As I was talking to my friend about the vastness of the universe, a topic that arose following the news of the recently discovered Trappist-1, we ended up talking about a movement called the VHEMT. VHEMT stands for Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. As the name suggests, this movement believes that the world could be saved from being destroyed if human beings stop breeding and become extinct.

VHEMT believes that  further reproduction of human beings will only lead to the destruction of the world in one way or the other. They believe that overpopulation will result in global warming and inevitably exterminate life on planet earth. While some antinatalists may agree to this, I strongly oppose the policy of the movement.

First of all, stopping the reproduction cycle of human beings is impractical and nearly impossible since most of the people would want to have kids and pass down their genes onto the next generation rather than agreeing to an extinction. Moreover, even if we were to go extinct, there’s a high chance of the earth going to waste either way because of the risk of all the nuclear power plants crashing down or the sun swallowing up our planet. We also don’t know what will likely be the earth’s condition after the human beings go extinct, so I don’t think taking such a huge step without knowing the absolute consequence would be a feasible idea. Therefore, instead of advocating on the extinction of human beings, I think we should focus on making our technologies more eco-friendly so that our upcoming generation won’t have to question themselves like we are doing right now. Human beings have so much to unravel and they have just started, why would anybody want to wipe out mankind in such a crucial stage of evolution?