From the mouth (well, keyboard) of a WaPo columnist...

... comes the realization (ta-da!) that some environmentalists are downright human-despising, if not simply human-hating:

I'll pause here to point out that I enthusiastically support renewable energy, believe strongly in the imposition of a carbon tax and am furthermore convinced that a worldwide shift away from fossil fuels would have hugely positive geopolitical consequences, even leaving aside the environmental benefits. It's true that I'm not crazy about the Kyoto climate negotiation process, of which the Copenhagen summit is the latest stage. But I'm even more disturbed by the apocalyptic and the anti-human prejudices of the climate change movement, some of which do indeed filter down to children as young as 9.

Over the years there have been many radical statements of this latter creed. In the infamous words of a National Park Service ecologist, "We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." A former leader of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals once declared that "humans have grown like a cancer; we're the biggest blight on the face of the earth." But it is a mistake to think that this is the language of only a crazy fringe.

Look, for example, at the Optimum Population Trust, a mainstream organization whose patrons include the naturalist David Attenborough, the scientist Jane Goodall and professors at Cambridge and Stanford -- and that campaigns against, well, human beings. Calling for "fewer emitters, lower emissions," the group offers members the chance to offset the pollution that they generate, merely by existing, through the purchase of family-planning devices in poor countries. Click on its PopOffsets calculator to see what I mean: It reckons that every $7 spent on family planning generates one ton fewer carbon emissions. Since the average American generates 20.6 tons of carbon annually, it will cost $144.20 -- $576.80 for a family of four -- to buy enough condoms to prevent the births of, say, 0.4 Kenyans.

And, sure enough, the Optimum Population Trust (how Orwellian is that name?) lets it be known that "Contraception is "greenest" technology", insists that "Family planning cheapest way to combat climate change," and soberly discussed the dire need to "reduce unintended births." In the words of WaPo columnist Applebaum:

The assumption behind this calculation is profoundly negative: that human beings are nothing more than machines for the production of carbon dioxide. And if we take that assumption seriously, a whole lot of other things look different, too. Weapons of mass destruction should perhaps be reconsidered, along with the flu virus: By reducing the population, they might also reduce emissions. Perhaps they should be encouraged?

Goodness, surely she is overreacting. Next thing you know, she'll dare to think that Al Gore is a lousy poet...

Comments

[Charlie B]

Carl - you may want to link readers to the May 2009 issue of Ethics & Medics (vol 34, no 5) entitled "Consuming Second Hand Steroids." Among other things it points out that an estrogenic steriod found in oral contraceptives - 17 alpha ethinyl estradiol (EE2) has been showing up in wastewater, streams and groundwater over the last 10 years. Its impact, of course, conflicts sharply with the ideological idolatry of population control. But it clearly implies that contraception is not "green." In contrast, Stratford Caldecott has pointed out, years ago in the NOR, that natural methods of fertility regulation are truly green!