The Texas Academy of Science recently presented a prestigious award to Eric Pianka, a professor at the University of Texas. At the award ceremony, Pianka characterized human beings as a “scourge” on the Earth, called for a police state to mandate sterilization of all Americans, and expressed hope that the lethal Ebola virus would mutate into a form that might kill 90 percent of the human race.
Writing in Environment News (in an article reprinted by the Heartland Institute (www.heartland.org), James Taylor observes that Pianka’s remarks “eerily” recalled the Unabomber manifesto, in which Ted Kasczinski called for an end to technology and the death of people who affect the Earth’s environment.
And how did Pianka’s audience of university students, scientists, and professors react to this diatribe? Astoundingly, according to this report, he received a nearly unanimous standing ovation.
Taylor quotes one member of the audience as follows: “Must now we worry that a Pianka-worshipping former student might someday become a professional biologist or physician with access to the most deadly strains of viruses and bacteria? … I still can’t get out of my mind the pleasant spring day in Texas when a few hundred scientists of the Texas Academy of Science gave a standing ovation for a speaker who they heard advocate for the slow and torturous death of over five billion human beings.”
Can the strain of anti-humanism in the academy get any more bizarre?