A dystopian future isn’t inevitable. By prioritising the needs of our children and grandchildren today, we can give them a world without poverty, discrimination and so many other evils, says William MacAskill
Humans | Comment 7 September 2025
By William MacAskill
Simone Rotella
CURRENTLY, society does little to care for its future. In my new book, What We Owe the Future, I make the case for longtermism: the view that we should be doing much more to protect the interests of generations to come. Longtermism puts the needs of our children and grandchildren front and centre in our moral thinking, and takes seriously the sheer scale of the future that may be ahead of us.
Why should we look so far ahead? The case for longtermism is grounded in three key ideas.
The first is that future people matter. The moral worth …
