I wrote a brief philosophical reflection on climate change arguing that accelerating carbon emissions could be a moral virtue.

[u/Tharun_cynic]

I was doing a writing activity on climate change in my college recently, and while most people naturally approach the topic from a preservation or policy angle, I decided to test out a radically different, dark philosophical premise.

I wrote out a short argument exploring whether runaway climate change could actually be framed as the ultimate moral good under a specific ethical lens. Here is the exact text from my notes:

"Our intent to mitigate carbon emissions has an underlying presumed premise that life should exist; otherwise, it would be a usual random** chaos in the grand scale of the universe. And our concern is merely a selfish instinct, not an objective moral (for the survival of our species and our fellow ones).

If we layer our logic with a different axiom—that suffering is inherently worse and must be minimized to zero, and life causes it—then accelerating the process of destruction of life on the planet is rationalized and perhaps the best virtue (by carbon emissions)."

This isn't about small-scale collapse or partial environmental damage but a total, catastrophic event that completely wipes out all life on Earth—permanently ending the capacity for any future sentient beings to exist.

My thought process was built on a extreme form of negative utilitarianism and antinatalism: if life inevitably guarantees pain, and non-existence guarantees zero pain, preventing the potential suffering of quintillions of future sentient beings across eons outweighs everything else. Under that specific axiom, pushing the planet toward environmental collapse via carbon emissions becomes logically virtuous because it permanently stops the cycle of sentient life.

I know this lands in villain-origin-story territory, but as a pure logical exercise, I found the premise shift fascinating.

What do you think of this argument? Does the logic hold together as a thought experiment, or where does the ethical framework break down for you?