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Environmentalists must choose between the environment and capitalist mass-immigration
Within our industrialised society, the cracks are beginning to show, resulting in apparent environmental decline upon our little isle, ‘green thinking’ has become embedded within our pop culture. Such as with all moral fads, its falseness hinders it from achieving its goal of modern-day society living in balance with nature. Whilst we happily buy our green products, change our diets to globally sourced vegetables and read articles about the benefits of menstrual cups over sanitary towels, we are blindly ignoring the truth and dancing with endless immigration to ecological disaster.
Population Growth
In 1951 the population of Great Britain was 50 million, this has increased by nearly 16 million to make a population now more than 66 million. This is taking a toll on our most precious resource, our environment. With this current trend, it is expected that by 2033, the UK population is set to have increased by 7 million people, this about 20 cities the size of Leicester, and by 2041 the population will have grown again to 74 million people.
With the fertility rate dropping in the UK to 1.7 babies per woman in England, the lowest it’s been in 80 years, it would stand to reason that the population would steadily begin decreasing. However, the UK has been making up for this shortage in potential labour and to nullify an ageing population by raising the population through immigration.
Estimates from the migration observatory at Oxford University has shown that immigration made up 56% of UK population growth from 1991 to 2018. Yearly immigration numbers have been steadily climbing, in 1997 there were 327,000 people who immigrated to the UK and in 2018 this had skyrocketed to 602,000.
This is solely a numbers game, this is not to blame immigrants for the environmental ills that we have caused, but, to be environmentally conscious we must heed the warnings that such a bloated population gives us. Everything will be multiplied.
The Urbanisation of the Environment
To accommodate the increasing population we need to be building 340,000 new homes each year until 2031 (Heriot-Watt University). But we are running out of land, although only 8% of UK land has been built upon we are limited by what land we can use, the following data shows how much of our land has been categorised:
6% Urban
2% Green Urban (parks/cemetery/private estate)
29% Pastures
27% is non-irrigated arable land
24% is Forrest and Nature
11% is Wetland
Two-thirds of the land used to produce the UK’s food and animal feed is abroad. Our natural resources are strained from the population we already have and our consumer lifestyle’s to the point where we are forced to spill over our borders (Journal of the Royal Society).
This leaves just 1% of the land that is suitable to build upon. This obviously invites destruction to our environment. The state of nature report in 2016 found that more than 1 in 7 species are facing extinction and more than half are in decline. This is a worrying thought when the UK is one of the world’s most nature depleted countries. As we increasingly urbanise our country we are not just polluting our environment but further erasing the land that has stood for a thousand years.
Soil Depletion
In 2014, Research conducted by Sheffield University stated that UK farm soils had only 100 harvests left. UK soil is in a dire state. This is a direct result of not just natural occurrences, but specifically over-farming to meet the demand of an engorged populous. As Michael Gove once addressed parliament “Countries can withstand coups d’état, wars and conflict, even leaving the EU, but no country can withstand the loss of its soil and fertility.” Although Government groups such as Defra will skirt about the issue and offer incentives for farmers to protect the soil, all of this is in vain if the problem of immigration is not the primary concern.
So what?
People may think, ‘but so what? People who have moved from the third world to the first world would still be polluting and damaging the environment wherever they are’. Although this is true, an individual living in Britain produces 70 times more CO2 than a person living in Nigeria (Population Matters). As the first world progressed to make our lives more comfortable the cost to the environment has been catastrophic.
What to do?
It is not enough to talk about reducing immigration by the tens of thousands as the Tories conveniently suggest each election cycle. But to comprehensively put a stop to mass immigration in its entirety. There is no point in offering incentives to farmers if we knowingly increase the demand.
It is a Capitalist Globalism that requires a constant flow of cheap low skilled workers to man the cogs that endlessly and needlessly grow our GDP, but to what end? Anyone who may argue that this is indeed progress is only pigheaded in the face of the issues that face our country today. Although we may be pacified by cheap fast food and a neverending supply of pointless consumer goods to arrive at your door in under 24 hours, environmentalists will have to make the difficult moral choice between the environment or mass immigration.