The Community, the Nation, and Obligations to Future Generations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avner de Shalit
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Strong Belief ◽  
The Future ◽  
Severe Climate Change

Prima facie one’s obligations to the nation and to future generations might clash because of the tension between the particular, the concrete, and the contemporary versus the universal, the abstract, and the future-oriented. However, the nation is and should be regarded as an intergenerational community; this mode of thinking, called here “thinking like a nation,” yields concrete obligations to the not yet born, based in current persons and their strong belief that the nation constitutes their self, a self that transcends into the future. According to the transgenerational theory which is based on the nation, depleting resources or creating severe climate change harms contemporaries who regard the transgenerational community of the nation as what constitutes their self. However, some reasons why one should be cautious about thinking like a nation, especially when this becomes a chauvinistic attitude, are noted.

What Can I Hope about the Earth’s Future Climate? Affective Resources for Overcoming Intergenerational Distance, Kantian and Otherwise

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political History ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Moral Problems

AbstractWhile climate change involves spatial, epistemological, social, and temporal remoteness, each type of distance can be bridged with strategies unique to it that can be borrowed from analogous moral problems. Temporal, or intergenerational, distance may actually be a motivational resource if we look at our natural feelings of hope for the future of the world, via Kant’s theory of political history, and for our children. Kant’s theory of hope also provides some basis for including future generations in a theory of justice.

scholarly journals ‘Will polar bears melt?’ A qualitative analysis of children’s questions about climate change

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 868-880
Author(s):  
Katharine Lee ◽  
Julie Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Polar Bears ◽  
Climate Zone ◽  
The Future

Climate change poses a grave threat to future generations, yet relatively little research examines children’s understandings of the issue. This study examines the questions children ask about climate change – rather than their answers to adults’ questions – exploring whether their questions suggest they view climate change as psychologically proximal or distant. Children aged 10–12 from 14 UK schools took part in an online event, asking scientists questions in a ‘climate zone’. The questions were analysed using thematic analysis. The themes related to the nature and reality of climate change, its causes, impacts, and solutions. Participants seemed most exercised about the future impacts of and ways of ameliorating climate change, with some questions evoking science-fiction disaster imagery. The contents of participants’ questions elucidated the ways in which they position climate change as both a proximal and distant phenomenon.

Climate Change and Reversed Intergenerational Equity: the Problem of Costs Now, for Benefits Later

Climate Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 266-281
Author(s):  
Gareth Davies
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Intergenerational Equity ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Policy Problem ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
The Future ◽  
Policy Challenge ◽  
Mitigation Costs ◽  
The Cost

Abstract Climate change is often seen as an issue of intergenerational equity—consumption now creates costs for future generations. However, radical mitigation now would reverse the problem, creating immediate costs for current generations, while the benefits would be primarily for future ones. This is a policy problem, as persuading those living now to bear the cost of changes whose benefits will mostly accrue after their deaths is politically difficult. The policy challenge is then how to temporally match costs to benefits, either by deferring mitigation costs, or by speeding up climatic benefits. Geoengineering may provide some help here, as it might enable climate change to be slowed more immediately, at a lower upfront cost, and allow a greater share of the mitigation and adaptation burden to be passed on to those in the future who will benefit most.

Temporal Parochialism and Its Discontents

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Scheffler
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
The Future

Many of us exhibit a form of temporal parochialism. We lack a rich set of evaluative resources for thinking about our relations to generations other than our own. Yet we are hardly indifferent to the fate of our successors, and issues like climate change that implicate our attitudes toward the future generate intense interest. Many philosophers writing about future generations focus on issues of moral responsibility, devoting special attention to the puzzles of “population ethics.” They seek to identify a suitable principle of beneficence to help resolve those puzzles. This chapter outlines a different approach. Rather than focusing solely on issues of moral responsibility, this book will investigate the question of how future generations feature in our practical and evaluative thought as a whole. The aim is to explore the evaluative commitments that may be latent in our existing attitudes, and so to enrich our thinking about future generations.

Future Generations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Dow
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The State ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Stable Environment ◽  
The People ◽  
The Future

This chapter examines how conceptions of the environment and the state of the natural world are implicated in people's ideas about parenthood, fertility, and future generations. It carries the theme of the stable environment out into the wider world by considering what it means to care about stabilizing the natural environment in the interest of future generations. It also discusses the importance of reproduction—in humans and other parts of the natural world—in caring for the environment and working to prevent climate change. The chapter analyzes the concerns that the people of Spey Bay had about humans putting ourselves at risk of endangerment by destroying our natural environments and becoming overreliant on technology to create children. Finally, it looks at the salience of nature and naturalness to how people in Spey Bay think about reproduction, ethics, the future, and the environment.

An arrow in the Achilles' heel of sustainability and wealth accounting

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sjak Smulders
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
National Economy ◽  
Growth Pattern ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
The Future

AbstractHow sustainable is the growth pattern of a national economy? At first, answering this question seems almost impossible, since this would require knowing what happens and what can happen in the future. One needs to assess whether the investments we make today will be sufficient to provide future generations with the means to cope with imminent disasters like the exhaustion of minerals and vital resources, or other problems like increasing population pressure and climate change. One also needs to assess which combination of investment leads to the desired result. If entrepreneurs, managers and households already have problems in finding out what is the best mix of investment for them in their micro-environment, how can we answer the aggregate question that needs so much more information?

scholarly journals Oro för klimatförändringarnas konsekvenser

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Ekholm
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Sustainable Lifestyle ◽  
The Future ◽  
Change Climate ◽  
People’S Attitudes

Worrying about the consequences of climate change. Climate behaviour and the meaning of caring for future generations The aim of the study was to see how care-worry about the consequences of climate change for future generations are experienced and handled by informants in a Swedish context. The term care-worry refer to an assembly of several approaches, such as empathy, care, responsibility, worry, and justice towards other people and coming generations. Care-worry is related to and initiates people’s attitudes and behaviours towards future risks. Empirically, the study is based on thematic interviews conducted in the year 2016 and deals with informants who explicitly expressed worries about climate change for future generations. All 24 informants turned out to be parents. From the material, four ideal types were depicted, which in different ways can illustrate the parents’ care-worry. Different climate behaviours also seem to be linked to these ideal types. The study as a whole shows that parents’ care-worries affect them in various ways to reduce their own climate footprint in the future. Many of them choose a more sustainable lifestyle for the sake of future generations.

What we can learn from the parallels between the COVID-19 and the future climate change crises

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén D. Manzanedo ◽  
Peter Manning
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Substantial Portion ◽  
Preventative Measures ◽  
The Future ◽  
Behavioral Norm ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Global Population

The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak pandemic is now a global crisis. It has caused 1.6+ million confirmed cases and 100 000+ deaths at the time of writing and triggered unprecedented preventative measures that have put a substantial portion of the global population under confinement, imposed isolation, and established ‘social distancing’ as a new global behavioral norm. The COVID-19 crisis has affected all aspects of everyday life and work, while also threatening the health of the global economy. This crisis offers also an unprecedented view of what the global climate crisis may look like. In fact, some of the parallels between the COVID-19 crisis and what we expect from the looming global climate emergency are remarkable. Reflecting upon the most challenging aspects of today’s crisis and how they compare with those expected from the climate change emergency may help us better prepare for the future.

Love, Inc.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie Essig
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Dating Apps ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
True Love ◽  
The Future ◽  
False Sense ◽  
Global Movements

In Love, Inc., Laurie Essig argues that love is not all we need. As the future became less secure—with global climate change and the transfer of wealth to the few—Americans became more romantic. Romance is not just what lovers do but also what lovers learn through ideology. As an ideology, romance allowed us to privatize our futures, to imagine ourselves as safe and secure tomorrow if only we could find our "one true love" today. But the fairy dust of romance blinded us to what we really need: global movements and structural changes. By traveling through dating apps and spectacular engagements, white weddings and Disney honeymoons, Essig shows us how romance was sold to us and why we bought it. Love, Inc. seduced so many of us into a false sense of security, but it also, paradoxically, gives us hope in hopeless times. This book explores the struggle between our inner cynics and our inner romantic.

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