Original article (in Serbian) was published on 15/5/2024; Author: Marija Vučić
Recently, British climate scientist Bill McGuire has become the focus of global criticism on Twitter for his statement that a major deadly pandemic is the only quick way to halve the emission of harmful gases. Many have interpreted his comments as advocating for mass depopulation and the “culling” of humanity. Among his critics are Serbian web portals like Nulta tacka and Srbin Info, which traditionally deny climate change. These sites suggest, without any evidence, that such statements are part of a conspiracy by the powerful to decimate the planet’s population.
McGuire, a volcanologist, climate scientist and natural disaster expert at University College London, wrote a status that depopulation conspiracy theorists interpreted as confirmation of their beliefs.
“If I am brutally honest, the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic #climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate”, McGuire wrote on May 11 in a since deleted tweet.
This narrative has also reached Serbia. On Tuesday, Nulta tacka published the sensational headline “Climate expert calls for mass depopulation in order to save the planet from “global warming””, and in the text they even use the phrase “culling of the population”.
It is a translation from a similar, controversial web portal in English.
Although the text indicates that McGuire quickly clarified his intentions, Nulta tacka remains unconvinced, viewing his deletion of the tweet as evidence of deceit.
“McGuire was obviously hoping to convince people not to believe their lying eyes, but the internet lasts forever and screenshots of his post quickly went viral”, Nulta tacka writes in this not-so-skillful translation.
Did McGuire Call for Depopulation? No.
A day after the controversial tweet, McGuire announced that he had deleted the tweet and wrote that it “seems like a lot of people can’t read” and that his words had been misinterpreted, either accidentally or on purpose.
He stated the following:
“I SAID ‘THE ONLY WAY I SEE EMISSIONS FALLING AS FAST AS THEY NEED TO…’
I DID NOT SAY ‘WE NEED A PANDEMIC..’
FFS DON’T READ THINGS INTO A STATEMENT THAT AREN’T THERE
I COULD HAVE SAID SOCIETY-BUSTING ASTEROID IMPACT INSTEAD OF PANDEMIC”
In new tweets, he clarified that emissions of harmful gases can only fall due to a major economic collapse, which would occur in the event of a major pandemic, that is, due to population decline.
“Emissions have only fallen at times of major economic shock, due to pandemic or otherwise. A much bigger one is the only way emissions will fall by at least 50% in 66 months – needed to have any chance of dodging dangerous, all pervasive, #climate breakdown”, he stated.
We witnessed such a decline, only on a smaller scale, he explained, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When asked by a Twitter user to clarify whether he wished to eliminate the human population on the planet, he said:
“Why on earth would I? I’ve been doing my best to save it for years”, McGuire said.
A day later, Srbin Info also shared the article from Nulta tacka. This web portal, under the ‘depopulation’ tag, features similar stories that frame climate change as a conspiracy theory and deny its existence altogether.
Down the Rabbit Hole
Nulta tacka dramatically portrayed McGuire’s tweet, describing him as a ‘radical globalist’ who purportedly advocates for wiping out the human population to ‘save the planet’ from ‘climate change.’ The site also claims that he is not alone, suggesting that this group of ‘anti-humanists’ is led by the World Economic Forum.”
“The globalist organization based in Switzerland recently revealed the details of the so-called “Noah’s Ark” that will supposedly “save the elite” during an event that will wipe out most of the people on Earth. The World Economic Forum has assured the global “elites” that they will be saved from depopulation, while the “others” will remain “to drown”, writes Nulta tacka.
These alleged details, as this web portal explains, were presented by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, saying that the majority of humanity will soon become useless and a burden to the elites and will have to be eliminated. They write that the historian made this ominous plan public at the World Economic Forum panel, where he allegedly assured the elites that, when mass depopulation occurs, they will be protected – scientists will build a kind of Noah’s Ark, especially for them.
Harari, however, said none of this, which can be heard directly in the video recording of his speech at the Warwick Economic Summit 2022.
Quite the opposite – he criticizes the political elites because everyone, in the climate change story, hopes that technology will save things. He calls this technological utopian and Noah’s Ark syndrome.
“Yes, eventually they built an arc, but just for five people, or something like that. Almost everybody drowned. (…) Humanity might divide into a majority maybe of people who will suffer tremendously and a minority that will have the resources, the wealth, the technology to protect themselves and even “flourish” (…) One of the reasons that we do not see enough urgency from leaders, from business elites and so forth, is that in the back of their minds, they are counting on a technological Noah’s Ark, and that’s very, very dangerous”, said Harari.
