On this month’s Power Hour, I interview Robert Zubrin, author of “Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.”
I discovered Dr. Zubrin’s book two weeks ago, and have since read it twice. It is a fascinating history of the theory and practice of what Zubrin calls “anti-humanism”–the belief that “human beings are pathogens whose activities need to be suppressed in order to protect a fixed ecological order with interests that stand above those of humanity.” Zubrin traces anti-humanism from the doctrines of Thomas Malthus centuries ago, which led to murder and sterilization campaigns in the name of protecting ourselves and the planet from “overpopulation,” to the racist social mis-interpretations of the theory of evolution that led to mass-murder in the name of protecting ourselves and the planet from “degeneration of the gene pool,” to the modern “environmentalist” movement’s war against life-saving practical energy, pesticides, and genetically-modified organisms, in the name of saving ourselves and the planet from an “excessive” human “footprint.”
What you will learn in this book is at once fascinating and disturbing–from the extent of US endorsement of Hitler’s racist policies, to our country’s involvement in forced sterilization campaigns, to the bloody track record of organizations ranging from the Sierra Club to USAID to UNESCO to the Natural History Museum of New York, to the social views of Thomas Malthus and even the heroic Charles Darwin. You will also learn about the inspiring possibilities that will open up in energy and biotechnology if we can liberate ourselves from the “green” stranglehold on technological innovation.