The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, known by its acronym VHEMT (pronounced "vehement"), is a deep ecology organization that endorses the voluntary extinction of the human race. Their motto, "May we live long and die out," briefly summarizes their goal. The organization does not advocate murder, suicide, or any such unnatural methods; instead, it advocates the proposal that all humans refrain from reproducing. Such a position is not uncommon within the worldview of deep ecology, which views humanity as being on equal moral grounds with the Earth's biosphere.

The movement recognizes two levels of support. "Volunteers" are people who believe in the VHEMT goal of eventual human extinction, and have decided to have no children (or no more, if they already had children when they joined the movement) in order to further that goal. "Supporters" are people who do not believe that the human species should become extinct, but believe that a reduction in global reproduction rates would be beneficial. They too have decided to have no (or no more) children. Supporters' views might be more in line with the Population Connection movement or the Negative Population Growth movement.

Les Knight, the leader of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, stated that he was sterilized at the age of 25 and has no children. He claims that he does not hate children, and in fact says that some of his members are children. On Hannity and Colmes, he presented his movement's ideologies and stated that "as long as there's one breeding pair of homo sapiens, there's too great a threat to the biosphere."Sean Hannity. Televised on Hannity & Colmes (FOX News Channel) "Should Humanity Let Itself Die Out?" 08/14/2001. It is also interesting that he himself has no hope in the movement himself, stating that it will not work, but that "it is the right thing to do."

Les Knight's statement, "think before you breed" is one he feels should be kept in mind by many people. His website views that a choice to prevent having children is a good approach, although further methods, such as social, economic, and political sanctions on those who reproduce. He denies that his movement is a suicide cult or a group of mass-murderers, saying, "we think of negative population growth...we think of death and killing and suicides. All we have to do is stop reproducing. We don't have to kill ourselves." On his website, however, suicide is admittedly claimed to be a positive approach to stop "ravaging the Earth", although living long is their goal to help prevent others from reproducing by spreading their message and through doing environmental work during their lives. They also cite the fact that historically, high death rates is coupled with subsequent high birth rates.

The movement rejects China's one-child policy because "one child is still too many" and because they oppose coercive methods of population control.

The organization spreads its message through the Internet and, because of this, reaches the parts of the globe that are more wealthy, such as North America, Europe, and developed cities. However, these are regions of the globe that are already experiencing lower population growth.

See also

• Childfree

External links

• Official site
• "Enough Already" - Failure Magazine (Nov. 2005)

References