http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,190479,00.html

Professor: Many Humans Have to Die for Earth to Live

Tuesday , April 04, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas — A University of Texas biology professor has been targeted by talk radio, bloggers and vitriolic e-mails — including a death threat — after a published report that he advocated death for most of the population as a means of saving the Earth.

But Dr. Eric Pianka said Monday his remarks about what he believes is an impending pandemic were taken out of context.

"What we really need to do is start thinking about controlling our population before it's too late," he said. "It's already too late, but we're not even thinking about it. We're just mindlessly rushing ahead breeding our brains out."

The public furor began when The Gazette-Enterprise of Seguin, Texas, reported Sunday on two speeches Pianka made last month to groups of scientists and students about vanishing animal habitats and the explosion of the human population.

The newspaper's Jamie Mobley attended one of those speeches and also interviewed Forrest Mims, an amateur scientist and author who heard Pianka speak early last month before the Texas Academy of Science.

After the newspaper's report appeared, it was circulated widely and posted on "The Drudge Report." It quickly became talk-radio fodder.

The Gazette-Enterprise quoted Pianka as saying disease "will control the scourge of humanity. We're looking forward to a huge collapse."

The professor weighed the killing power of various diseases such as bird flu and HIV, insisting neither would yield the needed results.

"HIV is too slow. It's no good," he said. He went on to discuss how an Ebola pandemic could wipe out a significant chunk of the human population.

• Click here to view the FOXNews.com Bird Flu Center.

Pianka said he was only trying to warn his audience that disease epidemics have happened before and will happen again if the human population growth isn't contained.

He said he believes the Earth would be better off if the human population were smaller because fewer natural resources would be consumed and humans wouldn't continue to destroy animal habitats. But he said that doesn't mean he wants most humans to die.

But Mims, chairman of the academy's environmental science section, told The Associated Press there was no mistaking Pianka's disdain for humans and desire for their elimination.

"He wishes for it. He hopes for it. He laughs about it. He jokes about it," Mims said. "It's got to happen because we are the scourge of humanity."

David Marsh, president of the Texas Academy of Science, did not return telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment. No recording or transcript of either that speech or another delivered last Friday at St. Edward's University in Austin was available for review by the AP.

The Gazette-Enterprise said it reviewed a transcript of the original speech, which was provided on the condition that it not be distributed.

Allan Hook, a St. Edward's biology professor who heard both speeches, said Pianka "wasn't so perhaps adamant in his own personal views of what he thinks might happen" in his second lecture.

But Hook declined to elaborate on what Pianka said in the earlier speech, which Pianka delivered while being honored as the academy's 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

University of Texas officials don't plan to take any action against Pianka, university spokesman Don Hale said.

"Dr. Pianka has First Amendment rights to express his point of view," Hale said. "We have plenty of faculty with a lot of different points of view and they have the right to express that point of view, but they're expressing their personal point of view."

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coulda swore we had this but couldn't find it. while he may not have gotten his point across very well, the guy's dead on. i guess people just don't like being told 'this earth isn't yours to whore around'

Other than pandemic ridden doom and gloom scenarios and violations of personl freedom, how does a nation go about implementing population control?

By starting WW3.

one simple thing, and it sounds nuts, is actually border control. here we go:

when there were so many tribes and civilizations thousands of years ago, these different tribes and civilizations actually controlled their borders. for example, tribe a would not ever go onto tribe b's land, and so forth. why wouldn't they? if a member of tribe a went onto tribe b's land, a member of tribe b would kill that trespassing member. that was it. don't come onto our land.

why did they do this? it threatened them. they knew there was a reason that member of tribe a was coming onto their land -- let's say it was probably for food. why for food? because they didn't have enough food on their land, because they probably either foolishly ate it all or they ran the place dry because they didn't control their population well.

if they allowed another tribe to come onto their land, now their sources would run dry and soon, there would be less food and tribe b would begin to die off, just like what tribe a is facing.

basically, it makes people control their growth or become extinct. they don't have a choice like we currently do to move off wherever they please.

I agree that we are headed for a huge collapse, and that we need to start looking at viable means of population control, but the cheering for the death of the human race by a whole bunch of respected scientists displays to me why science and religion are equally as dangerous when used for an ignorant purpose. The Earth itself isn't more important then humanity, and the solution to our problems is not a giant reduction in the human population. There are millions of planets out there, and we should be very concerned about keeping our own planet in check. But once humanity is dead the Earth can go crashing into the nearest celestial body as far as I am concerned.

When I get really down on illegal immigration, it has little to do with jobs. It is about overpopulation, and the fact that illegals spawn like rabbits. This country cannot sustain its growth under the current stress of its population, and for us to be fed millions in addition who create tens of millions more it will balloon into complete fucking shit during our lifetimes. Just throwen it out there I'm glad a lot of people have some very Utopian ideas that will void my pessimism. All we need is love, the shit will work itself out.

i think the Earth would eventually prove to be a lot stronger than we are giving her credit for.

"Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy."

http://qntm.org/destroy

mother nature is already and has been, taking steps to control the human population via cancer, AIDS and various other diseases, with the occassional tsunami and flooding, earthquakes, tornados and heat waves

You guys sound like hippy throwbacks from the sixties.

THE WORLD CAN'T SUPPORT A BILLION PEOPLE!

http://www.theskyiscrape.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=38348

i fucking knew we had it. damnit.

merge mods?

at some point, we will reach a human population that this earth cannot sustain. i suppose you cannot accept that, though?

How much border control are we talking here? I think it's extremely unreasonable to become as territorial as the ancient tribes of the Americas were.

Business is conducted on a global scale nowadays. Tourism is a huge industry. People go everywhere. Illegal. Legal. Doesn't matter - they go.

And what about technology?

It is bullshit to say that the earth cant support 1 billion people. Only Asia alone has a bit more than 2.5 billions

i know. i think what littlewing was referencing was what hippies said in the 60's.

What's funny is that the people who'll be belittling this professor are the SAME ONES WHO BELIEVE THAT THE EVENTS OF REVELATION WILL HAPPEN SOON.

If we are to achieve sustainablity, we have to replace energy with intelligence. Depending on fossil fuels and insecticides is not going to cut it. This earth can support a huge, huge number of people. All we have to do is find a way to work with and within the environment.

"The earth is fine, the people are fucked"

George Carlin is a bright man.

I don't think anyone is claiming that. Even with your diminished capacity for independent thought you have to admit that at some point in the future the Earth will not be able to support the human population. I'm not going to venture a guess at what that magic number is but you don't have to be a genius to figure it can't be all that far off (maybe a couple thousand years).