Readers will be relieved to hear that a green think tank, the Optimum Population Trust, has identified a solution to a new and pressing environmental menace, namely human reproduction. An OPT briefing paper, A Population-Based Climate Strategy, argues that couples having two children instead of three would reduce that family’s carbon dioxide output by the “equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York.” The OPT regards population growth as a “failure of courage and leadership” and mulls, albeit hesitantly, on the need for “intervention by the state… in individual freedoms for the foreseeable future.” OPT co-chairman, Professor John Guillebaud, claims:
“The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet… The decision to have children should be seen as a very big one and one that should take the environment into account… The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”
It’s easy, of course, to dismiss Professor Guillebaud’s suggestions as a kind of whimsical fascism and not entirely convincing. But regular readers will note how the Professor’s moral calculus is more or less in keeping with that of fellow environmental crusader, Dr John Reid (mentioned here), whose plan to save the world from human beings entails putting “something in the water” – specifically, “a virus that would… make a substantial proportion of the population infertile.” And while the good doctor is happy to share his view of all human life as an extraneous infestation of an otherwise pristine Earth, he’s also insistent that “affluent populations should be targeted first.” Cynics among us might wonder, with some justification, whether Dr Reid and Professor Guillebaud are motivated by an urge to save the planet or by a dislike of human beings.
Meanwhile, Carnal Reason ponders the prospect of “child offset opportunities” and suggests, dryly, that we might pursue this line of eco-logic to its obvious and challenging conclusion:
“We need to consider root causes here. Take the bull by the horn, as it were. If one less child is good, then two less is better, and no children at all is best. But there are obstacles. We will have a problem living the dream, a world devoid of humans, as long as screwing is more popular than dying. What we need is a radical change of thought and lifestyle. A new ethic, a new way of life. A new sexual revolution. You know what I’m talking about. Just think of it as Getting Gay for Gaia. It takes a real man to take one for the home world. You know what you have to do.”
Update: In related news (via Jawa), unhinged ‘conservationist’ Paul Watson describes humanity as a cancer. Vegan diets are good, we’re told, but “curing the biosphere of the human virus will require a radical and invasive approach.”
Guy le Baud? Wonder what that means in French.
“Burning car”, I think.
But if the poor in the Third World stop being created, how am I supposed to get rich?….
“Paul Watson describes humanity as a cancer. Vegan diets are good, we’re told, but ‘curing the biosphere of the human virus will require a radical and invasive approach.’”
Physician, heal thyself.
When not describing humanity as “the AIDS of the Earth”, the lovely Mr Watson shares his vision of the future:
“People should be placed in parks within ecosystems… We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference… We need to remove and destroy all fences and barriers that bar wildlife from moving freely across the land… We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion. We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings…”
http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_070504_1.html
“We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.”
Well, when I become Intelligent Dictator, Watson will have to succumb to his own rule, since he refuses do the honorable thing right now.
I’m sorry, I know I’m not very bright but – why do people who advocate either the slashing of human population or its removal altogether never seem to start with themselves and their families? It’s always the irresponsible Africans or Asians who are to blame, while affluent westerners, as long as they parrot the right genocidal obscenities, who get to do what they like. Hey ho, not that I’d want to meet such murderous tossers on their own patch, or anything.
“People should be placed in parks within ecosystems… We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference… We need to remove and destroy all fences and barriers that bar wildlife from moving freely across the land… We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion. We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings…”
I think you may have missed a word or two from this quote, namely the word “other”, which usually goes before the word “people” in such bs. I assume it’s just a typo.
Incidentally, I wonder what their reaction would be to armed uprisings in such circumstances. Would they argue that oppression breeds opposition, or would they simply have such opponents executed? hmm. Tough call.
Tin Drummer,
“Why do people who advocate either the slashing of human population or its removal altogether never seem to start with themselves and their families?”
That would be a small but practical step. And, as you say, one that’s oddly overlooked.
“It’s always the irresponsible Africans or Asians who are to blame…”
Actually, both Guillebaud and Reid have their eyes on Western populations as first for the cull. But Paul Watson seems to despise all humanity equally, which is nice.
“I wonder what their reaction would be to armed uprisings in such circumstances.”
I’m not convinced Guillebaud, Reid or Watson are concerned by such trifling details, or by any of the other practical implications of their depopulation fantasies. They profess a deep concern for “the planet”, and possibly its shrubbery, but not the people on it.
“It’s always the irresponsible Africans or Asians who are to blame…”
Actually, both Guillebaud and Reid have their eyes on Western populations as first for the cull. But Paul Watson seems to despise all humanity equally, which is nice.
Well, I guess that equality is a good thing, after all.
On a non-evidential level (ie a completely made up one), my view of such movements has always been that we are still, in some ways, living out the nightmares of the C20, and especially of the cold war (40 years spent with total destruction only 4 minutes or so away) – I wonder if these groups are a kind of delayed sociological response to those stresses, even maybe going back to WWI…I don’t know, but I can’t help thinking that extraordinary century can’t just be brushed off.
If we’re speculating, I’m not sure their motives are clear even to themselves.
And, Cold War aside, the 20th century had some of mankind’s finest moments too. There are footprints on the Moon, for instance. Maybe it depends on how positive one feels about the future and its possibilities.
Maybe it depends on how positive one feels about the future and its possibilities.
Agreed. I’m probably reading too much of my own pessimism into it, much as I think humanity is darn cool on the whole and that people are ace. But I kind of meant the psycho-sociological (yay, inventing words is ace) stresses on particularly an only partly validated western Europe which was either a bystander or failed to prevent the worst things ever and had a 40 year recurring dream to deal with. We lost a degree or several of confidence, is my point, really.
I guess you can find plenty of people who will tell you the moon landings were either fake or dreadful anyhow.
I personally beleive the moon landings to have been a massive mis-allocation of capital.
There’s more on the Apollo missions here:
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2007/02/exposure_revisi.html
Biological life is fire, trapped and controlled and harnessed by water. Fire reproduces, and it can starve, or suffocate, or freeze.
America is already at a zero-sum population growth. Perhaps if the developing countries (whose birthrates have been decried for at least a century) were to reach our level of, shall we say, SATISFACTION with life in general, perhaps they, too, would make fewer babies.
The sun provides us with enough energy for a hundred billion people. The problem is simply to harness that energy in usable forms: electricity is the most obvious, but also as sugar from plants, etc.
I can see I’m going to have to put a lock on that liquor cabinet.
Well, it’s all for the common good, David. As the late, great Jim Jones once put it:
“What we’d like to get are the people that caused this stuff…everybody dies…we win when we go down. I’m speaking as a prophet today. I wouldn’t talk to serious if I didn’t know what I was talking about…It’s the will of Sovereign Being that this happen, that we lay down our lives to protest at what’s being done — the criminality of people, the cruelty of people…what a legacy…please get us some medication, it’s simply, it’s simple….Just, please get it. Before it’s too late. They’ll pay for it. This is a revolutionary suicide. This is not a self destructive suicide. So they’ll pay for this. This brought this upon us, and they’ll pay for that….Don’t be this way. Stop this hysterics. This is not the way for people who are Socialists or Communists to die. No way for us to die. We must die with some dignity….Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, please, Mother please, please, please don’t — don’t do this…It’s been done by every tribe in history, every tribe facing annihilation. All the Indians of the Amazon are doing it right now — they refuse to bring any babies into the word, they kill every child that comes into the world. Because they don’t want to live in this kind of a world…Are we black, proud, and Socialist, or what are we? Now stop this nonsense…Where’s the vat, the vat, the vat? Where’s the vat with the Green C on it? The vat with the Green C in…we didn’t commit suicide, we committed an act or revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world…those defectors who in turn went on to passionately fight against the very group they had once supported wholeheartedly appear to be denying any responsibility for their previous actions…”
Motion carried. Yeas, 913. Nays, 167.
On Playing God
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