Should We Deploy Nuclear Energy?

This chapter argues that the lens of intergenerational ethics could help flesh out the moral implications of nuclear energy production and waste management. Instead of using ethics as a yardstick to pass a dichotomous judgment on nuclear energy, a better understanding of the technological subtleties of different existing and future nuclear technologies is needed; different technological pathways could influence the interests of different future generations in different ways. A more detailed look at these technologies and at future generations could improve the appreciation of the subtle intergenerational dilemmas of nuclear technology and contribute to technologically and ethically informed policymaking about the future of nuclear energy. This will provide a solid step toward comparing a specific type of nuclear energy (and its associated short-term and long-term risks and benefits) with other energy technologies.

Intergenerational Justice and Equality

Egalitarians hold that people should be equal with respect to some morally relevant factor. While this does not imply that all inequalities should be eliminated, egalitarians do generally require that divergences from equality are presumptively worse unless special reasons render the resultant inequalities justifiable. In intergenerational contexts, egalitarianism faces special problems. While many ethicists and political theorists have emphasized the value of equality among contemporaries, there are reasons for skepticism about the value of equality between generations, or between persons who live at different times and whose lives may not even overlap. Strict principles of intergenerational equality would forbid progress and development that would improve circumstances in the future but would therefore create intergenerational inequalities by making later generations better off than earlier ones. This chapter considers aspects of the general case for egalitarianism, with specific focus on the value of equality between generations and over time.

On “Dynastic” Inequality

This chapter investigates whether the replication of inequality is, other things being equal, morally objectionable in ways not applicable to inequality that remains confined to a single generation or “birth cohort.” The focus is both theoretical and practical. The chapter considers the philosophical foundations that might lie behind an objection to dynastic inequality, negotiating the diversity of egalitarian views supporting this position and the complexity around the causal mechanisms at work in cases where inequality has a dynastic tendency. It then discusses the policy reforms that might target inequalities that replicate old distributive trends while leaving newly produced trends more intact, with a focus on tax policy. Current tax rules in most developed economies do not make a distinction between new and old influences on the material distribution. Accordingly, it is likely that the tax reforms implied could be quite extensive.

Political Institutions and Intergenerational Ethics

This chapter reviews two prominent debates about institutions and intergenerational ethics, one held at the time of the founding of America and the other held today in the context of climate change. These two debates have more in common than may, at first, appear. On the face of it, the historical debate was about whether institutions, specifically the constitution, may bind future generations or whether the latter should be left maximally unencumbered. By contrast, proponents of climate change mitigation today would like institutions to be more inclusive of future generations’ interests. But, this chapter suggests, the new debate ought to be understood along the same lines as the old one, namely as being about avoiding disenfranchisement, that is, about preventing a situation in which previous generations determine too much of the context of future generations’ choices.

Species Conservation, Biotechnology, and Intergenerational Ethics

This chapter evaluates biotechnological species conservation strategies, such as de-extinction, genetic rescue, conservation cloning, and gene drives, in light of the requirement that one has a responsibility to ensure environmental conditions that are conducive to future people having a reasonable chance at a decent life and access to a broad range of environmental goods and values. The chapter argues that the extent to which biotechnological conservation can meet responsibilities to future generations depends not only on the technologies developed and the biological materials that are banked but also on conserving sufficiently intact ecological systems. This is because many of the ways in which species are valuable are tied to social and ecological relationships. Therefore, biotechnological conservation should not be seen as a substitute for more traditional approaches to conservation. It is best understood as a complement to be used in certain types of cases, such as to increase genetic diversity within a target species that has been through a severe population bottleneck or to suppress anthropogenically introduced threats.

Well-being and Intergenerational Ethics

This chapter argues that alongside the individuals who are welfare subjects, certain “multigenerational entities” (MGEs) are so too. It also argues that MGE well-being makes differences to what people should do. More briefly, it argues that certain non-welfare features of certain MGEs make such differences too. These matters are intergenerational by concerning entities that are essentially multigenerational, rather than through the more-traveled paths of connection just among entities in different generations. Overall, this chapter aims to identify, for the philosophy of well-being and intergenerational ethics, some good reasons to engage positively with the planet and its future, beyond those that ambitiously individualistic approaches can generate.

Contractualism, Interpersonal and Intergenerational

Scanlon’s non-consequentialist account of reasoning about the obligations we owe to one another, contractualism, is one many find attractive as an approach to understanding the basis of the obligations living individuals owe to one another. There are good reasons for doubting, however, that it can be fruitfully extended into the context of reasoning about obligations to future generations. This chapter considers two reasons for skepticism. The first is that the non-identity problem implies that any choice we make that affects the interests of future generations will be justifiable to them, as long as they are left with lives worth living. The second says that though it makes sense to care about the justifiability of one’s conduct to those with whom one can potentially interact, there is no reason to be concerned about the justifiability of one’s choices or conduct to future generations that one cannot, in principle, ever meet. The author argues that both of these challenges rely for their force on setting aside central aspects of the contractualist framework.

Postericide and Intergenerational Ethics

In the Anthropocene, future people are dangerously vulnerable to the conduct of present people. The advances made by humanity since the Industrial Revolution give the current generation the ability to damage and degrade the environment in ways that could make humanity go extinct. What measures should be taken to protect future people from the dangers of extinction they face? This chapter outlines a new international crime of postericide as a morally required response to humanity’s changed circumstances. Postericide is committed when an agent intentionally or recklessly performs conduct fit to bring about the extinction of humanity. International criminal law contains no precedents for the prosecution of postericide. A proper understanding of the moral imperatives embodied in international criminal law shows that it is, in this respect, incomplete. Drawing on political and legal theory, moral philosophy, and jurisprudence, this chapter defends postericide as a moral necessity in the Anthropocene, and shows how it is entailed by the ideals at the heart of international criminal law.

Discursive Justice in and With Future Generations

Most discussions of intergenerational justice focus on distributive justice between generations. Much of contemporary thinking about justice, though, focuses on how people might reason together in a respectful and egalitarian manner—with, that is, justice in political discourse. This chapter seeks to apply this latter sort of theorizing to the intergenerational context. It identifies two ways in which discursive justice might be applicable to that context. First, the present generation might wrong future generations by making discursive justice more difficult in the future; it might, for instance, create a future in which political agents must display greater virtue—both intellectual and moral—than present generations have had to demonstrate. Second, if we accept that agents may have interests that outlive themselves, then one generation might wrong another by failing to listen to the claims that persist through time and across generations. This discussion is compatible with the conclusion that moral claims generally diminish in importance over time; as the world in which a given generation’s moral commitments were made changes, so too does the moral pull of those commitments diminish.

Intergenerational Justice and Debt

Discussions of public debt often take on an intergenerational character. Balanced budget amendments and austerity policies are justified by appeal to the idea that high levels of national or state debt represent an unfair burden on the future. Conversely, debt forgiveness campaigns that appeal to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank often suggest that debt harms the interests of the future citizens of the indebted nation. In response to these issues, this chapter makes three significant points. First, it argues that, somewhat controversially, states are often more likely to undermine substantive justice by taking on too little debt rather than by taking on too much. This section looks at the best available evidence from macroeconomics on the relationship between debt and economic growth. Second, the chapter examines the procedural issues for making debt policy decisions and how they can more reliably reflect the interests of the future; it argues in favor of a guardianship paradigm for intergenerational procedural justice. The chapter also shows that sustainable infrastructure is necessary to complement the guardianship paradigm by generating a convergence between justice-based motivations and economic self-interest. Finally, the chapter argues that questions of global and intergenerational justice are inextricably linked in the context of public debt because global injustice often limits the ability of some states to properly manage their fiscal affairs.