April, 2024
The full answers were too long to fit nicely on the chart, so as a reminder, they were:
- Very important: Increasing immigration is crucial for maintaining population growth, supporting the economy, and providing refuge for those displaced by climate change.
- Somewhat important: While increasing immigration can help with demographic and climate issues, it should be balanced with other domestic policies.
- Not very important: Canada should focus more on internal policies and less on increasing immigration levels.
- Not important at all: Canada should not increase its immigration levels, and should instead focus on reducing overall immigration.
- Other.
A slim majority felt that increasing immigration is very important, while slightly fewer felt that it is somewhat important.
Answers in the negative, combined, were fewer than either of the positive answers.
Sylvia, who answered “Other”, noted concerns regarding limits to growth, stating that endless growth, including economic growth, isn’t possible.
I am not sure whether this comment is based on the 1972 Limits to Growth report commissioned by the Club of Rome. In a nutshell, this report argued that exponential population and economic growth would exhaust the Earth’s finite resource base and cause a catastrophic decline in population and industrial capacity. It was estimated that this was likely to occur within 100 years from the report’s publication.
The concerns this report raised remain relevant. Non-renewable resources are being depleted, but the timelines for when they reach their peak are illustrative of some of the weaknesses in the Limits to Growth report.
Peak oil, for example, was initially projected to occur in the early 2000s, but as extraction methods and technologies developed, enabling producers to drill deeper along with the discovery of new reserves, the timeline for this has been pushed back to, roughly, 2020-2040.
The point here is that, while there are finite aspects of life on this planet, there are also aspects that carry infinite potential. Foremost among these are human beings, but the capacity for near boundless creativity depends on us supporting each other.
To wrap this up, one of the interesting things about growth, is, if it’s healthy, it tends to find an equilibrium.
There is a well-worn analogy likening the human species to a cancer, framing us as having a boundless appetite for growth, even if it winds up killing that which we depend on for our survival, and thus, ultimately, us.
Cancerous growth seems to me to be growth that is misaligned with an overarching goal, it’s out of sync with its host. There are certainly aspects of that in our relationship with Earth and the natural world, but I like to think that we have the potential to overcome that, to understand where the limits are and to live within them.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments, below.
