Wisconsin’s current Secretary of State Doug La Follette wrote a survival guide in 1992 claiming one of the best ways to save the planet from environmental Armageddon is through forced human sterilization.
La Follette, who ran in the Democratic primary to replace Republican Gov. Scott Walker in the 2012 recall election, devoted an entire chapter of “The Survival Handbook: A Strategy for Saving Planet Earth” to the belief that the world’s human population is destroying the environment.
“In a finite world,” he wrote in Chapter 11, “the human population cannot continue to expand indefinitely. Our expanding population lies at the heart of all the environmental problems which are discussed in this Survival Handbook.”
The problem, La Follette noted, is that there will eventually be too many people to feed. His thoughts essentially ape the theories and beliefs of 18th century economist Thomas Malthus, who argued in his book “Essay on the Principle of Population” that population growth outstrips food resources.
La Follette goes on to suggest families get “sterilized after having two children.”
Not to worry, he wrote at the time, sterilization is a “simple, painless, and inexpensive operation for a man, and it will not effect your sex life.”
He goes on to suggest doling out “financial incentives” to people through taxpayer money as a way of rewarding smaller families. He also believes that the government should shovel money at international organizations that seek to limit human population.
La Follette has gotten into some rows with Walker in the past. For instance, he sued the governor in 2015, claiming Walker’s then-budget violated Wisconsin’s state constitution by interfering with the secretary of state’s work maintaining state records. La Follette brought the lawsuit one day after the Republican governor launched his unsuccessful bid for president.
La Follette served on the board of directors of environmental group Friends of the Earth and the Union of Concerned Scientists. La Follette was elected in 2003 to the board of green group Sierra Club.
The Sierra Club and other environmentalist groups have flirted with the idea of population control for years, mostly out of concern human population contributes to environmental damage.
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