TCNJ

37 WINTER 2019 abortion and then-new reproduc- tive technologies, like IVF and surrogacy. Abortion, she believes, is morally acceptable in most cases in the early stages, up until the point where the fetus has some continuing (moment to moment, even if very brief ) consciousness or sentience. After graduation, she landed at a Wall Street law firm. She loved it, but ultimately, academia beckoned. Soon, she was doing research on the side, exploring the ethical puzzle of surrogate motherhood. In 1993, she was offered a position with TCNJ's philosophy department, where she's been, among other things, exploring the moral implications of abortion, and whether it's possible to hurt possible people. These days, she's looking at population ethics as it relates to what she sees is the most pressing issue facing us today and the future of our future: climate change. "We've ignored it," says Roberts, who is currently working on a book about what makes one possible world — or possible future — morally better than another. "We are at a pivotal moment. It's not too late now — but it's soon going to be," she says. Here, too, population ethics plays a role in how climate change will shape our lives. "Having an additional child is the most carbon- intensive effect we can have," Roberts says, citing climate scientists. Reducing the size of our families would go a long way to ensuring the overall happiness and longevity of those of us who are living on the planet today or will come into existence tomorrow. (Certain exceptions could be made for groups that have seen their populations decimated by genocide or similar atrocities.) Yet it's a choice that, in the utilitarian view, could bring on an apocalypse: shrinking numbers of distant future people who find themselves incapable of warding off extinction. Conversely, as Roberts sees it, a smaller population with a smaller carbon footprint could be a decisive factor in making it possible for them to actually survive. Philosophy professor Roberts

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