Would it be the worst thing in the world if people were to become extinct? a column published by the New York Times has asked.
Todd May, a Clemson University philosophy professor, raised the macabre question Monday in a guest opinion piece amid what he described as an upward trend in academic conversations about human extinction “given the increasingly threatening predations of climate change.”
“Human beings are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it,” May wrote, listing the effects of man-made climate change and a growing global population rate as examples. “If this were all to the story there would be no tragedy. The elimination of the human species would be a good thing, full stop.”
But May added that people “bring things to the planet that other animals cannot,” including reason, art, and science.
“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,” he wrote. “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.”
A Monmouth University poll released in November found that while a majority of Republicans now believe in climate change, many still don’t consider it to be a man-made phenomenon, though NASA states at least 97 percent of publishing climate scientists agree human activities are likely driving climate change. President Trump often refers to climate change as “a hoax,” pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement and rescinding a number of Obama-era regulations aimed at protecting the environment.
May, an anarchism and post-structuralism specialist, works as an adviser on NBC fantasy comedy “The Good Place.”
