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 The tweet was subsequently withdrawn by McGuire, “not because I regret it”, but people took it the wrong way.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.
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Another cracking article, for which many thanks.
Nevertheless, not so long ago, queueing to gain entrance to the one way circuit supermarket, surrounded by a masked up multitude, berated by supermarket staff for not wearing a mask, I must confess the thought often occurred……
Here we go. A glimpse into the real motivations of Green Tyranny. The climate is just the excuse for the easily manipulated who come home from work and switch on their BBC news to hear all the evidence free garbage about 2 C warming that is going to cause storms, floods, droughts, wild fires, climate refugees and all the rest of the scaremongering politics that seeks to have us clamouring for government to lead us to safety. There are now 8 billion people in the world, but over one billion still do not have any electricity. If they are all to have the same prosperity as us in the wealthy west they would need to use the very same fuels as we did —–Coal oil and gas. But is there enough of that in the ground for all these people? This is what the Malthus minded people concern themselves with. So according to their way of thinking we would either need more coal and gas or LESS PEOPLE. Well because coal and gas are finite resources, the only choice it seems is LESS PEOPLE. ——–But to all of these people concerned about population growth, here is what they need to realise. Once poor people in the developing world get access to coal and gas, they start to develop their economies, they become wealthier, healthier, they are better educated, they have access to contraception. they start to live more organised lives, and as a result have fewer children. ——So the answer to worries about population growth is WEALTH and that can only come from the use of fossil fuels. Instead we coerce poor people into leaving their resources in the ground and we fob them off with some money for turbines and solar panels. When we deny poor people fossil fuels what we are really telling them is they cannot have electricity and prosperity. The harm to us all comes not from climate change, but from climate change policies.
Very well summarised. In fact modern life seems to be almost too good a contraceptive. There are currently very few countries outside Africa that are even reaching replacement rates for their own populations.
Immigration distorts the picture but from Japan, South Korea and China to most European countries the number of births is already falling off a cliff.
Yes the west does bring in migrants because of ageing population. But that could easily be remedied with tax relief for couples to have a couple of children.
Hans Rosling made the same case very convincingly in Factfulness.
Education, health and prosperity lead to an increase in child survival rates and hence a decrease in the number of children born.
Thanks. ——-I have been aware of this for over 20 years since I first started investigating the troubling science and politics of climate change.
Totally agree. Just one tiny point (apologies it’s the pedant in me) it’s FEWER PEOPLE not less!
‘It is not an exaggeration to state that at the core of the modern green movement is a visceral hatred of humanity.’
We see this misanthropy brought out in the absence of placation for the Attenboroughs, Packhams, Monbiots, etc, carried by the fact that populations are collapsing anyway, as people, particularly in the intelligentsias, decide to delay having children or not to have them at all. That’s not good enough. It doesn’t chastise and wound people sufficiently directly. It doesn’t make people suffer now.
H. L. Mencken defined Puritanism as the “haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy”.
My father in law had a little ditty about people’s propensity for misery and suffering;
Here we sit in grief and pain
over the road they suffer the same
but next door they suffer more
At the moment North Devon is living up to its status as a temperate rain forest, a veritable 40 shades of green verdant growth everywhere following lots of rain, the climate and the sea levels seem much the same as they have been for decades. Just relax and enjoy living in the best of all possible worlds.
is the hose pipe ban still in place? It was in Dartmouth a few months ago even with all the rain we had in the winter.
No hosepipe ban here,it was never really needed and was lifted before the winter. I think they only imposed it for the sake of gesture politics.
Control !
OK, a cull it is, let’s start with Bill McGuire
Money where your mouth is Bill, slash up!
They never do, Dinger. They never do. It’s us they want to cull.
Green Endarkenment.
Dark Green. Green being a sign of putrefaction – pus and corruption.
Did anyone see this BBC documentary? I think Harold Shipman would’ve fit right in had he lived and worked in Canada nowadays. Even here in the Netherlands, people are being euthanized because they’ve got autism and/or are mentally ill. WTAF does this say about the state of humanity and our once ‘civilized’ society going forward? The only toxic emissions we should be concerned with cutting are these and other vile individuals who are demonstrably a threat to the human race. I wish they and their ilk could be rounded up and blasted to infinity and beyond on the next SpaceX rocket out of here;
”In the recently released BBC documentary Better Off Dead?, disability rights activist Liz Carr interviewed Dr. Ellen Wiebe, Canada’s most notorious euthanasia doctor. Wiebe is also an abortionist and an activist with Dying With Dignity, the euthanasia lobby group seeking to expand eligibility for assisted suicide in Canada even further. Wiebe’s attempted defence of Canada’s euthanasia regime backfired when throughout her interview, she laughed and smiled as she discussed ending the lives of patients.
“I love my job,” she told Carr. “I’ve always loved being a doctor and I delivered over 1,000 babies and I took care of families, but this is the very best work I’ve ever done in the last seven years. And people ask me why, and I think well, doctors like grateful patients, and nobody is more grateful than my patients now and their families.” Her euthanasia patients, it must be noted, are dead. As one disturbed watcher noted on social media: “Enjoying her job a little too much, I felt.” Many others concurred.
According to a long report published in The New Atlantis by Alexander Raikin titled “No Other Options,” a suicidal man who was told he was ineligible because he had no serious illness and lacked “the capacity to make informed decisions about his own personal health” was cleared by Wiebe, who flew him to Vancouver and killed him there. “It’s the most rewarding work we’ve ever done,” Wiebe told fellow physicians in 2020. Wiebe has defended expanding eligibility for euthanasia for those who suffer only from mental illness.
And then there is Wiebe’s response in a MAiD seminar, answering the question of what doctors should do with a patient who appears to be resisting euthanasia. She suggested, with chuckles, that the patient be sedated.”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/canadian-euthanasia-doctor-gushes-about-how-much-she-enjoys-killing-people/?utm_source=most_recent&utm_campaign=usa
I’m sure you’ve watched the the electrifying David Starkey’s presentation on YouTube from six days ago entitled “We’re about to elect a government nobody wants.” I’d like to think what you describe above would have been literally unthinkable in UK pre 1997. ie pre Blair.
The presentation is 40 minutes of coruscating invective on Blair’s hijacking of the constitution and what needs to be done to reverse the process. Such a reversal is a sine qua non if we are to get any decency and civilization back opines Starkey.
These people never seem to want to lead by example. Show some leadership!
My thoughts exactly.
Why not lead by example with their families and themselves?
Another way of solving the “climate crisis” is a cull of all the alarmists.
You often hear the term Malthusian about these people, just a quick reminder about where this term comes from. Thomas Malthus was a scholar who wrote ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’ in 1798. He theorised that the production of food was a linear progression, and that larger populations would always leave the poorest to starve. Therefore smaller populations were a good thing.
However, Thomas’s theory did not take into account the coming industrial revolution, advances in farming and transportation, and the indomitable human spirit either, and our capacity as a species to solve problems. In 1798 the global population was just about 1bn, and the prospect of mass starvations was ever present due to the methods of the time. Roll forward 200 years, with now 8bn on the planet. We can feed everyone, people live nearly twice as long as they did in 1798, and we all got considerably richer, living lives of abundance. Malthus’s vision of a future based on rising populations resulting in starvation of the poor is totally discredited, indeed this is the first generation where the poor have been fat. Yet still we hear ‘too many people on the planet’, by people who refuse to volunteer to be the first to leave, and presumably the same people who think the population is ‘rising exponentially’ (it isn’t…), and the world is running out of space to house everyone. (nope..), etc etc. It is puzzling that they see the west as the problem, and not Africa or Asia where large families are needed to work the farm, or be the only chance that the parents will be looked after in old age. Still I suppose that this day and age it truly is more about communist slogans, than allowing any of it to be contaminated by facts.
Yep correct. Those who keep harping on about “too many people” never mean any of their family or friends. They only mean poor people somewhere on the other side of the world. And yes all of this nonsense about resources, running out of food etc was all totally discredited by Julian Simon.
Indomitable human spirit indeed. Some years back I remember reading an article about the favelas of Brazil, where the average income at that time was less than 5 dollars a day. The author, some erudite academic type, said that it was ‘impossible’ to live on so little, and was at a loss to explain how people were surviving. It struck me then that he had never been poor and could only think in comfortable, ‘first world’ terms which both negated and denigrated the different socioeconomic experiences of others. I don’t think he meant to be a cultural elitist, but that’s exactly how it came across. And the green mob just keep grinding it out for their oligarchic overlords.
Once at work, I said I was ‘starving’. A colleague told me I had no conception of the meaning of starvation.
He was correct.
I’m far more careful when I use this word now.
A cull would certainly be very beneficial. I suggest we start with McGuire (and his family) and then move on to all the other Climate Change Authoritarians and their Propagandists.
The world will be a far better place without them.
Note that none of the people above calling for depopulation have thought to start with themselves, it is always someone else who they consider inferior to themselves who needs to suffer.
My view is, if they think the world is overpopulated, why don’t you practce what you preach and head to dignitas.
That McGwire professor looks.like a bit of an over eater. No doubt he is completely lacking in self awareness and blissfully ignorant of his hypocrisy.
Attenborough has two children, so does McGuire (and two cats apparently), Todd May has three, Professor Patricia MacCormack doesn’t look like anyone would want to have children with her, Colin Hickey looks too young to have kids, but he does have two brothers who he presumably wishes didn’t exist, and the Conly woman I am not sure about but seeing as she wrote a book about how you should not have more than one child, I expect she doesn’t (and she seems too mad for anyone to want to marry her).
As always, the response should be ‘great – you go first’.
But of course we need to cull billions of people, or else millions might die because of climate change. You know it makes sense.
Excellent article. In 1930’s Germany, Bill Mcguire would have been reporting directly to the Führer
“… that the only “realistic way” to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown was to cull the human population…”
And those of us paying attention know where to start.
And yet I bet these people, or at least some of them, were the very first in the queue and were shrieking the very loudest about Saving Just One Life, and accusing the rest of us of Wanting People To Die.
Anyway surely catastrophic climate change as promoted by Attenborough and the like will perform exactly this function? So why the complaints? You could look at it as the planet self regulating, if you’re that way inclined.
Yes, it is inconsistent. I think they wanted lockdown/jab mandates to save their own lives, but dressed it up as caring for others. Utterly hollow words, since lockdown was brutal and uncaring and the jabs were muck.
But it made them feel virtuous. 😇
Screaming mad climate psychotic Big Bill McGuire. I read about how he was planning to take his family off grid in preparation for the climate crisis. He is a vulcanologist but not ex actor a Vulcan.
Hi Chris
It is my view that there are very few actors in this world who are motivated by pure evil, i.e. destruction for the sake of it. So most actors are doing so under the notion of some perceived good, however misguided or selfish that perception might be.
To critique someone effectively therefore normally means coming alongside their perceived good or truth and then fulfilling it properly. This means showing that either their perception of a problem is wrong or maybe just not the whole story, or their solution is.
As much as a deliberate population cull is both reprehensible and evil, and which must also inevitably undermine any coherent reason for man to take up a worthwhile purpose on this earth either religious or secular, none the less there is some truth to their position. The fact that you fail to acknowledge this also makes your piece extreme and unrealistic – it’s as if you don’t think there are limits.
It is a basic scientific fact that any moving system is going to only work within certain parameters at each stage of its process. If not, ‘shit of all kinds will back up’ and the process will grind to a halt. You can apply this to anything.
So where population is concerned if you have too much in one place – shit will back up! This is a key reason to stop mass immigration because it takes so long for systems to adapt – including cultural assimilation, but it is also a key reason to stop over population; initially in any one place but also notionally in the whole world. It’s also a key benefit of a move towards organic agriculture, it maintains and improves the soil sustainably for the next generation, and naturally imposes all sorts of limits including population ones, which we should be more aware of. The notion that there is no limit is for the fairies and just unscientific, just get on the London tube in the morning. But what is the overall limit – who knows?
I agree that some sinister neo-malthusian culling approach is unworkable and wrong – its murder, but we should none the less act as if there are limits to what any system can take, before the shit backs up.
If the purpose of life is individual human flourishing across the ‘play ground’ of the world so as not to get boring – then this will focus our use of resources as efficiently and sustainably as possible. But human flourishing takes wealth and freedom of all kinds (and does not want either energy or time impoverishment), you can only do flourishing properly if you are not merely surviving, and if it takes more people to merely survive then populations will increase and still not improve flourishing at all. As with most processes there is a sweet spot in the middle, where you can get the max energy output for the inputs over the long term. Where humans are concerned the process we ultimately aiming at is maximum individual flourishing across the long term.
I also do not think that the industrial revolution, even though it has clearly enabled time and energy benefits has been particularly focused on the possibility of individual flourishing. Maybe just for an elite few, many of whom then did not know what to do with it once they had the possibility, because no one was really thinking in those terms.
Of course there is a limit but it seems pretty obvious to me that we are nowhere near reaching it and never will be.
I guess it’s useful to understand the arguments and motivations of people one disagrees with, but it seems these days the world is full of people with opinions who want their opinion imposed on everyone else. I have opinions but try to limit myself to wanting the bare minimum imposed on others. I am sick of people telling me how to live my life, so I have got to the point where I don’t care what their arguments are or their motivations, I just want them to f*** off and leave me alone.
Nowhere near reaching a limit, and yet you have reached yours already? Of course we are already over the natural and strategically safe population limit of the UK if we have to import 40% of our food, especially while continuing to degrade the soil with chemical fertiliser. We are well over all sorts of limits, the key thing for this particular thread is that we are still well within range of natural global historical temperature variables, and Co2 is a complete red herring.
I’m not sure what you mean by “mine”. If you’re talking about the UK, my main issue with the UK is not the number of people but the importing of large numbers of people from alien cultures. I suppose it’s nice to have space, but ultimately people will choose whether they want to have loads of kids or more space, and it will reach an equilibrium of its own accord. Anyway, birth rates are declining everywhere so the question is academic.
Just because we have to import 40% of our food (if true) doesn’t necessarily make us over populated it could be we’re not very efficient at making our own food.
He could set an example and show us how it’s done, of course. I presume, like all socialist totalitarians, he means other people and not him and his family. Scumabgs
Two sentences really struck me in Chris Morrison’s excellent article about the monstrous Bill McGuire, because I had never made those connections before:
“The grisly streak of neo-Malthusianism that runs through the green movement reared its ugly head…”
“It is not an exaggeration to state that at the core of the modern green movement is a visceral hatred of humanity.”
I hope people are beginning to realise that the Russian-Ukraine War has no other aim than culling humanity, specifically Ethnic Europeans. It’s a “meat-grinder”, as someone said, and both Putin & Zelensky are complicit. Behind the scenes, they are allies, acting out their parts on behalf of the Illuminati. Let’s say “No” to them both.
Another important thing to remember when these people harp on about their “climate catastrophe” is that this idea comes entirely from worst case scenario’s from unvalidated climate models that have so far all been wrong and do not match what the real world is doing. It does not come from any empirical science and the climate modelling that produces these worst case scenarios is evidence of NOTHING.
Starting at 26:11 minutes in the following video, they discuss bird flu vaccines FOR HUMANS that have already been flown into the UK from the USA, in preparation for the next planned cull of humanity.
Breaking: Illegal Migrants that are pouring into our respective countries are in fact UN soldiers. (youtube.com)
Vaccination squads
Right you lot – who ate all the pies?
“Bill McGuire Sir. Bill McGuire ate them all.”
What have you got to say for yourself McGuire?
“Well sir…erm…erm”
These people are either stupid or evil; I’m inclined towards the latter explanation.
Wonder how many kids Bill McGuire has fathered?
OOOPS sorry just finished reading the comments and he has two. Well two he has owned up to.(saec)
This gentleman can cull himself if it is so
important.
Bill could try eating less, that’d help the environment a bit.
They are already in the process of culling us under the guise of doing good. Excess deaths rose significantly in vaccinated countries and the long-term effects of the vaccine are becoming very apparent. Damaged immune systems, rising cancers, blood clots and cardiovascular illnesses and strokes. This is before we get to the progressive neurological damage – a slow destruction of the hippocampus to ensure we are more compliant and the destruction of reproductive organs to ensure infertility and population reduction. With the censorship of the MSM the masses might not put 2+2 together. That is their hope and why they want Musk’s X and no doubt this platform shut down. Fauci May end up in jail following the confirmation recently of US sponsored gain-of-function research at Wuhan lab. The intentional leak of Covid was at best a plandemic created for profit from mRNA vaccines and at worst a plan to harm and reduce world populations. The best we can hope for is an awakening in the general public consciousness but things will very likely have to become very dark before people wake up to what is happening.
Let’s start with Bill McGuire and then we’ll pause.
No, don’t pause.What about Greta and the entire cast of Just Stop Oil?
Great article, thank you.
Just to say though that I am a Waitrose shopper, not a Malthusian or believer in anthropogenic climate change, just someone that enjoys good food. And Waitrose were hit by the same shortages as every other retailer during the obscene lockdowns.
There was recently a post on Facebook with people congratulating David Attenborough on being 98 or however old he is, going on about how brilliant he is. Clearly they know nothing about these awful things he has said.
It only popped up on my feed because one of my normie friends had liked it.
It took so much willpower not to comment on it but because of my line of work I have to be very careful about posting non-normie things under my own name.
The Revenge of the Unloved during childhood and possibly abused
Why not say – with Dirty Harry – : You first buddy.
Yes, I would have more respect for this psychopath if he set an example and gave himself a ‘good death’…
He isn’t even factually right. Urbanisation is the way to reduce the birth rate, and the environmental harm. It may have gone too far already. Read Empty Planet.
The planet has a way of compensating. Look at the greening