Demonstrating my thesis that environmentalism is growing progressively anti human–and showing how unoriginal so many in that movement have become–David Attenborough calls up the cliché that we are a “plague on the Earth” in support of radical depopulation. From the Telegraph story:
The television presenter said that humans are threatening their own existence and that of other species by using up the world’s resources. He said the only way to save the planet from famine and species extinction is to limit human population growth. “We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now,” he told the Radio Times.
Sir David, who is a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, has spoken out before about the “frightening explosion in human numbers” and the need for investment in sex education and other voluntary means of limiting population in developing countries.
Radical depopulation of the kind for which Attenborough and Population Matters (formerly Optimum Population Trust) yearn, isn’t going to come about via sex education, birth control, or other “non coercive” methods. Heck, look at China’s brutally tyrannical one child policy, which has only slowed the rate of population growth, not actually reduced the numbers.
To really get the job done would require genocidal means, which I am sure Attenborough would never consider or support. But I worry that less genteel others might not be so hesitant.