Carnal Reason

University of Texas professor Eric Pianka is the eco-flavor of the week. Basically, he hopes Ebola virus will rid the earth of its infestation of humans.

“The biggest enemy we face is anthropocentrism,” he said, describing the belief system in which humans are the central element of the universe. “This is that common attitude that everything on this Earth was put here for [human] use.”To Pianka, a human life is no more valuable than any other — a lizard, a bison, a rhino. And as humans reproduce, the demand for resources like food, water and energy becomes more than the Earth can sustain, he says.

Ken Wilkins, a Baylor University biology professor and associate dean, agrees the inevitability of a crashing point is unarguable. “The human population is growing,” he said. “We will see a point when we reach the carrying capacity — there aren’t enough resources.

But resources aren’t the only threat, Pianka says. It’s the Ebola virus he deems most capable of wide scale decimation.
“Humans are so dense (in population) that they constitute a perfect substrate for an epidemic,” he says. He contends Ebola is merely an evolutionary step away from escaping the confines of Africa. And should an outbreak occur, Pianka assuredly says humanity will quickly come to a “grinding halt.”
…
In an evaluation of Pianka’s course — performed anonymously in keeping with university policy — one student offered:

“Though I agree that conservation biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90 percent of the human population should die of Ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness.”
…
Brenna McConnell, a biology senior, said she and others in the audience “had not thought seriously about overpopulation issues and a feasible solution prior to the meeting.” But though McConnell arrived at the event with little to say on the issue, she returned to Seguin with a whole new outlook.

An entry to her online blog captures her initial response to what’s become a new conviction:

“[Pianka is] a radical thinker, that one!” she wrote. “I mean, he’s basically advocating for the death for all but 10 percent of the current population. And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he’s right.’

Though Pianka turned down requests for a sit-down interview, he maintains he is not advocating human death.

Does he believe nature will bring about this promised devastation? Or is humanity’s own dissemination of a deadly virus the only answer? And more importantly, is this the motive behind his talks?

Responding to these very questions, Pianka said, “Good terrorists would be taking [Ebola Roaston and Ebola Zaire] so that they had microbes they could let loose on the Earth that would kill 90 percent of people.”

The Seguin Gazette

How very coy. Perhaps the professor might be willing to do a little consulting.

Pianka is still beating around the bush. The virus is gonna get us, maybe with the help of a good terrorist. Other eco-scare mongers are more up front.

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil presents a different final scenario: we run out of oil. Oddly, the cure remains the same.

Probably the greatest obstacle to the scenario with the best chance of success (in my opinion) is the Western world’s unintelligent devotion to political correctness, human rights and the sanctity of human life. In the Darwinian world that preceded and will follow the fossil fuel era, these concepts were and will be meaningless. Survival in a Darwinian resource-poor world depends on the ruthless elimination of rivals, not the acquisition of moral kudos by cherishing them when they are weak. In fact, human civilization in the fossil fuel era has been totally anomalous, fuelled by the unthinking exploitation and exhaustion of all the world’s resources, not just fossil fuels. Sir Fred Hoyle pointed out, decades ago, that Western civilization was a “one-shot affair”, for this reason (Duncan 1997).So the population reduction scenario with the best chance of success has to be Darwinian in all its aspects, with none of the sentimentality that shrouded the second half of the 20th Century in a dense fog of political correctness (Stanton 2003 page 193). It is best examined at the nation-state scale. The United Kingdom will serve as the model.

To those sentimentalists who cannot understand the need to reduce UK population from 60 million to about 2 million over 150 years, and who are outraged at the proposed replacement of human rights by cold logic, I would say “You have had your day, in which your woolly thinking has messed up not just the Western world but the whole planet, which could, if Homo sapiens had been truly intelligent, have supported a small population enjoying a wonderful quality of life almost for ever. You have thrown away that opportunity.”

The Darwinian approach, in this planned population reduction scenario, is to maximise the well-being of the UK as a nation-state. Individual citizens, and aliens, must expect to be seriously inconvenienced by the single-minded drive to reduce population ahead of resource shortage. The consolation is that the alternative, letting Nature take its course, would be so much worse.

The scenario is: Immigration is banned. Unauthorised arrives are treated as criminals. Every woman is entitled to raise one healthy child. No religious or cultural exceptions can be made, but entitlements can be traded. Abortion or infanticide is compulsory if the fetus or baby proves to be handicapped (Darwinian selection weeds out the unfit). When, through old age, accident or disease, an individual becomes more of a burden than a benefit to society, his or her life is humanely ended. Voluntary euthanasia is legal and made easy. Imprisonment is rare, replaced by corporal punishment for lesser offences and painless capital punishment for greater.

Association for the Study of Peak Oil, Ireland

None of that sentimental save the children stuff for these guys. The very ideas of human rights and the sanctity of life are historical aberrations, ones they are prepared to set straight. There’s killing to be done, and the ASPO is ready with a plan. I get the impression they can hardly wait.

The Seguin Gazette states that “To Pianka, a human life is no more valuable than any other — a lizard, a bison, a rhino.” It follows that killing a man is no worse than killing a lizard. But one thing is not clear to me. If human life is worth even as much as animal life, why so great a desire see people dead? Is life itself evil? Or is human life uniquely evil? This is the secular, updated version of original sin. This time there is no god, and there is no saviour. But there will be hell to pay.

For the diametrical opposite of this life-hating filth, see Reason Online’s interview with Norman Borlaug. This man’s life work has been to use science to prevent famine. He set out to feed the world, and has saved millions of lives. And guess who was the prophet of famine who said Borlaug could not succeed. I won’t tell you. Read it for yourself.

Posted on April 3rd, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: eco-catastrophe