Solar expansion will destroy all non-human life---human survival’s the only escape
Dr. Simon Beard 19, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at University of Cambridge, PhD in Moral Philosophy from the London School of Economics, and Phil Torres, Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Founder of the X-Risks Institute, Writer Appearing in Skeptic, Free Inquiry, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Salon, Truthout, Erkenntnis, Metaphilosophy, “How Tragic Would Human Extinction Be? Convergent Arguments for Making the Survival of Our Lineage a Global Priority”, p. 7-8
Even more, perhaps justice obliges us to overcome not just past human suffering, but past and ongoing suffering that humans have caused to non-human organisms. Consider that we are the number one driver of global biodiversity loss, which has resulted in the sixth mass extinction in life’s 3.8-billionyear history. As Jennifer Jacquet (2017) observes, humanity has probably changed the biosphere more than any other organism since cyanobacteria brought about the Great Oxygenation Event ~2.45 billion years ago. This yields a view according to which, to quote R. Slaughter (1994), “the global commons has been compromised by human activity and restorative actions are necessary.” Thus, it behooves humanity to continue existing in order to undo some or all of the damage that we have inflicted upon the natural world, an act that could be accomplished given (a) ongoing attitudinal shifts about sustainability, as well as (b) future technological possibilities, such as carbon removal and de-extinction techniques, that could restore climatic and ecological systems. An even grander point stems from the fact that the sun will eventually sterilize this planetary spaceship, thus destroying all life on Earth. It follows that, since humans are the only species with the capacity to migrate to and terraform exoplanets in the foreseeable future, and if one values the continued existence of Earth-originating life, then one should work to ensure that humanity doesn’t go extinct so that Earth-originating life doesn’t go extinct either.19 Along these lines exactly, humans are the only species with the capacity to intervene in the Darwinian “struggle for existence” and reduce the truly enormous amount of suffering among wild animals. In fact, this is the central aim of David Pearce’s “abolitionist project,” which imagines a world in which “our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically preprogrammed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today’s peak experiences” (Pearce 2007). Thus, even if one believes that humanity has so far been a great evil in the world—towards ourselves and other organisms—if one also believes in moral progress and cares about “cosmic justice,” so to speak, then one could still come to the conclusion that we ought to prioritize our long-term survival.