The People-Haters Are At It Again

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By Steven W. Mosher


In the UK he is a household name. He has
done a beautiful series of documentaries for BBC on
the world’s wildlife. He was even knighted by the
Queen.
And he is a bona-fide, certified, take-noprisoners
people hater.
The hater in question, Sir David
Attenborough, made the news last week by
comparing the human race (that is, you and me) to a
plague on the planet. Going even further, he
predicted that disaster would befall us within the
next half-century unless something is done to stop
our reckless reproduction.
Or, as he told the Radio Times, “It’s coming
home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not
just climate change. 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, and the natural world is doing it for us right
now.”
One would think that the geriatric
broadcaster, who is 86 years old, would be putting
his earthly affairs in order instead of imagining
distant catastrophes caused by faceless hordes, but
perhaps this is what gets him out of bed every
morning.
As for me, neither climate change nor
population growth keeps me up at night. In fact, the
latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) report, recently leaked to the press, reveals
that for two decades global warming has been
consistently overestimated.
Not only that, the report also indicates that
solar activity plays a larger role in global warming
than previously thought. If the sun is putting out
more heat, there is not much we can do about it.
Attenborough, like many population control
enthusiasts, reserves particular rancor for Africans.
“We keep putting on programs about famine in
Ethiopia – that is what’s happening. Too many
people there. They can’t support themselves – and it’s
not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case.”
You would think that, as a maker of
documentaries, Sir David would do his homework.
But he gets the situation in Ethiopia all wrong. What
really happened is that the Marxists who run the
country—the Derg, as they are called—destroyed its
agricultural economy by herding farmers into huge
and unproductive state farms, by forbidding them to
trade in grain, and by restricting seasonal labor
movements. Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians
starved to death as a result of these misguided
policies.
The Derg, quite naturally, are not about to
admit that the famines are their fault. Though
economically illiterate, they do not lack a certain
political savvy. So they have seized upon the
convenient Western theory of overpopulation to
explain away their failures. And Attenborough, like
many Western observers, has fallen for their selfserving
disinformation campaign.
It fits in all too neatly with his worldview,
which is that we are a “plague“ on the planet. He is,
after all, a patron of an anti-people group called
Population Matters, which pushes population control
programs around the world.
“Until humanity manages to sort itself out and
get a coordinated view about the planet, it’s going to
get worse and worse,” Attenborough says.
What he means, of course, is that he wants the
UN Population Fund and Western governments to
intensify their current war against people, especially
against Africans, to stop them from having babies.
How about promoting freedom instead?

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