There’s a 1 in 6 chance we’ll be extinct in 100 years. So what can we do about it?

Updated June 3, 2026 — 10:19am,first published June 3, 2026 — 5:00am

How are you going? Enjoying the winter sun? Feeling optimistic about the future? Well, for one day only, let me try to ruin your day. Or rather, let me let Dr Andrew Leigh ruin it. They say the devil makes work for idle hands, and that sums up Leigh in one go.

Leigh is a former economics professor, who for ages has been the federal government’s assistant minister for productivity, competition, charities, treasury and the kitchen sink.

If that tells you anything, it’s that he hasn’t got a real job. He’s the only minister I know of who keeps busy by writing books and thinking deep economic thoughts.

Although he’s always among the smartest in the room, Leigh hasn’t been smart enough – or maybe dumb enough – to join one of Labor’s factions. So by the time the factions have finished dividing them, all the big jobs are taken. Someone as smart as Leigh can’t be excluded, so he gets what’s left on the floor.

Unfortunately, Leigh’s deep thinking overflowed last month when he gave the annual Giblin Lecture (Giblin was probably Australia’s most illustrious economist). Economists are meant to be happy, optimistic souls who advise us on how to get richer and consume more. They can deal with depressing subjects – such as recessions, wars, revolutions and pandemics – but always to find ways we can bounce back and resume economic growth.

But that wasn’t good enough for Leigh. He decided to go all the way – the full gloom and doom. Why don’t we think about the extinction of the human race? We should, because if we leave it too long, there’ll be nothing left to fix and no one left to do the fixing. So we need to begin the fixing as soon as possible.

So I hope that’s cheered you up. Leigh, naturally, has a lot more questions to ask and answer. How great is the risk that humanity could be wiped out?

His answer comes from the Australian philosopher Toby Ord, now at Oxford. Ord estimates the chances are perhaps as high as one in six – 17 per cent – over the coming century. Leigh says this fits with other expert assessments.

So what are the things most likely to cause humans’ extinction? Leigh says that whereas in the past extinctions were caused by natural events such as fluctuations in the climate or asteroid strikes, the most important risks today are “anthropogenic” – ones our species has brought upon itself.

This was made clear in the last century by the risk from nuclear weapons and also by catastrophic climate change.

But Leigh and others think the greatest risks are from emerging technologi