There was a time when humanity looked in the mirror and saw something precious, worth protecting and fighting for — indeed, worth liberating. But now we are beset on all sides by propaganda promoting a radically different viewpoint. According to this idea, human beings are a cancer upon the Earth, a species whose aspirations and appetites are endangering the natural order. This is the core of antihumanism.
Merchants of Despair traces the pedigree of this ideology and exposes its deadly consequences in startling and horrifying detail. The book names the chief prophets and promoters of antihumanism over the last two centuries, from Thomas Malthus through Paul Ehrlich and Al Gore. It exposes the worst crimes perpetrated by the antihumanist movement, including eugenics campaigns in the United States and genocidal anti-development and population-control programs around the world.
Combining riveting tales from history with powerful policy arguments, Merchants of Despair provides scientific refutations to antihumanism’s major pseudo-scientific claims, including its modern tirades against nuclear power, pesticides, population growth, biotech foods, resource depletion, industrial development, and, most recently, fear-mongering about global warming. Merchants of Despair exposes this dangerous agenda and makes the definitive scientific and moral case against it.
Excerpt 1: “The Population Control Holocaust”
Excerpt 2: “The Truth About DDT and Silent Spring”
Praise for Merchants of Despair
“Robert Zubrin’s masterful study…makes for riveting reading. Merchants of Despair is a cautionary tale of what happens when powerful, unprincipled elites are not only alienated from the mass of their fellow men, but come to see them as a barrier to imagined social, evolutionary, or environmental progress. ”
— Steven W. Mosher, President, Population Research Institute
“Merchants of Despair is an extraordinary and important book….This fascinating volume carefully traces developments of the Malthusian hypothesis right up to the present: through eugenics to population control and genocide; through the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth and extreme environmentalism to climate change and the myth of global warming apocalypse. It is a shocking exposé of a movement whose deadly history has remained hidden far too long. Robert Zubrin has my nomination for a Pulitzer Prize ”
— S. Fred Singer, Chairman, Science and Environmental Policy Project; author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years
“I believe no one to date has so clearly explained the thread of the antihuman movement throughout history. To read this book is to become a warrior in the battle against it. ”
— Jay Lehr, Heartland Institute
Interviews with Robert Zubrin
Related Articles
Talks about Merchants of Despair
Robert Zubrin is available to give talks about the book. His charts are available here. To arrange a talk, contact Dr. Zubrin at zubrin@aol.com.