Death Wish

Six billion horrible, agonizing deaths from an Ebola pandemic - that is the Easter wish of University of Texas Professor Eric Pianka, who is the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist at the Texas Academy of Science, but who ought also to hold the Paul Ehrlich Chair at the National Academy of Hysterical Apocalyptic Extremist Nincompoopery.

To read Pianka's ravings, you'd think it was still 1968:

"Earth’s population is growing....We will see a point when we reach the carrying capacity – there aren’t enough resources.”

Pianka believes the planet’s current population of 6.5 billion is much too high, and 700 million would be the ideal number.

He says people are turning Earth into "fat, human biomass” and leaving the planet "parched,” the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons reports.

As if that weren’t outrageous enough, he goes on to say that human life is no more valuable than other forms of life, such as reptiles, and tells students that each one of them will get to bury nine others.

"This is really an exciting time,” he says. [emphasis added]

I wonder if anybody's asked Pianka if he thinks we should wait for nature to take its grisly course or if "scientists" like him should help expedite the process. And, if so, where that process should begin, and with whom. After all, we, the overpopulators, deserve to know who's going to feel the excitement first. Inquiring minds want to know.

Makes me wonder if Pianka is a Matrix mark. There's a scene in the first movie where Agent Smith goes on a long, embittered spiel to a captured Morpheus about how humans are the only mammalian species on Earth that doesn't live in equilibrium with its environment; how we multiply and spread, consuming every last natural resource, before expanding yet again; how mankind is more like a virus, a plague infecting the planet - and that the Matrix is the cure. Set Smith's and Pianka's soliloquoys side by side and it's difficult to tell the difference.

I'll spare you the rather gapingly obvious Nazi parallels. Ditto the fact that, given flat or declining Western birthrates versus the exploding populations of the Muslim world, the followers of Mohammed - and the Chinese, naturally - would be the logical starting places for the Great Winnowing. I will, however, betcha that that isn't where Pianka would start, and that he fully expects to be in that select surviving 10%. If he proves to be less than immune to his recommended "treatment" for the planet, he'll blame George Bush with his dying gurgle for committing global genocide. And if he does live, he can always move to South America, just like other necrophiliacal "scientists" of his breed. I would imagine Hugo Chavez would have a Joseph Mengele professorship would be open somewhere; and if not, he'd create one for the Texas who made all his dreams come true.

Okay, that was one gapingly obvious Nazi parallel. But no more, I promise.