Wednesday, November 16, 2005
 
When You Go Ad Absurdum, Go All Ad Absurdum
Maybe None: Is having a child -- even one -- environmentally destructive?:
    Knight is the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, an informal network of people dedicated to phasing out the human race in the interest of the health of the Earth. Knight, whose convictions led him to get a vasectomy in the 1970s, when he was 25, believes that the human race is inherently dangerous to the planet and inevitably creates an unsustainable situation.

    "As long as there's one breeding couple," he says cheerfully, "we're in danger of being right back here again. Wherever humans live, not much else lives. It isn't that we're evil and want to kill everything -- it's just how we live."

    Knight's position might sound extreme at first blush, but there's an undeniable logic to it: Human activities -- from development to travel, from farming to just turning on the lights at night -- are damaging the biosphere. More people means more damage. So if fewer people means less destruction, wouldn't no people at all be the best solution for the planet?
One could apply Knight's sound--but hardly valid--logic to all of life itself, since every herbivore on the planet eats weeds and damages their life cycles, and every damn weed on the plant sucks nitrogen out of the soil and changes the environment.

Why stop at living processes? Why, rain erodes landmasses! Solar flares irradiate uninhabited planets! Novae char!

The only solution is to embrace nullity!

Anything less is inconsistency.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:17 PM
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To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."