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The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
I read in an article somewhere about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. In doing some further research, I found that this movement has been around for at least ten years (there’s a video of Tucker Carlson interviewing the head of this, from nine years ago). We already know that the Left is basically anti-human, believing that the human race is a stain on the planet, and that Earth would be better off with no people in it. Well, this group believes that all people should refrain from reproduction, so that the human population would gradually die out.
The man who started the group is an old-school environmentalist who was involved in the Zero Population Growth movement in the 1970s. He is called Les U. Knight (too funny-less you!), and his base is in Portland, Oregon. I guess this group is the logical conclusion of the ZPG movement. Interesting that he has refused to contribute to human extinction by extinguishing himself. He did, however, get a vasectomy at the age of 25.
Knight argues that the human population is far greater than the Earth can handle, and that the best thing for Earth’s biosphere is for humans to voluntarily cease reproducing.[18] He says that humans are “incompatible with the biosphere”[3] and that human existence is causing environmental damage which will eventually bring about the extinction of humans (as well as other organisms)
This is a horrible viewpoint that only an atheist could espouse. Fortunately, the movement has remained very small-maybe it will die out, itself. One can only hope.
Published in Environment
I beg to differ. This atheist feels that this despicable point of view is something only a dirt-munching earth-worshipper could abide. These people have a religion.
These spiteful mutants (h/t @drlorentz) have always been with us and always will. The problem is that a society which values harmony over survival forgives the monsters and attacks the decent. There’s a quote to that effect, something like “those who are kind to the cruel will be cruel to the kind.” Some points of view should be stamped out, and this is one of them. It is a pathology of the species. “You first.”
Yeah, I wrote about some of these vicious misanthropes on Salvo recently. Notice how it’s always someone else who has to die to fulfil their dreams of “saving the planet”? Oh, and the planet is doing just fine. We are the most important part of the biosphere.
He should demonstrate his commitment to the cause by having the courage to lead by example.
That’s what happened to the Shakers, they didn’t reproduce because they considered all sex as sinful. Overall, I prefer the Shakers over this group: at least they left behind much nicer furniture and barns.
The human race is not a stain on the planet. Liberalism is. Ditto for Communism and Socialism. They seek to oppress the many so that the few among a parasitic leader class can accumulate power and prestige to themselves. Liberals and Socialists always project evils onto conservatives that which they themselves are guilty of.
Yes, they do have a religion and their dogma is there is no dogma.
Seeing that they have been around for at least ten years, and I am only hearing about them now, they can’t have had much influence. I do think they could contribute the most to humanity by extinguishing themselves right away. We who remain might be happier if they did.
This stuff started showing up in college policy debate circa early 2000s. The way it worked was that one team would state their case for whatever their proposal under the resolution was: for example, Team A would propose that a broadly-deployed anti-missile system was the best way to reduce the odds of nuclear war. The classical debating response for Team B would be to argue that this was not the best alternative: they might propose stronger retaliatory capabilities, or nuclear disarmament, or whatever, as a better approach. But what started happening was that Team B would actually argue the VHE case–that instead of trying to reduce the odds of nuclear war, we should simply all commit suicide…and then would go on to argue for the ‘benefits’ of this approach.
Indeed, they are eugenicists with an inferiority complex.
We didn’t invent extinction of species, and we are the only creatures on Earth who can prevent it.
I wonder if some people are commenting without reading what RushBabe49 has actually posted. While I am sure there are misanthropes calling for the human herd to be culled, the individual mentioned in the post is not. He is calling for humans to choose to refrain from reproducing, and he has does this himself.
There is a gigantic difference here. It is the difference between saying drinking is a sin and I won’t do it, and saying I want to forbid people from drinking.
Anything calling for the extinction of the human race can go fund itself.
Correct.
Just out of curiosity, not to disagree, but how can we ever prevent species extinction? Last I heard, for example, cheetahs are being bred, but there are so few of them that they are getting inbred. We can change the course of revers, and fish out the north Atlantic, but how do we save species?
Nature designed some species for extinction, like the koala and panda who only eat one food. When climate or humans interrupt that food, the species suffer. However, we humans have saved both species so far, in contravention of Nature. We win. Without humans on Earth, species would still go extinct.
We may not be able to prevent ALL extinctions, but we can prevent SOME of them. None of the other “inhabitants” of the planet can even do that much.
I confess that I do not catch the logic here. A species “designed for extinction” makes no sense to me, nor does such a manifest purpose (or any other purpose) in evolution.
Also the earlier claim (not yours) that jhumans can prevent species extinction is bound by a couple of terms, such as “some” and “for the time being”.
But “for the time being” can be quite a while, at least until the sun explodes and EVERYTHING on Earth becomes extinct.
While there are a relatively small number of people calling for the actual extinction of humanity, there is a much larger set of people who believe that humans are in some sense a plague on the planet. This meme is, I think, significant:
There are apparently quite a few young women who have resolved not to have children because “it hurts the planet” (although in some cases this may just be self-justification, when they’ve already decided they don’t want kids or are afraid to)
And everyone knows that lions really just want to watch zebras grazing.
A species that cannot adapt to the loss of the only food it can consume has a high probability of going extinct, thus “designed for extinction.” If all bamboo is killed off for some reason, pandas would go too, unless they could eat something else. One reason we are at the top of the food chain is that we can survive on a wide variety of food
When the lion lays down with the lamb, what will the lion eat for dinner?
I tried serving it fair trade, sustainably sourced quinoa, but the lion got fussy.
Agreed. I don’t have much of a problem with that guy – he is wrong, but ethical.
His brethren will not be.
I was once told that before Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, lions etc were vegetarians.
Yes, that side seems to quickly go from “WE should not reproduce” to “THEY should all die, and if they don’t do it on their own, we must help them!”
You see, the things is that climate doesn’t or hasn’t interrupted Eucalyptus or bamboo forests, but man has. I can see that man can stop destroying habitats, but not that he can change the climate or any other natural process. So it’s not that we save buffalo (etc.) from extinction but we stop our own behavior that leads to their extinction.
I can think of three species extinctions off-hand that were exclusively caused by man: the dodo, and the passenger pigeon, both hunted to extinction for food, and the Tasmanian wolf (tiger).
Which ones can mankind save that are not at risk due to mankind’s activities.
Believe it or not, zoos have proven that obligate carnivores can live and be healthy on a grain diet.
Lions always
saytalk up their vegetarian roots before they eat you. Cats like to play with their food.