Public Theological Remarks on Time Discounting and Intergenerational Justice

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-346
Author(s):  
Izak Johannes (Johan) van der Merwe
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ecological Economics ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Time Discounting ◽  
Economic Method ◽  
The Cost

Abstract This article inhabits an interdisciplinary space between ecological economics and public theology. After the publication of the 2007 Stern report a debate ensued about the way the economic tool of time discounting is applied as a means to assess the cost of climate change. In this article, the debate is reviewed and the notions of intergenerational justice, sacrifice, stewardship and servant leadership in the Christian tradition are subsequently identified as valuable resources that are recognized by a growing number of philosophers, economists and business leaders, as being of benefit to the conversation on the present generation’s responsibilities to future generations. Time discounting is regarded in this article as a morally questionable economic method to weigh the costs of climate change.

13. Environmental Taxes and Intergenerational Justice

2021 ◽  
pp. 187-202
Author(s):  
William Abel ◽  
Elizabeth Kahn ◽  
Tom Parr ◽  
Andrew Walton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
The State ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Environmental Taxes ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Current Generation

This chapter evaluates environmental taxes as part of a set of policies to address the threats that climate change poses. These taxes increase the price of activities that are environmentally harmful. In doing so, they discourage such behaviour and raise revenue that the state can use to redress its effects. The chapter embeds these considerations in an account of intergenerational justice, arguing that the current generation has a duty to provide future generations with prospects at least equal to its own. It also examines the objection that the proposed approach allows historical emitters off of the moral hook, showing that the state can adjust environmental taxes to take account of this. Finally, the chapter explores how to amend these taxes so that they are not regressive and that they do not present undue barriers to particularly valuable activities.

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.

Climate change, intergenerational equity and the social discount rate

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 320-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Caney
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
Time Discounting ◽  
Adequate Response ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Analyses ◽  
Mitigation Policies

Climate change is projected to have very severe impacts on future generations. Given this, any adequate response to it has to consider the nature of our obligations to future generations. This paper seeks to do that and to relate this to the way that inter-generational justice is often framed by economic analyses of climate change. To do this the paper considers three kinds of considerations that, it has been argued, should guide the kinds of actions that one generation should take if it is to treat both current and future people equitably. In particular it examines the case for what has been termed pure time discounting, growth discounting and opportunity cost discounting; and it assesses their implications for climate policy. It argues that none of these support the claims of those who think they give us reason to delay aggressive mitigation policies. It also finds, however, that the second kind of argument can, in certain circumstances, provide support for passing on some of the costs of mitigation to future generations.

scholarly journals Climate Change and Justice between Nonoverlapping Generations

1970 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Karnein
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Intergenerational Relationships ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Indirect Reciprocity ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Common Ownership ◽  
Present Generation ◽  
Combat Climate Change

It is becoming less and less controversial that we ought to aggressively combat climate change. One main reason for doing so is concern for future generations, as it is they who will be the most seriously affected by it. Surprisingly, none of the more prominent deontological theories of intergenerational justice can explain why it is wrong for the present generation to do very little to stop worsening the problem. This paper discusses three such theories, namely indirect reciprocity, common ownership of the earth and human rights. It shows that while indirect reciprocity and common ownership are both too undemanding, the human rights approach misunderstands the nature of our intergenerational relationships, thereby capturing either too much or too little about what is problematic about climate change. The paper finally proposes a way to think about intergenerational justice that avoids the pitfalls of the traditional theories and can explain what is wrong with perpetuating climate change. 

Future Generations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahul Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Current Generation ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

The policies concerning, for instance, the mitigation of climate change that the current generation chooses to adopt will have far-reaching implications for the lives of future generations. What policies ought to be chosen depends, in part, on what justice requires with respect to the protection of the interests of those who will live in the further future. This chapter discusses the prospects for extending four prominent ways of thinking about justice within a generation to the intergenerational context—Rawlsian contractualism, Hobbesian contractarianism, the rights-based approach, and luck egalitarianism. It argues that none of them offer a wholly satisfactory approach to intergenerational justice. The final section of the chapter discusses whether obligations to protect the interests of future generations are in fact best understood as obligations of justice.

Intergenerational Justice

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-148
Author(s):  
Joseph Heath
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Intergenerational Cooperation

The problem of climate change has generated renewed interest in the question of what we owe to future generations. This question is often thought to pose special problems for contractualists, because many claim that there is no possibility of mutually beneficial cooperation between generations. Because benefits can flow only forward in time, there cannot be reciprocity between non-contemporaneous generations, and so there is no place for a social contract to determine how the benefits and burdens of cooperation are to be assigned. This chapter argues that this supposed problem for contractualism is not really a problem at all, since there is no problem in principle, or in practice, with a system of intergenerational cooperation in which benefits flow only one way. The widespread failure to appreciate this is due to several counterintuitive features of the system that is at work in our society.

Intergenerational Justice in Sustainable Development Treaty Implementation

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Intergenerational Equity ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Treaty Implementation

Economic, technological, social and environmental transformations are affecting all humanity, and decisions taken today will impact the quality of life for all future generations. This volume surveys current commitments to sustainable development, analysing innovative policies, practices and procedures to promote respect for intergenerational justice. Expert contributors provide serious scholarly and practical discussions of the theoretical, institutional, and legal considerations inherent in intergenerational justice at local, national, regional and global scales. They investigate treaty commitments related to intergenerational equity, explore linkages between regimes, and offer insights from diverse experiences of national future generations' institutions. This volume should be read by lawyers, academics, policy-makers, business and civil society leaders interested in the economy, society, the environment, sustainable development, climate change, and other law, policy and practices impacting all generations.

Our Obligation to Future Generations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amartya Sen
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Effective Power ◽  
Basic Plane

Our reasoned sense of obligations to others can arise from at least three possible sources: cooperation, having caused harm, and effective power to improve suffering. The last source, this chapter argues, is particularly important in considering our obligations to future generations. It draws on a line of reasoning that takes us well beyond contractarian motivations to the idea of the “impartial spectator” as developed by Adam Smith. The interests of future generations come into the story because they are important in our attempt to be impartial spectators. The obligation of power contrasts with the mutual obligations for cooperation at the basic plane of motivational justification. In the context of climate concerns and intergenerational justice, this asymmetry-embracing approach seems to allow an easier entry for understanding our obligations.

Configurations to Superior Environmental Innovation Strategy: A Both–And Approach

2021 ◽  
pp. 108602662110316
Author(s):  
Tiziana Russo-Spena ◽  
Nadia Di Paola ◽  
Aidan O’Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Innovation Strategy ◽  
Environmental Innovation ◽  
Data Set

An effective climate change action involves the critical role that companies must play in assuring the long-term human and social well-being of future generations. In our study, we offer a more holistic, inclusive, both–and approach to the challenge of environmental innovation (EI) that uses a novel methodology to identify relevant configurations for firms engaging in a superior EI strategy. A conceptual framework is proposed that identifies six sets of driving characteristics of EI and two sets of beneficial outcomes, all inherently tensional. Our analysis utilizes a complementary rather than an oppositional point of view. A data set of 65 companies in the ICT value chain is analyzed via fuzzy-set comparative analysis (fsQCA) and a post-QCA procedure. The results reveal that achieving a superior EI strategy is possible in several scenarios. Specifically, after close examination, two main configuration groups emerge, referred to as technological environmental innovators and organizational environmental innovators.

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