Deep Ecology Misanthropy Moving Into Mainstream Environmentalism

Deep Ecology is a neo earth religion, the ideology of which holds that nature should be given equal consideration with people—a concept sometimes called ecological egalitarianism. The explicit rejection of human exceptionalism led adherents into a profound nihilism and anti-humanism in which deep ecologists yearn for a radical human depopulation to under 1 billion.

It is one thing when the fringe speaks in this manner. But as we have noted here at SHS before, such thinking is moving into the popular culture with movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, and also, closer to the environmental mainstream with its growing obsessions over climate change and limiting human prosperity. Now, a major UK environmental adviser wants to see his country cut its population in half. From the story:

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron. The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably. Porritt said: “Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure”...

Porritt is winning scientific backing. Professor Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, will use the OPT conference, to be held at the Royal Statistical Society, to warn that population growth could help derail attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rapley, who formerly ran the British Antarctic Survey, said humanity was emitting the equivalent of 50 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. “We have to cut this by 80%, and population growth is going to make that much harder,” he said.

There are decidedly genocidal and tyrannically eugenic implications in such advocacy. Porritt, for example, has called for the UK to adopt a 2 child policy. But that would, at most, keep the population roughly static—assuming immigration was limited. It would not cut the population by half—the UK currently has about 61 million people—meaning much harsher measures would have to be taken than exerting social pressure or enacting legal requirements to restrict family size.

It is of great concern that a key adviser to the government seems to have swallowed the deep ecology poison and still be considered a respectable spokesperson for environmentalism.