Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, makes the case that a growing strain of environmentalism has stopped valuing human beings as anything special. The film lays out the positions of activists and legal theorists who want constitutional-style rights extended to animals, plants, rivers, and "Mother Earth," and who argue that human needs should be weighed no higher than any other species' claims on the planet. Smith walks through proposals to cut the human population by as much as 90 percent, framing them as the logical endpoint of treating humanity as an ecological threat rather than a species with its own moral standing. The film draws on Smith's companion book of the same title and presents these positions largely through his own analysis and selected statements from the movement's proponents, building toward the question of what happens to human rights and freedoms once humans are no longer treated as the planet's most important occupants.