Climate Change and Population Ethics

Climate change will certainly alter the world’s future people. Moreover, the alteration may be very large. There is even a slight possibility that it will cause the extinction of humanity, so that after some future date there will be no more people ever. A correct assessment of the harm done by climate change or of the benefit of policies aimed at controlling climate change must take account of the resulting change of population. Yet in the practice of policy no assessment ever does so. This practice of policy-makers concerned with climate change simply continues the common practice of policy-makers in general. It is very rare for policy-makers to take account of the effects of their policies on population. Why? Because they assume, in common with most people, that changes in population are in themselves ethically neutral: they do not make the world either better or worse. This “intuition of neutrality” seems a good reason for ignoring changes in population when making evaluations. But actually, it is not a good reason. I shall explain that, even to the extent that the intuition is true, it does not mean that changes in population can be ignored in making assessments. Changes in population must be taken into account. Yet is difficult to do so, given that the theory of population ethics is in disarray.