If you could stop global warming by killing 2 million random people worldwide, would you do it?

Question

I intentionally left the question somewhat vague so that answerers could give it their own context. But the issue of whether or not global warming is real is not relevant to the question: if you don't believe in it, your answer will obviously be no.

What I'm really after is to know whether or not environmentalists in the YA community are as hostile to the human race as these folks (perhaps I should have said 100 million):

"We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight." -- David Foreman, Earth First!

"The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing....This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run." Economist editorial

"I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems." John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

Annalyn, a comment unrelated to the question: I have heard many times that "the Amazon is the lungs of our earth," but I must disagree. Lungs take in oxygen and expel CO2. You are claiming that the Amazon does the opposite. So, if you want to be precise with your analogy, shouldn't you say that factories are actually the lungs of the earth?

Answer 1

Yea, this is the whole crux of the global warming argument. Taking control over other people's lives using mock science. This idea is the same reason Hitler gassed the Jews because the psudo science of Eugenics was once thought to be real too.

Answer 2

It's an absurd question. Global warming will only slow down if we reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we are putting in the atmosphere. Even if you chose the 2 million people in the world who are spewing the most carbon dioxide that would not make much of a dent in the carbon dioxide that the rest of the 6 billion of us are creating.

That being said, Malthus told us a long time ago that if we don't figure out how to live in a sustainable way, the human population is going to reduce one way or another, whether by war, famine or disease. I do not advocate killing anyone and I would not support anyone who said they know how to choose who to kill in order that the rest of us may live. But those choices may be made for us by nature, and the sad fact is that the people who are dying first are generally the poorest amongst us (and therefore the ones who were contributing the least to the problem of global warming in the first place).

Answer 3

I feel your pain. The temperature bounces around, and bad arguements abound. But as and AGW skeptic I just encourage to look at the blue line in metoffice chart. It looks like we've arrive at a local maxima. I'd bet we're in for 20-30 years of cooling as per the 1940 or 1900 cooling trends. If the chart is expanded to the left we would see the cooling of the Little Ice Age (1600) further down ~300 BC would be the Roman Era warming. In gelogic time Global Temperatures do not track CO2 levels & Life trives on Earh for hundreds of millions of years at levels ranging from 1000 to 3000ppm. I'm not saying we shouldn't care about the environment. My sense is just that the real economic nightmare of rising energy cost is being ignored at the expense of the phatom menace of AGW.

Answer 4

Global Warming has already killed that many people in the last decade or two and it has made no difference. You would have to kill faster than the birthrate to make a difference. That is currently 75 million per year.

So killing 2 million random people would make little or no difference. You are thinking way too small. You need to kill at least 75 million per year. Plus, I don't have the means to kill 2 million people, random or otherwise, let alone 75 million.

That is a lot of destruction you know! You'd have to be not only a psychotic but a workaholic to kill that many people!
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Answer 5

This type of question cannot be answered out of context. The premise is untrue---you can't stop global warming by killing 2 million people---and so no ethical decision can be made. The circumsances are not clear. What if you could also stop global warming without killing anyone at all? What is the mechanism whereby the slaughter of the innocent 2 million stops the warming? This is close to the logic of terrorism.

Answer 6

No. But If I had to, I'd kill the people who are killing the Amazon Rainforest. The Amazon is the lungs of our earth, and gets rid of most of the Co2 in the air. If we stopped killing the rainforest, the earth would not be half as bad (in global warming).

Answer 7

Because your question surmises that global warming is a real and threatening problem, the real question is how many people will die worldwide if we don't stop it. So if in fact it is real and will eventually cause the deaths of maany millions of people than according to many ethical theories it would make sense to sacrifice some so that more can live.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."


I would just hope that we are able to come up with a number of combined solutions so that such drastic measures are not necessary.

Answer 8

Absolutely.

Answer 9

Nope. Even if I were Chuck Norris, I could not kill that many people in the years of life remaining to me.

Answer 10

No. I couldn't handle watching all of those innocent people die right infront of me. Global Warming is eventaully going to kill us all, so why stop it and just kill 2 million people, when we should let mother nature take her course, and kill us all with her powers.