Climate change has been a trending topic in Canada for several years now. We’re told that humans are influencing the environment and that we all need to drastically change our way of life if we are going to stop climate change.

Is it true?

And, if it is true, is it plausible that Canada plays an important part in climate change?

To answer that questoin it is important to think about our economy and Canada’s role in the global economy. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping opened China up to foreign investment in manufacturing with the promise of cheap labour. After Mao’s cultural revolution, famines, dysfunction, and mass poverty, Chinese people were done talking about abstract moral principles like equality and the evils of their privileged class. They knew that if they were going to improve their country and compete with the west they would need to re-orient their thinking and focus on economic growth. That’s the beginning of manufacturing outsourcing. The manufacturing base of the west started moving to China in 1978 and never came back.

That means that manufactured goods that are outsourced to China are often designed, manufactured, engineered, and marketed by companies outside of China.

Since we know that Canada doesn’t manufacture very much, we should ask ourselves what Canada designs and markets that is made in China. The answer is things like Arcteryx, Lululemon, Native sneakers, and Canada goose jackets. Most of our consumer goods are designed in Europe and America and made in China. Our iPhones, Adidas hoodies, Zara clothing, televisions, laptops, etc, are all designed, marketed, and manufactured outside of Canada.

Our main industries in Canada are things that don’t cause emissions. We have one of the largest foreign student populations in Canada and that’s because foreigners respect Canadian universities and are willing to pay big bucks for Canadian degress. Canadian housing is also a big industry. As is selling Canadian citizenship. The rest of the economy is service oriented, some minor car manufacturing plants, and oil.

The majority of our emissions come from cars, and that’s simply because we are a big country and we have a lot of wide open spaces between point A and point B. It’s pretty hard to survice in Canada without a car.

The biggest factor infuencing the number of Cars on the road is something that the mainstream media doesn’t want to talk about. Immigration. More bodies in the country means more cars on the road means more carbon dioxide emissions.

Likewise, more bodies in Canada means more demand for housing means more urban sprawl and more encroachment on our natural environment.

So, if climate change is real. It’s not because of anything we’re doing. We don’t manufacture anything and we don’t even really design very much that gets manufactured in China. We are an extremely unproductive country and because of that the majority of Canadians don’t have the income to even consume very much. Canadians don’t consume very much because they don’t have a lot of money and they don’t have a lot of money because they don’t produce very much and since they neither produce or consume very much it is highly unlikely that Canada is a very big contributing factor to planetary climate change.

If climate change is real AND we are contributing to it, it because of the number of the number of people coming into the country and the resultant urban sprawl and increase in cars on the road.