“When people like you fly over Africa you want to see wild animals. When I fly over Africa, I don’t want to see dead Africans.” I still remember this statement from one of my former bosses at the UN, about 20 years ago. I was shocked at his idea that caring about the environment meant caring less about people. It seemed an attitude born of an urban life, forgetting the need to sustain the environmental basis of the livelihoods of billions. It showed me how hyper-modernist some leaders from Africa could be – perhaps from too much time flying over things to talk to people who fly over things. Since then, I always thought it a baseless form of rhetoric to claim that environmentalists prefer nature to people. Even if some might be like that, their lack of power on this planet means critiquing their psyche was a distraction from serious policy discussion.
However, there is indeed another form of misanthropy, or people-hating, which can arise in environmentalism, as people become more anxious about the state of the planet. It is more subtle, involving a general denigration of humanity or the human condition, so people conclude we need to be controlled for our own good. This sentiment is not marginal to power and is facilitating the recent growth of authoritarian views within parts of the Western environmental movement. In my book Breaking Together, I explain how it is a fear-driven and illogical response which risks making matters worse as we go deeper into an era of societal disruption and collapse. The following is an excerpt where I explore this phenomenon. In it I mention various terms and chapters – if interested, the book is now free as a pdf from my University (clearly I haven’t got the hang of that ‘doomer grift’).
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