Troubling reading

Found at Wittingshire:

Dr. Eric R. Pianka (a University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert) was named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist by the Texas Academy of Sciences. In his speech to the Academy in March of this year, he candidly spoke on the need to eliminate NINETY percent of the population. His remarks received a standing ovation by those in attendance. Troubling reading...

UT professor says death is imminent

By Jamie Mobley
The Gazette-Enterprise
April 2, 2006

"A University of Texas professor says the Earth would be better off with 90 percent of the human population dead.

'Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine,' Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward's University on Friday. 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.

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."

"'The biggest enemy we face is anthropocentrism,' he said, describing the belief system in which humans are the central element of the universe. 'This is that common attitude that everything on this Earth was put here for [human] use.'

To Pianka, a human life is no more valuable than any other - a lizard, a bison, a rhino."

More on Pianka's speech: The Citizen Scientist

From Jonathan Witt at Wittingshire:

"All of this (doomsday predictions) leaves out of the equation creativity, the ability of intelligent agents to innovate, to create new and better ways to make and do things.

Have we made mistakes? Of course. Is there more we can do to clean up rivers and streams and oceans and cities around the world? Of course. But we won't preserve the Earth by telling ourselves that we're nothing more than a vicious pestilence, by pretending that we do not have dominion over the Earth. (Imagine such an approach transferred to the sphere of parenting.) We would do better to recognize the unique causal power of creative intelligence--both in origins science where it is routinely and perversely denied in the face of growing evidence, and in our models of human activity--even as we remind ourselves of the responsibility we have as stewards of planet Earth."