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OPINION

Enviros Would Be Just Fine Without Human Beings

a stick figure with the traditional circle and slash through it and the words voluntary human extinction
A world without humans is the goal of some humans. (Dreamstime)

George J. Marlin By Monday, 24 April 2023 10:25 AM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, it is written that God made man in His image and likeness “and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the Earth.”

Because dominion over the Earth is a grave responsibility, man is expected to respect and protect the integrity of creation.

The catechism of the Catholic Church, for example, stresses man’s obligation to the environment: “Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present and future humanity. ... Man’s dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come: it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.”

Granted, man has not always lived up to the standards expressed in the catechism. And the environmental movement of the 1960s was right to expose water and air pollution and to demand remediation.

But, like many such movements, there arose in the '60s a fringe “Earth First” element that would tolerate no compromise in the defense of Mother Earth.

These Earth Firsters had contempt for people and commenced a religious crusade to “shake off the awful thing called Western culture which has now brought the world to the brink of ecocide.”

Environmental doomsayers reject liberal democracy and have called for the suppression of rights, including the repeal of the First Amendment.

Biologist Paul Ehrlich — who claimed an overpopulated world would starve to death in the 1970s — argued that the government has the authority to regulate population growth that included compulsory abortion, adding sterilant to drinking water and staple foods of those who contribute to social deterioration and the “implementation of long-term birth control devices in women who have already given birth to two or three children.”

The most radical environmentalist groups (i.e., Voluntary Human Existence Movement) call for the extinction of the human race in order to save the planet.

Ridiculous, don’t you think?

Not anymore.

The 1960s avant-garde environmentalists, whose views were considered out of bounds, are mainstream in the 21st century.

These radicals hold “that the end of Humanity’s reign on Earth is imminent and that we should welcome it.”

Adam Kirsch, the noted critic, describes this phenomenon in a newly published monograph, The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us.

This world view, Kirsch notes, is not the brainchild of conspiracy theorists living in their mother’s basement but of a disparate group of thinkers that include “engineers and philosophers, political activists and would-be hermits, novelists and paleontologists.”

In general, they reject Genesis. They reject the traditional belief that man is the preeminent being in creation.

Within this movement there are two groups, Anthropocene antihumanists and transhumanists.

The Anthropocene antihumanists, disgusted with Mankind’s destruction of the natural environment and hostile to the very idea of their concerns, welcome the destruction of the human species.

They “reject any claim Humanity might once have had to admiration and solidarity. Instead, they invest their admiration in the non-human: animals, plants, rocks, water, air. Any of these entities is superior to humanity for the simple reason that it doesn’t destroy all the others.”

Given a choice they will side with nature, not humanity.

The other group, transhumanists, agree that man is doomed and “contemplate the prospect of Humanity’s disappearance with serenity.”

Their plan is to transform the universe by creating “new forms of intelligent life that will no longer be homo sapiens.”

For transhumanists the “supreme nature” will be the flow of data. They bow at the altar of artificial general intelligence and look forward to a time when humanity will be extinguished and replaced with “wiser virtual beings who tread more lightly on the planet.”

This revolt against humanity, Kirsch concludes, “is fundamentally incompatible with the principles humanists claim to honor — freedom, reason, moral authority.”

How true.

Nevertheless, these intolerant authoritarian zealots, who historian Richard Hofstadter described as reformers who embrace “hatred as a form of a creed,” are brainwashing Millenials and GenZ to believe that majority rule is averse to environmental values and that they should be preparing to “embrace their own elimination.”

Scary? Yes, it is.

And in the course of time, I won’t be surprised if dissidents, like myself, are banished to anti-environment gulags.

George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of "The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact," and "Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy." Read George J. Marlin's Reports — More Here.

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Environmental doomsayers reject liberal democracy and have called for the suppression of rights, including the repeal of the First Amendment.
environmentalists, humans
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2023-25-24
Monday, 24 April 2023 10:25 AM
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