigration but they will reduce its impact and the disruptions it causes. And none of them do significant damage to the basic principles of Western liberal democracy. There is no inherent right to migrate to the West or to spread the politics of Islam once you’ve arrived.

High Risk

The French government seems to think hosting world leaders and several hundred thousand French citizens at rallies for unity is a step towards the social cohesion which was damaged by the Paris atrocities. They may be right.

There is the obvious risk of more terror. Put a lot of people in one place at a pre-annonouced time and you create a target. I hope and pray the French security services are up to the job.

The greater risk is that the people who show up will be the lily white crowds who have attended the “Je Suis Charlie” demos to date. Will that build unity or will it serve to illustrate the two solitudes which have emerged in France. Without black faces and headscarves the rallies risk underscoring the essential problem Islam poses for France.

The gains from such rallies are ephemeral. If they are successful everyone will feel a little better. The downside risks are long term. Even without a terrorist outrage the stark divisions present in French society may well be underscored.

For France’s sake I hope the rallies are a huge success but there is no question that they represent huge risks for minimal gains. And on Monday the very real problems ill thought out mass Muslim immigration pose for France will be just as intractable.

UPDATE: The March has come and gone and other than anyone trampled by Sarkozy as he pushed his way to the front row, it was without terrorist incident.

And, with the exception of the President of Mali, it was a collection of 1.5 million white French people. I have been scanning the pics but I’ve seen no signs of any black faces. No doubt there were some which I have missed. No headscarves that I could see. I may have missed some of those as well as it was a cold day and people were bundled up.

However, I think it is fair to say that if the demographics of the crowds out today were the actual demographics of France the atrocity at Charlie Hebdo would not have happened.

Non-white, Muslim immigration to France has been a failure. There has been no integration at any sort of mass cultural level. Realistically, one reason why there are so few obvious Muslims at the Charlie Hebdo rallies is because they would have been made to feel deeply unwelcome. As they have been for fifty years.

The Solidarity rally reminded French people of a France which has vanished from day to day life. At the rally there were no “No go” zones.

The sullen, sometimes violent, black, Arab and Muslim immigrants whom the majority of the French population ignore or, sadly, despise are out of sight at the rally. As they are in the parts of France the rally goers will tend to come from.

Tomorrow the rally will be over and the intractibily of the French problems with race, religion and radicals will return.