A World Without People

 When I think of the Earth and when I think of human beings on the Earth, I think of human beings with the earth. I don’t think of the Earth with human beings, and I surely do not think the Earth AND human beings. Right now, humans on this planet are pretty much just using and abusing it instead of living on it simply how animals and plants do. Human beings do not use what they need; instead, they use what they want. Luckily, present day humans are educated on climate change; they know that the choices they make right now affect the future of the planet and the future generations that live on this planet; instead of trying to do everything that they can to try and fix this problem, or rather prevent it from getting worse, humans sleep on their problems as if they will solve it in their dreams or they say, “I won’t be alive in one hundred years, so what does it matter?” There are parts of the earth that are right now, as I type this, burning to crisps and dying off; there are currently animals in the ocean choking because they have our plastic in their stomachs and lungs; there are animals being force fed and trapped in a small area just to be killed and eaten at the time that it is ideal for the human consumption; there are millions of youth citizens of the world begging that we save the planet, but there’s no adult in the room to lead. 

Parfit stated in his article  "Energy Policy and the Further Future: The Identity Problem" that existence is preferred over non-existence for human beings, but I think that is selfish of us to say. I believe that the existence of the planet is in fact preferred over the existence of human beings; if generations do not continue to care more about the topic of climate change and pollution, I do not think it would be so horrible for humans to live because the animals, the plants, the water, the air, and all the life on earth, except for humans, would benefit and prosper. It is selfish of us humans to use up all of the Earth’s resources quicker than we should, and it is selfish of us to just be okay with giving the future generations a lower quality of life just because we can’t stop polluting and abusing our environment. The future is unwritten, and we are capable of making it the best that it can be, but instead the future is looking like Thneedville in the Lorax where a short, ignorant man is making billions of dollars from selling bottles of “clean air”. 

When we say that existence is preferred over non-existence for the future humans; then we should act like it. We are like the pregnant woman in the first non-identity video who takes drugs and makes her future child sick for the rest of his life; he has a low quality of life that was directly caused by another person that could have been avoided entirely. We are given the future humans a low quality of life that could be entirely avoided if we were to just make a change in our daily lives; the slightest change by everyone existing on our current planet could make the largest difference for people in the future. 

I always say that as more generations come into the world the better it is, so of course there is the smallest maybe that in fifty years the population of the world could care about the future of the planet rather than their own lives, but fifty years is way too late. We make the change now; we give ourselves a better future and give the planet a better life. So many present day humans fear death so much that they refuse to talk about it, yet they are okay with watching the planet that they call home die because of them.