Voluntary Human Extinction Movement © Eric R. Pianka VHEMT (pronounced vehement) was founded in 1991 by American Les Knight. It is not an organization, but is a loose network of altruistic people who care about life on planet Earth. Members are not just a bunch of misanthropes and anti-social, Malthusian misfits, taking morbid delight whenever disaster strikes humans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Voluntary human extinction is an extreme humanitarian alternative to human disasters. Members don't carry on about how the human race has shown itself to be a greedy, amoral parasite on the once-healthy face of this planet. That type of negativity offers no solution to the inexorable horrors which human activity is causing. Rather, The Movement presents an encouraging alternative to the callous exploitation and wholesale destruction of Earth's ecology. As VHEMT Volunteers know, the hopeful alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species, us: Homo sapiens... or more appropriately Homo the sap (sapiens is Latin for "wise" which we most assuredly are NOT). 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. When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die, evolve (if they believe in evolution), and will perhaps pass away, as so many of Nature's "experiments" have done throughout the eons. It's going to take all of us going. Last updated 10 September 2014 by Eric R. Pianka