Celebrate Human Life this Earth Day.

Earth is a beautiful place. Everywhere, natural wonder surrounds us. Gorgeous lakes and rivers, pristine mountain valleys, vast golden prairies, and countless other treasures demand our respect, our awe, and our stewardship. Protecting our environment is important for so many reasons, not the least of which is to ensure that future generations have fresh air and water to live with. It is this concern that fed the rise of conservationism and environmentalism in the 60’s and 70’s, and ultimately the green movement that is so influential today. Perhaps coincidentally, abortionism also gained much steam at this same time, but more on that in a moment.

Whereas conservationists were concerned primarily with ensuring the abundance of natural resources for future human generations, environmentalists became more concerned with the well-being of plants, animals, and the ecosystems in which they live in and of themselves. Today, many greens have taken things to the next level and have elevated concern for those natural entities above their concern for human life, even pitting the two against each other. Many people in today’s green movement, including in the United Nations Population Fund, now see human beings as the enemies of Mother Earth.

They believe the Earth is in imminent danger of becoming grossly overpopulated (or that it already is) and action must be taken to drastically slow birth rates and curb population growth around the world. Such actions invariably consist of widespread contraception, family planning, and of course, abortion. This is where environmentalism has become dangerously anti-human life and, as if by default, a sort of vehicle for abortionism. It’s as if the mighty Culture of Death has slowly but surely engulfed the environmentalist movement and now uses it to spur the abortionism on to greater and greater depths.

Recently, we have seen this unholy alliance manifest itself. For example, in an editorial bluntly entitled, “The whole world needs to adopt China’s one-child policy,” Diane Francis at the National Post blithely describes the global adoption of China’s brutal one-child policy as “the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate.” For those of us who have not been won over by the juggernaut movement we call environmentalism, the rest of Francis’s article reads like the shocking inevitable conclusion of the melding of the abortionism and environmentalism movements: It’s either us or them - “us” being the natural world and its spokespeople and “them” being those dreadful humans - and we will use lethal means to ensure it is “us” who survives.

And then there’s the strange story of Toni Vernelli’s decision to abort her child and then sterilize herself in order to “save the planet.” As if reading from the enviro-abortionism playbook, the studious Vernelli explained that, “every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of overpopulation.” Hardly a rosier picture of the future generation could one paint.

For Vernelli and the rest of the “abort a child, save the planet” crowd, people are creatures with a mouth to feed, two large feet leaving “carbon footprints” everywhere, and not much else. No minds to create, innovate, or discover; no hearts to love, cherish, or empathize; and no hands to build, aid, or restore. Just climate-changing, planet-destroying consumers. Contrary to Vernelli’s world view, it is precisely the things about people she chooses to ignore that make us the greatest resource on Earth.

It is human beings who have limitless potential to invent, adjust, improvise and create. It is we who will develop cleaner ways to burn coal, more efficient ways to use the sun and wind for power, and better methods of transportation. It is people who will develop all sorts of products and technology that will serve to protect the environment and provide for our children and grandchildren for years to come (that is, if they aren’t killed before they are born). Moreover, it is human beings who will accompany, love, comfort, and provide emotional, spiritual, and physical nourishment for their brothers and sisters. Yep, the world would be a lonely, desolate, and meaningless place without other people around.

It is for this gift, the gift of human life, we celebrate Earth Day 2010.
Marlon Bartram