From the “The-needs-of-the-planet-over-the-needs-of-the-many” Department
In my memory, around the year 1990 it became a fad to be an environmentalist, that was the year I was introduced to the idea of Earth Day. I was a sophomore in High School, and the whole school emptied out onto the practice football field where we formed the image of the planet Earth (or a big circle, if you happened to see us perform this stunt) which was watched by no-one, except for maybe the USSR’s spy satelites. This was my perception of the mainstream introduction of the Environmental Movement.
“Save the Planet”
“Protect our Mother”
and other secular phrases which irked me at the time.
It was a harmless cause, it was far reaching, and there was always something small you could do for a big cause.
Pick up litter.
Start a Recycling Program
Promote Recycled goods
Plant a Tree
But that was the warm-fuzzy-safe version of Environmentalism.
I’ve noticed that there are different types of environmentalists:
- Everyday Environmentalists – These are your “green” types who think that they need to do their part to keep the planet clean. They recycle, they use recycled products. They carpool. They also encourage others to do the same. Some more serious cases live in environmentalist communes.
- Extreme Environmentalists – These are the types of people who protest and make it their life goal to stop corporations and big businesses from poluting or performing animal testing. Usually these protests are in direct opposition to human progress.
Groups like PeTA and Greenpeace are in this camp, as well as less violent groups like VHEMT. It is this group that starts to get into ideas like Gaia Worship, and the belief that an animal, or species is more important than Human beings.
- Eco-Terrorists – These are the malicious types who intentionally bring harm to their fellow man in the name of saving the planet, animals, environment. Groups like the Earth Liberation Front, and the Animal Liberation Front have been classified by police and security organizations as domestic terrorists groups. They vandalize car lots, burn buildings and laboratories, and while they have not actively engaged in manslaughter, they have terrorized people with illegal acts.
- Sado-Environmentalism – This is the dark underbelly of the Environmentalist Movement. Often these are intellectual thinkers, or schollars. They have the firm (yet somehow unbelievable) belief that Mankind is a cancer and has to be eradicated to save the planet. And that is the subject of this post.
Check out these quotes:
“The ending of the human epoch on Earth, would most likely be greeted with a hearty ‘Good riddance!’”
Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics
“Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet . . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”
David M. Graber, Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1989
Now add to the mix, a guy people are calling Dr. Doom; otherwise known as Dr. Eric R. Pianka, an Evolutionary Ecologist at the University of Texas.
One of Pianka’s earliest points was a condemnation of anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a privileged position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked him what good the lizards are that he studies. He answered, “What good are you?”
Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We’re no better than bacteria!”
Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it’s too late.
So how does he want to save the planet? Read on:
Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.
He then showed solutions for reducing the world’s population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.
Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.
AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world’s population is airborne Ebola ( Ebola Reston ), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs.
After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, “We’ve got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.”
With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The audience that had been applauding some of his statements now sat silent.
Kill of 90% of the population, violently with Ebola.
And yes, he’s serious.
Now I would love to think that these three people I’ve quoted are a select few people, but the Citizen Scientist continues his observations of the Pianka lecture:
The audience laughed when he said, “You know, the bird flu’s good, too.” They laughed again when he proposed, with a discernable note of glee in his voice that, “We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth.”
After noting that the audience did not represent the general population, a questioner asked, “What kind of reception have you received as you have presented these ideas to other audiences that are not representative of us?”
Pianka replied, “I speak to the converted!”
There was a room full of Sado-Environmentalists.
Scary, isn’t it?
Environmentalism doesn’t seem so warm and fuzzy anymore, does it?