Eco-misanthropes want better living through mass death

By DEROY MURDOCK
Scripps Howard News Service
15-JUN-06

Most ecologists want to make life easy for butterflies and waterfalls. Who
can argue with that? Some environmental extremists, however, think what
Earth really needs is fewer people. In some cases, billions fewer.

"We're no better than bacteria!" University of Texas biologist Eric Pianka
recently announced. "Things are gonna get better after the collapse because
we won't be able to decimate the Earth so much," he added. "And, I actually
think the world will be much better when there's only 10 or 20 percent of us
left."

Pianka dreamed that disease "will control the scourge of humanity." He
celebrated the potential of Ebola Reston, an airborne strain of the killer
virus, to make Earth nearly human-free. "We've got airborne 90 percent
mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that."

Just five hours after Pianka's March 3 speech to the Texas Academy of
Science, which Forrest Mims III covered March 31 in The Citizen Scientist,
the Academy named Pianka its 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist. Several
hundred scientists gave Pianka a standing ovation, Mims reported.

Pianka is not alone.

In the April 17 Boston Globe, columnist Cathy Young quoted Texas Lutheran
University's Brenna McConnell who heard Pianka. "He's a radical thinker,
that one!" McConnell exclaimed. "I mean, he's basically advocating for the
death of all but 10 percent of the current population! And at the risk of
sounding just as radical, I think he's right."

As University of Texas-Arlington's Rebecca Calisi observed April 4 on
Infowars.com: "There is no denying the natural world would be a better place
without people. ALL people!"

One wonders, among any 10 of Pianka's, McConnell's, or Calisi's loved ones,
which nine might they yield to "save the Earth?" And would these "radical
thinkers" sacrifice themselves to protect our planet?

For his part, William Burger decried "the devastation humans are currently
imposing upon our planet." The curator emeritus for botany at Chicago's
Field Museum of Science last Nov. 9 wrote then-Discovery Institute scholar
Jay Richards regarding his book, "The Privileged Planet." Burger continued,
"Still, adding over 70 million new humans to the planet each year, the
future looks pretty bleak to me. Surely, the Black Death was one of the best
things that ever happened to Europe: elevating the worth of human labor,
reducing environmental degradation, and, rather promptly, producing the
Renaissance. From where I sit, Planet Earth could use another major human
pandemic, and pronto!"

What frightful words from a flower expert!

Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola calls humanity a sinking ship with
100 passengers and a lifeboat for 10. "Those who hate life try to pull more
people on board and drown everybody. Those who love and respect life use
axes to chop off the extra hands hanging on the gunwale."

At an Oct. 27 hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,
Jerry Vlasak of the North American Animal Liberation Front discussed his
2004 recommendations on how to reduce medical research on animals. "I don't
think you'd have to kill _ assassinate _ too many vivisectors before you
would see a marked decrease in the amount of vivisection going on," Vlasak
said. "And I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a
million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives." Asked about this comment,
Vlasak told the senators: "I made that statement. I stand by that
statement."

The green movement includes "Elves" _ Earth Liberation Front radicals who
firebomb houses under construction to prevent their supposed environmental
harm (never mind that lumber smoke is a greenhouse gas). Likewise, the
Animal Liberation Front's fanatics have penetrated medical research
facilities to free lab rats. If such eco-terrorism delays or blocks cures
for deadly diseases, well, who needs all those humans anyway?

Beyond identifying and foiling Islamic terrorists, U.S. law enforcement
officials also should locate and defeat eco-terrorists who may try to use
disease agents and other pathogens to animate this ideology of mass death. A
few vials of mutated Ebola virus could be equally dangerous in the hands of
both Muslim extremists and militant ecologists.

While the environmental movement features both sensible and misguided _
though good-hearted _ individuals, too many greens love butterflies and
waterfalls best when those pesky humans are scrubbed from the landscape.

(New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard
News Service and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation
in Arlington, Va.)