Chinese Immigrants' Carbon Footprint

Steve Sailer (https://vdare.com/posts/nyt-it-s-racist-to-notice-that-melbourne-australia-now-has-a-black-street-crime-problem) notes one of the conundrums for the left arising from their support for immigration in his observation of the causal chain beginning with African immigration through to increased street crime, White Flight, lower density living, less reliance on mass transit and more use of private vehicles, culminating in more carbon emissions.

Empirical support for the hypothesis that immigration is bad news for global warming is provided by new Australian research (The Conversation - Chinese Migrants' ecological footprint) illustrating the environmental impact on cities resulting from Australia’s extraordinarily high rate of immigration, particularly from China. Chinese immigrants average around 15% of Australia's total annual migrant intake and they are the most significant contributor to the Asianisation of Australia, particularly of its two biggest state capitals, Sydney and Melbourne.

The researchers (Professor Peter Newman, Professor Wendy Stone and Christina Ting, all of Swinburne University of Technology) found that Chinese immigrants who settled in the middle-class Melbourne suburb of Box Hill (29% of Box Hill is Chinese-born) had per capita carbon emissions that were 2.7 times higher than when they lived in China, and which were also 37% higher than their Australian-born Box Hill neighbours.

Whilst middle-class Chinese immigrants’ “cultural integration” (as measured by English proficiency, religion, food preferences, participation in entertainment and festivals, and social interaction and community engagement) is laggardly, their “consumer acculturation” outstrips the Australian-born, their carbon-profligacy manifested in their appetite for larger dwellings, higher consumption of meat and dairy, and more overseas travel.

This poses a tricky dilemma for the contemporary, Diversity-obsessed Left. The cognitive dissonance (holding two contradictory ideas – global warming terrible, immigration wonderful - at the same time) must be reaching unbearable tinnitus levels by now.