Written by: Daniel Xie

In Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, Thanos, is the main antagonist for the Marvel Cinematic Universe up to that point. Having survived a cataclysm in his homeworld that he claimed was caused by his planet being unable to sustain a large population, believes that if technology and the population of sentient civilizations throughout the cosmos continue to increase, similar collapses will happen across the universe. To solve this problem, he seeks to destroy half of all living things in the universe, and through the use of the Infinity Stones, he gets his wish; killing half of the population of the universe to keep things in “perfect balance”. It was only by recovering the Infinity Gems and by changing the past, that the Avengers were finally able to undo Thanos’ actions, albeit at a great cost.

Thanos’ mindset is that civilization-developing lifeforms are ultimately a plague, a virus that needed to be controlled or completely destroyed for the sake of ecological preservation. This is more relevant than the casual moviegoer would expect, and informs the viewpoints of elements of the environmentalist movement about humanity in relation to the environment. This strain of thought within environmentalists posits that because many environmental problems, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, occurred during humanity’s time on Earth, then humans are a virus that should be controlled, if not eliminated.

This mindset, dubbed “ecofascism” by its detractors on both the left and the right, has seen an increase following the Coronavirus outbreak. In the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak, various images, now proven to be false, have surfaced showing Italy supposedly recovering ecologically due to the quarantine, with wildlife emerging all over the country. In response to these images, along with a drop in global emissions following the Coronavirus, tweets have surfaced claiming that “humanity” is the virus, and that the virus is a vaccine deployed by the planet to heal itself through the control, if not outright elimination of, the human population. These tweets consequently celebrate the spread of COVID-19 as a way for the planet to kill off a “virus” perceived to be killing said planet through the destruction of the environment. This view has thankfully, been rejected by most environmentalists.

These misanthropic and Malthusian views prove to be incredibly disturbing in this day and age. Not only do they outright celebrate human death through various tragedies by framing “humanity” as the enemy to the planet rather than existing socioeconomic systems perpetuating and enabling environmental devastation by framing all of humanity as a disease that should be contained if not outright destroyed, proponents of these worldviews, have proposed letting elements of the population die off, along with eugenics and mass sterilization, as means of reducing the human population "for the preservation of a blue and pure world."

They celebrate human death through a virus as beneficial to the planet because “the emissions are dropping and wildlife is returning.” Ecofascists are obfuscating the role of capitalism and the concentration of wealth at the hands of a handful of individuals. Many of whom run the key industries worsening the climate crisis--in escalating ecological disasters worldwide. As it has been noted, despite what Thanos or real-life ecofascists would want us to believe, a large population of humans supposedly being prone to ecological devastation is not the problem. Rather, the problem is that for the many years, if not decades, the wealth inequality has increased between the wealthiest 1% and the 99% of the population. Due to wealth inequality, much of the 99% globally lacks access to basic needs such as food and clean water, as resources are hoarded by the 1%, whom can have very easy access to clean water and adequate food given their wealth. Much of the ultra-rich is comprised of corporate and political elites in charge of industries-such as the fossil fuel industry. They generate profit at the expense of the environment, which makes it no wonder why the environment is in such dire straits today.

Wealth inequality, and power being concentrated at the hands of those with vested interests to lobby politicians to take no action against fossil fuel production while promoting climate change denial as fact, has long been understood by those living in the global south as the true source of inequality and environmental devastation, rather than overpopulation or the supposed ability of humans to gravitate towards ecological devastation on their own.

On July 14, 1997, Sri Lankan academic Asoka Bandarage wrote, in response to United Nations World Population Day, how between 1960-1991, the global income share of the richest 20 per cent of the global population increased from 70.2 per cent to 85 per cent, while the share of the poorest 20% declined from 2.3 per cent to 1.4 per cent; with much of the world’s poor in that bracket being women. Concurrently, the Global North, which at that time accounted for little more than 20 per cent of the global population accounted for about 75 per cent of global energy consumption, emission of two-thirds of greenhouse gas production, and 90 per cent of CFCs.

The ecofascists will hit back with the allegation that “capitalism is the problem, but that it’s ultimately a human invention”, and that because humanity created capitalism, humanity must be inherently evil and prone to destroying their environment. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Capitalism has only emerged as the dominant economic system for the last 300-400 years. At the start of human history, people lived cooperatively as nomadic hunter-gatherers, working together for the purpose of survival and sharing resources among their tribes. It was only when a surplus of resources was did a hierarchy, and thus a ruling class emerged, and even then, it organized itself socioeconomically along the lines of local city states, and then kings and emperors claiming divine right to rule, along with feudal and church-governed socioeconomic systems. It was only in the past few centuries that we have seen capitalism develop as the socioeconomic system currently dominating our global economy.

As the late Ursula K. LeGuin would say, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” At the end of the day, capitalism was ultimately an socioeconomic system created due to the needs and sociopolitical conditions of the past, and it wasn’t the first socioeconomic system thought of in response to the needs and conditions of past eras. And thus, it would not necessarily be the last, and only idea that humans could think of to create socioeconomic stability. In fact, already there have been societies that have existed for a long time and organized themselves outside of capitalist impulses. Examples of such societies include various indigenous societies around the world that have been resisting for centuries settler colonialism on their lands. Indigenous societies make up for 5% of the population, but protect much of the biodiversity that remains in the world; said biodiversity being the highest on indigenous managed lands.

In a University of British Columbia study it was found that there is a higher number of birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles in indigenous communities than there are anywhere else. In labeling all of humanity as prone to creating destructive societies, the eco-fascists ignore instances in the real world where humans establish and maintain sustainable societies that resist the encroachment of capitalism and settler colonialism that is responsible for the devastation of the environment.

This lack of acknowledgement of indigenous societies as important in preserving biodiversity, along with the lack of acknowledgement at how various intellectuals and activists in the Global South view the issue of overpopulation, highlights a key problematic aspect within the environmentalist movement: that it is ultimately driven by a white-centric and eurocentric view of ecology, and this is today reflected in ecofascist viewpoints. The Eurocentric lens within the environmentalist movement was rooted historically in the support of conservationists during the early part of the 20th century for policies such as eugenics.

In the 1970s, many supported the use of sterilization as a means of population control, along with the opposition of environmentalists such as Garrett Hardin against sending food aid to developed nations in order to control the population (the implication that if people starve to death, the population would be much more stable). Much of these policies championed by the darker elements of the environmentalist movement, as it can be seen, are often directed against developed nations, or populations considered to be undesirable.

Consequently, if an anti-human or Malthusian program is implemented to “reduce the population” and “save humanity” by any means necessary, it will result in an unaccountable loss of life--all while those in charge of the capitalist sociopolitical system escape any accountability for ecological devastation and use the momentum directed towards Malthusianism to pin the blame on ecological devastation on developing countries and their “population surpluses”. This in turn would only give credence to far-right ideologues that have railed against immigrants and refugees from non-western countries, whom could hypothetically rebrand themselves as defending the environment from groups seen as undesirable.

Ultimately, in regards to the ecological crises of our age, humanity is not the enemy to all life on the planet. The enemy, the real virus infecting the planet, is capitalism and its impact on the planet. In their Eurocentric and white-centric environmentalist thinking that all humanity is the enemy, and that we should as Thanos did, snap out a large percentage of human life, ecofascists not only disgustingly celebrate tragedies befalling humanity such COVID-19 as trimpuhs, but also mask the role of capitalism in worsening the ecological crisis.

We should never declare that humans are a virus that should be left behind as the planet heals, or worse, envision mass Thanos-style genocides and population reductions as the ecofascists are doing. In pushing for a green new deal, we should envision a much more just and sustainable world where wealth and access to resources are fairly distributed for all of humanity, where no one is left behind in our efforts to preserve the environment, and the machines of capitalism currently leading us into ecological catastrophe function no more.