Trending Science: Want to save the planet? Eat humans

Long before a recent UN report sounded the alarm about global warming, coverage of the hot-button issue has ranged from sobering scientific consensus to an urgent tone and imagery of doom. Almost the entire scientific community agrees with the view that global warming is mainly caused by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. It also agrees that modifying food production and halting land abuse are two of the most common solutions.

Eat each other: climate change activism gone wild

Put aside reducing deforestation and tilling for a moment, and open your mind to a new, yet macabre approach: eating human flesh. Wait, don’t give up on this outlandish notion just yet. Just hear behavioural scientist Magnus Söderlund out.

Speaking at a Stockholm summit on food of the future in early September, Prof. Söderlund of the Stockholm School of Economics floated the idea of eating human meat from dead bodies to fight the climate crisis. His audience wasn’t so keen on the idea. He did bring up more some more conceivable options like insects.

In an interview following the panel discussion ‘Can You Imagine Eating Human Flesh?’, Prof. Söderlund didn’t back down on using cannibalism to supplement our food supply. When asked if he would personally chomp on human flesh, he was receptive to the idea. “I feel somewhat hesitant but to not appear overly conservative … I’d have to say … I’d be open to at least tasting it,” he told Swedish state television channel TV4.

Save earth, eat a human

During the talk, Prof. Söderlund said that us humans can be saved if we don’t outright reject the taste of our own flesh. It’s all a question of breaking down barriers and taboos against cannibalism. No mention of dignity, morality, mores and norms, but perhaps even more importantly the severe health risks.

“[T]o suggest that cannibalism is a solution to climate change is about as bad as climate denial itself,” Genevieve Guenther, director of End Climate Silence, a non-profit organisation aimed at assisting the media to connect stories about climate change impacts to climate change itself, told ‘Business Insider’. “I don’t think that it should be even entertained in any seriousness, but exposed as a kind of propaganda that only makes it harder for us to transform the world in the ways that we need to.”

“The idea that we would be able to administer this in any kind of rational, systemic way is so absurd,” Guenther added. “It would mean our whole culture would descend into barbarism.”

If ever there comes a time when humanity considers turning to cannibalism, society will have bigger issues to deal with. “If we come to the point where we’re looking at human corpses for food sources, we’re going to have larger problems on our hands,” Guenther said. “It will mean that we failed to mitigate the climate crisis.”