Wishing That All Humanity Would Disappear
From Jeff Jacoby:
THERE’LL ALWAYS BE an England, but will there be Englishmen to inhabit it? Not many, if Jonathon Porritt gets his way. The chairman of Britain’s Sustainable Development Commission declares that “having more than two children is irresponsible” and that couples who “decide to procreate” should first consider their “total environmental footprint.” According to the Sunday Times, Porritt wants the British government to “improve family planning, even if it means shifting money from curing illness to increasing contraception and abortion.” Ending or preventing human life, in other words, should take precedence over extending or saving it.
Such misanthropy is not unique. Greenpeace co-founder Paul Watson, now president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, wants to “radically” reduce the world’s human beings by five-sixths. Population alarmists Paul and Anne Ehrlich have described “the birth of an average American baby” as a “disaster.” Alan Weisman’s 2007 best-seller The World Without Us celebrates the Eden the world would revert to if only mankind would vanish. There is even a Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which urges “people who care about life on planet Earth” to “refrain from further reproduction.”
Those on the green fringe do indeed care about life on Earth -- every kind of life, it sometimes seem, but one.
Labels: Environmentalism, Environmentalists
posted by John McAdams at 6:16 PM
2 Comments:
It's not all bad; remember, it's librals who are refusing to procreate.
It is those who advocate for infinite population growth that might be said to be anti-human, for any species that expands forever, or exceeds the carrying capacity of it's environment, will crash and die. Therefore those of us that love humans like Paul Watson want to see our human numbers in balance with what the planet is able to sustain--a number smaller, maybe far smaller, than those alive now. Advocating that we breed less, instead of waiting until a crash and subsequent die-off, is the smart thing to do if you care about people. You may disagree that humanity faces any limits on its number or resources, but it is wrong and inaccurate to say that those who believe our population already exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet don't love humans. I am am one of those people, and am hoping to help you and your friends avoid living in a time when the living envy the dead because the collective weight of our consumption and population pushes a critical resource or ecosystem into collapse. Most species that have ever lived are now extinct, and we aren't the first one to keep breeding and consuming until a collapse occurred. So out of love for both humanity and this wonderful planet, and after years of study, I like others have concluded that only by gently reducing our numbers will humans avoid a massive and brutal die-off. You can disagree, but our motives are not anti-human; in my view failing to recognize the restraints of a finite planet is antihuman because it will lead to a horrible fate for some generation in the not too distant future--maybe this one. Thanks for listening.
Jeff
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