Commentary: The Dark Side of Deep Ecology

By James A. Marusek

Editor's Note:  I originally published this article on October 29, 2009.  But this is just as profound now as it was then, and worth bringing back, often!

Mr. Maursek's old site, IMPACT, is no longer available. However, his work can now be found at The Other Side of the Global Warming Debate and The Legacy of the Environmental Movement which may be found at these new addresses. I would like to thank Mr. Marusek for allowing me to republish this excerpt which is from a much larger commentary, Solar “Grand Minima” Preparedness Plan, i.e. Little Ice Age Preparedness Plan. RK

Deep Ecologists push radical depopulation, perhaps to as few as 500 million people worldwide, as the best medicine to cure the human infection and again permit nature to flourish. Some believers have become advocates of thinning the world’s population through genocide, abortion, euthanasia, pestilence, famine and war. But some Deep Ecologist are actively pursuing this objective now with whatever means are available as we stand by and watch from the sidelines.

Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. Every year, nearly 1.5 billion people --mostly children under five -- suffer from preventable water-borne diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, amoebic dysentery, bacterial gastroenteritis, giardiasis, schistosomiasis, and various viral diseases such as hepatitis A. Yet now there is a mounting campaign, led by environmental activists in wealthy industrialized nations, to eliminate every last man-made chlorine molecule from the face of the earth.

As Greenpeace's Joe Thornton explains, There are no uses of chlorine which we regard as safe. Yet chlorination -- considered one of the greatest advances ever in public health and hygiene -- is almost universally accepted as the method of choice for purifying water supplies. In the United States alone, 98 percent of public water systems are purified by chlorine or chlorine-based products. In 1991, an epidemic of cholera started in Peru and spread to the rest of Latin American. This epidemic reached the U.S. in 1992 via an outbreak among 75 commercial airline passengers from Peru. This epidemic is reported to have caused as many as 1 million cases of cholera and as many as 10,000 deaths.

Although the epidemic was reportedly started by a ship which dumped its bilge within reach of Peruvian waters, the epidemic's spread has been credited in part to the Peruvian government's decision to stop chlorinating drinking water supplies under the urging of environmental activist.

Please read - Cholera Epidemic in U.S. Courtesy of EPA "Science" and Dirty Water; Will the United States repeat Peru's chlorine folly?

Ten thousand people were killed and 10 to 15 million left homeless when a cyclone slammed into India's eastern coastal state of Orissa in October 1999. The U.S. Agency for International Development provided corn and soy meal as humanitarian aid to thousands of hungry storm victims. A staunch member of this eco-religion, Vandana Shiva, of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology demanded this food aid distribution immediately be halted because it contained genetically modified (GM) food and accused the United States of using the people of India as guinea pigs. This is despite the fact that Americans have been growing and eating biotech crops for years with no ill effects (about one third of all the corn grown in the United States has been genetically modified).

In 2002, eco-religious groups from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Comers International convinced the government of Zambia to block the distribution of American-donated genetically enhanced corn to its starving people. As 3 million people in his country face starvation, the president of Zambia let some 15 million metric tons of donated corn sit untouched in storage because some of it was genetically modified.

Please read; Biotech Food Politics: Zambia Revisited and Africans Starve Rather than Accept Bounty of GM Corn and Zambia Allows Its People To Eat

In 2008 a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has sickened more than 100,000 and killed at least 4,500. A simple innovation, using GM rice plants, to produce a rice-based oral rehydration solution was developed. This innovation has been shown to cut the duration of disease in children in Peru. But its introduction and use in Zimbabwe was opposed by various eco-religious groups.

Environmental activist urged Chad to fight global warming and the government responded by banning the manufacture, importation and use of charcoal – the sole source of fuel for 99% of Chadians. Women giving birth could not even find a bit of charcoal to heat water for washing.

Another dark aspect of this religious movement is it spawns religious fanatics, such as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), that believe terrorism such as the destruction of property and threatening human lives, are justified in the name of their eco-religious beliefs.