In a recent article Matty Häyry observes that human reproduction is both irrational and immoral1; hence, he suggests, those who seek help before conceiving, “could be advised it is all right not to have children”. Häyry believes that if prospective parents are told that “according to at least one philosopher it would be all right not to reproduce at all” this could empower people “to make the rational choice to remain childless”; valiantly, he suggests himself as “the one philosopher to (...) be blamed for this unpopular idea”.In a rejoinder to Matty Häyry, Søren Holm claims it is not strongly irrational to have children2; S Aksoy contends that having children is the biggest dream of many married couples, and “the major goal in a couple’s life”3; Rebecca Bennet, accepts that human reproduction may be irrational but in most cases she thinks this is morally defensible.4Matty Häyry does not need my help to defend himself; I will …. (shrink)

There is no longer any doubt that the coming decades will bring serious threats to humanity from anthropogenic climate change. As we have suggested elsewhere, horrible scenarios are far more realistic than non-horrible ones, and science and technology are incapable, especially in our non-ideal world, of equitably distributing wealth, access to resources and adaptations to climate change. In this article, we offer an alternative to these inevitable horrible scenarios. The alternative is to implement either an anti-natalist policy, or procreative beneficence (...) and reproductive rights policies aimed at radically reducing the birth rate. These alternatives, however, are potentially unfair and quite possibly unthinkable to most of humanity. (shrink)