Would human extinction be a tragedy?
Would human extinction be a tragedy? Our species possesses inherent value, but humans are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it.
TODD MAY: ‘There are stirrings of discussion these days in philosophical circles about the prospect of human extinction… Would human extinction be a tragedy?… Our species possesses inherent value, but we are causing unimaginable animal suffering… What I am asking here is simply whether it would be a tragedy if the planet no longer contained human beings… To make the case, let me start with a claim that I think will be at once depressing and, upon reflection, uncontroversial. Human beings are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it.
This is happening through at least three means. First, human contribution to climate change is devastating ecosystems. Second, increasing human population is encroaching on ecosystems that would otherwise be intact. Third, factory farming fosters the creation of millions upon millions of animals for whom it offers nothing but suffering and misery before slaughtering them in often barbaric ways. There is no reason to think that those practices are going to diminish any time soon. Quite the opposite. Humanity, then, is the source of devastation of the lives of conscious animals on a scale that is difficult to comprehend…
Although I do not have a final answer to this question, we should recognise that the case of future humans is very different from the case of currently existing humans. To demand of currently existing humans that they should end their lives would introduce significant suffering among those who have much to lose by dying. In contrast, preventing future humans from existing does not introduce such suffering, since those human beings will not exist and therefore not have lives to sacrifice. The two situations, then, are not analogous…
It may well be, then, that the extinction of humanity would make the world better off and yet would be a tragedy. I don’t want to say this for sure, since the issue is quite complex. But it certainly seems a live possibility, and that by itself disturbs me… It may also turn out that it is through our own actions that we human beings bring about our extinction, or at least something near it, contributing through our practices to our own tragic end’. SOURCE…
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