The Alleged "Blamelessness" of Humanity.

I recently engaged in a Twitter debate (any such debate is always a mistake, I find) with a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for the West Country, who is also a livestock farmer. I should stress that my remarks are not just addressed to her, but against all who share her views on this subject.

An interlocutor in our discussion had voiced his disgust at humanity, given our record of pollution, destruction of the environment and other species, and anthropogenic climate change. I pointed out that our species was responsible for the current Sixth Extinction, and had been responsible for the extinction of very many other forms of life on this planet since our ancestors exterminated the Pleistocene megafauna.

At this point, the Liberal Democrat farmer told me it was wrong to blame humans, that this led to "dehumanisation", and this is what the Nazis had done. I pointed out, in reply, that the Nazis were engaged in separating humans into distinct groups - some labelled "superior", others "inferior", some useful to society, others useless and harmful, and did not blame humans in toto for anything. Indeed, that would have been quite contrary to Nazi ideology. I did not use these exact words, but this was my intention.

What I did not challenge, but should have challenged, was this person's anthropocentric assumptions; however, let us step back first, and look at the point about "blame". If it is wrong to blame humans, then humans are not to blame for anthropogenic climate change - which is rather strange, because the word "anthropogenic" means "human-caused". If it is wrong to blame humans, they aren't to blame for biodiversity loss - which is also anthropogenic! Nor are they to blame for any form of pollution - not air pollution or soil pollution or pollution of the rivers, seas and oceans, not plastic or microplastic pollution!

This, of course, is self-evident nonsense. Who or what else is to blame? God? Little green persons from Outer Space?

Now we come to the second part of the accusation: that "blaming humans leads to dehumanisation". Actually, the Liberal Democrat farmer expressed it as "blaming man leads to dehumanisation" (my emphasis), using the masculine singular noun as a generic term for humanity. No feminist revolt against the patriarchy from this woman! As far as she is concerned, being human is the highest possible state of being, and therefore any derogation from that - any fall from pristine, primordial innocence - is "dehumanisation". Compare and contrast the Christian doctrine of The Fall, particularly in its Calvinist form! (Not one I share, I hasten to add.)

She is absolutely wrong on all counts: being human is not the highest state of being; nor are humans innocent. They have never been "innocent". Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Noble Savage" is as much a myth as Adam and Eve! Humans are not superior to, or separate from, nature, and nor do they have any right to do with or to it, or any part of it, what they please. They have no more rights than any other animal species with respect to the rest of nature.

Her perspective is that of the incorrigible and inveterate carnivore, who rears animals for slaughter and human consumption, and eats meat herself, even though she may well have heard the sounds of dying animals emanating from the slaughterhouse. It is also, it goes without saying, that of the speciesist, who thinks humans are superior to non-human animals, even if they have larger brains in some cases, and even if many show evidence of remarkable intelligence.

I was also accused by her of being a Malthusian and a eugenicist, and of wanting to destroy the human race.

I defended Malthus, pointing out that he is very likely to be vindicated, given that the modern cereal farming methods which were alleged to have refuted his predictions once and for all are destroying soil fertility & killing off insect pollinators (climate change will do the rest), flatly denied being a eugenicist - that charge was pure calumny, as was the absurd charge that I wanted to exterminate my fellow humans (as if I could!).

No: my point, which I explained as patiently as I could, was that the late James Lovelock's Gaia mechanism, which is the biosphere's in-built self-defence system, based on feedback mechanisms, will respond to Homo sapiens' attacks on it by treating us as pathogenic organisms, and will cull our species severely, if not render us extinct.

I have been saying this for quite some time now. I do not expect humans to take the necessary action on climate change and biodiversity loss - which would entail, inter alios, a substantial reduction in the size of the human population, voluntarily. Indeed, I think that is a complete political impossibility. Consequently, I think nature will impose her (or its) solution on us, contrary to our will, and that will take no account whatever of human values, such as equity or social justice. None of us will like the result, but no-one will be able to do a thing about it: it will be completely unstoppable, no matter what precise form, or forms, it takes.