Rahul Kumar is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Queen's University, Canada.
This book examines underexplored themes concerning morality and our relationship to future generations. Would it be morally wrong to allow humanity to go extinct? If not, how many people should there be? By not acting on climate change, are we wronging future generations? It was published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
1. Rethinking the Asymmetry 2. A portable defense of the Procreation Asymmetry 3. Is a person-affecting solution to the non-identity problem impossible? Axiology, accessibility and additional people 4. Our obligations to future generations: the limits of intergenerational justice and the necessity of the ethics of metaphysics 5. Citizens in appropriate numbers: evaluating five claims about justice and population size 6. The savings problem in the original position: assessing and revising a model 7. How should utilitarians think about the future? 8. The ethics of intergenerational relationships 9. What's wrong with human extinction? 10. On the survival of humanity 11. The threat of intergenerational extortion: on the temptation to become the climate mafia, masquerading as an intergenerational Robin Hood 12. Endangering humanity: an international crime? 13. Human rights, harm, and climate change mitigation