How is it that the most compassionate, most tolerant, most caring people in the world are so eager to start killing?

There’s scarcely a single program suggested by the left that wouldn’t result in the deaths of large numbers of people – reaching even unto the millions – if put into full effect. All the Democratic health care schemes, from ObamaCare to Medicare-for-All, would result in the collapse of the U.S. health care system, with myriads dying as a result. Banning guns would turn the American countryside into something resembling Sonora, with thousands killed (Keep in mind that the cities with the highest murder rates – Chicago, D.C., Newark – are also those that have banned guns). Democratic obstinance on immigration reform, with the welcome mat laid out to every MS-13 hitman and Hamas goon that comes down the pike, has already resulted in hundreds of deaths – Kate Steinle’s being only the most visible

We can also mention the Obama/Clinton Mideast plan, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands, and ain’t over yet.

As the man said, this is no coincidence, comrades. The death rates inherent in leftist policies aren’t a bug, they’re a feature.  As history clearly demonstrates, from the USSR through Red China through Cambodia through Venezuela, socialist policies can’t be implemented without massive spikes in mortality. It’s supposed to be that way. Recall the slogan: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

We see this once again in the “climate emergency” statement published in BioScience this Tuesday. This statement, signed by 11,000 “scientists” (the majority no doubt sociologists and similar irrelevancies) opens, "We declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency." It goes on to call for emergency legislation worldwide, including a demand for population to “be stabilized -- and, ideally, gradually reduced -- within a framework that ensures social integrity.”

Sounds benign, doesn’t it? “Gradually reduced,” “social integrity.” But of course, it isn’t. The “solutions” suggested in this statement. which include deindustrialization, an immediate switch to renewables, a curtailing of modern agriculture (particularly as regards meat), and collectivization of the economy, would result in immediate social collapse across vast areas of the globe, with casualties in the hundreds of millions.

But it’s meant to. The Greens have never made a secret of the fact that depopulation is their major goal. Human population must be cut to, oh, a billion, according to one suggestion, 100 million to another – and it must be done immediately. There is, of course, only one way to do this.

Years ago, when working as an editor for a national magazine, I was sent a review column covering a book calling for exactly that type of program, except that the writer made no bones about the fact that billions would need to be killed. The reviewer agreed completely, with the proviso that we couldn’t use nuclear weapons to do the job, because that would be wrong.

The concept goes back even further. In his 2010 historical study Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, the brilliant historian Timothy Snyder, revealed, after sixty years, the true motive behind the Nazi invasion of Russia. (Snyder apparently was the first man to actually spend time in German archives.) Not merely lebensraum, nothing that simple. No – the Nazis were convinced that there were too many people in Europe and too little food, and that therefore the “useless eaters” needed to be wiped out. The resulting savagery of Barbarossa and its sequels was no accident of wartime brutality or runaway master-race ideology; it was the actual purpose of the operation. The Nazis were Greens, and, as Snyder clearly demonstrates, so was their goal. (Snyder is nowhere near as brilliant about current politics, but that’s neither here nor there.)

There may be some difference between the environmentalism of the 40s and that of the early 21^st century, but if so, it somehow eludes me.

The Bioscience statement clearly shows that nothing has changed. Today’s Greens look forward to mass murder as much as any homicidal maniac ranting on Facebook. They must be treated in the same way.