An Epiphany on Man

There is a website, which I mentioned the other day, that advocates that all people simply stop breeding with the goal of eventual extinction. At first, I took it as satirical. An extreme and humorous response to ecological extremism. A spoof, perhaps.

I have changed my mind. They appear to be serious. Very serious. Even though they take a light-hearted approach.

When I was younger, just after I exited the Navy, I drove up to the San Francisco area to visit a former Navy buddy. At one point, while we were on a hill overlooking the city from just north of the Golden Gate bridge, Jay went into a rant (he tended to do that a lot) about the population explosion and how that was the key issue in combating pollution. I was, at the time, just beginning to formulate my belief that we should abandon all attempts to minimize pollution. You might say I am an extreme naturist. I'll blog about that sometime, I suppose. Consider this a related post.

Anyway, Jay felt that population control was the key. After all, limiting the number of people would result in a limitation of pollution. Limit the population to zero growth rate and you will eventually, through technological advancement, reduce pollution to levels tolerable by all species. How to achieve that level of population control was not something Jay had thought out.

I don't think Jay, being a free spirit type, would approve of the Chinese one child policy. In fact, his liberal leanings were centered around a more anarchist view of government. He was pretty much opposed to any government intervention in his life. So there is little chance he endorsed a governmental answer to the population explosion.

Jay's outlook probably came from the changes to his beloved Bay Area during his time in the Navy. Similar things happened to most of us. While we were away from "home" (wherever that happened to be), growth happened. Neighborhoods grew, shopping malls popped up like mushrooms, roads were built, towns expanded into cities, cities into metropolises (metropoli?), and we felt alien when we returned to our home towns.

I think Jay had just read Paul Erlich's The Population Bomb . Jay was easily influenced. Especially by radical ideas that prophesied doom. I was a little more skeptical than jay. But, then, I have always been that way. Erlich was wrong, of course, especially about the starvation and food wars in the 70's and 80's.

It was at this point in my life where I began to realize that homo sapiens was a parasitic life form. It's quite clear when you think about it. We draw on the resources of the planet and its life for our own needs. We are outside of the food chain. We even do our best to avoid even returning our meager nutrients to the eco-sysytem.

We may just be the most successful parasite to ever exist on the planet.