The Very Nice People Who Want Humanity to Go Extinct
And why it’s never going to happen
Last week I read an interesting article in the New York Times about Les Knight. He’s the de facto leader of the Voluntary Human Extinction movement, which Times journalist Cara Buckley describes as “less a movement than a loose consortium of people who believe that the best thing humans can do to help the Earth is to stop having children.”
Knight and his fellow travelers want humanity to go extinct. But by choice. They support reproductive freedom and they oppose suicide (though presumably, they are in favor of physician-assisted suicide).
Reading about Knight and his friends reminded me of a similar philosophical movement known as Anti-Natalism. Like the Voluntary Extinctionists, Anti-Natalists believe it is unethical to have children. But not always for the same reasons.
For the Voluntary Extinctionists, having children is unethical because humanity is uniquely destructive of life on Earth. Having children just perpetuates and exacerbates the mass extinction we’re imposing on the planet.
Many Anti-Natalists accept this “misanthropic” argument against procreation. But they also advance a “philanthropic” argument centered on the prevention of suffering.
