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TechnoratiBig News: Climate Change Is All Those Samba-Loving Illegal Immigrants' Fault!
Taking anti-immigration rhetoric to a new xenophobic low, the so-called Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has released a report finding, essentially, that illegal immigrants playing their radios are the reason for high energy consumption and carbon emissions that threaten the planet. The report – referencing the fertility rates of Hispanic women – magnanimously notes "it is not the fault of immigrants for requiring energy resources," but the fault of U.S. policymakers for "failing to correct immigration policies" that undermine our energy goals.
"America's massive immigration-fueled population growth was the single largest contributing factor to the nation's increased energy consumption and carbon emissions over the past 35 years."
Citing such racist rantings and its ties to white supremacist groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center will now include FAIR on its list of hate groups. For more on FAIR, go here
28 Comments so far
Show AllI have a problem with people who have arrived here illegally who seem to think they have a right to be here. What does George Lopez mean when he say's "were not going anywhere and we are taking over". Whose taking over what?
With this logic, outsourcing is environmentally-friendly. Maybe Blackwater is really an environmental group.
A neocon friend of Irish descent told me America has gotten so bad that he is considering emigrating to Ireland. Then he said "Imagine if ALL the Irish moved "home"! My reply was "Can you say Bangladesh?".
There is nothing wrong with admitting our ethnic and cultural population ratios are changing. That if you extend the trend to infinity, immigrants from Mexico and Puerto Rico and their large traditional families are gradually turning the US into an hispanic nation. This is what FAIR is really afraid of.
There is nothing wrong with admitting that most of US population growth is from immigrants and their high birth rate.
There is nothing wrong with admitting that Americans cause more environmental destruction and GHG emissions per capita than almost any other nation.
(Although poor immigrants tend to live in apartments, eat corn and rice, and take the bus, while we gringos live in McMansions, commute 25 miles each way in a 300 hp SUV, buy trendy fashions and junk made in overseas sweatshops, and just love that Outback steakhouse.)
Do the math. Immigrants = more Americans = more destruction.
>>>bbr-001 wrote: Then he said "Imagine if ALL the Irish moved "home"! My reply was "Can you say Bangladesh?".
Good point, bbr-001. The following is from the U.S. Census Bureau website:
"Number of U.S. residents who claim Irish ancestry: 34.0 million. This number is almost nine times the population of Ireland itself (3.9 million). Irish is the nation’s second most frequently reported ancestry, trailing only German."
People are forgetting that North & South America, Australia and parts of Africa absorbed a huge population load from Europe.
If your Irish-American neocon friend went back to Ireland, he would find a land, like every country in the EU, with socialistic health care, a living minimum wage (equivalent of $14/hour), extensive welfare benefits, investment in public transit, tiny fuel efficient cars and restrictions in car use in central city areas, tolerance of immigration, and other far more socialistic stuff than what he probably thinks the US already has too much of.
I don't think he would like it there.
pjd412, there may be "tolerance of immigration" in Ireland itself (not sure, but don't know to the contrary, either), but Northern Ireland was recently in the news - for racist attacks against Roma gypsies. Also, I would be careful before pronouncing "every country in the EU" as immigrant-friendly - because I happen to follow the news quite regularly :). And these attacks are against fellow-EU citizens. As long as there's "economic growth", there may be an appearance of tolerance. When the economy slows down and factories start to close, human nature would come out loud and clear.
How about the millions of tons of napalm (and other petrochemicals) that have been dropped on villages in Southeast Asia, Iraq and Afghanistan by our planes in the last 50 years? I am certain that the carbon released into the atmosphere had to have had some effect. Do they reason that there was no net gain because the number of people wiped out by those explosions meant there were fewer polluters?
Problem is, the wrong people are being wiped out.
How about all those damned Polacks and Hunkies comin' in and flaming those steel mills after my English forebears had gone to the trouble of clearing New England and massacring the natives? Didn't that warm stuff up?
I read the report and it said nothing about Hispanics playing radios. I fault Zimet for throwing in that line. It is manipulative and misleading. That she would come up with that says something about her.We don't need to have stuff like that on Common Dreams. As one of the characters used to say on the TV show "Dragnet" "Just give us the facts,Ma'am."
Climate change is a reality and overpopulation is one of the main causes. But how can people, many of whom, I'm sure are Catholic, blame the Hispanics as if they are the only Catholics who attend and support a church that forbids birth control even to save a woman's life.
Whether you attend such a church and ignore the ban because you have access to birth control information and supplies and you don't care about the poor who are denied the right to ignore church doctrine that controls and denies them conjugal love except for procreation, you are equally guilty of global climate change due to overpopulation. It is absurd for Americans ,who are complicit due to their silent acceptance of the Catholic ban on birth control( that they ignore ),to blame the poor Hispanics , who are being faithful to the only religion they know or they lack reproductive education and access to affordable birth control. Maybe they lack access because the very people who are blaming them are the ones who vandalise planned parenthood and threaten and kill the workers forcing the clinics to close.
Latinos have access to, and use, birth control. If they have large families, it is because they WANT a large family, not because they don't have "reproductive education" whatever the hell that would be. I'm sure they know where babies come from and the various methods to avoid having babies.
And in turn, it was cheap and abundant energy, leading to cheap and abundant food, which led to overpopulation.
Excellent comment, genie, thank you.
I heard that the "Wall St." thing wasn't the fault of Jews but, rather some Jewish people.
I guess it's, sort of, the same thing.
Another good article might be how "eating Kosher" harms the environment.
I was told that it was belief in evolution that killed the dinosaurs and bankrupt America.
Has anyone read the report? I did, it doesn't say anything that the U.S. Census Bureau hasn't already reported. In fact, it's virtually a copy. It's mostly empirical data from Census Bureau statistics.
It's Zimet's own words about the illegals playing radios and you all fell for it. Zimet is a race-baiter; look up the definition.
"mmigration, Energy and the Environment addresses America's stifled immigration policy debate: it finds that America's massive immigration-fueled population growth was the single largest contributing factor to the nation's increased energy consumption and carbon emissions over the past 35 years."
That can easily be interpreted as they think illegals played their radios too loud. The history of immigration tensions in this country is very racist, the current focus on illegal immigrants from Latin America is just the newest form of this racism.
To be fair, F.A.I.R. appears to be against all immigration. Their arguments do seem to be focused on our brothers and sisters from the south though. They, F.A.I.R. support such people as the vigilantes on the border whom I consider akin to white supremacists. I don't know if they understand that at some point we are all made up of immigrants. They seem to encourage a great deal of fear that the people from the south are going to invade us and take what we have. I think we need some generosity here. We by comparison have so much while those in the south have so little. It would benefit the members to open their hearts and minds, but what the heck I don't think they have that kind of spirit in 'em.
...that's the craziest shit I've ever heard, even crazier than the claim we're entering an ice age because the Titanic hit an iceberg a hundred years ago.
Actually, it was a hit and run by the ice berg.
lord_buckley, thanks for the laugh.
(P.S. That was a joke, no? ;))
Only decent God fearing Mercun stations can be played without causing energy drains and climate change (which doesn't really exist). Mexcun music probably contributes to large Catholic families too. Thank God for neo-con thinking to keep us free and brave.
The acronym FAIR is already taken - Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
Actually a lot of CD readers and commenters - the "population growth is the cause of all our problems" set - would agree with the above. They then go on to their other bugaboo, religion, and even drag up that old derogatory talk about large Catholic families - something that has not been true for decades - even in Mexico.
Population growth rate and family size in Mexico is decreasing rapidly.
The biggest driver of GHG emissions in the US is its affluent population living in increasingly large houses, chilled to increasingly low temperatures through heavy AC use, and located increasingly "out in the country" where both spouses drive their own single-occupant SUV 60 miles each way to work or shopping malls (also over-chilled) every day. I'd like to think I'm describing a carricature, but probably at least half of those in the office wher I work live this way.
pjd412, your last paragraph just about nails it. Hervé Kempf's "How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth" is a small, very readable book (translated from French) that deals with this very subject. I'm not sure if people make the connection between "large houses, chilled to increasingly low temperatures through heavy AC use" and climate change. Or the mindless activities done in the name of leisure and entertainment. Or the freezers and cold shelves left open in supermarkets, just so people can pick up their ice cream, meat and dairy without the "hassle" of having to open a glass door. Or the blindingly bright lights in malls and stores even on a bright summer day. Or the escalators that keep running even when there's no one on them. And son...
I thought these right-wingers didn't believe in climate change!
That was my thought too!
Baby steps toward progress... twisted, deranged baby steps.
Frankensteinian, Count_Draculanian baby steps. This article reads like they've known about it all along, and now that its obvious to everyone the discussion is shifting to blame.