Books

The World Without Us
Alan Weisman
St. Martin’s Press 2007 Buy it.
Fascinating reading even if you don’t think humans should disappear completely from Earth. Thoroughly researched with testimony from experts clearly translated into understandable descriptions. Includes a couple of pages about VHEMT and a reasonable suggestion for improving human population density.
Listen to an interview of Alan Weisman by Ira Flatow on NPR’s Science Friday September 7, 2007.

In the Clear: A Worldview in Essays
Day of 6 Billion
Brian Julian
McKinleyville Press 2001

The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action
Wendy Northcutt
Plume Books 2000

Chapter 4: The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement’s motto is “May we live long and die out.” They encourage a radical alternative to our callous extinction of plants and animals. “Each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoning billions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom.” The philosophies of abstinence held by these three groups [Shakers, Heaven’s Gate, VHEMT] guarantee that “the gene stops here.” In summary, groups that insist upon celibacy will die off without an effective way of recruiting new converts. And even those celibate groups that manage to expand their ranks will logically eliminate themselves once they reach the hypothetical pinnacle of success: recruitment of the entire human race. These sorts of groups are eligible for a Darwin Award. Catholic priests, homosexuals who manage to reproduce despite their sexual preferences, and similar groups can theoretically exist eternally, and are not eligible for this notorious award.

In a sense, we are advocating “abstinence” but not from sexual activity, just from breeding. This distinction isn’t relevant to a group Darwin Award, but our “effective way of recruiting new converts” disqualifies VHEMT.
The Darwin Awards give us entertaining stories and thoughtful discussions about their veracity and implications for evolution, but in reality the removal of a few thousand, or even a few million, people from our gene pool will have no discernable influence on future Homo sapiens.
A commonly expressed misconception about advocates of voluntary human extinction is that we’ll die out in one generation because we aren’t passing on our genes, as if there’s a gene for awareness of humanity’s place in the biosphere. All of us came from breeding couples and yet we’ve decided to stop breeding. There’s no way to breed more people who don’t want to breed in order to keep the idea of not breeding alive.
Humans do, on the other hand, influence evolution of other species, the ones we don’t drive to extinction anyway.

Deep Environmental Politics: The Role of Radical Environmentalism in Crafting American Environmental Policy
Phillip F. Cramer
Praeger 1998

Pagan Kennedy’s Living: the handbook for maturing hipsters
Pagan Kennedy
St. Martins 1997

Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief
Donna Kossy
Feral House 1994
VHEMT’s pages in book