Tom Flake has a few questions for a select, but influential, few:
I hear people use the term save the planet. I must confess I am confused. Save it from what? Save it for whom? Save it to what end? Is it in danger of destruction? If so, destroyed in what manner? Do people who use this term speak English as a first language?
People who use this term usually are trying to motivate people to take some type of action. eg. You should recycle to save the planet. Does that mean if I don't recycle, the planet will be hit by a meteor? Clearly, that isn't the case. There is no connection (that I've heard anyone make) between my recycling and the course of asteroids in their path. The only thing I can figure is that they must not mean "saved from utter and complete destruction" as in asteroid collision, sun going nova, black hole destruction. Even nuclear weapons would likely leave roaches and critters in the oceans.
Perhaps when people use the term they mean save the planet from being made unlivable to human beings. Have any of these people seen pictures of slums in the worst of South America or Asia? People can live quite successfully in the worst kind of filth. My observation is that pollution, litter, clutter, debris, man-made detritus, while not pretty don't make an area uninhabitable. This means that when people use the term "save the planet" they don't mean saved so that the planet will continue to support human life. There is no evidence that my failure to recycle will leave the planet uninhabitable.
Perhaps when people use the term save the planet, they mean improved so that the carrying capacity of the planet for human habitation is increased. That since the human population is increasing, they are concerned for future generations reaching some level of overpopulation and thus they wan't to increase the amount of arable land that is being farmed. Their actions though, preserving forests, protesting population growth, advocating abortion, doesn't support the hypothesis that these people are into preserving and extending the species.
This can only mean that people who use the term save the planet must mean "lower the carrying capacity of the planet for human beings". Use less to preserve a natural environment for other species use. Because somehow when a whale kills and eats a fish, that's better than when a human kills and eats the fish. From the fishes point of view I don't see the difference.
There's more and it's worthy, so go check it out.
And speaking of more, Chuck Colson has a few related thoughts:
The last time that Britain’s population was cut in half was the 14th century. The cause was the Black Death.
Seven centuries later, a leading British environmentalist is urging a similar decrease in what Ebenezer Scrooge famously called “the surplus population.” Only this time, he’s asking for volunteers.
In February, Jonathan Porritt, the chairman of the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission, said that couples with more than two children were placing an “‘irresponsible’ burden of the environment.”
He accused his fellow environmentalists of “betraying the interests of [their] members” by not telling people to be responsible for “their total environmental footprint.”
Not surprisingly, Porritt’s comments didn’t sit very well with a lot of Britons. But he’s convinced, as he wrote on his website, that “logic” and “sound evidence” are on his side.
So, six weeks later, he upped the ante: he declared that the UK must cut its population from its current 61 million to 30 million “if it is to build a sustainable society.”
Porritt told attendees at the annual conference of Britain’s Optimum Population Trust—yes, that’s the organization’s name—that “population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure.”
According to Porritt, “each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries.” The “impact” he’s referring to is the emission of greenhouse gases believed to cause man-made global warming.
Porritt and his supporters, like Chris Rapley, the director of Britain’s Science Museum, are fuzzy when it comes to details about how to cut the population in half, and I don’t blame them: not even China’s infamous “one-child” policy will achieve Porritt’s goal.
One industrialized country that may, however, is Russia. A combination of plummeting birth rates, substance abuse, infectious disease, poor nutrition and other factors has reduced the life expectancy of Russian males to 59 years, 10 years less than at the end of the Soviet Union. As a result, Russia’s population is projected to drop by a third by 2050 and a half by 2100. A sustainable society? I think not.
Of course, a few good wars could reduce the human population, but all that ordnance, you see, would be bad for the environment.
The common thread between Tom and Chuck's posts is clear... there's more to the environmentalist movement than meets the eye (or the ear). There's a fascination with saving the planet that doesn't necessarily include saving the humans dwelling on that planet.
And that friends makes the movement wickedly non-philanthropic and worthy of our vehement opposition.












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