Professor Patricia MacCormack Calls for Human Extinction

At the Other McCain, "Feminist Witch/University Professor Advocates Human Extinction."

OMG! No Way! We're Doomed! Civilization is Accelerating Extinction and Altering the Natural World at a Pace 'Unprecedented in Human History'

More doomsday hysteria from the climate cult.

At the New York Times, "Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace":

WASHINGTON — Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.

The 1,500-page report, compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies, is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe and the dangers that creates for human civilization. A summary of its findings, which was approved by representatives from the United States and 131 other countries, was released Monday in Paris. The full report is set to be published this year.

Its conclusions are stark. In most major land habitats, from the savannas of Africa to the rain forests of South America, the average abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by 20 percent or more, mainly over the past century. With the human population passing 7 billion, activities like farming, logging, poaching, fishing and mining are altering the natural world at a rate “unprecedented in human history.”

At the same time, a new threat has emerged: Global warming has become a major driver of wildlife decline, the assessment found, by shifting or shrinking the local climates that many mammals, birds, insects, fish and plants evolved to survive in. When combined with the other ways humans are damaging the environment, climate change is now pushing a growing number of species, such as the Bengal tiger, closer to extinction.

As a result, biodiversity loss is projected to accelerate through 2050, particularly in the tropics, unless countries drastically step up their conservation efforts.

A previous report by the group had estimated that, in the Americas, nature provides some $24 trillion of non-monetized benefits to humans each year. The Amazon rain forest absorbs immense quantities of carbon dioxide and helps slow the pace of global warming. Wetlands purify drinking water. Coral reefs sustain tourism and fisheries in the Caribbean. Exotic tropical plants form the basis of a variety of medicines.

But as these natural landscapes wither and become less biologically rich, the services they can provide to humans have been dwindling.

Humans are producing more food than ever, but land degradation is already harming agricultural productivity on 23 percent of the planet’s land area, the new report said. The decline of wild bees and other insects that help pollinate fruits and vegetables is putting up to $577 billion in annual crop production at risk. The loss of mangrove forests and coral reefs along coasts could expose up to 300 million people to increased risk of flooding.

The authors note that the devastation of nature has become so severe that piecemeal efforts to protect individual species or to set up wildlife refuges will no longer be sufficient. Instead, they call for “transformative changes” that include curbing wasteful consumption, slimming down agriculture’s environmental footprint and cracking down on illegal logging and fishing...

We're all gonna die!

Anti-Humanism

At Quillette, an excellent piece, "How Anti-Humanism Conquered the Left."

“Ehrlich and many others are still claiming that disaster is imminent, despite their previous predictions repeatedly failing to materialize. Just last year, Ehrlich compared human population growth to the spread of cancer.” https://t.co/gzwIto5So6

— Quillette (@Quillette) May 3, 2019

Today is International Workers’ Day, a holiday with socialist origins. Its name hearkens back to a time when the political Left was ostensibly devoted to the cause of human welfare. These days, however, some on the far Left care less about the wellbeing of people than they do about making sure that people are never born at all. How did these radicals come to support a massive reduction in human population, if not humanity’s demise? Whether it’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioning the morality of childbearing, a birth-strike movement that encourages people to forego parenthood despite the “grief that [they say they] feel as a result,” or political commentator Bill Maher blithely claiming, “I can’t think of a better gift to our planet than pumping out fewer humans to destroy it,” a misanthropic philosophy known as “anti-natalism” is going increasingly mainstream.

The logical conclusion of this anti-humanist ideology is, depressingly, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (Vhemt). According to its founder, activist Les Knight, Vhemt (pronounced “vehement”) is gaining steam. “In the last year,” Knight told the Daily Mail, “I’ve seen more and more articles about people choosing to remain child-free or to not add more to their existing family than ever. I’ve been collecting these stories and last year was just a groundswell of articles, and, in addition, there have been articles about human extinction.”

Over 2000 new people have “liked” the movement’s Facebook page since January and, more importantly, the number of people fulfilling the movement’s goals (regardless of any affiliation with the movement itself) is growing. The U.S. birth rate is at an all-time low. According to the latest figures from the Center for Disease Control, the total U.S. fertility rate for 2017 was at an all-time low of 1.77 babies per woman (i.e., below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies per woman needed to maintain the current population).

Recent examples of writings that are warming to the idea of human extinction include the New Yorker’s “The Case for Not Being Born,” NBC News’ “Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them,” and the New York Times’ “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?” which muses that, “It may well be, then, that the extinction of humanity would make the world better off.” Last month, the progressive magazine FastCompany released a disturbing video entitled, “Why Having Kids Is the Worst Thing You Can Do for the Planet.”

Some anti-natalists are not content with promoting the voluntary reduction of birth rates, and would prefer to hurry the process along with government intervention. Various prominent environmentalists, from Johns Hopkins University bioethicist Travis Rieder to science popularizer and entertainer Bill Nye, support the introduction of special taxes or other state-imposed penalties for having “too many” children. In 2015, Bowdoin College’s Sarah Conly published a book advocating a “one-child” policy, like the one China abandoned following disastrous consequences including female infanticide and a destabilizing gender ratio of 120 boys per 100 girls, which left around 17 percent of China’s young men unable to find a Chinese wife. Even after that barbaric policy’s collapse, she maintains it was “a good thing.”

Modern-day anti-humanism emerged in the 1970s, midwifed by a doomy strain of environmental pessimism led by Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich (but with intellectual antecedents dating back to Thomas Malthus in the eighteenth century). Ehrlich published his widely read polemic The Population Bomb in 1968, which originally opened with the lines, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

Thanks to human ingenuity in the form of the Green Revolution, that didn’t happen...

Keep reading.

Freezing Weather is Creating Energy Shortages in the Northeast

I just saw this at Watts Up With That?, "Frigid cold is why we need dependable energy."

Which reminded me of the East Coast natural gas shortages causing problems this last few weeks, not the least of which some folks couldn't heat their homes. Thanks radical left-wing anti-human environmental psychos!

At the Hartford Courant, "Cold Wave Puts Pressure On Energy Suppliers":

Energy industry officials have for years warned that inadequate pipeline capacity limits the amount of natural gas coming into New England during peak demand periods like this one. Several multi-billion-dollar proposals for new pipelines have been blocked or withdrawn in the last two years as a result of financing issues and opposition from environmental and consumer groups.

Herb said the current cold spell’s inadequate gas supply problems have triggered increased demands for heating oil.

“We’ve absolutely seen huge [institutional and industrial] users switching to fuel oil,” Herb said. He said big schools like the University of Connecticut, Yale University and Fairfield University, as well as a number of big industrial plants, are now using oil to power their heating systems.

Steve Sack, of Sack Energy, a major Connecticut fuel oil wholesaler, said those major users are now looking to purchase fuel oil on the spot market.

In some areas of the northeast, including portions of Pennsylvania and New York, major demand for fuel oil is creating shortage worries. But wholesalers and retail home heating oil suppliers say Connecticut isn’t experiencing the same problems.

The primary reason for Connecticut’s comfortable supply situation is that most of this state’s fuel oil comes into New Haven by barge and then is pumped up through the Buckeye pipeline to major portions of Connecticut. That avoids the kind of problems New York is having getting oil barges up the ice-choked Hudson River, Herb said.

“Right now, we’re having no issues with supply,” Sack said. He said areas of Connecticut that aren’t along the pipeline that runs from New Haven up through Springfield, Mass., are being supplied by tractor trailer trucks from the port or terminals along the pipeline.

Sack said wholesale fuel oil prices at New York’s harbor are now running at about $2.06 per gallon, which are “down a little bit right now” from earlier price levels.

Herb said his office is constantly monitoring the supply situation. He said he recently got a call from U.S. Department of Energy officials asking if the federal regional petroleum reserve should be released to help the energy situation.

“We told them no. … We did not need that,” Herb said.

Heating oil company drivers are being pushed to the max to keep getting fuel deliveries to residential customers who need them.

RTWT.

Marriage and Kids vs. Dogs and Netflix

I'd like to see actually statistics on this, but if it's anywhere near majority opinion, we can be relieved that humans will die out by self-extinction over the near few generations.

My god, what is wrong with these people?

It's Lauren Southern, in the U.K.:

Is it Ethical to Have Children?

Of course it's ethical.

It's only unethical if you're a leftist anti-humanist.

FWIW, at the far-left Foreign Policy, "As Environmental Catastrophe Looms, Is it Ethical to Have Children?"

New York Times 'Slammed' with Cancellations Over Bret Stephens Op-Ed

At Twitchy:

ICYMI --> New York Times ‘slammed’ with cancellations as punishment for climate change heresy https://t.co/LB2e6RrocM

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) April 30, 2017

It was a perfectly reasonable op-ed:

That this quiet, measured Bret Stephens column caused such an uproar is hilarious. https://t.co/luAgIdlTSw

— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) April 30, 2017

Reminds, if you haven't yet, be sure to pick up your copy of Robert Zubrin's, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.

#BretStephens pic.twitter.com/EthcpFe6P6

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 1, 2017

Did Reince Priebus Just Compare Donald Trump to Jesus?

Professor Daniel Drezner about popped a vessel at this:

OMFG. https://t.co/XjJsaCc2o6 pic.twitter.com/Ng725lrY2m

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) December 25, 2016

Mollie Hemingway responds:

I get that not everybody is Christian but you should really know that Christians celebrate this good news at this time each and every year. https://t.co/CSsWMv4oI1

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 25, 2016

At the Bustle, "Did Reince Priebus Just Compare Donald Trump To Jesus? Probably Not, But It Sure Sounded Like It."

And at BuzzFeed. The "new king" is Jesus, not Donald Trump:

People are arguing about whether Republicans just compared Trump to Jesus https://t.co/cyknbSgPAo pic.twitter.com/Gq2M5nRDMY

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) December 25, 2016

Deal of the Day: DEWALT Brushless 20V MAX XR Combo Kit

At Amazon, DEWALT DCK281D2 20V Max XR Lithium Ion Brushless Compact Drill/Driver & Impact Driver Combo Kit.

Also, today only, 40% or More Off Citizen Watches for Men & Women.

Plus, more spring cleaning supplies, BISSELL 1940 Powerfresh Steam Mop, Blue.

More, from Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era.

And from Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race.

BONUS: Robert Zubrin, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.

The Most Persistent Hobgoblin of the Last Quarter Century Has Been Global Warming

This is great.

At IBD, "Another Climate Alarmist Lets It Slip: Why They Want to Scare You":

World savers are anything but. They always have an unspoken motive. H.L. Mencken saw the self-appointed saviors for what they were almost a century ago, when he said the "whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

The most persistent hobgoblin of the last quarter-century has been global warming, now called climate change but eventually to be known as extreme weather, or some such other fright-inducing name. The climate activists are constantly bombarding us with warnings, hectoring, hysteria, pleading and threats. Apocalyptic books have been written and shrill movies made, all in an effort to slow man's combustion of fossil fuels.

Included among these is a new documentary "inspired" by Naomi Klein's book "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate." If the title isn't enough to give away Klein's motives for attacking the climate "crisis," then a comment she makes in the trailer — please forgive: watching the entire documentary would be as agonizing as any medieval torture — should.

"So here's the big question," says Klein. "What if global warming isn't only a crisis? What if it's the best chance we're ever going to get to build a better world?"

Then comes the threat:

"Change, or be changed."

Klein says she "spent six years wandering through the wreckage caused by the carbon in the air and the economic system that put it there." Clearly, it is her goal to shatter the free-market system. The climate? It's just a vehicle, a pretext for uprooting the only economic system in history that has brought prosperity and good health.

Klein's statement is perfectly in line with Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of United Nation's Framework Convention on Climate Change, and in fact is almost an echo. Figueres acknowledged earlier this year that the environmental activists' goal is not to spare the world an ecological disaster, but to destroy capitalism...

Keep reading.

Klein's also the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She's got a little fear-mongering industry going there.

Let's Be Honest About Extravagant Consumption

I've had my share of extravagant consumption, and I'm looking forward to some more of it. YOLO.

At the Guardian UK, "Cyber heirs who flaunt their wealth online could be a boon."

Of course the Guardian's agenda is to further inflame class warfare, hence the cheers for greater transparency of ostentatious wealth. And I'll bet there's more admiration for it than the lefties like to admit. Frankly, wealthy leftists wallow in ugly guilt. Get over it and be proud of what you've earned. It could certainly be worse.

Bill Nye the 'Science Guy' Isn't a Scientist

What a damned mountebank.

At WaPo, "Bill Nye: Climate change is “not something you should be debating or denying”":

Bill Nye is NOT a Science Guy. http://t.co/xCh3wjKljV

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) April 25, 2015

“When James Hansen testified before Congress in 1988, I said ‘Wow, that’s really something,’” Nye says. “My first kids’ book in 1993, I had a demonstration on climate change.” Several episodes of “Bill Nye the Science Guy” also covered the subject.

“It’s not something that’s really debated in the scientific community,” Nye says. “The connection between humans and climate change is about as strong, or a little stronger, than the connection between cigarettes and cancer.”

Not, of course, that Nye is actually a scientist. He trained as an engineer, and worked at Boeing in that role, before trying out his comedic skills in a Seattle Steve Martin lookalike contest — the beginnings of his comedy career. But he says his engineering background is more than sufficient to make sense of the issue.

“I’m not a full time climate scientist, but I know enough about it to know it’s not something you should be debating or denying. It’s something you should be getting-on-with-it-ing,” he says.

Somewhere along the way, Nye also became one of Obama’s favorite science voices. This week, Nye traveled along to the Everglades as the president sought to instill a newfound appreciation not only of the climate change problem, but also for our national parks system, its value to the economy and even, yes, our place-specific memories.

“If you increase the amount of carbon dioxide, the planet’s going to get warmer,” Nye says. “So the president and I sat and talked about all of this.”

The Everglades, Nye says, are “a one of a kind on the Earth’s surface.”

I guess it figures. A movement built on the cult of "scientific" consensus elevates a non-scientist to priesthood status, a man who then becomes a spiritual adviser to President Obama, himself a political hack who maintains power through a ruthless cult of personalty that marshals the media's propaganda apparatus to whip-up the ideological fears and hatred of the left's environmental "bitter clingers" who enable the Democrat downsizing of the American dream.

Bill Nye's fomenting shuttupery of the highest order. And he's a bloody fraud. Man.

Well, as Instapundit would say, "Hit back twice as hard."

Obama Commemorating Earth Day with Massive Carbon Footprint in Florida

At the Tampa Bay Times, "Obama's big carbon footprint celebrating Earth Day in Fla":

@VictoriaTaft #EarthDay2015 tweet of the day!! @TwitchyTeam pic.twitter.com/queB62S1Gq

— Tom Thurman (@Tommm1954) April 22, 2015

President Obama will visit the Everglades Wednesday, Earth Day, to call attention to global warming and the administration's efforts to cut carbon pollution across the globe. CBS News reporter Mark Knoller raised an intervesting question with honorary Floridian and former Jim Davis adviser Josh Earnest at the press secretary's daily briefing today. Here's a transcript of the exchange:

     Q    Thanks.  On the Everglades trip, does the President risk undermining his message when he flies to the Everglades on a 747 hundreds of miles to make a statement about climate change?  (Laughter.)
     Q    He could drive.  (Laughter.)
     MR. EARNEST:  It’s a provocative question.
     Q    Take a van.
     MR. EARNEST:  But, no, he doesn't.  The President believes that there are important changes that we can make to reduce carbon pollution in this country, and we can do it in a way that will be good for our economy.  That is precisely the case that the President will be making at the Everglades.  And he’s looking forward to the trip.
     Q    Does he try to minimize the carbon footprint that he leaves whenever he goes anywhere?
     MR. EARNEST:  Well, obviously, the Department of Defense and the Presidential Airlift Group at the United States Air Force is responsible for the President’s transportation.  So you can talk to them about any steps that they may have taken.
     I can say as a general matter that the Department of Defense has acknowledged that climate change does pose a national security threat to the United States.  And there are a lot of practices that the Department of Defense has taken to try to reduce their carbon footprint.  I don't know how that intersects with the use of Air Force One, but you could check with the Air Force on that.
All right?  Thanks, everybody.  Have a good Monday.

Happy Earth Day! Drivers Ditching Hybrids and Electric Vehicles for SUVs

And it's not just about cheaper gas prices these days. Hybrids and EVs just aren't "equal" after all.

At USA Today, "Earth Day, bah! Hybrid, EV owners shift to SUVs":

Owners of gas-electric hybrids and battery electric vehicles are less and less likely to trade for another one, according to data from auto buying and research site Edmunds.com. Even more surprising: they are increasingly likely to shift to SUVs.

The disenchantment with clean-air fuel savers appears to be the result mainly of relatively low fuel prices, though there also seems to be a decline in their being seen as "special."

"For better or worse, it looks like many hybrid and EV owners are driven more by financial motives rather than a responsibility to the environment," says Edmunds.com Director of Industry Analysis Jessica Caldwell. "Three years ago, when gas was at near-record highs, it was a lot easier to rationalize the price premiums on alternative fuel vehicles. But with today's gas prices as low as they are, the math just doesn't make a very compelling case."

It's a blow to the sentiment of Earth Day today, the 45th annual fete for the planet.

And it's bad news for automakers, who need to sell more and more alternative-power vehicles to meet tightening federal fuel-economy rules.

To avoid a backlog, General Motors recently cut the prices of its Spark EV and Cadillac ELR extended-range electric and temporarily halted production of its Chevrolet Volt plug-in car.

Sales of the Nissan Leaf, the best -selling EV in the U.S., are down 27.2% the first quarter this year in a new-vehicle market up 5.6%, says Autodata.

Toyota's Prius gas-electric hybrid is down 7.7%; the plug-in version, fell 61.4%, Autodata says.

Overall, only 45% of this year's hybrid and EV trade-ins have involved the purchase of another alternative-power vehicle, Edmunds data show. That's down from slightly more than 60% in 2012 and is the first time the rate has fallen below 50%...

Canadian Animal-Lover Convicted for 2 Deaths After Parking on Montreal Provincial Highway to Save Baby Ducks and 'Take Them Home'

Further proof that leftism's a narcissistic disease that puts regular people's lives at risk. And her defense attorney was "surprised" at the conviction. Yes, because parking in the middle of the freeway to save baby ducks is so compassionate. Seriously, another case of radical leftist anti-humanism. Thank goodness she's going to the slammer.

Via Blazing Cat Fur, "Canada woman stops for ducks; guilty in 2 deaths":

MONTREAL (AP) — A Canadian woman who parked her car on a highway to help a group of ducklings on the side of the road was found guilty Friday of causing the deaths of a motorcyclist and his passenger daughter who slammed into her car.

Emma Czornobaj was convicted by a jury on two counts of criminal negligence causing death, a charge that carries a maximum life sentence, and two counts of dangerous driving causing death, which comes with a maximum of 14 years in jail.

The 25-year-old was charged in the deaths of Andre Roy, 50, and his daughter Jessie, 16.

She wiped away tears when the verdict was delivered to a packed courtroom in Montreal. Quebec Superior Court Justice Eliane Perreault said the 12-member jury voted unanimously.

Czornobaj was released until her pre-sentence hearing on Aug. 8.

Roy's motorcycle slammed into Czornobaj's car, which was stopped in the left lane of a provincial highway south of Montreal in 2010.

Czornobaj, a self-professed animal lover, told the court that she did not see the ducklings' mother anywhere and planned to capture them and take them home.

Defense lawyer Marc Labelle said his client was stunned by the jury's decision. "The fact that she was involved in the accident in the first place was a hard experience for her," he said. "The fact that she had to go through a trial with a lot of publicity was tough and to be confirmed by 12 citizens, the jury, that the conduct was criminal is a hard blow."

Freakin' demonic people. Let's hope she's raped bloody in the slammer.