Reducing suffering doesn’t stop with the people alive today. It includes your grandchildren, and billions of people not yet born. And we use more energy than any generation before us, at a huge cost to the world they will inherit.
Most of that energy is not clean. Despite real advances in wind and solar, fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) still supply roughly 80% of the world’s primary energy. Burning them pollutes the environment and adds carbon to the atmosphere, driving global warming with potentially catastrophic effects for future generations. And the damage has already started:
- Warming: The UN Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Reports find that current policies put the world on track for roughly 3°C of warming this century.
- Wildlife: WWF’s Living Planet Report 2024 found that monitored wildlife populations declined by an average of 73% between 1970 and 2020. The most commonly reported threat is habitat loss, much of it to grow food for humans.
- Resources: Fresh water and fertile land are under growing strain; about 2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water (UN World Water Development Report 2023). Oh, and the bees are in trouble too: the UN’s IPBES pollinator assessment found that, where data exist, up to 40% of invertebrate pollinator species, especially bees and butterflies, face extinction, and three-quarters of the world’s major food crops depend at least partly on pollinators.
- Demand: Global energy demand rose about 2.2% in 2024 alone (International Energy Agency), and as populations and economies grow, so will our need for energy and everything else.
Today Versus Tomorrow
Here’s the quandary: how do we weigh benefits to future generations against costs to people living today?
Humanists must count the uncountable billions yet to come. Harming them matters as much as harming anyone alive today.
But banning dirty energy would immediately and certainly hurt the billions of people who can’t access clean energy today. We can’t tell a family not to use electricity from the nearby coal plant to heat their home and feed their children because of harm to people not yet born. Quite frankly, those of us with jobs need to get to work, and most of us can’t easily give up cars and airplanes. Simply by living in this century, we are all but forced to use energy that pollutes, and tomorrow’s families may pay for it with a lower quality of life than ours.
The Ecomodernist Way Out
Humanists transform, and we seek transformation that benefits billions of lives, today and tomorrow. That’s why we take an Ecomodernist approach. As the Ecomodernist Manifesto puts it:
The ethical and pragmatic path toward a just and sustainable global energy economy requires that human beings transition as rapidly as possible to energy sources that are cheap, clean, dense, and abundant. Such a path will require sustained public support for the development and deployment of clean energy technologies, both within nations and between them, through international collaboration and competition, and within a broader framework for global modernization and development.
This refuses the false choice between people today and people tomorrow. Energy that is cheap and clean doesn’t ask a family to choose between heat tonight and a livable planet for their grandchildren. It gives them both! The faster clean energy becomes the cheapest, easiest option everywhere, the less anyone has to sacrifice, and the more people we can lift out of poverty without borrowing against the future.
We’re not there yet, and the status quo will cause immense suffering in the future. So Humanists must get active: dramatically cut our use of fossil fuels and promote clean alternatives, even if it costs us some quality of life along the way. Support clean energy research and deployment. Vote for policies that speed the transition. Cut waste. As with every contested issue, persuasion beats outrage: people who disagree with us on climate policy aren’t villains, and humanizing them wins far more converts than mocking them.
Doing nothing dehumanizes the people of the future. They can’t speak up yet, but they’ll be every bit as human as we are.
Sources
- WWF, Living Planet Report 2024
- UN Environment Programme, Emissions Gap Report 2024
- International Energy Agency, Global Energy Review 2025
- Energy Institute, Statistical Review of World Energy
- UN World Water Development Report 2023
- IPBES, Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production (2016)
- An Ecomodernist Manifesto