OPINION:
Recently, Jeffrey Clark, an associate editor for Fox News Digital, wrote an important column summarizing the growing call in media circles for “humans to go extinct.” In his article, Mr. Clark cites the oft-repeated refrain from cultural talking heads who now argue that “science proves kids are bad for the earth and that morality suggests we stop having them.”
Examples include Ginger Zee, a meteorologist on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” who recounted in December the tension she felt in becoming pregnant with her second child because some in her family didn’t think she would “do that again,” for the sake of the planet.
Then there is Britt Wray, a writer for the Gen Dread newsletter, who not long ago told CNN that women were feeling “spooked, anxious, [and in] some cases fully traumatized” as a result of climate change and the carbon cost of children.
Also, we have Jade Sasser, associate professor of gender and sexuality studies, at the University of California, Riverside, who recently said, “I’m not a parent, and I will not be a parent” as she bemoaned the damage humans are doing to the planet.
And let’s not forget Britain’s Prince Harry, who has openly called for two children to be the “maximum” that any couple should be permitted to have, and pop star Miley Cyrus, who has said that “until I feel like my kid would live on an earth with fish in the water, I’m not bringing in another person to deal with that.”
Social media is also replete with examples, such as the TikTok user “@damiensoylash,” who posted:
“Having children is wrong. I won’t be having them myself because all the experts agree that the single worst thing any of us can do for the climate is to have a person, have a child [who], over the course of their life, will contribute 58 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. So, if you care about the planet, if you care about animals and the ecosystems and the oceans and the levels of carbon, don’t have children.”
And no list of the parade of the panicked would be complete without Eric Pianka, who was a professor of zoology and biology at the University of Texas and won the 2006 Texas Academy of Sciences Scientist of the Year award. Planka, who died in 2022, said Earth will likely not survive unless drastic measures are taken to reduce the present human population by as much as 90%. He added that such depopulation cannot be accomplished via natural death or birth control. That would take too long.
Pianka’s solution is the spread of an airborne virus to get rid of the problem organism — that is, people. I’m not kidding. He actually said that.
None of this anti-human hand-wringing should surprise you. This extinction agenda has been front and center in the curriculum of our nation’s schools for decades. Nearly all our educational institutions have been teaching one generation after another a clear set of anti-anthropomorphic ideas for years, such as:
• Human beings are nothing but the evolutionary byproducts of a primordial soup and, therefore, indistinguishable in value from all other matter around us.
• Human-centered dominance of the planet is bad; thus, human life should be subjugated for the greater good of planetary maintenance.
• The self-evident truths that have served since the dawn of time as the foundation for human dignity and the basis for inalienable human rights are the evil byproducts of colonialism, overpopulation and European expansion.
• There is no such thing as truth. All values are relative cultural constructs and nothing but opinions.
• Finally, because we are little but the happenstance product of Darwinism, people have no ontological value over and above a bacterium or a bird. Therefore, the obvious conclusion is that a vulture or a virus should be allowed to thrive just as much, if not more so, as human beings.
Thomas Carlyle once said, “The thing a man does practically believe … the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain … is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest.”
Yes, that “thing” that ultimately “determines all the rest” is the power of ideas. Ideas serve as the impetus for all human action. Ideas are never neutral. They always lead somewhere. They always have consequences — some lead to human flourishing, and some to euthanasia, infanticide, concentration camps and furnaces.
If you want to know why our “best and brightest” are calling for our own extinction, look no further than your local schools. When we teach our progeny that fish are of greater value than people and that “there is no such thing as truth, and that’s the truth,” it shouldn’t surprise us that “smart folks” like Miley Cyrus and Eric Pianka think the best way to cure the disease that ails us is to get rid of 90% of the problem organism, i.e., our children.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host.
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