The Anti-Human Agenda
By Dr. Tim Ball Monday, May 19, 2008

“A tongue-in-cheek comment from my university said if we could just get rid of the students it would be a great place to work. Some environmentalists think if we could just get rid of all the people on the planet it would be a great place to live. Generally over-population is a major part of the environmentalists’ argument that humans are causing all the problems, including climate change. Satire is a good measure of this position typified by the bumper sticker that says, “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself.”

The relationship between population and resources has been an issue throughout history. All predictions to date were wrong including Thomas Malthus in the 19th century, who claimed the population would outgrow the food supply. The most recent flurry of alarmism over population growth was a key piece of the ideas of the Club of Rome and the now discredited book “Limits to Growth”. It received momentum through Paul Ehrlich’s book, “The Population Bomb.” The ideas were combined with sustainable development at the 1994 world conference on population in Cairo. Here it is in ‘bureaucratese’ from Section 3.1

The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and Agenda 21, adopted by the international community at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, call for patterns of development that reflect the new understanding of these and other intersectoral linkages.

There is also general agreement that unsustainable consumption and production patterns are contributing to the unsustainable use of natural resources and environmental degradation as well as to the reinforcement of social inequities and of poverty with the above- mentioned consequences for demographic parameters.

Although the discussion was about health and development, there was little doubt the underlying theme was the need to reduce population, especially in the developing world. It was the wrong approach. The error of left wing politics is to ignore how population declines with increased development. It’s a process called the “demographic transition” in which the death rate declines, then the birth rate declines and population numbers decline. It is evident in every developed country and unless supplemented by immigration, as many developed nations are now practicing, can cause other problems.

Environmentalism in its more virulent form is anti-humanity, and anti-evolution. It holds that human progress is not a natural evolution but an unnatural aberration. Ron Arnold, Executive Vice-President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, said, “Environmentalism intends to transform government, economy, and society in order to liberate nature from human exploitation.”

The 1990 Greenpeace Report on Global Warming said, “Carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere naturally and unnaturally.” What do they mean by “unnatural”? It is a Freudian slip disclosing an underlying thought, but it also introduces a profound contradiction. If what humans do is not natural, then by inference we are not natural. If we are not natural then by default you must conclude a greater authority put us here–but of course they don’t want that either.

Somehow evolution, survival of the fittest and the most adaptable, doesn’t apply to humans. Some actually express this view. David Graber, a research biologist with the National park Service said,

“Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true. Somewhere along the line – at about a billion years ago – we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

What contract and with whom? What happens if the virus wipes out Graber and his like? Perhaps Christopher Manes, author of “Green Rage”, would decide because he says “a large percentage of humanity is (an) ecological redundancy.” Getting rid of everyone permanently solves the problem – David Foreman former chief lobbyist for the Wilderness Society says the optimum number is zero. Presumably he’s the last to go.

Canadian David Suzuki, a former genetics professor might see the irony, although I doubt it. He said. “Economics is a very species – chauvinistic idea. No other species on earth – and there are may be 30 million of them – has had the nerve to put forth a concept called economics, in which one species, us, declares the right to put value on everything else on earth, in the living and non-living world.” First, he is wrong because all other species do put a value on everything else – it is food or it is not food. Doesn’t get more basic than that. Second, the 30 million number is wrong, but so are the statistics Suzuki uses about the rate of extinctions. Then it is another of those confounded species chauvinistic ideas and doesn’t apply to those who know the truth. Suzuki traveled across Canada selling a book (how economically driven) claiming 2 species an hour were becoming extinct. I challenged him to name them and the 46 others that disappeared everyday. I suggested we have a daily obituary column lamenting them. It won’t happen because it simply doesn’t happen. It does imply we are arrogant mass-murderers as well as economists. Of course no other species had the nerve or ability to develop concepts like economics. Conceptual thought is another of the evolutionary advances humans made. Or is it? Again we confront the conundrum – apparently our advances are not evolutionary, we are not playing according to the ‘natural ‘ rules.

The English TV comedy series “Yes Minister” had a wonderful episode in which the most efficient and economical hospital was one that had no patients. Well environmentalists don’t harbor those views lightly. Ingrid Newkirk of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said,

“Mankind is a cancer; we’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” “If you haven’t given voluntary human extinction much thought before, the idea of a world with no people in it may seem strange. But, if you give it a chance, I think you might agree that the extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species, Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”

It’s too bad the dinosaurs or all the other species that became extinct long before Homo Sapiens came on the scene did not know of this.

Before you conclude Ms. Newkirk is alone in this extreme view, consider Richard Conniff’s comment in “Audubon.” “Among environmentalists sharing two or three beers, the notion is quite common that if only some calamity could wipe out the entire human race, other species might once again have a chance.” The Roman adage, In vino veritas (In wine there is truth) applies although apparently Ms. Newkirk did not need such liquid courage.

I struggled for years with the role or function of extremists in society. I realize now their job is to define the limits of an idea or ideology. We are all environmentalists to a greater or lesser extent and we should resent those who have usurped the concept or the title. Everyone cares about the environment; the question is how far do we pursue the concept. Those who are anti-humanity and anti-society or don’t believe evolution applies to humans have the ultimate in arrogance. Is there any other species that would advocate its own demise?”

I think it is Tim Ball in an article called “The Anti-Human agenda” or something like that, who says that OTHER species DO make value judgements about other species with which they share the Earth, too, only they are not as advanced as man’s are. Other species value judgements consist of “Is – this – food: Yes / No?”

Ha ha ha. Not bad, eh?

But killing off everything/everyone that gets in the way of our ambitions isn’t very clever, whether those we kill are insects or rodents or Muslims or Jews.”

Wont some think of the mosquitoes?

Nice that you lumped insects, rodents, muslims and jews all in the same group.

toad, you are a simpleton if you think Bush is about destroying muslims. Nothing can be gained by engaging with you further.

…..Really, they are only our thumbs and our intellect.

Given that your starting point was how your opponents here don’t understand basic genetics and evolution the following assertions seem to be an extraordinarily limited perception of what constitutes evolution.

Only our intellect? It is that key evolutionary development that has always marked humans as very different from any other life form on the planet. Do you not see? Our ability to control our environment, as you so dismissively put it, is itself an evolutionary development.

Moreover, it is one that is intertwined to the development of the mind, with each developing the other. I think that evolution reached a critical threshold when it came to Homo Sapiens, in that our evolution has been increasingly of the mind rather than the body. Moreover, I think this divergence will increase, because the “environmental” pressures and the causes of “mutation” will be increasingly different from those that corporeal evolution has dealt with over several billion years. The principles may be the same but the agents and the speed of change will not be, and neither will the effects!

It seems to me that in this discussion we are already exploring what the evolution of the mind has wrought over the past few thousand years. It’s very easy to see how humans have used their minds to transcend the physical limitations of our bodies with regard to shelter, food and travel. A world of hard infrastructure enabled by science and technology has been created. Something no other animal has done. It is easy for us to regard those as being objective – external to the mind.

But what we have also done is attempt to build a soft infrastructure to protect ourselves – not just laws and the means to enable their application (police, courts, fines, prisons) but moral and ethical frameworks that can provide guidance as to what is the right and wrong or how they can be decided. In short – social culture. This societal software is the product of many, individual, conscious minds interacting together and I would argue that these constructs are no less objective than hardware, in that they lie outside the realm of a single mind. Moreover, as these constructs grow and extend it becomes increasingly difficult to trace them back to pure instincts and selfish genes (though the arguments can be made).

As such I would like to think that have an ethical and moral responsibility to the environment that created us – but not to the extent that we should somehow revert ourselves to being simply another creature on the planet – not that we probably could now. Evolution moves forward in ways that we cannot predict – it may well be that it is the cockroaches that are as doomed as the dinosaurs, while humans, or more precisely our descendents, who survive and prosper in the universe.

The best course of action is no action. There is no need to respond to a non-existent threat with solutions that don’t achieve anything beyond impoverishing people.

The government needs to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol Treaty before it has to start handing over real money. It also needs to remove the requirement for a mandatory level of Bio-fuels to be included in normal fuel stocks.

The only positive for the economy at present is the Diary industry which brings in valuable export dollars. Everything else is a negative. Why would the Green Party want to cripple the economy apart from the fact that its members don’t participate in it and have no understanding of where the money comes from for their welfare cheques and government jobs?

……… but then they taxpayer fund a calendar with Frankenstein like images, and say its cool!

whats with them?

Shake out the cobwebs, and look at the real world. It does not revolve around humans. Ask yourselves what our advantages are for survival over other creatures. Really, they are only our thumbs and our intellect.

But killing off everything/everyone that gets in the way of our ambitions isn’t very clever, whether those we kill are insects or rodents or Muslims or Jews. Just a pity neither the Crusaders or the Third Reich (or, for that matter, President Bush) worked this out. The world would be a better place if they had.

Follow the way you guys look at it, and the cockroaches will inherit the earth when humans are extinct. They are far better adapted to survival in adverse environments that we are.

Once again we get the “everything in nature is better” dogma. They adapt to their environment and we change ours. The only way they win is if we stop changing our environment or if we just let them win. Which are you advocating?

“Almost all of them have much shorter life cycles than us, so they have the evolutionary advantage of being able to adapt in a shorter period of time.”

You are joking right? They have the advantage because they adapt over thousands of generations and we can only develop completely new technology constantly during a persons lifetime?

They have the “evolutionary advantage”, so we cant win there. What is left? Changing our environment. Play to your strengths, not away from them.

Hey toad, next time you are talking to her, tell Gaia ‘game on, bitch’, from me, okay?

“The main reason it is not used today is not its residual toxicity to humans, but the fact that DDT resistant pests were becoming more prevalent, and that it simply didn’t work well as a pesticide any more.”

That card has been over played. Residential use of DDT isn’t going to be breeding super insects.

Can it be done again?

Some argue that a second green revolution will be harder to achieve than the first, because genetically modified organisms provide the only hope for new seed, and Europeans are dead against them; because there is not enough water to permit a big expansion of irrigation in, say, Africa; and because oil at $125 a barrel makes fertilisers too expensive. That seems unduly pessimistic. As Mr Bage points out, the only thing known for sure is that there has been an enormous fall in agricultural investment over 30 years. It seems a bit early to rule out in advance the possible benefits of reversing that decline.

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11502285

And toad don’t go accusing them of being far-right neo-cons because they are with you on the AGW BS

Only some of them, Phil! Just joking!

You don’t understand basic genetics and evolution theory. Whatever you use as a pesticide, there will be pest species (ie creatures who compete with us for food) who will over years or decades or centuries, genetically evolve to develop the resistance to that pesticide.

If we try to win the battle for food by annihilating every creature that competes with humans, the creatures that compete with us will win, because over time they will adapt to adverse environments, while we who try to control our environment so as to not have to adapt will not. Almost all of them have much shorter life cycles than us, so they have the evolutionary advantage of being able to adapt in a shorter period of time.

DDT is a classic example actually. The main reason it is not used today is not its residual toxicity to humans, but the fact that DDT resistant pests were becoming more prevalent, and that it simply didn’t work well as a pesticide any more.

We will never wipe out the mosquito or the grass grub or the cockroach or the rat, so let’s learn sensible ways of living with them.

“Yeah Phil!

Saving the snails, annihilating the Jews – the two go hand in glove really…”

Not for nothing are there articles with titles like “The Next Green Body Count”, and “Green Power, Black Death”, pal. Ban DDT, bingo, malaria makes a comeback in the third world, millions dead. “Biofuels” is the “next” example.

The more extreme rhetoric from the Green movement could well morph from writings to murderous action in one or two more generations, just like the example of Karl Marx and other………humans are a “parasite”, the earth would be “better off without them”, and such CHARMING stuff…….where do you think this is leading? If not put a stop to now?

a carbon tax is a lot fairer than the cap and trade mechanism, and it can be (AND SHOULD BE) abated by reductions in income tax and business tax.

“Perhaps someone has pointed this out to you before Philbest, but be careful, that has been a Green policy for a long while now…”

Sorry if my post was not clear, but I thought I DID give the Greens the benefit of THIS……read it again. I just think they still deserve savaging anyway…….

Please explain how “traditional” plant breeding is OK while GM is so dangerous.

I have to seriously disagree with you here. We have to think long term. There were people that were paranoid about electricity, and while there still are, the fact that we have gone over a century without negative effects (and in fact with hugely positive ones) means that accommodating the paranoids is not going to very lucrative except for a very small number of people.

Lets also face facts that our clean green image is a bit of a con. We still use pesticides, which is another irrational fear amongst the green sect who would prefer everything be grown organically (which follows from the misplaced faith that anything natural is better).

Dave, there is a significant difference between hybridisation (which can and does occur naturally) and genetic engineering (which can only occur through inserting a gene into the DNA of a completely different species).

Lions can successfully mate with tigers (even thought the offspring will be sterile), but toads cannot successfully mate with potatoes (and before anyone asks or makes snide comments about sexual perversity, because I am sure someone will, no, I have not attempted it!)

There is the difference!

This is not a decision that we can make now on a punt, and then change our minds later. There is no reason to rush.

The Green MPs have a carbon offsetting regime they pay into irrespective of which airline their MPs fly on – they pay personally, even though the Parliamentary Service should pay, but won’t (blame Labour and National for that). I have no idea which airline Sue Kedgley flew on, but she will certainly be paying for forest regeneration to offset the carbon emissions from her flights.

Every time I look at a rose I see genetic modification, achieved by splicing plants together.
Every time I look at a cow I see genetic modification, achieved by breeding different strains together.

Much of both the flora and fauna of NZ have been developed by genetic engineering, however, there seems to be a view that if it’s not done in a laboratory it’s not really GE. What kind of piddle are we talking here, please don’t try to claim something for our delightful country that it is not!

Is New Zealand clean, you bet, go and walk through the street of London and you’ll soon long for Wellington; is it green, you bet, fly over the north isl;and, then fly over eastern germany you’ll soon understand. Green doesn’t have to mean Green Party compliant, it is, after all is said and done, a colour, in fact ot’s the colour of the Town Belt I’m looking at right now