Environmentalist Suicide

Apparently today is Earth Day. Who knew?

A former friend of mine once said something incredibly stupid: She'd kill herself to protect the earth from her humanity. I believe this was caused by several factors. She had terribly low self-esteem, wasn't of anything close to sound mind, thought she was a druid, and didn't seem to value humanity very much. Her life was a sad story, which she liked to tell any time anyone else had a bad day and needed to vent. Got a bad grade on an exam? "I'm an orphan." Well fuck, that helps so much!

This is a fringe movement, those who believe that humanity should cease to exist in order to save the planet. I say cease to exist because they have different methods: murder, suicide, no next generation, so it's not quite accurate to say they want to destroy humanity or kill it. The thought behind the movement is that humanity is unnatural and harmful to the world and therefore must be removed.

I consider myself an environmentalist, but I consider the concept of 'environmentalist suicide' to be incredibly stupid. Humans are animals, naturally evolved like any other. We have as much right to exist as any other species, meaning that we have no right to exist but also do not deserve to not exist. Nature doesn't have morals, it just is. Survive or don't, that's it.

To suggest that humanity has less right to survive is based on the false notion that humanity is unnatural, that we break the rules. Bullshit. We're no better or worse than any other creature and we're all just trying to survive. The whales wouldn't die to save us (or at least have made no such indication), so why should we do the same for them? Does a wolf starve to death before it eats a rabbit? No. It eats the rabbit and doesn't question it. Instead it survives. Does the rabbit complain? No. It does what it can to survive and has a hundred siblings to carry on.

I'm not trying to justify all human action. It is equally stupid when people gloat about wasting energy and littering and going out of their way to destroy the world. Their kids need that world to live in.

There's a terrible situation of extremes. On one side you have those who don't consider any larger impact on the world and the next generation. On the other side you have the static world advocates. Who are the static world advocates? They are the ones who fight tooth and nail to not let anything change, who believe that any alteration of the environment is bad and should be stopped. They advocate taking a picture of the world and never letting that change. How boring. The irony is that they like to talk of biodiversity, when preventing any change means that we won't see new species, and so over time we'll have less diversity.

Evolution doesn't just happen. Something causes it. There is a balance to the world, which tends to remain unless upset. Humans are not the only cause. The world changes in temperature and air content and sea level and all sorts of things change and have changed without us. We should not fear changing the environment. It is not an antique to be locked away in a glass case and never touched. Certainly we should not break it, but we shouldn't be so afraid of some dust, or new paint, or using it as a pitcher rather than a vase.

Let's not get caught up in extremism. Humanity should not end. It also should not foul its own nest. We should not fear changing the world, but we should be careful to not destroy it. That means not destroying ourselves, for we are part of the world.