The new Greens are anti-human. Even conservation groups — a noble cause — now seethe with an anti-humanism that is both nihilistic and destructive to the cause of better environmental practices. I mean, who is going to follow a flag proclaiming "Humans Are Cancer!"

Along these lines, Julia Roberts narrates an angry video for Conservation International (embedded above) that has Mother Nature stating that she has "starved species" greater than humans. Over at The Stream, Jason Jones and John Zmirak discuss. From "Julia Roberts as Mother Nature: She Wants to Kill Us":

What is off-putting and ominous about this video is the narrator’s tone and language as she discusses humanity. Speaking with all the haughty disdain we’d associate with the Witch-Queen of Narnia, Roberts scoffs at man as an insignificant and transient biological blip. "I have fed species greater than you," she warns. "And I have starved species greater than you."

Say what? As Jones and Zmirak remark, there have been no greater species — anywhere at anytime — than humans:

In what sense could this be true? By what criteria could one judge a species greater than humanity? Yes, most dinosaurs weighed more. Insects and microbes outnumber us by the billions. Alligators have been around longer than humans. (Is that what they always seem to be grinning about?)

But somehow, body mass, numbers, or sheer longevity don’t stack up as measures of greatness. No single species has had a greater impact, for better or worse, on planet earth than human beings.

How is that in any way disputable? Humans are exceptional. There has never been another species in the known universe with our capacities, moral sense, rationality, or intelligence.

For example, only we have duties, which is why we are accountable for treating the environment in an irresponsible manner. But we also have duties to ourselves, our thriving — which is why proper environmentalism is a balancing act — unavailable if nature is made (by us) into a "person" with equal rights.

Jones and Zmirak call this brand of misanthropy "subhumanism":

Subhumanism is a pale, degraded copy of the brave image of man asserted during the Renaissance; it lacks the confident rationality that inspired the Enlightenment; it has shrugged off the dreams of self-transcendence and communion with nature that beguiled the romantics.

When we speak of humanity now, too often we think in terms of ecological damage, excessive numbers, and intractable hatreds. Ecologists have even taught us to see ourselves as a kind of plague on the planet, with our generation’s task to limit the damage we do to the rest of the biosphere.

Indeed. On one hand, we are called vermin. In the next breath, Green misanthropes yell at us to engage in radical self-sacrifice to "save the planet."

If Mother Nature has intentionally "starved" species "greater than you," she’s one cruel mamma!

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.