Blue Crab Boulevard

Ted Turner: A New Dim-Witted Malthus

Consider this another example, one in a long and depressing string of examples, that our educational system has been in the crapper for some time: Global Warming Will Cause Mass Cannibalism

TED TURNER: Not doing it [ed. "it" being something drastic about Anthropogenic Global Warming (tm)] will be catastrophic. We'll be eight degrees hottest in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state — like Somalia or Sudan — and living conditions will be intolerable. The droughts will be so bad there'll be no more corn grown. Not doing it is suicide. Just like dropping bombs on each other, nuclear weapons is suicide. We've got to stop doing the suicidal two things, which are hanging on to our nuclear weapons and after that we've got to stabilize the population. When I was born-

CHARLIE ROSE: So what's wrong with the population?

TURNER: We're too many people. That's why we have global warming. We have global warming because too many people are using too much stuff. If there were less people, they'd be using less stuff.

This is so stupid it hurts. But it does underscore how much of the AGW crowd's appeal is built upon a grade school level morality tale. "See the bad people! See how greedy the bad people are??! Watch how their greed bites them in the butt!"

Of course, the Malthusian implications in Ted Turner's vision are a little more sinister:

"See all the multitude of poor people who want to be rich people? How greedy of them! We can't have them succeed at that, now can we? It's better if they didn't exist. How can we get them to stop breathing?? Hmmm…"

It's amazing that so many supposedly secular people want so desperately to be living in "end times."

Junk Science | Rich Horton April 2, 2008

By dailybayonet, April 2, 2008 @ 1:45 pm

Was this crazy before he slept with Hanoi Jane, or did something rub off?Apologies for any unintended imagery.
By Bleepless, April 2, 2008 @ 3:13 pm

Pass the burgers, Gramps. Oh. Wait. You are the burgers.
By Ted Goldman, April 2, 2008 @ 4:46 pm

Turner forgot to take his lithium again.
A billionaire can be a moron too!
By Sam, April 2, 2008 @ 5:15 pm

Was this Ted Turner the TV guy? Sounds more like my 5-year old granddaughter after her mother lets her stay up and watch questionable TV shows.
By N. O'Brain, April 2, 2008 @ 5:40 pm

Just don’t eat the clowns.
They taste funny.
By MikeM, April 2, 2008 @ 8:35 pm

Ted wants fewer people? You first, gramps. Do your part.
Ted complains that people want to be rich and have stuff? Well, what did he think t.v. commercials were for when he ran TBS, etc.? He has his, now he wants me to be satisfied with less.
By kidrob, April 3, 2008 @ 6:03 am

its really easy for ted to say we use and have to much stuff. whats he selling now?
By skeneogden, April 3, 2008 @ 2:45 pm

I say Ted should do his part and join the Soylent Green program. It’s the least he could do for despoiling the environment by flying around in his private jet. Oh, and I’m sure he lives in a little 600 square foot walk up as well. Notice how Charlie Rose didn’t following up with any thing tough. Wouldn’t want to get dis-invited to any cocktail party’s.
By Mockinbird, April 3, 2008 @ 3:35 pm

Ted Turner is proof that some persons should just be taken out and shot.
By martian, April 4, 2008 @ 7:43 am

Ted is an idiot. However, even an idiot can be right once in a while and he does have one valid point – the human race is breeding itself out of house and home. We keep pumping out children at a tremendous rate while simultaneously improving health care so people live tremendously longer than in past eras. If we keep up at the present rate, it won’t be long (in historical terms) before we have more people than we can feed worldwide (it’s already true in some areas). Sooner or later we are going to have to face the fact that we only have this one planet and it can only produce so much food – especially when we are continually reducing the food producing land areas by building more housing to house the continually increasing population.