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The Great Distraction: ‘Overpopulation’ Is Back in Town
What’s next to hit New York after Hurricane Irene? If you’re in the heart of Times Square during the month of September, you’ll get the chance to see a scary video about overpopulation playing every hour on a huge screen. Sponsored by the Human Overpopulation Campaign of the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the video aims to persuade people that the population explosion is the root cause of environmental destruction and that we need to stop it now.
The timing of the video could not be in poorer taste. September marks the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the Twin Towers. The tragedy of that very real explosion will no doubt weigh heavily on people’s minds and hearts. The period should be a time to commemorate lives lost and challenge the strategic use of violence against civilians, whether by terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or national militaries like our own.
Why then is CBD choosing this moment to launch its video? Ostensibly, it’s because world population is soon to pass the 7 billion people mark. But the real truth is that fears about overpopulation are trendy again -- and well-funded by rich donors. A “sympathetic advertiser”, for example, is bankrolling most of the video.
CBD is a relatively small player in a huge public opinion campaign mounted by the population lobby. Almost everyday, in a variety of media, we are being told that the world’s serious environmental and social ills are caused by too many people. This begs two key questions. Are we really experiencing a population explosion? And just who and what are wreaking the most havoc on the planet?
Unbeknownst to many Americans, the so-called population explosion actually ended in the last century as growth rates came down more rapidly than anticipated. Family size has fallen to a global average of 2.45 children and is projected to fall to two or less in the next few decades. The main reason why global population is projected to increase to 9 billion by 2050, and possibly 10 billion by 2100 (a high projection that is disputed by many demographers), is that currently a large percentage of young people are entering their reproductive years. High fertility persists in only a few countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, because of deep class and gender inequalities and the failure of elites to invest in education, employment and health services, including accessible, high-quality family planning.
The real challenge before us is to plan for the addition of 2-3 billion more people on the planet in a sustainable way. Fortunately, that is possible, but only if we address the real causes of environmental pressures. Instead of blaming overpopulation, Americans need to get serious about climate policy, conservation, the transition to renewable energy, and mass transport. And we need to challenge the grotesque and growing inequality of wealth and power in our nation that fuels conspicuous consumption and weakens the government’s commitment to environmental regulation.
It’s also high time for environmentalists to stop turning a blind eye toward the role of the military in environmental degradation. The Pentagon is a major emitter of greenhouse gases, burning the same amount of fossil fuel everyday as the entire nation of Sweden. From weapons production to war zones, its ecological bootprint crushes and pollutes the earth.
Instead of lumping all people together into one destructive human mass, it’s important to carefully assess which human activities harm the environment and which enhance it. CBD blames overpopulation for the accelerated extinction of plant and animal species. Missing from this simple picture are the ways in which different systems of production yield very different environmental results.
Take the case of food. Industrial agriculture typically erodes biodiversity, while peasant farming often protects crop genetic diversity and creates a welcoming habitat for birds and other species. A Monsanto executive and a Central American small organic farmer may both be part of the human population, but there the resemblance ends.
Equally troubling about overpopulation propaganda is the way it undermines reproductive rights. While its purveyors claim they support family planning, they view it more as a means to an end – reducing population growth, rather than as a right in and of itself. The distinction may seem subtle, but it is not. Family planning programs designed to limit birth rates treat women, especially poor women and women of color, as targets rather than as individuals worthy of respect. Quality of care loses out to an obsession with the quantity of births averted.
The negative view of babies as future polluters and carbon emitters also plays into the hands of anti-abortion activists who are always seeking new ways to portray themselves as pro-life, and the pro-choice and environmental movements as anti-child. At a time when reproductive rights are under severe attack by conservative forces, the population lobby is playing with a fire it may not be able to put out.
So if you find yourself in Times Square in September, my advice is to walk on by CBD’s scary video. More worthy of a visit are Ground Zero or nearby Wall Street, the source of so many of our current financial woes. The focus on overpopulation is a great distraction from what really ails the body politic and the planet. No wonder it’s an advertiser footing the bill.
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483 Comments so far
Show AllPerhaps you need to hang out with a better class of people?
You might be amused if these are your concerns by the (at times truly bizarre) interview with Fuller in the Feb 1972 issue of "Playboy", back when they published lengthy interviews with public intellectuals.
The 'better' class of people?
Better class???
ORLY
For someone who goes by the name 'actualleftist' that's quite the classist remark. Do you think that the rich don't also live their lives pondering the 'great' questions? They might be more polite about 'getting their dick wet', or more epicurean about their favourite dish of nibbles. #3 is bang on when it comes to describing the motives of the 'better' class.
What makes you assume that "better class" of people is someone rich?
Who's the classist, hmm?
You're the one who called for the op to cultivate friends with a 'better class of people.
Senility kicking in?
You still don't get it.
What makes you assume that "better" class is rich people? What makes you assume that when someone says "better" class, he is talking about rich people?
Only a classist would make such an assumption. So, you're a racist, and a classist. Not surprising. Those who whine about supposed over population nearly all are.
And BTW, I did not make the original statement about "better" class of person.
Obviously I don't mean "class" in the Marxist sense! Are you really that thick? I mean better-behaved people who in between dick-wettings do some useful work.
Funny, I've never heard anyone suggest that people were too busy eating ribs and having sex to work hard at evil schemes like the tar sands pipeline...
I think anyone reading the thread can see that the 'overpopulation' people have a whole lot of vitriol and hype and nothing whatever in the way of data. Distraction indeed!
If they're paid, it can't be very well. ;)
Sorry if I came across as merely vulgar or flippant. I was trying to make a serious point. As the work of evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker has shown the parts of our brains that allow us our formidable powers of abstract reasoning represent, in a sense, a rather recent and 'thin' grafting upon the more primitive majority of brain mass we share with other animals. You can discipline your mind to work on a higher level task, solving an algebra problem, designing a new airplane, or writing a post on common dreams, but as soon as you let your guard down your brain reverts to working on what it was designed to do ( by evolution ) obtaining food, sex and status within the social group. The very things that assure survival and passing your genes along to the next generation. This is largely the same process for a New York attorney as it is for a baboon on the plains of Africa.
'Civilization', for the most part, represents a situation where elites rise up and, thru the exploitation of others, are able to satiate their need for sex, food and status to such an extent that they can devote much of their time to inventing things and 'solving problems'. The tragedy is that the part of our brains responsible for self restraint seems to have not kept up. Thus our civilization seems to be heading into the abyss and we have no more collective ability to stop it then would seven billion monkeys.
"'Civilization', for the most part, represents a situation where elites rise up and, thru the exploitation of others, are able to satiate their need for sex, food and status to such an extent that they can devote much of their time to inventing things and 'solving problems'."
Brilliant.
Yes, the suggestion that data could be presented in a lone pie chart which would devalue the overpopulation claim is flippant, and not at all useful.
I can tell you that I spent 7 years of my life 50 weeks per year 5 days per week better than 8 hrs per day collecting data which indicated not only that there's enough to go around for everyone (IF we have the will to plan wisely) but on top of this collecting techniques and tried and true practices to allow us to "do more with less." I spent every work day up to neck in facts and figures on these very issues and I've crunched massive amounts of data on food, water, energy, literacy and other issues. The WWW chart is the tip of that iceberg. I have a background in this and number of years of experience in this very area and when people leave drive-by discouraging comments I'd like very much to know where their data is coming from and how many years YOU have spent attempting to answer these very questions professionally.
The point of this all was to defeat that notion that everyone should get up in the morning with the idea that there isn't enough to go around for everyone, that there are "natural" losers who "can't" be fed and sheltered, so why bother trying.
I find the CommonDreams comments section quite depressing. About 25% of the commenters post ideas that are worth trying and the other 75% come up with obtuse arguments as to why those would "never work" and we're all doomed and there's no point in even trying! Why are you even reading a website like this, let alone commenting? Perhaps your time would be better spent on suicide if your primary concern is that there are too many humans on a doomed planet.
Your Pinker comments do not in any way attempt to address the issue as to whether or not there is in fact enough MATERIAL and KNOW-HOW on this planet right now to sustainably feed and clothe and shelter and educate people. You're just throwing out a wave of obfsuscation based in something not at all directly related to that issue.
SYD: Studies have been done that show that sometimes (and I'd say more than goes on record) the observer inadvertently influences that which is being observed. In my view, a lot of research reinforces the belief system of the individual conducting it. So with that being said, there is an equal spiritual thirst that exists in many persons. And since I would not (in this lifetime) know what it felt like to get my dick wet, I might add that sometimes celibates have known intensive mystical experience that transports them utterly out of the body and its various hungers.
In other words, once the physical appetites get met, the human ape is meant to reach for the numinous and ponder the mysteries, inclusive of the age-old, 'Why am I here... on this oddest of planets?" And for the altruistic, "How can I use the time allotted to make a difference that benefits others?"
Food for thought. Freud, for instance, a Taurus, and deeply identified with the "truth" of his physical body, presumed that women in his time period, frustrated largely due to the laws of the time that disallowed their ownership ofproperty, the right to vote, a sense of adult sovereignty, or even the freedom to choose their own marriage partner... were seen, by him, as showing a common neurosis that he felt was linked to the missing penis.
This is ludicrous; however, it's been taken seriously by a field dominated by MALE doctors and psychiatrists. The feminist can make a compelling case, although it's seldom given status in academe (since it would thereby challenge the patriarchal foundation of much thought that's already set there) that men suffer from birth envy. Today's porn which often simulates some vile sort of atavistic ritualistic maiming of the female body suggests a deep anguish aimed at (or around) the gateway that gives (or certainly conducts) life. Oddly compelling evidence... certainly as much as penis envy!
On the latter, when I lived with an Aries partner for years (in the Florida Keys) and he felt my personal power to be intolerable, he'd say, "You just want one!" (He meant, a dick. In other words, he used that canard on me.) My response, however, outwitted him since we DID have particularly good chemistry. I would answer, "No thanks. I'm on the low maintenance plan. I'll just borrow yours should the need arise."
My post intends to point out that a lot of "truth" is based on what's already IN the eye of the beholder.
Thinking about the 3 things you listed, does not preclude thinking about other things too.
So, not a problem.
Your point on pockets of overly-concentrated populations is well taken. I know for a fact you can travel over vast spans of the US & Africa [& I suspect S America & Asia also] & see hardly any people. The areas that ARE OVER-Populated are the Big Mega Cities [IE NYC, London, Paris, Tokyo, Calcutta, Moscow, Mexico City, Beijing, etc...] So what is the current neo-liberal global so-called 'free'-market policies [IE: GATT, NAFTA, WTO, etc] incentivizing? Driving people off their land where they could be growing food to feed their families & communities - into big Cities & Slums thus increasing population & poverty pressures in these locations!
Excellent points, especially on the neo-lib policies driving population into unwise and wasteful clusters.
Again this isn't an issue of "too many people" but of arranging them stupidly.
We might even say that the problem is that people are "arranged" at all.
Not being pedantic, I mean that one way to see the flaw in the economic system is that it robs many, many people (poor AND rich) of their ability to choose what they are doing and where, and instead either tells them what to do where or gives them some false choices.
If people could "arrange" themselves (i.e. be without fear of want) where would they go and what would they do?
To me that is the deep insight of Fuller's point about each new mouth to feed also being a brain to solve problems.
As soon as we recall that these are PEOPLE we are talking about (Homo Sapiens, "Wise Men") we suddenly find ourselves with ABUNDANT resources. ;)
Sort of, yes eliminating capitalist predation forced migration, etc, might help us greatly, and buy us 50, maybe even a 100 years, but some problems can't be solved with more brains, if you are in the dessert dying of thirst no amount of brains will save you if no water is available.
The more people, equals more brains, equals no population problem EVER was an argument by notorious right wing regressive Julian Simon, hopefully one can see how threadbare ASSUMING more people and more brain power automatically solves problems is when it's a right winger making that nonsensical argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Simon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
Once again I have to point to the massive UN population study up through 2300 I posted in this thread that is calling for the brakes to be put on population increase by 2075, followed by a brief slight decline and a levelling-off at about 10 billion.
Not only are people showing a clear ignorance of the actual projections, but people are continuing the nonsensical assertion that humans are going to THRIVE in the resourcesless Hell you predict AND REVERSE OUR GROWTH RATE SLOWDOWN! Some of you who clearly don't understand proper use of the word "exponential" are further predicting "exponential growth!"
It is de rigeur among those who obsess about overpopulation to chant the phrase "exponential growth" as it it were some magic mantra.
A doubling period of every couple of decades isn't a "mantra" pretend atheist, but it is a reality.
You really like demonstrating your ignorance don't you?
Hint, pretend enviromentalist, google "exponential", then read up.
Good thing nobody but the dark visions in your imagination are ASSUMING such things then, eh?
One of the advantages of "more brains" that some of us have found over the last period of time is the discovery that there are means BEYOND "eliminating capitalist predation forced migration etc." for addressing Peak Human Population, even if we don't include a list of them in every one of our posts for the convenience of readers. ;)
Just because we have enough hubris to call ourselves "wise men" or "thinking men" does not make it so. The only species to ever put the planet into danger of the runaway greenhouse effect most assuredly does not deserve the name "sapiens."
If we can all develop an appetite for insects, that will surely help put off The Day of Ecological Reckoning--fear not you free marketeers, companies and food scientists around the world are already getting the bugs ready for our stores and fast food joints.
Who in their right mind would want to cut short this grand experiment to demonstrate that you can have infinite growth of consumption on a finite planet--surely the yet to be born geniuses will enable us to transcend the biophysical laws of Planet Earth. And if not, we can always colonize the Moon and Mars--we colonized America when Europe got crowded didn't we. Come on you wimpy libs. Where is that sense of optimism that the best is yet to come.
Who is promoting an "infinite growth of consumption"?
Funny, I thought I posted a chart that called for using less energy and stopping wasting our resources on war, and you've turned that into "infinite growth of consumption"!
Actualleftist...overpopulation a canard in a world in which we refuse to use resources wisely. But Actualleftist, the world we actually inhabit is not the one of your fantasies but rather the messy one you referred to where people do not use the resourses in in a wise way. In this world we actually inhabit, how many people do you think the Earth will support?
How many? In the world as it actually is, at present (which said "present" is ALWAYS in flux)? Alot less than presently exist, and rather rapidly, due to being saddled with a mindset that sees only a problem, where there actually exists an opportunity-for-change, ALSO being saddled with an oligarchy hell-bent on a massive "culling" of "their herd".
Thank you for showing up. With people, it's also possible to CHANGE the desert, to forest/grassland (the old NAWAPA proposal from the 60's would have started doing exactly this). Then a place like Arizona might hold 20 million or more people, comfortably. Obviously,there is some theoretical number "X" that would be impossible to support on Earth, with Earth resources. It is FAR FROM OBVIOUS what the optimum number is. THAT number changes with the changing base of knowledge in design science and technology. The Vikings felt crowded in dark-age Norway (their sci & tech base being more primitive, thus unable to support as many people as present-day Norway).
Massive ecological engineering THAT has never had unintended consequences has it? Green revolution fail like salting the soil ring any bell?s You people will resort to ANY dangerous thing to not have the fertility cult be questioned won't you?
Everything has unintended consequences. Humans correct & continue. Desalination is relativly simple. The bigger problem is pulling the already in-place salts after inserting the water. It'll require halophytes to pull that salt out. It takes preparation, no doubt, and "course corrections". And much more flora & fauna will be enabled to live in a former desert, now green. This I just picked up from a few minutes of surfing. Imagine a dedicated team of scientists/engineers/technicians on this problem. But you seem more attracted to mass extinctions (especially of humanity). I leave you to your dark imaginings.
I prefer to live amongst the original co-evolved primal eco-system of planet earth and not amongst linear rows of Bradford pears in a vast traffic island world thank you very much. Does anyone on the "left" read Thoreau, or Edward Abbey, or listen to Joni Mitchell|? "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot," that wasn't praise douche rag!
Dr. Hartmann,
Your opinions are utterly unsupported in this article. You've also insinuated and drawn libelous and hyperbolic analogies. It is impossible for anyone to stand with or against you on these subjects because you've brought no facts to the discussion and taken no defensible position. My guess is that you're presuming people will have read your book "Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxiety," which, on your website is self-praised as "...designed to make students, scholars, activists and policymakers think critically about how environmental and biological fears are implicated in the construction of threats to local, national and global security." Perhaps you provide meaningful support for your opinions there. Critical thinking, as defined by dictionary.com, is "disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence." This opinion piece fails in at least two of these criteria. Specifically, I'd like you to support these two sentences. "The real challenge before us is to plan for the addition of 2-3 billion more people on the planet in a sustainable way. Fortunately, that is possible, but only if we address the real causes of environmental pressures."
All the nuances of the overpopulation argument are valid - sure rich nations need to consume less. Of course underdeveloped nations are mostly not responsible for environmental destruction...
*BUT*
Overpopulation is overwhelmingly at play here and WILL only get worse. Our population grows exponentially, not in a regular, linear fashion. You only need to look at the very simple math involved to reach the conclusion that we will ZOOM towards 9 billion very quickly, even at a 2.4% growth rate.
That rate of growth will surely outpace any expected benefits we can glean from technology and conservation - especially since our world "leaders" seem politically frozen in 1970.
Earth will not support all of us moving forward and before long, it won't require man-made die-offs to cap our populations.
"Overpopulation is overwhelmingly at play here ..."
Why is that, because you say so? The burden of proof that there isn't enough to go around is very much on the backs of the people who (shudder!) want to REDUCE THE EXCESS POPULATION, and with the stakes this high I should hope you might be able to point to one or two facts to back that up.
Are you volunteering to be part of the cull, incidentally? You are on the internet, after all, that's quite a resource usage with your energy and the computer and so forth... I imagine you'll be among the first of the volunteers for canning at the Soylent Green plant... no?
If the ongoing Mass Extinction does not do it for you, I must assume that you have no appreciation for the web of life and our place in it, and our dependence on it--I must assume Actualleftist that you would have no problem with a human diet of insects, the fact that your grand child will rarely, if ever, taste wild sea food, that they will live in a world with unparalled human suffering. Welcome to the future--the emerging Earth version of Easter Island. I hope you will be able to find a bit of shade my friend.
See part 5 of www.StudentsForTheEarth.org
The fertility cultists are ALL anthropocentric to the core, and would just as soon live on a space station drinking Tang (tm) as hike in a Redwood forest and eat a heritage organic apple. :( x 1000
What does the Reichstag fire have to do with overpopulation?
I'm sorry. Did I say Reichstag fire? That was a different time and a different place, even though it had the same result. What I meant to say was: The Tragedy of 911.
Thanks. That thought ran through my mind, too.
Well, i am in no position to quote statistics or speak to these issues. However, it seems intuitively obvious to me that 'be fruitful and multiply' as a directive from 'above', has long outlived its used by date. Perhaps it should be reconsidered as ' be creatively fruitful and multiply wisdom and compassion'. Just a thought.
Secondly. What is the 'ground zero' connection here?
Or to bastardize a line from one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, 'Much Ado About Nothing'
'is the Earth not peopled?'
Which is why the statistical evidence that population growth is very much slowing should be some reassurance to folks worried about the Global Population.
But it never seems to be, does it?
If you want freedom, whose rules should you play by?
Do you need permission to start a new system? a new government?
Does the Earth not balance itself out with each Natural Disaster?
Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
I would suggest reading "Overshoot" by William Catton. It's the best book I ever read on the population issue, mainly because Catton eschews ideology in favor of dispassionate sociological and ecological analysis.
This article is so much liberal-progressive-evangelical BS. Are all Amerikans delusional? This author strikes me ass the evil twin sister of Michele Bachman. As human civilization attempts to sail between the Scylla of AGW on the one side, and the Charybdis of post peak oil on the other, ms. Hartmann will offer us the simplistic platitude of 'educate baby, educate!' to complement ms. Bachman's 'drill baby, drill!'. I can picture them parked side by side at Starbucks, oblivious to each others presence, Michele in her SUV, Betsy in her Prius, both talking on their cellphones with agents, booking airline flights and making speaking engagements, both planning to save the world!
We are all "one destructive human mass" from an environmental perspective. Two hundred years ago there were several million elephants and less then a billion people on the planet. Now there are only a few hundred thousand elephants left but seven billion people. It is not so much that we are evil or ignorant, but rather that we all have a strong natural instinct to be successful, live well and procreate, and we have, to the point of an overshoot that threatens complete disaster.
I don't think I am a bad guy, but here is how my day went yesterday. I went for a hike in my pasture and admired the birds and butterflies (no, really, I did!). I shot a woodchuck that had been raiding the garden. I had some oatmeal (imported from Ireland) for lunch. I changed the oil in my John Deere tractor. I hopped on my motorcycle (that gets 55mpg, but needs a new set of imported tires every 5000 miles!) and drove by the acres of 'round up ready' corn and soybeans my renter has planted on my farm to my job at a UPS depot 20 miles away. On my break I ate an orange imported from Australia and peeled the plastic rapper off the latest issue of National Geographic. I browsed thru an article on orphan elephant rehabilitation in Kenya. There was a photo of a baby elephant recovering from having a spear thrust some 10-12 inches into it's head. Seems some local Masai, let's call him Mishak, was annoyed that elephants were trampling all over his sustainable-organic farming operation, as elephants are wont to do, and reacted in a perfectly natural way, he attempted to kill them.
Now I am sure Betsy would love to take away my rifle and Mishak's spear and sit us both down to educate us. She would try to convince me to move closer to my job and bicycle to work and turn my farm into a organic vegetable growing coop while convincing Mishak to become an entrepreneur and open a wildlife tourism business. Sorry, Betsy, but I just don't think that is going to happen.
Our way of life is unsustainable. Seven billion people is unsustainable. Nature has awoken to the threat we pose and is making adjustments to put us back in our place. We must plan for a very different future with far fewer people.
"This article is so much liberal-progressive-evangelical BS. "
Bullshit. The people who scream the loudest about overpopulation are liberals. One of the easiest ways to tell if someone is a liberal, is to find out what his / her vies on population are. If s/he screams, cries, whines, moans, about overpopulation, then there is a very good chance that s/he is a liberal.
"As human civilization attempts to sail between the Scylla of AGW on the one side, and the Charybdis of post peak oil on the other, ms. Hartmann will offer us the simplistic platitude of 'educate baby, educate!' to complement ms. Bachman's 'drill baby, drill!'
"
In the real material world, as opposed to the pie in the sky thought experiments of people who whine about overpopulation, "educate baby, educate" works. Countries with high education levels, along with sex ed programs, have low birth rates.
"We are all "one destructive human mass" from an environmental perspective. Two hundred years ago there were several million elephants and less then a billion people on the planet."
Show evidence that those elephants, or American bison, were killed because of population size, and not sheer greed.
"shot a woodchuck that had been raiding the garden. I had some oatmeal (imported from Ireland) for lunch. I changed the oil in my John Deere tractor. I hopped on my motorcycle (that gets 55mpg, but needs a new set of imported tires every 5000 miles!) and drove by the acres of 'round up ready' corn and soybeans my renter has planted on my farm to my job at a UPS depot 20 miles away. On my break I ate an orange imported from Australia and peeled the plastic rapper off the latest issue of National Geographic. I browsed thru an article on orphan elephant rehabilitation in Kenya. There was a photo of a baby elephant recovering from having a spear thrust some 10-12 inches into it's head"
Your way of life is unsustainable. Seven billion people is sustainable.
Is your way of life sustainable finger pointing guy? Those in glass houses...
And a lot more people are concerned about over population than liberals, Earth Firsters! for starters, most of whom are anarchists FAR to the left of your braying rfloh.
I don't drive for one. No TV for another.
Also, unlike your heroes, I'm not arguing that people should be bombed to save them from their own religious beliefs, something that consumes a lot of resources.
"And a lot more people are concerned about over population than liberals, Earth Firsters! for starters, most of whom are anarchists FAR to the left of your braying rfloh."
Liberals and right wing libertarians (of which you are one).
There you go LYING again, you see the thing with ACTUAL atheism is it doesn't demand lock step conformity, thus I agree with Dawkins and Hitchens there is no god, and disagree on any stated counterproductive Islamaphobia. Shocking idn' it that someone might be a skeptic and free thinker questioning ALL ideologies including an ostensibly "feminist" breeder propaganda? I prefer the old school feminists of the 70s who were against breeder propaganda. And you don't get to tell ME what *I* believe, sorry if that punctures any fantasies you had there buddy! I was arrested for my Earth First! activism, have you sacrificed ANYTHING for your lying world view? Bonus points for actually addressing the question, and an honest answer!
Sigh!
"There you go LYING again, you see the thing with ACTUAL atheism is it doesn't demand lock step conformity"
There you go with your reading comprehension problems again. I made no such claim.
"Shocking idn' it that someone might be a skeptic and free thinker questioning ALL ideologies including an ostensibly "feminist" breeder propaganda? "
Free thinker? LOLOL. Your positions, your arguments, even your insults, for example the "breeder" insult, are all just regurgitations of your idols.
"I was arrested for my Earth First! activism, have you sacrificed ANYTHING for your lying world view? Bonus points for actually addressing the question, and an honest answer!"
Sez the guy who cannot answer simple yes or no questions, such as, do you eat meat?
And BTW, what is my "lying" world view? And yes, I have been tear gassed and water cannoned before. You know nothing about me.
Do you have kids, and if so how many, two can play look at the small picture, and not the large picture, asshat!
Nope, no kids. Don't eat meat. Don't drive.
Unlike you, the hypocritical meat eater.