Climate Change and Justice Between Nonoverlapping Generations

Flashcards about climate change and justice between nonoverlapping generations.

The No Rights Challenge

Because future persons do not currently exist, some argue they can have no rights and thus no claims of justice against us.

Bomb planted beneath a Kindergarten example

Illustrates the counter-intuitiveness of the claim that nonexisting persons can have no rights.

Intergenerational Justice

It is conceptually possible for currently nonexistent individuals to have rights and that it is conceptually possible to speak of intergenerational justice.

The Non-Identity Challenge

Our actions today have profound effects on both the existence and identities of future persons.

Non-identity problem

It will frequently be impossible to show that we can harm future persons in the sense of making particular individuals worse off than they would have been had we acted otherwise.

Rights of abstract persons

Every person, independently of her particular identity and of whether she would have existed otherwise, has a right not to be killed by a deliberately planted bomb.

The Epistemic Challenge

There are serious epistemic limitations when it comes to determining the content of any obligation we might have to future generations.

First aspect of the Epistemic Challenge

We do not know how many future generations there will be.

Second aspect of the Epistemic Challenge

It is unclear what anyone can know about future generations’ values and preferences because there is no chance of directly exchanging our views with theirs.

Third aspect of the Epistemic Challenge

It is difficult to tell what the precise consequences of our actions will be, especially when it comes to the further future.

Historical and cultural norms

Duties of justice to future generations have been recognized in most if not all cultures since at least biblical times.

Duties to future generations

We have duties to persons with corresponding rights to whom we relate in a different fashion from the way we relate to our contemporaries.