Sometime during my freshman year at university (1985-86), I read an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle suggesting that the current generation should be the last generation of humans on earth. This intrigued me because it seemed obvious to me we’d already done enough damage and perhaps the other species here could make a better go of it once we cleaned up our mess and got out of the way.
I made mention of this to a few people. My mother, if I recall rightly, found the idea distasteful to say the least. She hadn’t read much science fiction at the time, a lot of which probably influenced my agreement with the writer’s sentiments.
In the intervening years, I’ve occasionally tried to find the editorial in question, with no success. Recently, though, I read a letter to the New Yorker which made reference to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Ah. That would be the group. It’s not hard to believe that the whole thing could be just one person who occasionally sends out a newsletter.
So I’m thinking about this in the context of compassion and doing right by the earth and those halcyon days when our population was only three or four billion. The image below is from the July 1975 issue of Mad magazine. Current population, 45 years later? 7.7 billion.
Occasionally I hear people talk about healing the earth. Usually in the form of a platitude on a bumper sticker or t-shirt. This makes the person with the platitude feel better, If this is a form of virtue signaling (I’ve always been a little unclear on that concept), I’m still okay with the sentiment, regardless of whether it leads to concrete action. What gets me is the response one sometimes hears, that the Earth has been through worse and will heal itself.
This may be true, but we’re wiping out species at an astounding rate and can’t seem, as nations to stop being cruel (the US rolling back rules on national park exploitation, for example). And, it’s an attitude that absolves corporations and municipalities from their responsibilities as stewards of the earth and as stewards of various populations. Flint, Michigan and its drinking water issue – several years later, still not solved, for another example. The attitude that the earth will heal itself doesn’t absolve us of turning the oceans, once teeming with life, into garbage dumps, fished out. In his recollections of the Kon-Tiki expedition, Thor Heyerdahl shares over and over again how easy it was to survive in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on the fish that were in abundance. I think he’d be horrified today of the state of large swaths of that ocean.
What is it about these times that sets it all up as a zero sum game?
I keep saying it: No one gets out alive as an individual. This much we know, but do we have to take half or more of the earth’s species with us? We seem to have no restrictions on the amount of cruelty we’re willing to exert on other people, species – yes, a lot of us are good, but as a species, we prove ourselves incapable of making the place better for the next generation. Or even to maintain a baseline for this one. The number of people who are going to die as current trends continue – fires, lack of insects, dropping levels of protein in rice, dropping levels of ice – it’s something we seemed to be inured to. It’s okay to leave what’s left to the next species to come up. We’ve proved ourselves unworthy.
Is voluntary human extinction an instance of compassion for the rest of the planet? There’s a cynical part of me that says absolutely, because I’m not sure we’re likely to contribute anything meaningful in the greater universe, should we make it off this planet before wiping it out entirely. I’ve had friends argue that the art we create shouldn’t be lost. I hate to think that so much won’t be appreciated by later generations, but there’s so much that’s not appreciated by this generation. First world problem, that.
And anyone advocating this must be able to examine the question: How would I feel to be the last one remaining, the one left to turn out the lights on Homo Sapiens? I’d like to believe I could lie down having done the job well. But the thought also terrifies me.
Joe Jots 