VHEMT

I did my recycling yesterday morning.

It’s one of my many Saturday chores, made necessary by living in a country which still clings to the quaint idea that Sunday should be a day of rest. In Switzerland nothing opens on a Sunday. Nothing at all and therefore anyone who actually works during the week has to make full use of the only day available to them.

The Swiss also like to recycle. Statistics show that Swiss recycle more than any other country in the world, some 52%. I am not sure what this statistic means. Is it of everything? Is it of stuff which can be recycled? Whatever it is it’s higher than all the other countries so it must be good.

My local recycling center (open Saturday 8am to midday) is a well-organized and surprisingly tidy looking affair. Specific containers for everything and anything. All well labeled and well presented. There is a crushing machine for cardboard, the usual colour coded bottle collecting bins, bins for metal, wood, plastic, fabric, cork and batteries. All of this you can find at any recycling center but the Swiss do go one step further with their bins for Alt Brot (old bread) and used Nespresso coffee pods.

The reality is, with the exception of human waste, the Swiss recycle pretty much everything. To maintain their status as the greenest of them all they have hiked up the price of the bin liners. At £2 per bag even the laziest of us are encouraged to go out of our way on a Saturday morning to save a polar bear or two.

The bags are ‘special’ bags, not your common or garden bin liner, they have a picture of a tree on them and tell you in no uncertain terms what can go inside. The word ‘STOP!’ is printed next to a picture of a battery and a bottle. I have not seen them myself but have heard if you decide to simply use a normal black bin liner and place your rubbish in the collection bins the Rubbish Police will swoop down. They will forensically examine the bag for any link to the perpetrator, a letter, a bill, a speck of DNA and once they have this the wrath of the Swiss police will be breaking down your door to shame you and then fine you.

The added benefit from all this regulation is that the Swiss walk a little taller. They know they are the greener than everyone else. I am sure they believe if Polar bears could travel, they would visit Switzerland, to eat cheese, to yodel, to ski a little and to say thank you.

How far can one take your green card carrying credentials though? You could install solar panels or a smelly seeping septic tank. You could fund a wind turbine, drive a Prius or actually pay the carbon offset when you fly. For me though if you really want to be the best and look down your nose at everyone else including the Swiss you should become a member of VHEMT.

VHEMT is the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Basically their premise is that mankind is the problem, so eliminate the problem. Thankfully they aren’t proposing everyone lies down and takes poison en-mass. No, they are proposing that people abstain from reproduction to effect a gradual reduction of man from the earth.

Personally I like this. I like their logical approach to the problem as well as the almost unpalatable solution to it. It’s logical and unthinkable in equal measure and they use this shock tactic as a means to promote their ideology. They wouldn’t include the word ‘Extinction’ in their name if they didn’t want to shock. Think about it though, simple arithmetic shows that if we all decided to have one child per couple, in a generation the worlds population would half. Within 4 generations the worlds population which currently stands at 7 Billion would be reduced to 400 million.

It’s not a bad idea really, but then I have 3 children so it’s a little late for me to be signing up.

The movement was founded by the improbably named Les U Knight and with a name like that and an ideology based on voluntary extinction I would happily stand in line to listen to him speak.

You just know it’s going to be off the wall madness, probably in a Vegas convention center and I would be there, whooping and applauding at his every word. At the very least it would be the most fun anyone could have when discussing the death of 6.6 billion people.

But if wiping out mankind isn’t your bag where else could you turn?

Well there aren’t that many places really. There are of course the usual suspects: Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth but they are not very cool. I always found such groups extremely boring and, frankly, rather dull. I don’t quite know why this is but not ever having been a huge animal lover I find it quite hard to get worked up when I hear of some animals being used for testing drugs or some other life saving things. I understand make up and other non-essential things but drugs or surgical procedures I don’t really have an issue with.

I once spent an afternoon at a surgeon-training center in Hamburg. It was a brand new facility, state of the art, using virtual operations, computer generated 3D training and the like. Computers are good to a point but for a trainee surgeon to really appreciate how to carry out the procedure properly he or she needs to use a living thing, a real living thing. Cadaver’s work but saving the life of a cadaver is somewhat tricky and I would guess the success rate is on the low side. No, there is no substitute for the real thing or as close to the real thing as possible.

Now what would you prefer?

To be the first person thing this man has carried out this particular procedure on or to know that he or she has 100’s of hours under his belt practicing on the nearest thing to the human anatomy? The animal for whom nature has chosen to give an almost human anatomy is the pig and in this facility they would operate on live pigs.

They would sedate them, operate on them and then even if the operation was successful, put the animal to sleep. It was a little shocking but I can see why it was necessary. Also as a collateral benefit the bacon sandwiches in the canteen were the best I have ever had.

I like pigs, aside from Polar bears they are my favourite animal but I still find it hard to be enthused by a group of radicals screaming about their rights. I totally understand their point but what’s their solution?  

Would they be happy for their son or daughter to be cut open by a man or woman who had never actually done it for real? I doubt it. As much as I disliked the pig murdering facility in Hamburg I understood the necessity of it.

No, I will opt out of the Animal Liberation Front, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, The Earth Liberation Front and the brilliantly named Animal Right Militia. Also I am probably not going to be accepted into the VHEMT which is a disappointment, as I genuinely like their ideology.

I have just re-read this and realized I am coming across as someone who cares about nothing except for the £2 per bag I am forced to pay if I don’t recycle. This is not the case.

I just know that at the macro level people will not change unless they are forced to. Individually we can recycle everything in our house and fertilize our plants with human faeces if we like but this really isn’t going to change anything at all. Halving the population every generation would work but I think persuading the rest of the worlds population would be a struggle.

No the only real solution lies in finding solutions to allow people maintain their current lifestyles without them changing anything. We have our cars, central heating, Internet and toasters and will do anything we can to keep them. That includes damaging the planet beyond repair for generations to come.

Humans really are that selfish. We will continue on our path of convenient self-destruction rather than considering a restrictive alternative because it’s too much like hard work.

The political ruling classes know this as well and I safely predict legislation will never be introduced which forces us to act very differently. We won’t vote for it because lets be honest why should we, what have the polar bears, white rhinos or cute bottle nosed dolphins ever done for us?

When President Chirac gave President Bush a souvenir statue of the Eiffel Tower…President Bush looked at it and said ‘This is great! A little oil rig!’

I rest my case, whatever the hell that might be.