by Rick Pearcey
April 6, 2006
from
ThePearceyReport Website
Relying on a transcript from audio
recorded during Dr.
Eric Pianka's presentation at the 109th meeting
of the Texas Academy of Science March 2-4, The Pearcey Report
has first-hand documentation on what the controversial ecologist
said regarding a number of issues, including taxes, children, forced
sterilization, overpopulation, economic growth, and more.
News of Dr. Pianka's views broke when
scientist and author Forrest Mims published a March 31 article in
The Citizen Scientist.
In that article Mims said,
"I watched in amazement as a few
hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their
feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that
enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of
Earth's population by airborne Ebola."
On March 31, Dr. Pianka spoke to
students and parents at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas.
"A University of Texas professor
says the Earth would be better off with 90 percent of the human
population dead," is how the
Gazette-Enterprise led its coverage of the talk.
[Editor's Note:
The Pearcey Report noticed April
8, 2006, that the Gazette-Enterprise
story no longer appears on the newspaper's website. Update: As of
April 10, the link is reestablished.]
"Every one of you who gets to
survive has to bury nine," the professor is quoted as saying.
According to reporter Jamie Mobley,
"Pianka's words are part of what he
calls his 'doomsday talk' - a 45-minute presentation outlining
humanity's ecological misdeeds and Pianka's predictions about
how nature, or perhaps humans themselves, will exterminate all
but a fraction of civilization."
Mobley reports that,
"though his statements are
admittedly bold, he's not without abundant advocates. But what
may set this revered biologist apart from other doomsday
soothsayers is this: Humanity's collapse is a notion he
embraces."
This is not new intellectual territory
for the professor. A Fall 2004 student evaluation from the
University of Texas says,
"Though I agree that convervation
[sic] biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not
think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die
of Ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation
awareness."
Another student comment from Fall 2004
says,
"I don't root for Ebola, but maybe a
ban on having more than one child. I agree... too many people
ruining this planet."
That student may not be rooting for
Ebola, but as Jamie Mobley reports, Dr. Pianka has supporters.
One of them attended Dr. Pianka's Texas
Academy of Science lecture and posted these comments online
afterward:
"Dr. Pianka's talk at the TAS
meeting was mostly of the problems humans are causing as we
rapidly proliferate around the globe.
While what he had to say is way too
vast to remember it all, moreover to relay it here in this blog,
the bulk of his talk was that he's waiting for the virus that
will eventually arise and kill off 90% of human population.
In fact, his hope, if you can call
it that, is that the Ebola virus which attacks humans currently
(but only through blood transmission) will mutate with the Ebola
virus that attacks monkeys airborne to create an airborne Ebola
virus that attacks humans.
He's a radical thinker, that one! I
mean, he's basically advocating for the death of all but 10% of
the current population! And at the risk of sounding just as
radical, I think he's right."
We now turn to the transcript, based on
audio from Dr. Pianka's academy speech in March (2006).
That such an audio-based document exists
at all may be an intriguing part of this story since, according to
published reports, an effort apparently was made to ensure that Dr.
Pianka's speech was not recorded by video or audio.
DR. PIANKA TRANSCRIPT
From Recorded Audio at speech
March 3, 2006
Texas Academy of Science
Note: Brackets indicate
possible wording. Two sets of remarks follow. Set 1 is based on
audio from the speech itself. Set 2 is from the question and
answer period that followed.
SET ONE
From the
Speech
We've got an airborne 90 percent mortality human killing
[agent]. Think about that.
Now, so far, it's been down, down, down. Let's start up. But we
can't get up very far. Aldo Leopold is one of the
greatest ecologists of all times. He was really the first
conservation biologist.
And here's quotes from Aldo. If you haven't read his Sand
County Almanac, I encourage you to read it.
It was published after he died by his children [unclear]… a
bunch of short stories they assembled and put together. It's a
really powerful book. It makes me cry when I read it.
He says the land ethic changes the role of homosapiens from
conqueror to steward...
It implies that we respect our fellow members and respect the
community, and we respect other things on this earth.
Now, this came out of a conservation biology book.
Aldo didn't draw this. But it's an ethical sequence based on
Aldo.
And here you can see what you're really familiar with: Your own
self - you take care of your money, you take care of your
possessions, and maybe you're a little bit altruistic towards
your brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts.
And I think if we went back 2,000 years when we were living in a
cave, we'd have these little social groups - tribes - where
everybody knew everybody, and we met in caves that were like
this room and older individuals told stories and younger
individuals learned from them. And there was some degree of
altruism and respect, mutual respect there.
Now we're up to the point where we have a nation and religious
groups and we're at odds within America. 50-50 split right down
the middle between Democrats and Republicans.
Let's go out a little bit further and think about people of
other [races] and other nations. We're not doing very well.
What about other sentient animals? Our closest relatives are
chimpanzees and gorillas. We don't treat them very well.
They're hunting gorillas, which are on the edge of extinction,
and eating them - they
call it "bush meat" - in Africa.
We subject chimps to all kinds of things in labs to create
pharmaceuticals that can help us.
I always wonder how we would feel if natural selection hadn't
taken a route that it has and if in fact chimps or gorillas or
both of them were superior to us and treated us the way we treat
them. I think that would be fair.
And finally, if we keep going out [up] and talk about all other
species - and then the whole earth.
And the point here is that this is where everything is focused.
And you can't move out from it. At least we don't seem able to.
Now here's a voice crying in the wilderness. It's been widely
ignored by everybody.
Herman Daly, who wrote 4 books on steady-state economics -
Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development. He
coined those terms.
And by sustainable development, I first thought those were
antonyms just strung together… they couldn't be… it weren't
possible.
He means something a little different. He means using renewable
resources and leaving the earth the way it was when we came into
it, each and everyone of us. Which would mean population
control.
We should be born with the right to reproduce but not to
over-reproduce.
We need to change our tax system so that you're taxed for having
kids rather than getting a reward. [Applause.]
Daly is being completely ignored by mainstream ecologists.
They're all into this grow, grow, grow - the principle of a
ponzi… you know, growth, a chain letter, a ponzi scheme.
You can't do it.
When you hear politicians say, "We're going to grow the
economy," think about it. Money is debt. For economies to grow,
debt has to increase. What we have done in spending in the last
4, 5, 6 years is put our grandchildren into debt, and their
grandchildren. And they're never going to be able to work it
off.
If Japan, Japan finally call in all those American dollars in
debt, America is going to go under. That could happen any
time.
Here's another sort of upside to it. Actually, Dennis Meadows at
the bottom there was asked to write this book - to do a study -
using systems ecology - back in the days before PCs, and he did
it in 1972, and the book was called Limits to Growth.
And then in 1992, he and some other co-authors did a Beyond
the Limits book and showed that we were over carrying
capacity.
And then he enlisted his daughter, Donella, to do the 30-year
update, which just came out a couple of years ago. She's dead
now, but she was the most optimistic of all the people that
wrote this book. And you can see it in her chapter at the very
end, where she talks about what we could do if we just had the
will...
But anyway, he estimated that we crossed the maximum number of
humans the earth could support back about 1978. But up until
then we could have eased into a sustainable world, but now we're
20% above.
I think it's actually much worse than that. We could not have
reached six and a half billion if it weren't for fossil fuels,
to do agriculture and feed the hordes of humans around the
earth. And the fossil fuels are running out. So I think we might
have to cut back to, say, two billion, which would be about
one-third as many people.
This is an old figure from the Meadows 1992 Beyond the
Limits book and you are here in 1999 - we're actually out
here now. We're starting to experience the world oil crash, and
you know that every time you fill up your car.
Here's the most optimistic projection: Is we don't have a
collapse.
But here's what's going to happen. And after the human population
collapses, there's going to be a lot fewer of us. Food's going
to be diminished. Pollution's going to go down, which will be
good. But there's not going to be much to recover from. Our
descendants are going to curse us for the party we took, the
party we had, and I really recommend Richard Heinberg's book the
[sic] Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial
Societies. This man has thought about these things deeply.
The End of Oil is good, too. But it's not anywhere as
good as the Party's Over.
There have been wise people for a long time - John Stuart Mill
in 1858 took issue with the whole business of grow, grow, grow.
And he said he thought stationary systems made sense, stable
systems. Where you don't have bubbles that are going to burst or
you're going to go bankrupt.
He said he didn't think the people had to elbow their way to the
top, to fight, struggle with each other to get the resources.
That if we could just live in a stable world where we didn't
continue to grow, and weren't based on this grow, grow, grow
thing. That we could work on the art of living, and we could
become better human beings for it.
And these are some of the things that Donella Meadows says in
the end of the Limits to Growth.
***
So, this is the end. In the 1960s when I started studying
ecology, there was a lot of sand in the top of the hourglass.
But in my short stint of 40, 45 years as an ecologist. Most of
that sand has run out.
There's not much time left to get on an
airplane, go to Madagascar, and study something while you still
can.
Thank you.
[Applause.]
SET TWO
From the
Question Session
AUDIENCE: ...nonproliferation, but after your talk I [assess]
these things in a whole different light now. [Laughter.]
PIANKA: You know the bird flu's good, too. [Laughter.]
QUESTIONER: …Do you have any hope for these so-called
voluntary ... Are you involved in trying to design...
PIANKA: Actually, I really hope we do. I think we ought to get
to Mars while we still can. Some of you brave pioneering... should be on a one-way spaceship to Mars. You'll have to build
yourself a greenhouse to grow your own [laughter] a hundred
degrees, whatever it takes.
I think we should take the Library
of Congress up with us on DVDs and so when we wink out in this
little sphere, there will be a little bit of a record of what
happened on Earth somewhere else.
And I think in that new plan,
the books kids read in kindergarten will say "The Rape of the
Earth, Let's treat our planet a little better."
But I don't
think we can [unintelligible].
QUESTIONER: I don't think that we as an audience accurately
represent society at large. [Laughter] What kind of reception
have you received as you have presented these ideas to other
audiences that are not representative of us?
PIANKA: I speak to the converted! [Considerable laughter.]
[We're not going to be all in agreement.] I know that. But we
have to speak to the people that aren't. That's our - a real
challenge.
And convincing ‘em when the government's telling ‘em to keep
their head buried in the sand and pretend everything's OK isn't
going to be easy. The government's just lying to ‘em, and
they're accepting it.
QUESTIONER: I had a similar point. What can we do to correct
this problem? It's, it all has to come from policy level because
of the way human society is structured when the governments
represent people.
PIANKA: Politicians can't win elections with views like this. I
could never run for office. [Laughter] [Unintelligible]
[Laughter]
They have to present good news to win, and they
deceive themselves and deceive the public in every way they can
to stay in power. Even Al Gore, who wrote the environment book,
never faced overpopulation. No politician ever has.
The reason China was able to turn the corner and is going to become
the new super power in the world is because they got a police
state and they can force people to stop reproducing. That's the
only reason they were able to turn the corner.
QUESTIONER: [Unintelligible.]
PIANKA: ...Well, there's cheating going on. You can pay in China
and have more. I know all that. But there's a solution that's
theoretically possible. I call it the Johnny Anti-Appleseed
Solution.
Instead of being cursed with our fertility, I would
bless us with infertility. Now this could happen because male
sperm counts are falling because of plastics and the estrogen
[unintelligible] naturally.
But I asked a reproductive physiologist years ago about this. I
said, "Could you design a molecule that you could administer
once that would bind to the DNA to turn off reproduction and
make people sterile?" And he said, yeah, theoretically. And I
said, well, if you did that could you design an antidote that
would unmask it just briefly for as few seconds? And he said,
yeah, probably.
So this is what we need. We need to sterilize
everybody on the Earth [laughter] and make the antidote freely
available to anybody who's willing to work for it.
Immediately you'd get responsible parenthood. No more juvenile
delinquents, unwanted kids. You have a kid, you had to work, and
you had only a few seconds to do it in. [Extended laughter]
QUESTIONER: People who are educated seem to have less children.
PIANKA: Right. Right. Definitely, smarter people have fewer
kids. I think [unintelligible] pointed this out.
He said those
who don't have any conscience about the Earth are going to
inherit the Earth, because those who cared made fewer babies and
those who didn't care made more babies. And so we're [going to
evolve...] uncaring. And I think that's probably happening. I
think IQs are falling for the same reason, too.
MODERATOR: I think I'm going to [unintelligible] on that. If you
would like to talk to Dr. Pianka afterwards [unintelligible].
[Prolonged standing ovation]
Meeting Doctor Doom
by Forrest M. Mims
III.
April 07, 2006
from
SAS Website
Recovered through
WayBackMachine Website
Forrest M. Mims III is Chairman of the
Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science, and
the editor of
The Citizen Scientist. He and his science are featured online at
www.forrestmims.org and
www.sunandsky.org. The views
expressed herein are his own and do not represent the official views
of the Texas Academy of Science
or the Society for Amateur
Scientists. |
There is
always something special about science meetings.
The 109th meeting of the
Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5
March 2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student and his
professor presented the results of a DNA study I suggested to them
last year.
How fulfilling to see the baldcypress (Taxodium
distichum) leaves we collected last summer and my tree ring
photographs transformed into a first class scientific presentation
that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal (Brian Iken and Dr. Deanna McCullough, "Bald Cypress
of the Texas Hill Country: Taxonomically Unique?" 109th Meeting
of the Texas Academy of Science Program and Abstracts [PDF],
Poster P59, p. 84, 2006).
But there was a gravely disturbing side to that
otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in
amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science
rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that
enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's
population by airborne
Ebola.
The speech was given by Dr.
Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas
evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the
2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
Figure 1.
Dr. Eric R. Pianka and an
unidentified woman from the University of Texas at Arlington
following a recent speech before
the Texas Academy of Science
in which Pianka endorsed airborne
Ebola as an efficient means
for eliminating 90 percent of the
world's population.
Pianka received an enthusiastic
and prolonged standing ovation.
Later he received more applause
from a banquet hall filled with more than 400 people
when the president of the Texas
Academy of Science presented him
with a plaque naming him 2006
Distinguished Texas Scientist.
Photograph 2006 by Forrest M. Mims
III.
Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka
began speaking.
An official of the Academy approached a video camera
operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated
conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed
the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.
This curious incident came to mind a few minutes
later when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the
general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell
us. Because of many years of experience as a writer and editor,
Pianka's strange introduction and the TV camera incident raised a
red flag in my mind.
Suddenly I forgot that I was a member of the Texas
Academy of Science and chairman of its Environmental Science
Section. Instead, I grabbed a notepad so I could take on the role of
science reporter.
One of Pianka's earliest points was a condemnation of
anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a privileged
position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked
him what good the lizards are that he studies.
He answered,
"What good are you?"
Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming,
"We're no better than bacteria!"
Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how
human overpopulation is ruining the Earth.
He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed
that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of
the industrial age is devastating the planet.
He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore
the planet before it's too late.
Saving the Earth with Ebola
Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will
not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting
any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible
solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10
percent of the present number.
He then showed solutions for reducing the world's
population in the form of a slide depicting the
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead,
disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the
billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be
solved.
Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human
skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.
AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained,
because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90
percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola ( Ebola
Reston ), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in
days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention
that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus
initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that
eventually liquefy the internal organs.
After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at
killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and
carefully said,
"We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in
humans. Killing humans. Think about that."
With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen
behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The audience that
had been applauding some of his statements now sat silent.
After a dramatic pause, Pianka returned to politics
and environmentalism. But he revisited his call for mass death when
he reflected on the oil situation.
"And the fossil fuels are running out," he said,
"so I think we may have to cut back to two billion, which would
be about one-third as many people."
So the oil crisis alone may require eliminating
two-third's of the world's population.
How soon must the mass dying begin if Earth is to be
saved? Apparently fairly soon, for Pianka suggested he might be
around when the killer disease goes to work. He was born in 1939,
and his lengthy obituary appears on his
web site.
When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience
applauded. It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that
audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was
a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause.
Questions for Dr. Doom
Then came the question and answer session, in which
Professor Pianka stated that other diseases are also efficient
killers.
The audience laughed when he said,
"You know, the bird flu's good, too."
They laughed again when he proposed, with a
discernable note of glee in his voice that,
"We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth."
After noting that the audience did not represent the
general population, a questioner asked,
"What kind of reception have you received as you
have presented these ideas to other audiences that are not
representative of us?"
Pianka replied,
"I speak to the converted!"
Pianka responded to more questions by condemning
politicians in general and
Al Gore by name, because they
do not address the population problem and,
"...because they deceive the public in every way
they can to stay in power."
He spoke glowingly of the police state in China that
enforces their one-child policy.
He said,
"Smarter people have fewer kids."
He said those who don't have a conscience about the
Earth will inherit the Earth,
"...because those who care make fewer
babies and those that didn't care made more babies." He said we will
evolve as uncaring people, and "I think IQs are falling for the same
reason, too."
With this, the questioning was over.
Immediately
almost every scientist, professor and college student present stood
to their feet and vigorously applauded the man who had
enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human
population. Some even cheered. Dozens then mobbed the professor at
the lectern to extend greetings and ask questions. It was necessary
to wait a while before I could get close enough to take some
photographs (Fig. 1).
I was assigned to judge a paper in a grad student
competition after the speech. On the way, three professors dismissed
Pianka as a crank. While waiting to enter the competition room, a
group of a dozen Lamar University students expressed outrage over
the Pianka speech.
Yet five hours later, the distinguished leaders of
the Texas Academy of Science presented Pianka with a plaque in
recognition of his being named 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
When the banquet hall filled with more than 400 people responded
with enthusiastic applause, I walked out in protest.
Corresponding with Dr. Doom
Recently I exchanged a number of e-mails with Pianka.
I pointed out to him that one might infer his death wish was really
aimed at Africans, for Ebola is found only in Central Africa.
He
replied that Ebola does not discriminate, kills everyone and could
spread to Europe and the the Americas by a single infected airplane
passenger.
In his last e-mail, Pianka wrote that I completely
fail to understand his arguments. So I did a check and found
verification of my interpretation of his remarks on his own web
site.
In a student evaluation of a 2004 course he taught, one of
Professor Pianka's students wrote,
"Though I agree that convervation
[sic] biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think
that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola
[sic] is the most effective means of encouraging conservation
awareness."
(Go
here and scroll down to just before the Fall 2005 evaluation
section near the end.)
Yet the majority of his student reviews were
favorable, with one even saying,
"I worship Dr. Pianka."
The 45-minute lecture before the Texas Academy of
Science converted a university biology senior into a Pianka
disciple, who then published a blog that seriously supports Pianka's
mass death wish.
Dangerous Times
Let me now remove my reporter's hat for a moment and
tell you what I think.
We live in dangerous times. The national
security of many countries is at risk. Science has become tainted by
highly publicized cases of misconduct and fraud.
Must now we worry that a Pianka-worshipping former
student might someday become a professional biologist or physician
with access to the most deadly strains of viruses and bacteria? I
believe that airborne Ebola is
unlikely to threaten the world outside of Central Africa.
But
scientists have regenerated the 1918 Spanish flu virus that killed
50 million people.
There is concern that small pox might someday
return. And what other terrible plagues are waiting out there in the
natural world to cross the species barrier and to which scientists
will one day have access?
Meanwhile, I still can't get out of my mind the
pleasant spring day in Texas when a few hundred scientists of the
Texas Academy of Science gave a standing ovation for a speaker who
they heard advocate for the slow and torturous death of over five
billion human beings.
|