Asteroids and solar flares will ruin all non-human life if humans go extinct
Jason G. Matheny 7, Special Consultant to the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, PhD candidate in Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Co-Founder of New Harvest, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction”, Risk Analysis, Volume 27, Number 5, http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2007/2007-10-15-reducingrisk.html
Human extinction in the next few centuries could reduce the number of future generations by thousands or more. We take extraordinary measures to protect some endangered species from extinction. It might be reasonable to take extraordinary measures to protect humanity from the same.19
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19. Human extinction would also likely condemn all nonhuman terrestrial life to extinction, as a planet-sterilizing asteroid or solar event is probable within the next billion years (Matheny, 2007).
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To decide whether this is so requires more discussion of the methodological problems mentioned here, as well as research on the extinction risks we face and the costs of mitigating them.20