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Malthusian snobs pray for cure for overpopulation
A misanthropic dinner party elite wants to see the human race decimated by disease – just so long as it doesn't affect them
In the middle of all the hoo-hah over Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand's childish phone calls on a late-night radio show, you may have missed a far more scandalous utterance that was made on BBC radio.
On 5 November, the upmarket Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3 aired a discussion about overpopulation between Dr Susan Blackmore (a neuroscientist) and Professor John Gray (of the London School of Economics).
Dr Blackmore said the "fundamental problem" facing the planet today is that "there are too many people". Professor Gray agreed. Then Dr Blackmore declared: "For the planet's sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we're doomed."
So, it's official: at the Beeb it is unacceptable to make crude jokes about having sex with someone's granddaughter, but it is perfectly OK to wish death upon large swathes of mankind.
Make a rude call to Andrew Sachs' answerphone and you will be accused of dragging the BBC's good name through the dirt. Spout misanthropic nonsense about the need for a speedily contagious disease to come and wipe out mankind and nobody will bat an eyelid.
At the Beeb it is perfectly OK to wish death upon large swathes of mankind
The disparity between the public reaction to Brandgate (wild) and the public reaction to what I think we should call 'Birdflugate' (non-existent) reveals a great deal about the warped morality of the cultural elite.
The reason why Dr Blackmore's remark received no coverage or complaints is because the herbal tea-drinking literati that listens to Radio 3 discussion programmes will secretly share her prejudices about overpopulation.
Malthusianism, the one-eyed belief that all of the Earth's problems are caused by over-breeding, is making a comeback in polite circles.
Following the discrediting of eugenics during the Second World War, Malthusians had been rather shamefaced about their beliefs. They continually invented new PC terms with which they might dress up their angst about "too many people".
In Africa in particular, measures to tackle overpopulation were promoted in the deceitful language of "choice" and "autonomy", by charities keen to avoid being accused of pursuing that far uglier-sounding goal: population control.
More recently, however, Malthusians have become more strident. The poisonous notion that the speedily breeding masses are pushing the planet to breaking point has become a casual dinner-party prejudice.
Earlier this year Prince Phillip gave a TV interview in which he offered a pat explanation for the food price crisis: "Too many people." On the other side of the political spectrum, a republican columnist for the Independent fretted about the "swelling billions" (that's people in the Third World ) who are pushing our planet to extinction.
Professor Gray has referred to humanity as a "plague". The novelist Lionel Shriver recognises that this is a "racially, religiously and ethnically sticky" issue but says "the threat of overpopulation is back and here to stay".
Dr Blackmore was taking these increasingly common prejudices to their logical conclusion when she wished that bird flu would come and kill some of us off (the "swelling billions", preferably, rather than Radio 3 aficionados).
She follows in the tradition of Earth First!, the eco-group which in the early 1990s said that "just as the Plague contributed to the demise of feudalism, Aids has the potential to end industrialism".
More recently, the Optimum Population Trust, which counts Prince Charles's eco-adviser Jonathon Porritt among its directors, said that if we don't find a way to reduce human numbers then "it will be one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse that bumps us off".
Enough. If Ross and Brand's outburst showed that comedians have trouble censoring their inner adolescents, then these middle-class fantasies about human annihilation suggest the cultural elite cannot keep its misanthropy in check.
The neo-Malthusians are as wrong as every population alarmist in history has ever been. Like Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) and his followers, today's bird flu dreamers make the schoolboy error of treating population growth as the only variant, and everything else – food production, progress, human ingenuity – as fixed entities.
They are motivated by severe pessimism about humanity's ability to come up with solutions to its problems, and by the base idea that disease is the only thing that can sort us out. ·
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Comments
It took ages before our politicians found it sufficiently PC to discuss 'green' issues. Population is, alas, still a non-PC subject. We humans have raped and ravished the world's resources, spoiling it for all the other 'innocent' species of life. As a race, we are incredibly dangerous. No other species has ever come so close to finishing the world as we know and love it. Pragmatism on population control is essential... but I fear it is too late.
There are too many people already. The resources of the Earth are finite, it can only carry so many people. If left unchecked we will consume and destroy eco-systems to the point where they will not recover. It's simple science and maths Brendan and of far greater importance than the Ross/Brand debate. Big problems require big solutions but we don't need to resort to germ warfare or eugenics, just simple education is the key. The debate on overpopulation is hotting up and it needs to. As with the climate-change debate it is always useful to have a sacrificial junk-scientist like you Brendan, to galvanize the opinions of people who know better.
Actually Carrie Boyer, you seem somewhat confused. There was and is nothing either in this article or in comments about it or in the issues discussed which was about 'some old pervert having sex with his granddaughter' if that's what you think, then you are clearly delusional, which is born out by your further ramblings about some lord who is going to 'make the land bigger and fill it with more resources'. Clearly you find reasoning a bit difficult, which is presumably why you prefers to leave it to your imaginary 'lord' to do. Oh dear.
I cannot understand why anyone should find the BBC at fault for the serious truths spoken by contributors. Gratuitous offense by frivolous clowns and bad language should be strongly condemned.
The above 3 comments are beyond contradiction, have a look at Peter Russell's World Clock" on the internet - read the facts:
world net population increasing by nearly 69 million a year. I am now 85 yrs old and pop. has doubled in my lifetime. No one wants to wish for a plague to wipe out the underclass (of which I am a member) but the sooner we become responsible for breeding there will be pleas for feeding. It is possible that Mr Brendan O'Neill is encouraged to write this sort of article by his own religious beliefs?
I am disheartened by the reasoning that it is somehow more outrageous and elitist to "wish death" on large portions of mankind than it is to be outraged over some old pervert having sex with his grandaughter. (Yes: that was mentioned in this article/opinion piece.) Both of these degraded thought processes will lead to depravity and misery if not kept in check by reason, and dare I say wisdom. Wisdom is given by the Lord, and if you would humble yourselves and pray, He will heal your land (and has the capacity to make it bigger, fill it with more resources, etc.). But I doubt people will turn to Him. Instead, they will rely on their own degraded "reasoning."
Why does O'Neill equate a recognition that there are too many humans to prejudice? It's self evident there are too many of us; we already farm practically all land suitable for food growing, we are constantly told only GM will produce enough food in the future, we have predictions on the likely human population in the future, thousands of other species have been wiped out from loss of habitat to humans, and we have burned so much fossil carbon deposits that the world is now dangerously overheating, but O'Neill trots out his ill-considered PC attitudes regardless, including the same old slurs about eugenics.
Every few years famine strikes again in Africa, and it's always the babies and small children who suffer, does anyone seriously think that uncontrolled birth rates have nothing to do with this? Perhaps O'Neill is happy with this 'natural birth control', but better surely to use a less lethal method which doesn't result in children starving to death?
As cities build higher and higher, as the homeless multiply and as millions are born, live and die on the streets in many countries, I really can't see why anyone would deny that our success with medicine along with increased food production, have removed what was once a natural check on population growth. As people in developed countries generally have less children, it is clearly in the third world where the explosion continues to take place.
As always, it is the poor who pay the price, and it will be in the teeming cities of the third world where deadly diseases will take hold. If O'Neill thinks we can just go on as before without a care, he's delusional.
Discussing population, food supply, famine, and sustainability on radio is in no sense analogous to two foul-mouthed yobs making obscene phone calls.
One does not have to be an elitist to understand the strain on resources. I agree with Ian, sometimes the only comfort/ respite the 'have nots' have, is to reproduce. The 'Haves' can only build their walls so high.....
O.K, here's a possible third opinion-Yes there are too many people in the world-people everywhere are faced with a free-market economy that keeps them poor. The only option to preserve them in their old age is to have as many children as possible to keep them safe. How about the haves making sure the have-nots have security and don't have to breed so much? Let's spread the gravy round, make the world a bit better, then we wont have people praying for epidemics.