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Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, or VHEMT (pronounced "vehement"[1]), is a movement that calls for the voluntary extinction of the human race.
The basic concept behind VHEMT is the belief that the Earth would be better off without humans, and as such, humans should refuse to breed.[2] However, this does not mean that they intend to force people to not breed, or to kill anyone or in fact to commit suicide[3]. This last point is illustrated in their motto, "May we live long and die out"[4].
According to the website, "Roots of VHEMT run as deep as human history. Potential for a voluntary human extinction movement has been around for as long as humans have."[5] Les U. Knight is credited with giving the name "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" to the philosophy,[6], is the owner of VHEMT.org, and is cited as the founder, de facto leader or "prime avatar", in different publications.
VHEMT recognizes two levels of support:
VHEMT doesn't request participants to declare which of the two types of 'member' they are. Neither does the movement require the choice to be implicitly made.[7]
There has been numerous media coverage of the ideas of Les U. Knight and of VHEMT. Quite a number of these have been collected at the VHEMT media page.
In 2001, Knight appeared on Hannity & Colmes to present VHEMT's ideology. On the program, he stated that "as long as there's one breeding pair of homo sapiens, there's too great a threat to the biosphere."[8] He also expressed no hope for voluntary human extinction, but stated that "it is the right thing to do."
Knight has also been interviewed by MSNBC's Tucker Carlson, during which he debated with the host on the merits of the movement.[9] Knight stressed the movement's peaceful, nonviolent goals and reiterated that the movement's motivation is environmental protection.
VHEMT spreads its message through the internet; thus, reaching mainly wealthier nations. As a general rule, these countries already have fertility rates below the replacement rate and are thus already trending toward "human extinction," or at least a reduced population. However, according to VHEMT, it is wealthier nations that have the largest impact on world resources.
Other criticism points out that humans are a part of nature and the biosphere the movement seeks to protect. By intentionally seeking to extinguish one of nature's creations, critics say, they are damaging a part of Earth's biosphere.
Still other critics suggest that the presence of humans is not nearly as devastating in the long term as VHEMT suggests. Pointing out that more than 99.9% of the species existing before the birth of humanity managed to go extinct on their own; and that other life, like plankton, substantially modified the earth's atmospheric composition and temperature as part of nature's circle of life.