For decades, elitist radical environmentalists in academia, politics, and popular culture have vocally longed for a sharp decline in or extinction of the human race, regularly referring to humanity as a “cancer,” “parasite,” or “virus” destroying the planet.

Environmental radicals and their pop culture lackeys have embraced human extinction or near-extinction as the ultimate cure for the destruction they believe humans are wreaking upon Mother Earth. For example, Canadian oil baron Maurice Strong, head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, said, “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” Dr. Charles Wurster, praising the ban on DDT because it would result in millions of unnecessary deaths from malaria in developing countries, said, “People are the cause of all of the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this [ban of DDT] is as good a way as any.”

Need more evidence? University of Texas ecologist Eric Pianka told a meeting of the Texas Academy of Science (TAS) that 90 percent of humans must die in order to save the planet, saying “disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved,” as detailed in Reason magazine among other media outlets. Pianka, whom TAS recognized as the Texas Distinguished Scientist of 2006, went on to explain AIDS was not an efficient killer, being too slow, and he favored the Ebola virus as the best candidate for eliminating 90 percent of his fellow human beings, because it is airborne, highly lethal, and kills its victims in days instead of years. TAS did not rescind Pianka’s award, nor did the University of Texas dismiss or even censure him for his outrageous statements, even though members of its faculty, staff, students, and alumni donor base would be among the victims of his hoped-for worldwide die-off.

In the 1990s, software developer and recording artist Chris Korda founded the now-defunct Church of Euthanasia, holding rallies and protests and even covering a billboard in Boston with a banner proclaiming “Save the Planet—Kill Yourself.” More recently, in 2013, celebrated English documentary producer Sir David Attenborough referred to humans as a “plague on Earth.” Parents, think about this the next time you are considering watching one of his environmental docuganda films with your kids—he thinks you and your children are a “plague.”

In September 2019, Aquaman actor Jason Momoa, undoubtedly a well-informed climate expert, gave a speech before the United Nations in which he called “humanity a disease that is infecting our planet.” His speech was applauded by most government ministers and leaders of environmental nongovernmental organizations in attendance, many of whom took selfies with him. Rocket Mortgage chose Mamoa as its spokesperson in commercials. They must somehow be satisfied with his view those starting families and buying homes with Rocket mortgages are killing the planet.

Even when they don’t go so far as to call openly for mass death, climate scolds flood the media with harangues demanding an end to economic growth and that governments require people to live with less in a zero-growth or (better still, in their view) shrinking economy. Thoughtless, wealthy elites such as Prince Charles and Leonardo DiCaprio—owners of multiple mansions, fleets of fuel-guzzling sports cars, armored vehicles, and yachts—fly around the world on private jets spewing more carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere on a single trip than most people do in a year or even five, to accept awards for saving the planet from climate change, while lecturing the hoi polloi—those multitudes less sanctified than they—to stop flying on commercial airliners, give up their private vehicles, and live in smaller homes or cramped apartments.

In this more-limited but in the long run still-deadly goal of shutting down the economy, the coronavirus has largely granted environmental hypocrites their wish. The world’s economy has ground to a sudden halt. When not forced by their governments to stay home or limit travel, people are self-isolating. Store shelves are empty. Companies that produce desired goods and services have shut down. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions are falling dramatically. Reports indicate that in the time since China first began to lock down the Wuhan province in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak, that nation’s carbon dioxide emissions have fallen by 25 percent, and it is likely similar reductions in emissions are taking place in every country, region, and town that is shutting down normal economic activity.

Christopher Jones of the CoolClimate Network at the University of California-Berkeley told NBC News, “Carbon dioxide is tied to industrial activity, electricity production, and transportation, so anything that affects those sectors will impact greenhouse gases, as well.”

This is what the breakdown of modern society looks like. Contrary to the claims by proponents of the Green New Deal, this is what it would really take to reduce carbon dioxide emissions substantially over the long term. If you like shortages of toilet paper, facial tissues, paper towels, medicine, milk, food, hospital beds, and medical technologies, by all means stop using fossil fuels.

Interestingly, despite world leaders embracing fossil fuel restrictions and utterly pointless international compacts like the Paris climate agreement, they don’t seem to be happy with the current state of the world economy even though it recreates the logical outcome of the policies they are pushing. Instead of celebrating the sharp decline in economic activity and the resulting carbon dioxide reductions, world leaders are now pouring gas on the economy in an attempt to halt the slide and bring back the economic prosperity that people around the world were experiencing before the pandemic, powered largely by low-cost, reliable fossil fuels.

These politicians have rapidly transformed into proponents of greater economic growth, more production, more wholesale and retail sales, more dining and drinking out, and so on. The public wants its restaurants, bars, theaters, and stadiums open. The people want supermarket shelves fully stocked. No one is celebrating this economic freefall, despite its purported climate benefits—at least publicly. Suddenly, everyone is embracing deregulation to allow the rapid construction of hospitals and factories to produce and deliver medical devices, tests, medicines, inoculations, and other necessities. It seems when a crisis arises, all those environmental and public health regulations are recognized as being impediments to the things human beings want and need.

Radical environmentalists and climate alarmists may privately, in their heart of hearts, be cheering the coronavirus-induced economic collapse, but if so, they are keeping awfully quiet about it. Inside Climate News (ICN) has run a couple of stories in the past few days indicating environmental radicals have or should change their tactics in the face of the coronavirus, abandoning plans for strikes and protests and toning down their inflammatory “end of the world” rhetoric. The author writes, “the advent of the coronavirus has advocacy groups treading carefully and moving campaigns online.” Perhaps they don’t want to draw the public’s attention to themselves in the current state of furor, especially the fact that this is what they’ve been clamoring for all along. The backlash could end their donations and careers.

Samantha Gross, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told ICN, “I actually worry about environmentalists getting too happy and worked up about the fact that emissions are going down, because this is really not the way you want to decrease emissions.”

Take note, people! Based on their own past statements, this is exactly what the radical environmentalists and global elites would bequeath you: a world of rampant death from disease and economic stagnation, a planet with far fewer people and much fewer possessions and comforts for those who survive.

We must wake up to the threat these misanthropic climate-crisis fearmongers pose to human flourishing and, after this current pandemic passes, embrace freedom of choice, free minds, and free markets. This is the best hope for creating an economy and health care delivery system able to prevent or respond rapidly to future pandemics.

Originally published on Heartland.org. Used with permission.

Photo by 🇨🇭 Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash.