If any of my readers is tempted to tune in to the Animal Planet mini-series “Whale Wars” (which started this evening) well, there’s something you should know about Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society which is prominently featured in the series.
According to the May 2007 article “Eco-Extremist Wants World Population to Drop below 1 Billion” featured in Business and Media Institute magazine, Mr. Watson believes that “saving the whales is more important than saving 5.5 billion people.” The article went on to quote Mr. Watson as saying, “We are killing our host the planet Earth.” The cure? According to Mr. Watson, the “cure” would be “a population drop to less than 1 billion.” Indeed, his exact words were, “We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.”
Yes, you read that right. A seeming genocide of 5.5 billion people. (After all, what else could you conclude from that statement?) But is Mr. Watson ashamed of his call to “radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion”? He went on to say, “I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ˜AIDS of the Earth. I make no apologies for that statement.”
You may be wondering what this has to do with “pit bulls” or domesticated pets in general. Well, apparently Mr. Watson wasn’t quite finished. Mr. Watson also calls for the “cutting down on the population of domesticated dogs and cats to cutting down on everything else in what he called ‘simplify, simplify, simplify’.”
So sure, save the whales. It’s only going to cost you your pets…oh and seemingly about 5.5 billion human lives.
P.S. I’m guessing Mr. Watson believes he should be among the approximate 500,000 “elite” who should survive this “rewilding” “nativist” ideology.
4 responses to “Save the Humans!”
I’m no fan of Watson but I agree. Human overpopulation is the major problem facing the world today (and has been for some decades now).
I don’t think he’s calling for culling (vs genocide, which would target specific families/races). It is time to start thinking about controlling reproduction, certainly. Resources are finite and humans are big animals that consume an inordinate (and escalating) amount of everything, are exremely destructive and therefore have a very averse effect on ecological cycles. Watson, incidentally, is not the only one to reach this rather obvious conclusion – many academics have said the same thing, certainly over the past few decades and even earlier.
I’ve wondered for some time whether anti-dog sentiment is linked to competition for resources that are becoming more limited as time goes by.
Once we boomers have shuffled off this mortal coil, there should be some improvement.
I respectfully disagree. If he’s not calling for genocide, meaning the extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group (and here I could make a good case that the first to be targeted will be the handicapped and the minorities and poor…like in oh, say Africa), then how will he go about reducing the world’s population to below 1 billion? If you cull a population, meaning you gather up people, where will they go if you are still to achieve the goal of reducing the world’s population to below 1 billion? And if he simply wants to control our breeding then even that would not see the world’s population dropping to below 1 billion and certainly not soon.
I think that those who propose such sick ideas as population reduction, or whatever word they want to use that gets people believing this is anything other than mass murder, should be the first to volunteer.
Well, there’s no question that we are overpopulated by at least a factor of two at around eight billion. I think attrition, coupled with some thought for the future, could certainly help.
I haven’t heard anyone advocate mass killings, including the extremist Watson.
Unless things slow down, there won’t be any clean water or other resources left – we’re getting close to that now with worldwide water shortages. That’s why we are seeing bans on bottled water in municipalities in Ontario – groundwater is becoming a precious resource. That’s a result of overpopulation which creates excessive demand.
Dr. Eric Pianka is alleged to have given a speech to the Texas Academy of Science in 2006 calling for the extermination of 90% of the world’s population via the distribution of the airborne Ebola virus. Prince Philip also wrote in his biography that “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.” And here are some more choice quotes:
“Even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
-Sir Julian Huxley, first Director General of UNESCO, 1946-1948.
“A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
-Ted Turner, in an interview with Audubon magazine.
“I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers that it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist…. I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.”
-Prince Philip, in his Foreward to If I Were an Animal; United Kingdom, Robin Clark Ltd., 1986.
“I reject the idea that humans are superior to other life forms… Man is just an ape with an overly developed sense of superiority.”
– Paul Watson, director of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and a founder of Greenpeace
“Under Socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not the character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner…”
-Bernard Shaw in his Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, 1928.