George Orwell’s Animal Farm tells of the visionary pig Old Major, who had a dream that soon proved disastrous: “And now, comrades, I will tell you about my dream of last night. I cannot describe that dream to you. It was a dream of the earth as it will be when Man is forgotten.”

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is one example of organizations that hope to play an important role in furthering these goals. Its manifesto states: “Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense.” Dense indeed. These folks may be the alleged sharp edge of environmentalism, but the same ethos is also expressed by Green celebrities who represent the dull and fuzzy parts.

As an African, I find entertaining efforts by wealthy white environmentalists to explain in euphemism and allusion their belief that the real problem of climate change is the growth of brown and black populations in Asia and Africa.

In its 2014 report, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed how the reduction through efficiency of CO₂ emissions from hydrocarbon fuels was wiped out by population increase. In other words, all the interminable blather at climate summits, all the regulation to increase the cost of energy and thereby reduce CO₂ emissions, all the trillions of tax dollars diverted to ‘renewables,’ the threats to persecute and imprison climate ‘criminals’ — all of it is just smoke and mirrors. None of it will stop the alleged manmade global warming unless, according to the United Nations, something is done to reduce human population.

It’s fairly likely that population will peak around mid-century and then begin declining at an accelerating rate that could leave the entire world’s population at under half a billion within a few centuries, with some demographers speaking of a coming population crunch. Yes, leading environmentalists predict global population to grow 50 to 100 percent this century and per capita consumption of energy and materials to increase with wealth, but they rarely explain that population growth is expected only in non-white races. Europe and the United States are growing only because of immigration. Their native-born populations fail to breed — perhaps because they are too busy saving the planet.

At a recent World Economic Forum in Davos, former Vice President Al Gore and Microsoft’s Bill Gates discussed how population is the fulcrum of global warming, and that contraceptives are therefore key to fighting climate change. The African population, said Gore, is anticipated to exceed India’s and China’s by 2050 and be more than both combined by the end of the century.

If you understand population demographics you will see that Gates and Gore are tiptoeing. As an African, I find entertaining efforts by wealthy white environmentalists to explain in euphemism and allusion their belief that the real problem of climate change is the growth of brown and black populations in Asia and Africa.

Gates and Gore would never say it except in veiled language.

Instead they try to brainwash everyone with nonstop global warming campaigning. They explain that richer nations must be fleeced for global warming reparations, and that people in those nations should smile with ecological self-satisfaction as they are robbed of their hard-won liberties and prosperity. A recent report estimates that, based on the failed computer models, serious efforts to limit the worst effects of global warming require $12.1 trillion over the next quarter century ($484 billion a year). That money can then be used at UN conferences to try to bribe politicians in less developed countries (LDCs) to get in on the game and to impose schemes of population control.

For decades, and now with a vengeance, environmental activists have used their influence with the U.S. State Department to activate population-control programs that use aid money to encourage governments of LDCs to abort their children — all in the name of saving the planet. As if the blood of fifty-four million murdered babies in America were not enough, we are witnessing globalization of infanticide.

Many politicians in LDCs are content to carry out and praise the benefits of population reduction. A notable exception is Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who said, “I am not one of those worried about the ‘population explosion’. This [population] is a great resource.”

Aborting humans, Zhao suggests, is the most cost-effective way to save the planet, a much bigger bang for the buck than technological patches or tree planting.

Population is both a challenge and an opportunity. But for environmentalists, increased population is always a bad thing since it usually means increased energy consumption, materials and chemicals accompanying economic growth, technological change and free trade. These are tools which can be abused. But history shows how prudent use, by free people, uplifts whole civilizations.

The Chinese, at least since the age of Mao, could never be accused of subtlety. Not surprisingly then, at another United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, population control was raised by Zhao Baige, a member of the Chinese government delegation, and vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China. She said that reducing population is an important key to saving the planet from global warming.

According to Zhao, since the institution of China’s one-child policy in 1979 the communist nation has reduced the number of births by 400 million, resulting in 18 million fewer tons of CO₂ emissions per year. Aborting humans, Zhao suggests, is the most cost-effective way to save the planet, a much bigger bang for the buck than technological patches or tree planting. And she demands credit.

Of course in China, it is not voluntary. Baige expects praise and privilege for extinguishing babies in the name of global warming. Even the kindness of the godless is cruelty.

James Wanliss is Professor of Physics at Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC, a policy adviser to the Heartland Institute, a senior fellow of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, and author of Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death.