“Humans are a cancer upon the Earth, a horde of vermin whose unconstrained aspirations and appetites are endangering the natural order. This is the core idea of anti-humanism.”
– Merchants of Despair
Few are aware that in the late 18th century a new political movement arose after realizing that too many undesirables were overpopulating the earth and depleting too many of the resources. These inferiors were an obvious blight on the earth and needed to be stopped, leading to the birth of the anti-humanist movement. The cure? An end to human life; yours, not theirs. Instead of ridding the world of poverty, the goal was to rid the world of the poor. Introducing…Better Dead Than Fed.
The initial naysayer was Thomas Malthus, an English economist, who insisted there weren’t enough resources to keep up with the growing population. His solution was simple, increase the death rates. Stop feeding the poor, stop healing the sick, and for God's sake, stop clothing the naked. We shouldn’t be surprised to learn that in the end, Malthus died from a damaged heart.
Next up was eugenics, an evil scheme that also reared its ugly head in the late 18th century, resulting in a flurry of unfortunate women around the globe who were sufficiently barren-ized. A quick check of the skin color wheel shows those affected appear to be more brown than pink. Oh, no! Oh, yes!
But population control isn’t the only face of anti-humanism. In Robert Zubrin’s 2013 book, “Merchants of Despair”, Zubrin outlines the history of the anti-humanism movement from Malthus to Darwin to Ehrlich to Gore, a brutal band of brothers. Each argued that restrictions in the form of regulations and laws were needed to control their favorite imaginary crisis, giving more and more power to the government and the institutions of governments.
Today, climate alarmists are the new religious charlatans who try to convince us every few years that the world is ending. Apocalyptic predictions have been rife since the 1960s. The United Nations in 1989 claimed entire nations would be underwater by 2000. Al Gore, in 2006, said we had 10 years left. In 2019, it was 12 years; yet by early 2020, we were down to only 8. That social justice warrior math sure isn’t your granddaddy’s math, is it?
Environmentalists are also struggling with the arduous task of compelling their own true believers of the catastrophic need to change their own behavior. Environmental elites tend to be more like ISIS fighters who persuade others to don the suicide vest and reap all those virgins. The jaws of life couldn’t get these climate frauds off their own contrail-spewing private jets and their own gas-guzzling yachts.
But ridding the world of cheap, plentiful energy has had the deleterious effect of creating a new category of poverty; the energy poor, those who now must pay more than 10 percent of their incomes to cover the inflated energy cost. In fact, the energy-poor has tripled in some European nations. Then there is Africa, where white-led nations deny them cheap energy, demanding instead that poor nations cut their teeth on the new alternative, less potent energy sources, like solar, wind, hydropower, and geothermal. Perhaps we should check the skin color wheel again?
While we have the same natural resources as the caveman, modern human creativity and ingenuity have advanced humankind. The technology, automation, and innovation that resulted from the Industrial Revolution are key. The freer we are the faster we can create and invent because more people generate more products and services. GDP per capita has increased with population, not decreased. In fact, over one-quarter of all the wealth in the world has been created in the last decade. As societies get richer, their citizens live longer, and women naturally have fewer children. Underpopulation now presents a more plausible predicament.
Zubrin asserts, “Every human mouth comes not just with a pair of hands, but with a brain. We are creative inventors, and the more of us there are, the better off we are.” Is mankind to be viewed as just another mouth to feed, or has the power of our minds immeasurably enhanced our labor? The answer is obvious.
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