The Gazette-Enterprise

AUSTIN — The Texas Academy of Science board of directors maintained steadfast resolve Tuesday, standing by its decision to honor University of Texas professor Eric Pianka as the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

Pianka became the subject of national discussion following a pair of recent lectures in which he claimed “the world will be a much better place when there’s only 10 percent of us left” — referencing a disease pandemic he says will soon decimate the human race.

The very same day TAS declared its stance, Kathy Walt, press secretary for Gov. Rick Perry, expressed disdain over what Pianka calls his “doomsday talk.” Walt called the scientist’s viewpoints “abhorrent” and likened them to Hitler’s “hate-filled Third Reich.”

A longtime UT educator and esteemed member of the science community, Pianka — and his views — burst into the public arena after vocal dispute from “community scientist” Forrest Mims, who chairs the Environmental Science Section of the TAS.

A columnist for the Gazette-Enterprise, Mims chastised a lecture Pianka presented at the annual TAS convention and questioned the academy’s decision to recognize the professor. Mims said he struggled with concern over how Pianka’s students react to the death-centered talk.

“He praised diseases such as Ebola for being efficient killers, and he showed a slide of rows of skulls to drive home his point,” Mims wrote in one of three petition letters to TAS. “I recall that one skull had flashing red eyes and that [Pianka] expressed his views about mass death and disease in good humor.”

Both Pianka and the academy, however, say Mims’ alarm is without merit.

“The man is rabid,” Pianka said, describing Mims — the man he calls an avowed enemy. “He has a warped world view.”

In recent days, the educator told the Associated Press that his speech has been taken out of context, insisting he merely wants to warn the public that population growth must slow down. His mission, he said, involves no ill will toward humanity.

But to the academy, the message behind Pianka’s presentation is inconsequential. President David Marsh said the organization selects the DTS honoree based solely upon the individual’s credentials and contributions to science. He said TAS places no constraints on its speakers, nor will it ever.

“Whether or not we as a body agree with the statements that Dr. Pianka made in his presentation is irrelevant,” he said. “We are an academy of individuals, and as such, each is free to make his or her alignments.”

Marsh went on to agree that Pianka’s comments have been misconstrued. And though Pianka accused the Gazette-Enterprise of “irresponsible journalism” Monday, a Tuesday e-mail from Marsh described the paper’s reports as having “journalistic integrity.”

“I’d like to thank you for displaying a fair degree of journalistic integrity in Sunday’s article regarding the Forrest Mims vs. TAS matter,” Marsh said. “You could have gone off into a sensationalistic venue but instead stuck pretty close to the facts. I thank you.”

Response to Mims’ dismay came following his first petition letter. Much like Tuesday’s public statement, the academy’s letter to Mims stated it neither condoned nor vilified the doomsday talk. Marsh argued that “one of the purposes of any such presentation is to stimulate discussion — which indeed it did.”

That discussion, however, didn’t end with the academy.

After The Drudge Report picked up on a Sunday article by the Gazette-Enterprise, the online community dissected both the motive and the message behind Pianka’s words. And the message, it seems, isn’t a new one. Pianka’s been sharing his views inside his UT classroom for years.

Students at St. Edward’s University also got a look into Pianka’s philosophy Friday, when the professor accepted an invitation to share his talk with one of the university’s science classes. Pianka extended that invitation to the Gazette-Enterprise, where the publication made a digital recording of Pianka’s lecture. A full transcript of that lecture will be available on the newspaper’s Web site later this week.

Pianka told the classroom packed with silent listeners that decades of ignoring population control would lead to deadly effects — a fact he says is too late to change. Referencing the Biblical story of the Apocalypse, he revealed a slide depicting the “Four Horsemen” — war, famine, disease and death. If humanity doesn’t take steps to solve the problem of overpopulation, “the Four Horsemen will do it for us.”

Pianka went on to describe his vision of humanity’s crash and its aftermath.

“What I’m waiting for is the day you go to the supermarket and there are no Triscuits on the shelves,” Pianka warned the class, advising they begin packing a survival kit in preparation for the coming disaster. “We’re going to be hunters and gatherers again soon.”

The professor’s university Web site features an extensive list of items survivors will need when “civilization grinds to a halt.”

“When you’re out in the wilderness, you’re going to have to take things out with your hands,” Pianka said, telling students they’d best hone their survival skills.

While some have described Pianka’s words as hyperbole, the governor’s office’s distaste was plainspoken.

“Professor Pianka’s gleeful embracing of the destruction of 90 percent of the earth’s population as a necessary and worthy event is abhorrent, as is his notion that human life holds no more value than that of a lizard, bison or rhinoceros,” Walt said.

Read more about Pianka by visiting his lab page at uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus .

Read more about Forrest Mims at www.forrestmims.org or visit the Citizen Scientist at http://www.sas.org/tcs/index.html .

Read more about the Texas Academy of Science at http://www.texasacademyofscience.org .

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