A novel approach to solving environmental problems

Written by Darren Hewer

Earth The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) has a motto: "May we live long and die out." Their website claims that human beings have consistently done terrible damage to this planet, and therefore the human race should stop breeding and gradually die out. This is called an "encouraging alternative to the callous exploitation and wholesale destruction of Earth’s ecology".

Implicitly the claim is being made that the health of the Earth is worth destroying the human race via a slow process of suffocation. But why should we believe that? This seems to be a moral claim: What humans have done to the earth is wrong. But this means that there is some sort of objective moral standard beyond and existing wholly apart from human beings

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The site says that if all humans died "Earth’s biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free." But if human beings are merely the result of natural evolution why should we behave contrary to how we naturally behave? If nature is all there is, then there is no higher moral standard, there just is. Where do "glory" and "freedom" come in, when in a naturalistic worldview these are merely human social constructs which would disappear along with the human race?

There’s no denying that we need to do a better job of protecting our environment, but what do you think of the VHEMT? Is it not better to find a way to redeem a problem for good rather than merely destroying it?

Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Tags: earth, environment, environmentalism, humanity, space

One Response to “A novel approach to solving environmental problems”

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Cat says:

January 7, 2010 at 4:12 am

From what I’ve heard, the VHEMT is just one person. And yes, even we lefties think she’s a nutter.

That said, even if one believes–as I do–that nature is all there is, there’s still a basis for morality. What helps us survive is good. (What makes us happy is even better, but that’s another discussion for another time.) If “us” is just, say, your country, then you’ll be willing to sacrifice the rest of the world to protect your country. If “us” is all of humanity, then you’d be willing to smoke the Earth to save humans. But if “us” encompasses more than humans, then suddenly we’re faced with the task of protecting everything.

Ms. VHEMT clearly believes that, which I think is a good and fine thing to believe, but she and I disagree strongly about the human capacity to play nicely with other species. She says that we’re inherently destructive. I say that western culture is in fact anomalous in its capacity to blithely swallow up the world, and western culture is changing to recognize that ecosystems have moral standing.