The Hand That Empties the Cradle

Sorry to bring you more bad news, but the environmentalist war on children continues. Mark Steyn writes:

But here’s something new that took hold in the year 2007: A radical antihumanism, long present just below the surface, bobbed up and became explicit and respectable. In Britain, the Optimum Population Trust said that “the biggest cause of climate change is climate changers — in other words, human beings,” and professor John Guillebaud called on Britons to voluntarily reduce the number of children they have.

Last week, in the Medical Journal of Australia, Barry Walters went further: To hell with this wimp-o pantywaist “voluntary” child-reduction. Professor Walters wants a “carbon tax” on babies, with, conversely, “carbon credits” for those who undergo sterilization procedures. So that’d be great news for the female eco-activists recently profiled in London’s Daily Mail who boast about how they’d had their tubes tied and babies aborted in order to save the planet. “Every person who is born,” says Toni Vernelli, “produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases and adds to the problem of overpopulation.” We are the pollution, and sterilization is the solution. The best way to bequeath a more sustainable environment to our children is not to have any.

What’s the “pro-choice” line? “Every child should be wanted”? Not anymore. The progressive position has subtly evolved: Every child should be unwanted.

By the way, if you’re looking for some last-minute stocking stuffers, Oxford University Press has published a book by professor David Benatar of the University of Cape Town called “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” The author “argues for the ‘anti-natal’ view — that it is always wrong to have children … . Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct.” As does Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us” — which Publishers Weekly hails as “an enthralling tour of the world … anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like.” It’s a good thing it “anticipates” it poetically, because, once it happens, there will be no more poetry.

Lest you think the above are “extremists,” consider how deeply invested the “mainstream” is in a total fiction. At the recent climate jamboree in Bali, the Rev. Al Gore told the assembled faithful: “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here.” Really? The American Thinker’s Web site ran the numbers. In the seven years between the signing of Kyoto in 1997 and 2004, here’s what happened:

-Emissions worldwide increased 18.0 percent;

-Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1 percent;

-Emissions from nonsigners increased 10.0 percent; and

-Emissions from the United States increased 6.6 percent.

It’s hard not to conclude a form of mental illness has gripped the world’s elites. If you’re one of that dwindling band of Westerners who’ll be celebrating the birth of a child, “homeless” or otherwise, next week, make the most of it. A year or two on, and the eco-professors will propose banning Nativity scenes because they set a bad example.

It is difficult for me to fathom the worldview that places love for this inanimate earth, or even all the creatures, great and small, that crawl, swim, slither, ooze, and fly in it, above love for a human child. Perhaps city dwellers long for what they lack — immersion in the beauty of nature — and take for granted what they have.

But if you have an environmentalist on your gift list this year, perhaps all you can do is to shrug and give them a piece of Mother Earth to love: a pet rock.

This Earth is an astonishing wonder, and amazing creation, but it is ultimately just the third rock from the sun. I will not love the cradle more than I love the child.

Posted by Gina Cobb

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