Deer cull protestors from Ontario not welcome

Kudos to Cranbrook council for rejecting the squeaky wheel aka, Invermere Deer Protection Society (IDPS). The recent decision to approve the cull is a bitter pill to the sometimes violent and vocal animal rights activists that have been drawn to this issue.  The IDPS campaign has morphed from wanting to be involved in local discussions two years ago to the animal rights world bearing down on the Kootenays. Animal Alliance of Canada (AAC) staged a protest on the highway in Cranbrook on Feb 17 2013 waving placards decrying the city’s decision to proceed with a deer cull.  Liz White, a full-time staff member of the Toronto based AAC, was front and center along with Devin Kazakoff president of the IDPS. Ironic that the IDPS has to bring in the AAC to  advocate for the deer that are a threat  to pets and people.  On the AAC webpage she tweets on Feb 17 2013 “Animal_Alliance @Animal_Alliance Landed in Cranbrook on a tiny plane. Out now looking for deer traps pic.twitter.com/IDyseTcK.  What reason would they have to look for traps other than to tamper or interfere with the lawfully set traps? For all their pontificating, posturing and thinly veiled threats only five people, two of which don’t live in Cranbrook, showed up to protest; they have no support.

 

What galls most people, myself included, is that these activists will not accept that domesticated deer present a clear and present danger to people and pets. My experience as a Conservation Officer in the Kootenays, until I retired recently, gives me the background to weigh in on the dangers of domesticated deer. I attended numerous deer/ human/ dog interactions in Kimberley and Cranbrook.  I have seen the cuts and bruises done to dog owners as they tried break up a fight between their dog and a deer.  I have witnessed the desperation in the dog owners eyes as they watched the last bit of life eke out of their pet after a deer stomped it into the ground. I intervened in a deer bearing down on a young girl with her dog on a leash. If I hadn’t drove over the curb and cut the deer off there would have been serious injuries to the dog and likely to the girl. When you add in the damage to landscapes and gardens the situation is compounded by the financial loss to homeowners. The IDPS solution is to chase them out of town with dogs or just leave them alone.  Deer should not be herded with dogs; it’s like pushing water uphill.  Deer will usually bolt right into oncoming traffic resulting in more damage and the death of the deer.

 

This started back in January 2012 when Colleen Bailey appeared before Kimberley and Invermere councils as the spokesperson for the newly formed group Humane Treatment of Urban Wildlife Committee (HTUW).  Apparently the HTUW had been asleep at the wheel for over a year and a half when councils throughout the region were debating the urban deer issue. At the eleventh hour Colleen wanted all culls delayed so the HTUW can study the issue.  Invermere went ahead with the cull, HTUW stomped their feet and cried foul. Devin Kazakoff president of the IDPS couldn’t get any local lawyers to plead their case in court until he found Rebecca Breder. When you go shopping for an animal rights lawyer Breder  is the gold standard.  It’s ironic that in Ms. Breder’s own words “ animals are neither property nor chattel – as existing law defines them – but sentient beings with the right to life, liberty and well-being”. I would appear that she uses selective passion; ignoring the physical and emotional trauma those owners and their dogs have experienced!

 

The Invermere Deer Protection Organization was able to convince Shane Suman to launch a Supreme Court injunction on Feb 9 2012 with Rebecca Breder acting as counsel.  Suman is an interesting choice as a petitioner; he has own court troubles with both US and Canada.  The District of Invermere became the lightning rod for animal activists from across North America that view wildlife thru a different lens than most of the residents in the Kootenays. Fast forward to Feb 2013 and the domesticated deer are still a threat both in the spring and fall regardless of where you find them.  The threat is elevated in town where deer have been protected by the bambi syndrome. “We invaded their home” “they were here first” is an escape from reality. Big Game, aka deer, moose elk and predators, do not belong in the city; they never did and never should.  Wildlife in town attract predators, I know I’ve chased many cougars and bears out of schoolyards and back alleys of towns in the Kootenays. 

 

If you don’t like the cull, hunting, trapping, resource extraction and all other things that are not on your ethical list move from the Kootenays and find like-minded people that protest the things that make your life better. If you choose to stay in the Kootenays and want to live in harmony with nature, that’s quite all right but don’t force your ideology on the rest of us.  To the people that don’t live in these communities, let alone this province or country, fix your own problems before coming to our rescue, we honestly don’t need your input.  To the protestors, petitioners and dozen or so members of the IDPS get over it, move on and ThinkTwice before waving signs and stomping your feet. That only makes you a far greater nuisance than the deer.

 

Paul Visentin

Kootenay ThinkTwice

 

 

 

 

 

Real sustainability versus activist sustainability

Activist sustainability concepts don’t meet environmental, humanitarian or sustainability tests

Paul Driessen  January 31, 2013

Companies everywhere extol their sustainable development programs and goals. Sustainability drives UN programs like Agenda 21, EU and US green energy initiatives, and myriad manufacturing, agricultural, forestry and other efforts. But what is sustainability? What is – or isn’t – sustainable?

Former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland said sustainability means we may develop … and meet the needs of current generations … only to the extent that doing so “will not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”

At first blush, that sounds logical, perhaps even ethical. But on closer examination, it is neither. It’s right out of Alice’s encounter with an anthropomorphic egg in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” Humpty Dumpty replied, “who is to be master. That’s all.”

Obama presidential science advisor John Holdren has said we cannot talk about sustainability without talking about politics, power and control. That troubling reality is at the core of growing debates about Washington, DC central power versus state federalism, individual rights and liberties, United Nations and European Union attempts to make decisions for sovereign nations, and the growing power and influence of activist nongovernmental organizations on energy, environmental, economic and other matters.

Because those who define the terms of debate increasingly determine public policies, they also determine who is to be master: those who must live with the consequences of their personal choices, or unaccountable mandarins who impose policies, regulations, decisions and consequences on others. Putting that vital discussion aside for another day, one can discern three kinds of sustainability.

The public relations variety promotes corporate images and inspires flattering ads and press releases, but is largely devoid of real substance. A favorite example is a consulting company’s annual sustainability report, which boasted of having reduced the number of – paper cuts among employees.

Real sustainability seeks constantly improving technologies and practices: conserve energy, be more efficient, cut costs, to keep companies profitable and employees employed; tune up cars, keep tires inflated, and improve traffic light sequencing, to move traffic along, increase gas mileage and reduce pollution; use high yield farming to get the most crops per acre, reduce water use and improve nutrition.

This is tikun olam (repair of the world); the precept that you are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are you free to abandon it; the Boy Scout prescription that we must leave our world better than we found it; the Judeo-Christian principle of stewardship of creation: or Robert Kennedy’s declaration: I dream things that never were and say, Why not?

This brings us back to sustainability á la Gro Brundtland, the UN, Rio+20 and environmental activists: We may meet the needs of current generations only to the extent that doing so “will not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” The concept it inherently unworkable and inequitable.

No one predicted, certainly not years in advance, that the Hearthstone House in Appleton, Wisconsin would suddenly be lit with hydroelectric power, or that electricity would safeguard and enhance our lives and economy in the numerous ways it does today. No one foresaw widespread natural gas use for electricity generation and home heating, ubiquitous laptop computers, flash drives, fiber optic cables replacing copper, or little mobile phones with far more power than a 1990 desktop computer.  

Today, the pace of technological change has become mind-numbing. And yet, under sustainability dogma, we are supposed to predict future technologies – and ensure that today’s development activities will somehow not compromise those technologies’ unpredictable energy and raw material requirements.

Sustainability dogma also demands that we base policy decisions on knowing how many years energy, metal or other resource deposits will last, and to determine whether developing and using them will be sustainable. But what if new technologies let us find and develop new deposits, or make existing deposits last decades or centuries longer: 3-D and HD seismic, deepwater drilling and production, instant metallic mineral analysis gear in a backpack, or horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, for instance? How long must those expanded reserves last, before using them won’t be sustainable? And who decides?

How can politicians, regulators and environmental activists decree that oil and gas are not sustainable – even as seismic, fracking, drilling and other technologies unlock a century of new deposits? And then insist that corn ethanol is sustainable, even though this year’s US ethanol quota requires 40% of our corn crop, on an area the size of Iowa, billions of gallons of water, huge quantities of hydrocarbon-based pesticides, fertilizers and tractor fuel, vast amounts of natural gas to run the distilleries, and perpetual subsidies … to produce a fuel that drives up food prices and gets one-third less mileage per gallon than gasoline?

How can they decree that wind energy is sustainable, despite killing millions of birds and bats every year?

How is it sustainable, ethical or “environmental justice” for the United States to use so many of the world’s oil, gas, rare earth, platinum, gold and other resources – because we refuse to allow exploration and development of our own vast energy, metallic and other deposits right here in the United States?

How is it ethical to safeguard the needs of future generations, even if it means ignoring or compromising the needs of current generations – including the needs, aspirations, health and welfare of the most impoverished, energy-deprived, malnourished, politically powerless people on Earth? How much longer must 700 million Africans, 400 million Indians and another 300 million people in other countries continue to live without electricity and all its countless blessings, because eco-activists obsess about global warming, insist on wind and solar, and oppose coal, gas, nuclear and hydroelectric power plants?

How long must billions of people remain destitute, diseased and malnourished, because environmental activists and UN bureaucrats don’t like economic development, insecticides or biotechnology, either?

Does anyone suppose human ingenuity, creativity and innovation (what Julian Simon called our ultimate resource) will suddenly stop functioning? Assuming there is no government restriction on or confiscation of our God-given rights to innovate, create, invest and build – will human beings ever stop doing so?  

The fundamental problem with UN/activist/EPA “sustainability” is that it is infinitely elastic and malleable. No one can really know what it means, and it’s the perfect weapon in the hands of anti-hydrocarbon, anti-development activists. Whatever they support is sustainable. Whatever they oppose is unsustainable.

To the extent that their agendas foster “social justice” and “poverty eradication,” they will do so only in the context of climate protection, biodiversity, green growth, renewable energy, and an end to “unsustainable patterns of consumption and production” – as defined, evaluated and implemented by UN or EPA-approved scientists, regulators and activists, assisted largely by assumption-laden, agenda-driven computer models.

Worst of all, this UN/activist/EPA version of sustainable development gives unelected regulators increasing control over energy use, economic growth, wealth redistribution, and people’s lives, living standards, health and well-being. And they acquire control without the essential safeguards, checks and balances of robust science, independent courts, democracy, transparency, honesty and accountability.

We should strive to conserve energy, water and other resources, when it makes economic, technological, ecological and ethical sense to do so. We should reduce air and water pollutants that actually endanger human health and welfare. But we cannot afford to let “sustainable development” become yet another justification for ceding still more power to unelected, non-transparent, unaccountable overseers.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

Suzuki - CBC prophet taken down a notch

David Suzuki and Ezra Levant are at it again with some great video clips by Ezra Levant. These videos bring up some important questions. Just why did David Suzuki have those odd requests about female escorts? Did he have the same request last year in Invermere? Suzuki has not responded nor will he likely any time soon but you can follow the videos and Ezra Levant at The Sun News network just in case Suzuki comes clean.

Enjoy Paul Visentin

ThinkTwice group