In my previous article, I expressed the view that modern environmentalism resembles a pantheistic religion in that it contains a vision of sin and repentance, damnation and salvation. Indeed, many activists are Gaia theorists who worship ‘Mother Earth’ as a living entity and believe that the world has a cancer, and that cancer is called the human race. Their view of the ‘environment’ is intrinsically anti-human and backed by social Darwinist doctrines linked to nature-worship, elitism, and neo-paganism. Such environmental activists often attack our Judeo-Christian tradition for emphasising ‘the supremacy of a male God’, in contrast to ‘Mother Earth’ in which one must ‘acknowledge the animistic traditions of our ancestors’.
The Christian view of the environment is remarkably different from the one advocated by the Gaia worshippers within the environmental movement, and perhaps best articulated by St Francis Assisi. He is known as the patron saint for ecologists because he had a love of nature and animals. Instead of seeing humans as diabolical creatures who are raping ‘Mother Earth’, St Francis called Earth our sister and viewed humans and nature as united creations under God the Father. This view, of course, confers infinitely more dignity to the human race because it communicates that we should care about our planet and about human life.
Naturally, a reasonable concern to avoid pollution and our natural resources in a responsible manner is a commendable ethical position. We should take care of the earth but also help humanity, at the same time. However, the ‘environmentalist’ efforts of governments to cut carbon emissions make energy less affordable and accessible, which drives up the costs of consumer products, stifles economic growth, costs jobs, and imposes especially harmful effects on the Earth’s poorest people. Arguably, allocating monetary resources to help build sewage treatment plants, enhance sanitation, and provide clean water for poor people would have a greater immediate impact on their plight than would the battle over alleged ‘global warming’.
By contrast, one of the hallmarks of the modern environmentalist movement is its apparent indifference towards human life.
To give an example, on April 25, 2021 a British Vogue article with the title, Is Having A Baby in 2021 Pure Environmental Vandalism? ponders whether having children is an ‘act of environmental vandalism’. The author asks whether it is ‘possible to live an ecologically responsible life while adding another person to our [sic] overstretched planet’.
‘There are few questions more troubling when looking the current climate emergency than that of having a baby. Whether your body throbs to reproduce, you passively believe that it is on the cards for you one day, or you actively seek remain child-free, the declining health of the planet cannot help but factor in your thinking.’
Concerns about population growth are not new. In 1968, ecologist Paul Ehrlich echoed 18th century economist Thomas Malthus when he predicted worldwide famine due to overpopulation and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. Ehrlich was an entomologist at Stanford University and his book, The Population Bomb, became one of the most influential books of the 20th century. This book not only debated population control, but some argue that it also ‘gave a jolt nascent environmental movement and fuelled an anti-population-growth crusade that led to human rights abuses around the world’. According to British writer and journalist Melanie Phillips:
‘The obsession with population control has long been central to the environmental movement even though – ever since Thomas Malthus started this hare running in the 19th century – the dire predictions of catastrophic overpopulation have proved false over and over again.’
Ehrlich’s ideas are a natural extension of Malthusian thought. Malthus argued that the world’s human population would increase faster than the food supply unless checked by restraints such as war, famine, or disease. He also thought that ‘most people should die without reproducing’.
‘Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come,’ Ehrlich told CBS News following the publication of his book more than 50 years ago. Needless to say, such bizarre predictions never came true. In spite of all the worry, access to food and resources increased as the global population rose. And yet, this has not stopped many environmental activists from continuing to make similarly bizarre statements about the future of our planet.
The late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1988 commented: ‘In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.’ Clearly, he felt so strongly about this matter that he subsequently stated the following:
‘I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers that it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist … I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.’
Prince Philip’s neo-pagan predilections for reincarnation could be dismissed as another example of the notorious eccentricities of the British royal family. King Charles III, another committed environmental activist, is reported to talk to his plants and even to blame Syria’s horrific civil war on … climate change!
Unfortunately, the late Prince is not alone in comparing the human race to an ‘infectious disease’. Others have said that our species is a ‘super-malignancy on the face of the planet’ and ‘the AIDS of the earth’. The founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Foundation, once stated the following:
‘Humans are presently acting upon this body [the Earth’s ecosystem] in the same manner as an invasive virus with the result that we are eroding the ecological immune system. A virus kills its host and that is exactly what we are doing with our planet’s life support system. We are killing our host the planet Earth. I was once severely criticised for describing human beings as being the “AIDS of the Earth”. I make no apologies for that statement. Our viral like behaviour can be terminal both to the present biosphere and ourselves.’
It is the view that humans are in conflict with nature and thus there must be a winner. Granted, he expressed an extreme position. In 2023, there is a growing number of environmental activists that have succumbed to the notion that there is nothing special about human life.
Their comments include: ‘When it comes to feelings, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy’, and ‘the millions who died in the Nazi holocaust were equivalent to broiler chickens dying in slaughterhouses’. Yet while animals deserve our protection, people apparently do not. ‘I don’t believe that human beings have the right to life … This ‘right to human life’ I believe is another perversion.’
It is hard to imagine anything more terrifying than living in a culture where human life is made to appear so entirely relative to lesser values.
We have seen discussions arise where a new human life is seen as a threat to the environment, where some candidly contend that new babies represent an undesirable source of greenhouse emissions and consumer of natural resources. This type of thinking is leading conversations about the Western democracies adopting population control measures similar to the communist China one-child policy.
There are those that continue to criticise the direction environmentalism has taken. According to Melanie Phillips:
‘Environmentalism … is considered fashionably progressive in the West. A proper concern to avoid pollution and steward the Earth’s resources in a responsible manner is indeed a forward-looking, ethical position. Yet the modern environmental movement has become associated – just as it was in Nazi Germany – with indifference or contempt for humanity. It draws upon the most reactionary and regressive trains of thought since the Enlightenment. Those who express scepticism at its apocalyptic predictions of climate catastrophe are called antiscientific ‘flat-earthers’, yet it is environmentalists who are consumed by irrationality and a determination to stop science in its tracks, as well as disdain for bearer of reason, mankind.’
Instead of seeing humans as precious creatures conceived in the image of God, such radical environmentalists see their fellow humans the cause of all the Earth’s problems, especially ‘global warming’. It is only logical to place the goal of population control above the dignity of human life and to resort to any means in order to preserve ‘Mother Earth’ from being ‘raped’ and ‘violated’. From such a perspective, humans are seen as aggressors against a pristine nature.
According to James Tonkowich, a scholar at the Institute on Religion & Democracy in Washington, D.C., there is a long history of environmentalist thinking that sees humans primarily as consumers and polluters. ‘That thinking leads many to insist that abortion rights are integral to any environmental agenda,’ he says. As such, some environmental NGOs that claim to protect ‘places threatened by a warming planet by addressing climate change globally’ are also openly financing abortion on demand and population control measures out of an understanding that ‘an increase in human population must degrade the environment’.
Forgoing children is presently being promoted by the ‘greenie’ elites in the West as environmentally friendly, while childless women are doing their bit to reduce the carbon footprint of civilisation. It is deeply disturbing to see some women describe the termination of pregnancy as something entirely positive and morally valid. The Daily Mail reports a woman who proudly terminated her pregnancy in the firm belief she was saving the planet – ‘not produce a new life which would only add to the problem’. To justify her decision, this person commented:
‘Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet … Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.’
Tragically, not only are the young generations being fooled into forgoing children due to the fear of endangering the planet, they are also terminating their healthy pregnancy with some going so far as to openly claim that it was done in service of climate goals. Accordingly, a woman told the Daily Mail that she doesn’t wish to be a mother because having a child would ‘pollute the planet’. She also said, ‘Never having a child was the most environmentally friendly thing [she] could do.’ She and her fiancé commented: ‘We do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint. But all this would be undone if we had a child.’
What I see to be evil can be and often is perpetrated under the guise of doing good. Environmentalists err morally by believing that their vision of ‘saving the planet’ should be imposed regardless of the present human cost. This appears to confirm Dr Jordan Peterson’s recent commented that ‘malignant narcissists’ often ‘cloak themselves in compassion to deceive fools into granting them power’.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of ‘useful idiots’ around who are wilfully embracing the more extreme fringes of the elites’ death wish and what is becoming an environmentalist cult. They tend to believe that the Earth ‘will not survive’ unless drastic measures are taken, including the reduction of the population. Some even lament that neither war nor famine are capable of reducing the population enough and prefer the arrival of a virus to prey on the innocent. It is a disturbing fascination with the idea that death and ecological salvation.
Those who adhere to this sort of attitude betray a sinister desire to bring death at a large scale. It reveals a desire to eliminate human beings in search of some Utopian small number of sustainable survivors.
Even in the centre of environmental ideology, we must be careful of language that refers to humans as an ‘invasive virus’, a ‘plague’, or even a ‘problem’ that needs to be resolved. Such a desire to downgrade human life, and even turn it out of the planet altogether, has combined their supposed environmentalism with social Darwinism.
In sum, the inhuman nature of modern environmentalism must be exposed and I certainly feel very strongly about the need to expose the irrational nature of the neo-pagan environmentalist cult.
Augusto Zimmermann is professor and Head of Law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education, in Perth, Western Australia. He is a former Director of Postgraduate Research (2011-2012 and 2015-2017) and Associate Dean, Research (2010-2012) at Murdoch University. During his time at Murdoch, Dr Zimmermann was awarded the University’s Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research in 2012. He is also a former Commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia (2012-2017), and President of the Western Australian Legal Theory Association (WALTA). Dr Zimmermann is the author of numerous academic articles and books, including ‘Foundations of the Australian Legal System: History, Theory and Practice’ (LexisNexis, 2023).
