Sir David Attenborough is supposed to be a British national treasure, but his particular brand of environmentalism is toxic and elitist.
There can be no question to the fact that tackling man-made climate change and pollution is one of the most significant struggles we face as a species. However, we should never allow this campaign to intervene with what should be our primary collective goal: improving the lives of as many human beings as possible.
Some facets of the environmentalist movement have increasingly begun to drift away from this assumption. Where once the language of environmentalism was grounded in a basis of humanism- emphasising how we in advanced societies such as Britain were obliged to utilise our advanced economies, infrastructures and, educational systems to roll back the tide of a series of environmental calamities we seemed to be on the verge of creating- the green rhetoric has now taken on a sinister new element.
‘Population control’ is a term often associated with dystopian fiction, or in the case of Communist China and its brutally enforced ‘One-Child Policy’, real life totalitarian governments. Overt attempts to manage the number of children born in a state through legislative action is a tool only employed by the most insolent of regimes. By its very nature, it is too invasive to be regarded as acceptable in a free society. Nonetheless, the term is finding itself increasingly welcome within the lexicon of political environmentalism.
Pop-culture’s most prominent environmental activist, and the man whom the British public have bizarrely bestowed the title of ‘national treasure’ upon, Sir David Attenborough, is one of the country’s most aggressive advocates of population control: supplementing his distinguished broadcasting career with the role of critic-in-chief in charge of abusing the human race on account of its very existence.
In 2013, Britain’s most famous television host described humans as “a plague on earth”, and an “enormous horde”. This language is unambiguously destructive and malignant in the extreme.
What other hot button issue commentated on by any other prominent public figure would warrant the use of such language? Immigration perhaps? Maybe not, after all, ex-Prime Minister David Cameron was deservedly pilloried in 2015 after he referred to migrants massing in camps in Calais as a “swarm”. Unfortunately for Mr. Cameron, his manner of speaking is not quite soothing enough for him to have elicited any compliments from The Guardian for his comments. On top of that, he has never presented Blue Planet.
Attenborough has form for such blatant indifference to the plight of actual human beings. Just last month, he compared human pollution of the oceans with plastic to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Implying that the positively developing attitude against dumping plastic in the sea mirrors how popular opinion shifted away from the widely held perception that owning a slave was acceptable moral conduct.
I would assert that the brutal abduction, rape, enslavement, and murder of millions of Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries is in no way comparable to littering. As for the shift in public perception regarding the two, the example Attenborough chose to provide would be as about as appropriate as comparing the the increasing number of households that recycle to the change in the German public’s attitude towards the Jews after the end of the Second World War. It is asinine and offensive.
As a Cambridge-educated son of a university principle, Attenborough is in no way dissimilar to many of Britain’s other population control advocates, in the sense that his is distinctly white, and distinctly upper-class. As if to emphasise this point, he was recently joined on his crusade by our oh-so rebellious Prince Harry and his American wife.
In an interview given last month, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex committed themselves to limiting the number of children they will have to two, the pair’s very own ‘Two-Child Policy’: a move they hope will not only limit their own carbon footprint, but also influence the masses to do the same.
This thinly veiled lecture of derision delivered by the Royals was quite obviously an attempt by the House of Windsor to subtly ingrain into the minds of the proles the idea that it is they and their families who are to blame for the current environmental situation. What was of course not mentioned by the Prince, his wife, or the spineless Left press that has spent much of the last five years slobbering over the Royal Family, was their frequent use of pollution machines such as private jets- or even their very position within a hereditary ruling structure that owes its continued existence to the vapid toleration of the British public.
Harry’s remarks were shameless, hypocritical, and performative. The Prince should save the public the trouble of being subjected to his empty platitudes and self-serving martyrdom and instead remember that he belongs to a family that owns 360,000 acres of land in the UK alone: before he launches into another ham-fisted attempt to softly coerce the ordinary people of Britain into cleaning up a mess they have not created, he should consider the role his family and those of its ilk have played in bringing about this environmental disaster in the first place, and their future utility within a world seeking to overcome the unique set of challenges that have arisen out of such a situation.
The contradictions littering the arguments of high-profile population control advocates such as those already mentioned can be used to trace the origins of the movement. Population control is a solution proposed by a class of people who contribute the most to the urgency of the question it is seeking to address. It serves as a tool, simultaneously allowing the rich to absolve themselves of the lion’s-share of the blame they deserve, whilst facilitating the maintenance of their position at the top of a social hierarchy organised by the degree to which a person has access to the resources required to generate labour, production, and wealth.
Despite being the most significant contributors to climate change- on account of the fact of their increased consumption, and control of the pollutive industries and infrastructure that facilitate such consumption- the rich would prefer to pass the mantle of blame on to the working-classes of the global advanced economies and the expanding populations of the developing world. Populations that are increasingly operating as the engine fuelling this consumptive drive, as those at the top shift their production bases to economies in the global south ripe for exploitation.
It seems to be irrelevant to the Attenborough’s of the world that the reason these populations may be contributing more to the global carbon footprint is because of the fact that they too are beginning to have more of a stake in their own economies. Despite the fact that many of the workforces of the developing world are exploited to a level that would make a Victorian mill-owner wince, workers are gravitating towards industrial centres and cities, participating in the monetary economy, and as a result, accessing consumer goods previously reserved for us in the West.
This is why Attenborough’s insistence on promoting the rhetoric of population control is so insidious. Here is a man who has known wealth and opportunity for his entire life, a Knight of the Realm, a member of the British elite- who has chosen to use the status he has acquired to harangue the very people he claims to be trying to protect for having the audacity to breed- and in doing so, is removing the spotlight from the true source of the issue he is trying to address.
In what way is this any different to the tactics used by a figure such as Nigel Farage, or Kelvin MacKenzie? Both men have dedicated their professional lives to the goal of condemning the victims of Neoliberal policies, introduced by their bourgeoisie friends, for the adverse effects such legislation creates. Farage admonishes immigrants about wage compression, MacKenzie picks on welfare recipients for being in a position where they are required to claim welfare, and Attenborough decries the human race for continuing to exist.
The population control movement is inherently dangerous, and it was about time it was challenged, forcefully. When population control is enforced, it is never the wealthy that suffer. The term is a euphemism: it means ‘reduction of the poor’. According to China Daily over 1,900 officials breached the birth policy in Hunan Province between 2000 and 2005. An example of how wealth and power can always allow those at the top to circumvent the rules. Meanwhile, the masses were subjected to systemic levels of forced abortion, sterilisation, and infanticide, carried out by the authorities.
David Attenborough is another cog in the wheel of a machine that refuses to take responsibility for its own actions. It is essential that the reins of the environmentalist movement are not handed over to him and his gang of eschatological obsessives: a group of people who are openly hostile to the very existence of human beings on planet earth.
In an age where the journalistic flagship of Neoliberalism, The Economist, decries the fact that people in developing countries are living longer, healthier lives due to an improvement in their general diets- because this may come with environmental downsides- we must take a step back and evaluate the impact such rhetoric has on the people to which we are referring. The lives of the populations of the developing world are not expendable, and they come before any commitment we make to the preservation of our own comfort in the West.
The struggle to protect the environment, roll back the effects of climate change, and depollute the oceans is one of the most critical the human race has ever faced. It will require cooperation and sacrifice on a global scale. Nonetheless, we should not allow wealthy aristocrats to lay the blame for the crisis at the feet of its biggest victims. Sir David Attenborough is one of these aristocrats. The rhetoric of his movement is merely another campaign in the ongoing war his kind have waged against the global working-class for the last 50 years, cloaked in environmental concern. The case for population control should be rejected, as should its voices, no matter how entrancing they are.
