Med dagens födelsetal är vi snart 134.000 miljarder

 Kommentar till DN-debattartikel "Med dagens födelsetal är vi snart 134.000 miljarder”, DN 2010-03-14,

 

What can radical environmentalist learn from Heidegger's political involvement with a dark political movement that had an undeniably green aspect? As ecological problems increasingly give rise to social and political unrest, we can expect the emergence of a revolutionary vanguard whose aim will be to compel ”selfish” people to "do the right thing" ecologically, for example, by agreeing to follow Draconian measures to limit human reproduction. During times of "ecological scarcity,” this vanguard will want to round up the ecologically unenlightened so that the Earth may recover from the "human cancer” afflicting it.  We may readily see potential parallels between talk of "human cancer” (a concept that Is scarcely new to environmentalists) and Nazi talk of the "human vermin” who were a threat not only to the purity of the German Volk, but to the very future of human life on Earth. Heidegger’s experience teaches us that we should be wary of revolutionaries prepared to use dangerous means, including the elimination of political freedoms, to achieve even noble ends, including protection of the Earth from the predations of industrial capitalism and communism.

Sidan 76 i Michael E.Zimmerman, ‘Martin Heidegger: Antinaturalist Critic of Technological Modernity’, in David Macauley (ed.), Minding Nature: The Philosophers of Ecology, New York: Guilford Press, 1996.