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Articles

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

Simon Coghlan tells us, with help from Derek Parfit.

What on Earth is the worst thing that could happen? A meteor could strike the globe like a million hydrogen bombs. Political instability might lead to nuclear holocaust. An animal-to-human supervirus might rip pandemically across continents.

Although you may have caught a whiff here of science fiction, all these scenarios are conceivable, not only logically but scientifically. Of course, everyone reading this knows that in a few billion years the Sun will become a red giant and swallow the Earth, but here and now the lack of urgency surrounding climate change shows that many people find it hard to meaningfully own the idea of a catastrophically damaged planet.

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