Medium: “May We Live Long and Die Out”
A global movement to extinguish the human race
. . .VHEMT
(pronounced “vehement”) for short — a worldwide crusade of
at least 9,000 people who have voluntarily decided not to have
children. The idea behind VHEMT is that Homo
sapiens have
caused so much damage to the planet already that the only thing that
can restore the balance is for humanity to go extinct, and the only
humane way to do that is by refusing to procreate.
. . .The ideal world population is somewhere between 1.5 billion to 2 billion, according to a study published by three Stanford ecologists in 1994.
Let
us ponder the question, putting it thus:
Would
the world be better without all of us?
Of
course, we’re a major source of pollution.
Our extinction might offer a partial solution.
But
if we were fewer and not quite so dense
might not that be enough recompense
for
the messes forever we're making and hence
some
could live on if two-thirds were gone?
That
does make some sense.
However, if history is something to go on. . .
AND
what of our Ponzi economy
which
works when everything's growing?
Fewer
consumers mean few workers,
fewer
jobs. (And fewer shirkers.)
Nice
idea, though, this VHEMT.
Pity
it comes with shoes of cement.
Presuming,
as do all notions human,
what
we do makes a diff and also assuming
we
can duct tape damages caused
and
do what we do with nary a pause,
ignoring
that we are but Nature's phlegm,
’til she clears her throat with a mighty, “Ahem!”,
restoring
the world without MEN (or WOMEN), Amen!
See also:
Nautilus: Is Fixing the Climate Incompatible with American Ideals?
Welcome to the Anthropocene. This greeting is belated, of course. We have all been here the whole
of our lives, without knowing it for most of our days. The Anthropocene is a span of geological and evolutionary time (technically, an epoch) during which humans have had an outsized role in transforming the natural world, most of that time without knowledge and awareness of the consequences of their actions. Those who use the term argue about when the epoch begins. Does it start with the Industrial Revolution, late in the 18th century, hastening around 1850? Or does it make sense to push the date back in time to the first appearances of agriculture in scattered populations, as much as 10,000 years before the present, or even earlier?
