NationStates Jolt Archive

Or so says this website

http://www.vhemt.org/

Or so says this website

http://www.vhemt.org/
It seems they don't want the end of the world, only of the human species, to be achieved by a voluntary end to reproduction.

Another approach with a similar end goal (allowing Earth's biosphere to return to good health) can be found in the excellent Tom Clancy novel "Rainbow Six".

and good luck to them with their modest* little plan


* the asterix here indicates a footnote, wherein I express my slight tendency towards sarcasm in the above post. I have included the footnotes, because along with making me look scholarly and academic, chicks love them.**


** for those of you about to lambaste me for stupidity, that was also sarcastic

I like these guys better.

www.churchofeuthanasia.org/

Remember, Eat a Queer Fetus for Jesus!

Actually, the VHEMT aren't exactly idiots. Most of them adhere quite extremely to the malthusian thought of historic development. Thomas Malthus (among others) indicated that human growth will exponentially increase, whereas the means to sustain that growth will only grow in a linear way. Thus, population pressure (socially, ecologically) will also grow exponentially. An example: when the population grows from 1000 to 1100, that's a population increase of 10%, but a pressure increase of, for instance, 12% - and it will continue to grow exponentially.
Sadly, Malthus' arguments weren't altogether strong enough - although he did make a valid point, he was quite rapidly outgunned by the Smithians, who argued that growth would continue indefinetly. We all know how that's working out for the world, don't we?
Sadly, with the missed chance of Malthusian thought, the trend has been for a long time to have extreme faith in growth and progress - which in turn has proven quite a problem for the world as a whole.
If you think about it, most of the world's problems (like 99%) can be brought down to population pressure: war over territory (the 'Lebensraum'-idea still lives), war over fuels (to sustain economic growth, which in turn is a product of population), and most logically famine and epidemics.
From an evolutionary point of view, all populations have critical barriers (low and high): for instance, rats cannot sustain their populationgroup when there's more than 1 rat per square meter foraging area (approx.), and can also not sustain themselves when there's less than 4 specimens in a group (at least 2, max 3 females) [The actual numbers may vary a little, it's been a while since I've read the article). And so do humans as well. It's quite logical if you think about it. For instace, take HIV. A group of 10 people has perhaps a 1% chance to catch HIV, but a group of 20 doesn't have 2% but for instance 2.5% - greater numbers (linearly) make for an exponentially greater number of potential relations (and thus: chances to get infected).
Humans have all kinds of mechanisms which automatically try to keep the population down. For instance, in circumstances of famine, women will cease to ovulate - and thus, cease to become pregnant. This keeps tabs on growth under unfruitful circumstances. Yet, medicine has worked hard to 'cure' this, by providing such women hormonal cures to still be able to become pregnant (the Church wasn't quite innocent in this matter, mind you). I'm of course talking about Africa, but such natural mechanism has also been active in Early Modern European history.
Thus, what these people want is to keep tabs on human growth, which they see as parasitic for the world - this may seem quite mad, but there are some decent arguments to support their view. Although I'm no favor of self-extinction, I do believe that we should keep tabs on our growth - otherwise, nature will do it for us, and you just know that's gonna hurt...

I don't think that Malthus theory works in modern industrialized society, where we have a bountiful array of birth control options available. Most of the industrialized countries of the world are going to go into sharp population decline in the upcoming decades anyway and the VHEMT people are probably going to get their wish more or less. Russia for example is already losing hundreds of thousands of people every year in population decline. While we still have huge population growth in the crappy parts of the world (Mid East, Africa, India etc) as these areas get more advanced women will have less children.