The grisly streak of neo-Malthusianism that runs through the green movement reared its ugly head earlier this week when former United Nations contributing author and retired UCL Professor Bill McGuire tweeted that the only “realistic way” to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown was to cull the human population with a high fatality pandemic. The tweet was subsequently withdrawn by McGuire, “not because I regret it”, but people took it the wrong way. McGuire is the alarmists’ alarmist, suggesting for instance that human-caused climate change could lead to more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The Daily Sceptic will not take his views the wrong way. They are an illuminating insight into environmental Malthusianism that does not get anything like the amount of publicity it deserves.
Every now and then Sir David Attenborough allows the genial TV presenter mask to slip to reveal a harder-edged Malthusian side. Speaking to BBC Breakfast in 2021, he suggested that the Earth would be better off without the human race, describing us as “intruders”. In 2009, Attenborough became the patron of the Optimum Population Trust and told the Guardian: “I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people.” In 2013, he made the appalling remark that it was “barmy” for the United Nations to send bags of flour to famine-stricken Ethiopia. Too little land, too many people, was his considered judgement.
Any consideration of the refusal of food aid these days brings to mind the 19th century Malthusian Sir Charles Trevelyan, the British civil servant during the Irish famines who saw the starvation as retribution on the local population for their moral failings and tendency to have numerous children. He is said to have seen the great loss of life as a regrettable but unavoidable consequence of reform and regeneration.
Anti-human sentiment is riven through much green thinking. In 2019, Anglia Ruskin University Professor Patricia MacCormack wrote a book suggesting humans were already enslaved to the point of “zombiedom” because of capitalism, and “phasing out reproduction is the only way to repair the damage done to the world”. Green fanatics can be a joyless crowd – it is not enough to declare a climate crisis, now they want a ‘nookie’ emergency. As the economist and philosopher Robert Boulding once remarked: “Is there any more single-minded, simple pleasure than viewing with alarm? At times it is even better than sex.”
But at least most of them – one must fervently pray – stop short of Clemson University Philosophy Professor Todd May, who has asked if human extinction would be a tragedy. He is of the considered opinion that it might be a good thing “for those of us who are currently here to end our lives in order to prevent further animal suffering”. But he did accept that the policy would cause “significant suffering” among those who had much to lose by dying.
In an interesting paper published in 2022, the science historian Dr. Emily Klancher Merchant notes that environmental Malthusianism – the idea that human population growth is the primary driver of environmental harms and population control is a prerequisite to environmental protection – is experiencing a “resurgence”. She notes the views of Philosophy Emeritus Professor Sarah Conly who contends that it is not only wrong to have more than one child in the current environmental climate, but humans do not even retain the right to do so. Biologist Dr. Colin Hickey says that the threats posed by climate change justify “population engineering”, which he defines as the “intentional manipulation of the size and structure of human populations”. Governments should act to enforce a one child policy.
It is not an exaggeration to state that at the core of the modern green movement is a visceral hatred of humanity. There are just too many people on the planet, why won’t half of them just go away? The unnecessary Covid lockdowns were the ultimate luxury treat for many middle class fanatics – tons of social control, quiet streets, anyone not ‘essential’ locked away, plenty of food and drink in Waitrose. The American journalist H. L. Mencken defined Puritanism as the “haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy”. Imposing collective lock-away misery on entire populations – let joy be unconfined.
Industrialisation over the last 200 years has brought enormous benefits to humankind and given many people a standard of living beyond the wildest dreams of their ancestors. Life in the ‘natural’ state is nasty, brutish and short, a fate still awaiting almost every species on Earth, except, at the moment, homo sapiens. The green movement is a rejection of enlightenment and progress. It seeks to impoverish populations with Net Zero fantasies backed by deceitful claims of climate collapse, mass extinctions and non-existent climate refugees. Any move to stop humans procreating children is evil personified. Actual triumphs of environmentalism such as the massive recent greening of the planet and the protection of wild spaces as countries become richer are ignored. We have seen many such destructive cults in the past – a drive to control other people whatever the cost – a cost not borne, of course, by the saviour class itself. A war on essential hydrocarbons is really an undeclared war on humanity and human development.
Treble pandemics all round.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environmental Editor.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Hooray. 2 years too late. If only the Chinese hadn’t made a test this could have happened in March 2020.
Just imagine where we would be if they never overreacted these last 2 years.
I’d probably own a house, be physically fit, have more money and lower expenses, be a lot happier and possibly we wouldn’t be in a proxy war with Russia.
Well done Alexander, spine like a jellyfish…
Oh well onto the next thing, you guys go ahead, I’ll catch up (I won’t, never again)…
Exactly, backbone of a beanbag…abdicated to SAGE…
Hmm, I wonder what Independent SAGE and the lik are saying about it?
PS I just checked the Florida official “covid” mortality rate. I think it’s best described as negligible.
Where is that toad Ferguson?
Under a stone, but not, as far as I know, a tombstone.
Not yet.
One can but hope.
I’ve never wished ill on anyone until about 2 years ago. My list is now very long.
All the Davos bastards for starters.
Shagging someone’s wife in a dark corner of Imperial College?
Someone women must be really desperate.
Waiting for instructions from Gates HQ and preparing for the next “pandemic” which his master is
plottingpredicting.Cases? Ha ha ha.
Indeed.
Much better to ask why the regime is throwing out garbage numbers with an invitation to analyse them than to be an obedient little citizen and analyse the garbage numbers.
If statistics changed anything, they’d make them illegal.
so no reason to keep stabbing people with bogus vaccines then.
How on earth can anyone print a line like that? It’s absurd to record these as Covid deaths!
The whole article is complete trash – the figures have been irrelevant for a long time; not just since free testing stopped.
I’m just surprised we are all still alive!
I was a silly Billy, never wore a mask, never stopped socialising, never doused myself in sanitiser, never stopped working and never got jabbed! I must be the luckiest man in the world!
Shame about the economy collapsing, and those millions of people on the NHS waiting lists though
It’s not luck. You got through it unscathed because other people wore masks to protect you.
I didn’t think about that, but I am selfish.
And because others sacrificed themselves for you by taking the experimental ‘vaccines’.
Oh yes, may lord god Fauci bless them all!
I guess the downticks are from people who don’t get irony. Not with a hint from a winking smily face!
Obviously the lockdowns, face masks and most of all the vaccines are all working. (Of course spring/summer being the time of reduced number of deaths due to respiratory disease is neither here nor there).
Come the Autumn/winter respiratory disease and deaths will increase (as they always do) and we’ll need more lockdowns, face masks and vaccines. Simple really.
No pneumonia, no Covid.
Tracking ‘cases’ just keeps the narrative alive.
There’s little point in looking at cases alone as the loss of free testing will have had too much effect.
Hospitalisations and deaths are the only official stats that make sense now.
They’re down by a sufficient amount to suggest that covid is now over and we should relax all restrictions.
Hospitalisations and deaths are the only official stats that make sense now.
They don’t, as they still represent death within 28 days of a positive test and person in hospital after positive test, with neither of both implying a necessary causal relation between the test result and the event which got associated with it. For all practical purposes, COVID has been over since mass testing of the healthy became feasible because masses of tests where no longer needed for sick people – spring 2021 – and even before, it wasn’t exactly the kind of event it was being marketed as.
Excess mortality is the only reliable stat.
And the very simple fact of the matter is that there hasn’t been any over the course of the last two years.
The ‘pandemic’ is, and always has been, a scamdemic.
You then have to ask yourself why the experimental mRNA jabs have been so vociferously promoted?
Children can solve dot-to-dot puzzles; apparently, sheeple cannot.
But experts say the daily counts are now “completely irrelevant” because free tests have been scrapped for the vast majority of people.
Considering that population-level testing was always voluntary in the UK, these numbers always were completely irrelevant insofar COVID-this-disease goes. They were only ever relevant insofar the COVID experts could use them for their propaganda campaigns.
RFK Jr interviews Edward Dowd who says some life insurance CEOs are waking up to the scam and its dire effect on company solvency …
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/former-blackrock-advisor-tells-rfk-jr-the-fda-is-in-on-the-cover-up_55ENbl5vwWUKkWD.html
Oh dear, the cabal forgot to bribe the life insurers. Anyway I expect they’ll remember to do that in the next pandemic.
There is little point in talking about a decrease in ‘cases’ because they arise from the unfit for purpose tests. It’s all illusory….they might as well make any number up, including the ‘deaths from covid’ since they are within 28 days of ‘testing positive.’ Farcical.
….sorry posters…point already made further btl.
Aargh. I’m on holiday in Cornwall and in Penzance there’s a sign telling us hands face space because covid cases are high in the county. Hands face space again?! Are they mad? St Ives was heaving at the weekend. The sign might as well say “lots of people in Cornwall have a cold – beware!”. Numpties.
“Are they mad?”
Clearly the answer is yes!
Yes, it was clearly a rhetorical question. All gone stark raving bonkers batshit crazy. Again. Or still.
In the North East they are still spending our money on TV ads to keep the Covid scare going. They just can’t let it go.
Yes. Mad.
I hate this Government I am young healthy and well , I had a good working and regular social life I was 27 and going out to vegan walkabouts, and vegan restaurants then a bug similar to pneumonia mainly dangerous to the old and those with underlying health damage, the government decided to panic lock healthy people down of all aged, ignore proper pandemic guidance listen to behavioural scientists and now I do go out twice a week if once a week , to a vegan Walk Brixton but I wish they just had not gone so overboard, but of course it was set to a great reset
I am not a Covid denier my mum had it she was not exactly well dying more head pain , fever , arm pain , fatigue, and sweating, it was nasty yes .
I have despite a job and being slim not really skinny or naturally thin , struggled with a eating disorder for three years , I have had two serious relationships which did not end well .
I am now not coping I just cannot get out of my head though near me mask wearing out in the fresh air , or on buses trains and hand sanitiser has gone , though I still see masks in high amounts on the train to Victoria line recently getting back from Brixton among 16 17 people.
I just despair the World I am in at almost 30 in about two weeks , I like this site but seeing as it is anti lockdown anti mask, and is finally questioning the effectiveness of these things called Vaccines which do not stop transmission or stop you spreading it
I think we can agree a case is not necessary meaning anything you do not have a virus with no symptoms and not contagious and what is the point of these tests is this PCR which has found to be useless , and not accurate so why are we posting this are more fit healthy people who under 50 getting ill, dying no of course not ,
so why keeping posting this every time cases go up some evil charlatan insists on more restrictions masks , of course cases going up normal healthy people
mixing seeing people being human, we cannot have people mix can we now ,
I do not understand if convid is over , why not just stop giving us daily cases we are not children we can make our own decisions, and if we are living with it why keep reminding us of this in case of another mind up sixth wave , next autumn,
I honestly know a few people now last week at a social event one such said they would be jabbed annually and have more’’ to go aboard
I think we are doomed as a human race, lots of the population at least 75 80 percent who had two jabs will die in the next two years or the 65 who have had a third jab maybe one more year left the human race maybe by design is declining when I go out fewer people are having children, can’t afford it , working two jobs not getting by , making marriage seem pointless, and reducing the numbers of offspring, feminism globalist part of the same rotten cabal .
Dear CC,do not despair, I am 73 and I still hope for a better future, like you I am not a Covid denier or anti vaxer but after 3 doses I have had enough of lies,distortions and half truths.
I will have an annual jab if it’s part of the annual flu jab for us “oldies” but not separately.
Keep the faith and do not give up, we have a world to reclaim.
Beware of future flu jabs. Fauci, Vallance, Gates, Farrar, et al have apparently decided that they’ll be mRNA-based.
Dear CC -do not despair and most of all don’t give in to pressure for the jabs.
You have obviously taken in a lot of what has been said on here and no doubt, looked at the research and made up your own mind about them.
I honestly think if I had been in the Uk over the last two years I would have been persistently in the courts for ‘law-breaking’. Thankfully even though we did have some restrictions here(Thailand) they were no-where near the level of many other countries.
As an old navy captain of WW2 said to me POR – press on regardless.
Hope your life improves for you
Britain’s daily covid cases plunge. Time to roll out the next booster then.
And yet….I now know more people who are pretty seriously unwell with something which badly affects their breathing, mega cough, head banging headache. Some with, some without a ‘positive test’ but all are fully jabbed. Coincidence?
Don’t know about anyone else but isn’t this becoming a tad boring? I mean who cares anymore apart from the silly buggers still wearing face nappies in the street? But surely they should be ignored.
Fewer people are being jabbed.
Fewer people are ‘testing’ themselves.
And they’re not ”cases” anyway.
Well I never.
I always said that as soon the ‘free tests’ were abandoned infection rates would plummet.
What a surprise – not.
Yes it appears all those triple vaxxed that we’re going to get covid have know done do. But wait, they want their fourth jab. Will that cause another “wave”?
https://etana.substack.com/p/the-arc-of-a-fraud/comments
A further 508 covid deaths registered…of or with …all highlysuspect