Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries tagged as misanthropy

A Conundrum for Misanthropes

Thursday, February 14, 2008

I wonder if the same folks who think the earth has too many human beings (and wish for some sort of plague to rid the earth of many, if not all, of its human inhabitants) are celebrating the predictions that global warming “in the long term has the potential to kill everybody.”

Or is it just the particular mode of human extinction that determines the desirability of the end result? Is there something more attractive about dying from a runaway virus rather than heat stroke?

It seems to me that truly misanthropic environmentalists might find themselves in the uncomfortable position of endorsing climate change, if it will rid the earth of the scourge of humanity.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 18:29 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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climate change, envrionmentalism, global warming, misanthropy

More Matrix Anthropology

Monday, June 4, 2007

Oliver “Buzz” Thomas: “We’re like cancer. Unable to pace ourselves, we are greedily consuming our host organism (i.e. planet Earth) and getting dangerously close to killing ourselves in the process. The difference is that cancer has an excuse: No brain.”

Compare to the words of Agent Smith: “...There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.”

Be sure to take the Misanthropy Quiz.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 13:23 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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agent smith, anthropology, cancer, disease, environment, matrix, misanthropy, virus

Global Warming and Population Control

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

From the “we had to destroy the village to save it” department, check out this item from the Huffington Post by Dave Johnson, “A Global Warming Suggestion: Fewer Babies.”

It’s pretty indefatigable logic: if there are no people to be affected by environmental catastrophe, then the problem has been avoided. Johnson writes, “Yes, hundreds of millions of people will face water shortages and starvation by 2080 -- but only if those hundreds of millions of people are alive in the first place.”

He continues, “What am I getting at? One solution to the crisis is for people to stop having so many babies. We’re already using up the fisheries. The cattle being raised to feed so many meat-eaters is as big a problem as the cars we’re all driving.”

Read more background on the connection between global warming activism and population control measures here, which introduces the joint paper, “From Climate Control to Population Control: Troubling Background on the ‘Evangelical Climate Initiative’.”

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 11:57 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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abortion, climate change, global warming, misanthropy, population control

2006 in Review, 2nd Quarter

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Our series on the year in review continues with the second quarter:

April

“Surprise! Evangelical Politics Isn’t Univocal,” Jordan J. Ballor

So from issues like immigration to global warming, the press is eager to find the fault lines of evangelical politics. And moving beyond the typical Jim Wallis-Jerry Falwell dichotomy, there are real and honest disagreements among evangelicals on any number of political issues....

May

“How Do You Spell Relief?” Jordan J. Ballor

If Congress really wants to address the rising price of oil over the long-term, the only thing it can really do is act on what it directly controls. Congress doesn’t control supply and demand, but it does control how much it adds in taxes to the price per gallon. Why not cut or suspend the federal gas tax indefinitely?...

June

“There are more environmentalist misanthropes than you think,” Jay Richards

But anyone who reads widely in the environmental literature knows that suggestions such as Pianka’s are not uncommon. In fact, the desire for mass human death follows logically from the anti-human beliefs of some radical environmentalists. Some are more consistent in their beliefs than others. But Pianka is by no means the only person to express such opinions....

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in News and Events at 07:23 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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2006, environment, eric pianka, evangelicals, gasoline, misanthropy, oil, politics, prices, stewardship, taxes, year in review

The Annotated Inbox

Thursday, October 19, 2006

A number of interesting links, but no more time than to pass them on with perhaps a bit of a comment before they pass into the ether:

“The Fate of the Earth in the Balance: The Metaphysics of Climate Change,” by Steven F. Hayward, finds the spirit of Martin Heidegger in the work of Al Gore and Jonathan Schell on views of impending cataclysm. (HT: Commons Blog)
Marketplace commentator David Frum argues that a carbon tax is advantageous, and says his argument is not based on any particular view of climate change. Instead, national security and other concerns dominate, so that “taxes on carbon-based energy help move us toward a future in which the Persian Gulf region reverts to the obscurity it so richly deserves.” I agree that we need to move toward a “post-petroleum economy.”
A misanthropist’s paradise: “Imagine Earth without people,” expounding the view that the Earth would be better off without us. Sound familiar? Call me “Ishamel.” (HT: Slashdot)
The “World’s 10 Most Polluted Places.” What do they have in common? They are poor. A clean environment is a costly good.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 15:17 | Comment (1) | Trackback

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al gore, annotated inbox, carbon emissions, carbon tax, climate change, environment, global warming, misanthropy, pollution, stewardship

Do You See More than Just a 'Carbon Footprint'?

Monday, October 2, 2006

Call it something like an anthropological Rorschach test. What do you see when you look at the picture above? Do you see more than just a ’carbon footprint’?

It’s a fair question to ask, I think, of those who are a part of the radical environmentalist/population control political lobby. It’s also a note of caution to fellow Christians who want to build bridges with those folks...there is a complex of interrelated policies that are logically consistent once you assume the tenets of secular environmentalism.

Some worldviews just aren’t compatible with others.

Rev. Richard Cizik, the point-man on environmental policy for the National Association of Evangelicals, said in a speech earlier this year to the World Bank:

I’d like to take on the population issue, but in my community global warming is the third rail issue. I’ve touched the third rail . . . but still have a job. And I’ll still have a job after my talk here today. But population is a much more dangerous issue to touch. . . We need to confront population control and we can -- we’re not Roman Catholics after all -- but it’s too hot to handle now.

Just how much has secularist misanthropy already infiltrated our thinking?

For more on the connection between the climate change lobby and population control, see the newly released joint paper from the Acton Institute and the Institute on Religion & Democracy, “From Climate Control to Population Control: Troubling Background on the ‘Evangelical Climate Initiative’” (PDF here).

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 08:24 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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abortion, carbon footprint, climate change, environment, environmentalistm, global warming, misanthropy, national association of evangelicals, population control, richard cizik, stewardship.secularism

How Green Were the Nazis?

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

A new review on H-German by John Alexander Williams of Bradley University examines the edited collection of essays, How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2005).

The volume’s editors contend in part that “the green policies of the Nazis were more than a mere episode or aberration in environmental history at large. They point to larger meanings and demonstrate with brutal clarity that conservationism and environmentalism are not and have never been value-free or inherently benign enterprises.” While Williams argues that this conclusion “rings hollow” in light of the evidence produced in the essays, he does affirm that “the desire to protect nature must be accompanied by an equally strong commitment to social justice and human rights.”

On this point Williams specifically criticizes the final essay in the book, by Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, which “focuses on the SS’s wartime planning of the landscape in the occupied territories to the east of Germany.”

As Williams writes, “The Nazi war of imperial conquest, in carving out a new ‘living space’ for German colonists through mass expulsion and extermination, opened ‘new vistas for landscape architects and urban planners’ (p. 244). Hitler appointed Himmler in charge of ‘cleansing’ of occupied landscapes for resettlement by ethnic Germans.” Williams’ concern is that “Wolschke-Bulmahn never clearly explains what was environmentalist about these planners and the blueprints they prepared for Himmler.”

Williams concludes, “The failure of this essay is unfortunate, since Wolschke-Bulmahn and others have written much more effectively elsewhere about the intertwining of pastoral landscape ideals with Nazi imperialism and genocide.”

Read the entire review here.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 12:44 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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environment, genocide, misanthropy, nazi germany

A Quick Misanthropy Quiz

Friday, June 16, 2006

Before reading the rest of this post, let’s try a little experiment. Here are a set of quotations...your job is to decide who said it, a real-life scientist or Agent Smith from the Matrix trilogy (see answer key below the jump):

“Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.”

1. Humans are “no better than bacteria!”

2. “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.”

3. “There is no denying the natural world would be a better place without people. ALL people!”

4. “Planet Earth could use another major human pandemic, and pronto!”

5. “Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but humans do not. Humans move to an area, and multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed.”

PowerBlog contributor Don Bosch has a great post over at his home blog, the Evangelical Ecologist, reacting to today’s piece from Deroy Murdock, “For them, people are just in the way.”

Murdock cites William Burger’s letter to Acton’s Jay Richards, in which Burger says, among other things, “From where I sit, Planet Earth could use another major human pandemic, and pronto!” Check out the full text of Burger’s letter in PDF form here.

Continue reading "A Quick Misanthropy Quiz"

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 13:03 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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environment, misanthropy, population, stewardship