David Attenborough Calls Humans a “Plague on the Earth.”
Isn’t He Sort of Right?
by Will Oremus, Jan 23, 2013

Every now & then, Britain’s best-loved naturalist takes a
break from spying on the bedroom behavior of birds of
paradise to sound off about humans’ impact on the
environment. When he does, it almost always makes headlines
—not only because he’s Sir David Attenborough, but because
he calls it as he sees it.

In October, he took Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, & America
at large to task for their failure to face up to climate
change. That sentiment may have ruffled a few feathers
stateside but is relatively uncontroversial in his home
country. This time, in an interview with the UK TV-listings
magazine Radio Times, he stepped in it a little deeper.

“We are a plague on the Earth,” Attenborough said of
humanity as a whole, in a quote promptly picked up by
London’s Times & Telegraph & plastered on the Drudge Report.
“It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so.”
The full interview is available only in print, but the
Independent cribbed from it liberally enough to give you
the gist. “It’s not just climate change,” Attenborough went
on. “It’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous
horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural
world will do it for us, & the natural world is doing it
for us right now.”

Now, insulting the entire human race isn’t generally the
best way to win friends & influence people. And Atten-
borough’s remarks drew a predictable gnashing of teeth
from online commenters & cranks like the National Review’s
Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at something called the
Center on Human Exceptionalism. Smith accused Attenborough
of “demonstrating my thesis that environmentalism is
growing progressively anti-human.”

But Smith is exactly wrong. If anything, environmentalism
has grown progressively pro-human since the 60s & 70s,
when books like Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb spooked
a generation of activists into advocating various desperate
population-control measures. Such sentiments are so rare
in the environmental movement these days that it made
national news in 2011 when one lonely group dared broach
even the mild suggestion that voluntary birth control
could be good for the planet. Other environmental groups
the Times contacted for the article “generally declined
to discuss the issue or did not return calls,” upholding
a longstanding taboo on the topic.

These days the most effective environmental arguments
seem to be those that tie climate change to deadly extreme-
weather events like Hurricane Sandy. Complex & slippery
as those associations may be, they work because they tap
into people’s strongest instinct: self-preservation.
Modern environmentalists have fully internalized the
lesson that you don’t get very far by telling people
that their very existence is the problem.

So why would Attenborough say such a thing? Because, at 86,
he’s an unreconstructed member of the old guard. Because
he’s a knight & a national treasure & there’s no one to
tell him he can’t. But more importantly, because his life’s
work has given him a fundamentally different lens on
humanity. As a naturalist & nature-show host, his liveli-
hood is intertwined not with the stock market or the gross
domestic product, but with the fortunes of the world’s
non-human species, from insects to penguins to lemurs.
And when you look at it purely from their vantage point,
there is no denying that humans have made quite a mess
of the land, not to mention the sea.

Calling humanity “a plague on the Earth” isn’t politically
correct, & life would be grim indeed if everyone shared
Attenborough’s assessment. Even if they did, it’s not at
all clear that population control would be the solution.
Still, in a way Attenborough’s remarks are a refreshing
corrective to the overwhelmingly anthropocentric thrust
of today’s environmental movement. Of course humans should
care foremost about humans, but in recasting environmental
policy as a question primarily of economic costs & benefits,
we risk forgetting the obvious: We're not the only species
on this planet. And even as we’re rightly fretting on the
effects of sea-level rise on New York City 50 years from
now, the plants & animals with whom we share the Earth
are getting pummeled by deforestation, desertification,
overfishing, and ocean acidification.

Fortunately, the problem isn’t as straightforward as Atten-
borough’s excerpted quotes make it out to be. Yes, there
are a lot of people on Earth, but a steady easing of
population growth rates is expected in the coming decades
even in the absence of population-control policies. And
yes, we could eventually be in danger of running out of
space to grow the food needed to feed everyone, but that’s
as much a function of Western consumption habits as sheer
numbers. In short, what we need in the world is not
necessarily fewer people, but a lighter environmental
footprint per person. A man who can sneak up on a lyrebird
ought to know something about the possibility of treading
lightly.

https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/david-attenborough-calls-humanity-a-plague-on-the-earth-isn-t-he-sort-of-right.html

"David P." wrote in message
news:29d78704-0bed-44ee-bbe7-49de6e675b83n@googlegroups.com...
>
> David Attenborough Calls Humans a “Plague on the Earth.”
> Isn’t He Sort of Right?

According to the "deep ecology" eco-kooks, yes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement

Attenborough has become a self-righteous god-figure,
at least in his own mind.

One tiny little problem - his SUPPLICANTS are likely
to interpret his words as "Destroy All Humans". The means
now are viruses. C-19 is hardly the only horrible thing
out there. Fanatics know no bounds and they are embedded
everywhere, including Chinese labs.

Sorry Dave, humans are PART of "nature". We breed and
exploit and sometimes over-exploit just like any other
organism. We are no better, or worse, in this respect
than insects or mice or pigeons or crabgrass.

Will the crabgrass have it "better" post-humanity ?
Well, who gives a shit ? Why is it more "deserving" ?
If not the crabgrass then some other creepy-crawlie
that will denude the planet. Hardly anything new about
this pattern. Hell, oxygen-producing organisms poisoned
like 99% of the life on earth back in the day. Think
GW is bad - holy SHIT !

"Delimited" wrote in message
news:u6WdnYZSsKYBlJP8nZ2dnUU7-bfNnZ2d@earthlink.com...
>
> Attenborough has become a self-righteous god-figure,
> at least in his own mind.
>
> One tiny little problem - his SUPPLICANTS are likely
> to interpret his words as "Destroy All Humans". The means
> now are viruses. C-19 is hardly the only horrible thing
> out there. Fanatics know no bounds and they are embedded
> everywhere, including Chinese labs.

The Delta variant must be Prince Phillip's latest incarnation:

https://nwo.fandom.com/wiki/Prince_Philip_-_%E2%80%9CIf_I_were_reincarnated_I_would...be...as_a_killer_virus...%22