Some of the more radical elements of the environmental movement say some pretty weird things. Some of their proposals to make us all greener seem to be proposals to make us all dead – or at least some of us dead. In their zeal to save the planet, they are often quite willing to view humans as expendable at best or a plague at worst. Indeed, some of them really don’t seem to like people at all.
Consider the case of one academic and his proposals as found in the Medical Journal of Australia. Associate Professor Barry Walters of the University of Western Australia told the journal that families should pay a $5000-plus baby levy at birth and an annual carbon tax of up to $800 a child. He also opined that every couple with more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child’s lifetime.
And consider another recent case, this one from the UK. One woman, Toni, who works for an environmental group, said that she “shudders with horror” at the thought of a “little hand slipping into hers – and a voice calling her Mummy.” As Charles Colson tells the story, she is terrified at the thought of the impact on the environment a child might have.
Says Colson, “many young people in their peak child-bearing years are having themselves sterilized as an environmental statement”. Thus when “Toni learned she was pregnant 10 years ago, she quickly had an abortion to ‘protect the planet.’ Then, to make sure that such a ‘mistake’ could not happen again, she had herself sterilized at age 27. What did the child’s father think about all this? He sent her a ‘congratulations card’ and later married her. Apparently, he agrees that ‘having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet’.”
Concludes Colson, “While these are extreme cases, the beliefs driving them are anything-but-fringe, especially among environmental activists. Much of their rhetoric depicts the relationship between man and the rest of creation as a ‘zero-sum game,’ in which what is good for people is, by definition, bad for the planet. It is not uncommon to read about an environmentalist saying that what the planet needs is a good catastrophe to ‘cull’ the human herd. An award-winning scientist said just that last year.”
While such views may indeed be extreme, they are unfortunately becoming more and more common, both in green circles and among the intellectualoids. Andrew Bolt today lists around 20 other recent examples of some pretty bizarre claims coming out of the pulpits of the first church of Green. Here are some of the examples he produces:
– Greenpeace co-founder Paul Watson insists we “reduce human populations to fewer than one billion”.
– Dr John Reid, a former Swinburne University academic, gave a lecture on ABC radio recommending we “put something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system, and would make a substantial proportion of the population infertile”.
– Says Melbourne University population guru Prof Short: “We need to develop a one-child family policy because we are the global warmers.”
– Local pollster Hugh Mackay says “cars’ emissions are stealthily killing us” and we could “halve the fleet, at one stroke, by adopting the odds-and-evens number plate system”.
– Greenpeace says kangaroos don’t belch like cows, so are greener and should be eaten first.
– PETA campaigner Heather Mills, ex-wife of Paul McCartney, says cows’ burps are heating up the world and we should use milk from other animals: “Why don’t we try drinking rats’ milk and dogs’ milk?”
– Says green academic Mayer Hillman, author of How We Can Save the Planet: “When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it. (Carbon rationing) has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.”
Plenty of other such examples can be found. It seems that in our panic over the condition of the earth, we are quite happy to sacrifice humans, or at least radically reduce human activities and lifestyles, to achieve some sort of green utopia.
Now there is nothing wrong with taking sensible steps to protect our planet. But if some of these bizarre scenarios were ever to take effect, the totalitarian implications should be fairly obvious. It seems that democracy, freedom, economic growth and people themselves will all be at risk if some of these green zealots have their way.
By all means let us all be concerned about our planet’s wellbeing, but let us equally be concerned about radical green plans which are really anti-humanitarian and anti-life.
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=7298
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22945744-5000117,00.html
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