Professor Patricia MacCormack has set out her vision for a way to tackle climate change

The end of human civilisation is the only way to help save the planet, an ‘old school goth’ has said.

Philosophy professor Patricia MacCormack wants people to stop breeding, saying that giving birth is ‘the worst thing you can do’ if you don’t want to leave much of a carbon footprint. Prof MacCormack, who works at the Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, has received abuse online after she published The Ahuman Manifesto.

The central point, she says, is that mankind has already been enslaved to the point of ‘zombiedom’ by capitalism. She argues that the key to mitigating against that is to phase out child birth.



She said: ‘I simply propose people not reproduce, and it automatically translated into acts of violence. So, somehow, I want to kill children, which is ridiculous. Somehow, I’m proposing eugenics or some kind of ethnic population control … and I think that what that shows is there is an anthropocentric – or a human – impulse to read acts of grace as, automatically, acts of violence.


Professor MacCormack says that a phased reduction in human reproduction would help save the planet

‘And that says a lot more about the people not reading the book and just taking over the message.’

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Prof MacCormack told Yahoo lifestyle that she understood why her position would be triggering but says she fears for the future of children on a planet that is becoming increasingly inhospitable.

She says that there are already ‘non-human animals, who have been born into an apocalypse’ that are born to a life of suffering before being murdered. Part of her manifesto suggests counteracting that by introducing ‘abolitionist veganism’.

Prof MacCormack also said that campaign groups have not gone far enough with their disruption.

She has received a large amount of criticism for her opinion, with some accusing her of wanting to kill children

Speaking to her local paper, she said: ‘Even Extinction Rebellion only focus on the effect this will have on human life, when climate change is something that will affect every living being on the planet.

She added:’I was introduced to philosophy due to my interest in feminism and queer theory, so reproductive rights have long been an interest to me – this led me to learn more about animal rights, which is when I became vegan.

‘The basic premise of the book is that we’re in the age of the Anthropocene, humanity has caused mass problems and one of them is creating this hierarchal world where white, male, heterosexual and able-bodied people are succeeding, and people of different races, genders, sexualities and those with disabilities are struggling to get that.’

She argues for ‘abolitionist veganism’ as another way to stop climate change destroying the planet (Picture: Bloomsbury)

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