Why longtermism is the world’s most dangerous secular credo | Aeon Essays
Scarecrows keep away migratory birds from the dangers of the tailing ponds created by the exploitation on the tar sands at Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. Photo by Larry Towell/Magnum
Scarecrows keep away migratory birds from the dangers of the tailing ponds created by the exploitation on the tar sands at Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. Photo by Larry Towell/Magnum
is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany. His writing has appeared in Philosophy Now, Nautilus, Motherboard and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, among others. He is the author of The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse (2016), Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks (2017) and Human Extinction: A History of Thinking About the End of Humanity (forthcoming from Routledge).
There seems to be a growing recognition that humanity might be approaching the ‘end times’. Dire predictions of catastrophe clutter the news. Social media videos of hellish wildfires, devastating floods and hospitals overflowing with COVID-19 patients dominate our timelines. Extinction Rebellion activists are shutting down cities in a desperate attempt to save the world. One survey even found that more than half of the people asked about humanity’s future ‘rated the risk of our way of life ending within the next 100 years at 50 per cent or greater.’
