Bachelor Politicologie UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Do we have an obligation
to-wards future generations
when it comes to climate
change?
The rights and responsibilities of our
genera-tion.
Abstract. This paper focuses on the obligation that we do or do not have towards future generations as far as climate change is concerned. We as a collective have a very big influence on what the world will be like when we ''pass it on'' to future generations, which evokes a number of questions: Do future generations have rights that we need to respect; What grounds our obligation to combat climate change and what actions would justice require our generation to take? I will argue that we do have moral obligations to future generations and that we should therefore aim to do as much as we can be reasonably asked to do to stop climate change.
Jordi de Jong (10367195)
BACHELOR THESIS: GLOBAL JUSTICE, 2014-2015, SEMESTER 1
Lecturer: L.L. Ferracioli
January 29, 2015
1 Introduction
In this bachelor thesis I will discuss the obligation that we do or do not have to-wards future generations. Generations as a collective have a very big influence on what the world will be like when they ''pass it on'' to future generations. One might argue that with that influence comes a responsibility to make sure that future gen-erations can live in conditions that are at least, quality wise, similar to the condi-tions they live in themselves. Although this seems like a fair point, the implicacondi-tions of maintaining this view are more challenging to deal with than it appears. In the last couple of centuries the industrial and technological revolutions have drastical-ly intensified the impact that the human race has on this planet. There are more people living on this planet than ever before, which inevitably puts an ever-growing strain on Earth and its resources. Perhaps the biggest problem, especially with regards to the before mentioned argument, is the incredibly polluting pres-ence this generation has on Earth. Ensuring that future generations can live in the same conditions as us would mean that we have to find a way to nullify the effects our presence has on the environment, which might not be feasible (or even desira-ble, to some).
Despite the obvious urgency of this issue, it has thus far been very difficult to convince others of the necessity for change. A frequently mentioned explanation for the hesitant approach towards actively making an effort to reduce pollution is the free-rider problem.1 An equally popular explanation is the inability of world leaders to come to an agreement regarding the issue (Lean, 2014). Apart from these social and political explanations, there are also underlying philosophical problems that might explain the passiveness of our generation. Most of these prob-lems are about the uncertainty of the future or the fact that the people to whom we supposedly have a moral obligation have not come into existence yet.
In the first part of this thesis I will deal with the philosophical problems of ar-guing in favour of the position that we have moral obligations towards future gen-erations. After I have established that we do in fact have an obligation towards fu-ture generations I will discuss the grounds upon which these obligations lie. In the third part of this thesis I will explore the options that we have and which of the op-tions would be the most fair.
1 The free-rider problem is that ''though all of the members of the group therefore have a
common interest in obtaining this collective benefit (in this case: a sustainable planet), they have no common interest in paying the cost of providing that collective good (in this case: reducing one's own impact on climate change)''. See Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collec-tive Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard: Harvard University Press
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Part I: Arguing for the Rights of Future Generations
In this part I will deal with a number of philosophical problems that arise when arguing in favour of the position that we have moral obligations towards future generations. Each problem will be explained first, after which I will argue how and why each problem can be overcome.
The Non-identity Problem
The first problem is the so-called non-identity problem. The non-identity problem is that any action, however important or unimportant it may seem, will change the future and thus will also change who will eventually come into existence. This would make arguing for the rights for future generations problematic, as illustrat-ed in the following example. Suppose there is a man callillustrat-ed John. John feels bad about the large amount of carbon dioxide his large SUV emits, so he considers pur-chasing an electric car to reduce his emissions. Ultimately he decides not to, be-cause he feels that his contribution to climate change is not relevant on a global scale. One day, John is at the gas station, where he meets the woman whom he will eventually marry and have a child with, Mary. Mary's existence is flawed to a cer-tain extent, as she grows up in a time in which the world is more polluted than it was several decades earlier, when her parents were growing up. However, the de-cision of her father to contribute to her flawed existence is what eventually result-ed in her existing at all. If John had decidresult-ed to buy the electric car in order to im-prove the living conditions of Mary, he would have met an other woman with whom he would have had a different child, Paul. In other words, John's decision to buy an electric car would not have improved the living conditions of the child he would have had if he didn't decide to buy an electric car.
The non-identity problem can be refuted in a number of ways. A strict conse-quentialist, for example, might say that purchasing the electric car is the only right decision, because the quality of life of Paul is relatively higher than Mary's. Be that as it may, John's contribution to climate change remains negligible on a global scale. This means that even if John does decide to buy the electric car, the quality of life of his offspring wouldn't improve as much as to be noticeable. As such, the con-sequentialist counter-argument to the non-identity problem is not very effective when it comes to climate change.
A second, more effective way to solve the non-identity problem is to argue that some actions are wrong, regardless of their outcome. The fact that Mary's existence is the result of John's decision to continue polluting doesn't make his negative im-pact on climate change any more justifiable. Obviously the price of living more than compensates for the damage John has done to the environment since deciding to continue on driving his SUV, but the polluting in itself remains unethical. Some might even argue that John is has harmed his daughter by bringing her into a
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flawed existence, under what Woodward calls a “nonconsequentialist approach” to harm (Woodward 1986, 818). By knowingly polluting the air with greenhouse gas-es, John has contributed to the flawed existence that Mary has a right against being brought into. Whether unborn generations can even have rights will be discussed later.
For the last 'solution' to the non-identity problem I will discuss we will first need to accept the problem. By changing the way we live we do indeed not 'save' the people we intended to save by changing our way of life in the first place. Noth-ing will, actually, since any attempt to do so will result in them not comNoth-ing into ex-istence. Additionally, there are an infinite number of other potential scenario's which could change who will come into existence, most of which are beyond the control of any individual. If John had decided not to go to the gas station the day he met his future wife, Mary would also never have been born.
Do unborn generations have rights?
As said before, Some authors argue that unborn people have a right against being brought into a flawed existence. By doing so they assume the position that unborn individuals can have rights, even though they don't actually exist (yet). Here I will discuss various proposals on what attributes ground the possession of rights or under which conditions rights can be had.
First, however, we will need to define having rights. Feinberg describes having a right as having a claim on something against someone (Feinberg, 1974: 43). In the traditional cases of rights, the claimant and the claimee are both competent adult human beings. Since competent adult humans can be expected to have the ability to make rational and justifiable decisions based on their own conscience, they can be in the possession of rights. Objects, on the other hand, lack those qualities and can therefore not be meaningful holders of rights. To this point, most (if not everyone) would agree. In between adult humans and objects, however, there is a range of potential claimants whose entitlement to the possession of rights is less obvious (Feinberg, 1974: 44). Notable examples are animals, children, mentally handi-capped adults and of course unborn people.
Whether or not the aforementioned groups can have rights is the subject of continued debate. Some tie the possession of rights to the ability to make moral judgments based on a notion of right and wrong, which would lead us to conclude that animals, for example, do not have rights (Feinberg, 1974: 46). Animals cannot be reasoned with, make promises, or be blamed for behaviour that would other-wise be unacceptable. In addition, they are incapable of understanding when their rights are being violated, as a result of which they are unable to initiate legal pro-ceedings (Ibid.). Accordingly, animals are incapable of claiming their right. Since children, mentally handicapped adults and unborn generations (albeit for a very
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different reason) share the lack of this ability, they too are excluded from having rights when following this logic. A common response to the ''inability to claim a right argument'' is that individuals or animals that are incapable of claiming their rights may simply have these rights defended by others acting in their behalf (Par-tridge, 1990: 49).
Others disqualify future generations from having rights due to simply not exist-ing. De George claims that “Future generations by definition do not exist now. They cannot now, therefore, be the present bearer or subject of anything, including rights” (De George 1981, 161). However, we can safely assume (which I will elabo-rate on later) that future people will be right holders in the future and that we can affect the extent to which these rights can be claimed (Meyer, 2008). Their inexist-ence now is thus insufficient to claim that we cannot violate the rights of future persons in the present. (Ibid.).
On the other hand there are those who are much more lenient when distrib-uting rights. Quinn, for example, states the following: ''A person is constituted by his body and his mind. They are parts or aspects of him. For that very reason, it is fitting that he have primary say over what may be done to them [...]. In giving him this authority, morality recognizes his existence as an individual with ends of his own—an independent being. Since that is what he is, he deserves this recognition'' (Quinn, 1993: 170). In other words, the attribute that Quinn ties to the possession of rights is simply being an independent body and mind. This would include both children and mentally handicapped adults, and could be stretched to include ani-mals as well. Quinn's position is similar to Feinberg's interest principle, in that they both recognize that individuals need or deserve rights in order to defend their in-terests, the most stringent of which is preserving one's independence of body and mind. Feinberg's interest principal ties the possession of rights to having interests, which he does for two reasons. Firstly, a right holder must be capable of being rep-resented, and to be represented a being has to have an interest (Feinberg, 1974: 51). Secondly, a right holder must be capable of being a beneficiary in his own per-son. Once again, a being has to have an interest in order for this to be possible (Ibid.). Whereas Quinn excludes future generations from having rights (due to them not having an existent body and mind), Feinberg does not. As is the case with the other problem cases, he states that the interests of future persons can be genu-inely represented by spokesmen today (Feinberg, 1974: 65). Denying them their present rights out of fear of falling into ''obscure metaphysics'' or because of their mere potentiality would not be just, because ''the existence of the distant human future is no more remotely potential than that of a particular child already on its way'' (Ibid.). The uncertainties involved with future generations will be discussed later in this chapter.
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The last way of distributing rights that I will mention is a bit different from the ones mentioned so far, in that it does not base the possession of rights on individu-al attributes. Some theorists rather think of rights as instruments for achieving an optimal distribution of interests (Wenar, 2011). Within an instrumental theory of rights, room could be made to include the rights of future generations to the framework. Since this goes beyond the scope of this paper, I will not do so here.2
For the remainder of this paper I will accept Feinberg's interest principle, which means that the position that future generations have rights and that these rights can be claimed by proxies will be assumed. The right holders in this case will be the future inhabitants of this planet. Who should bear the costs of stopping or 'solving' climate change will be discussed along with the different options for deal-ing with climate change later in this paper.
Uncertainty about the future
The last problem I will discuss is the fact that we cannot say for certain that there will be future generations. Also, if they do eventually come into existence, we have no definitive way of knowing what their preferences are going to be. Although un-likely, it is possible that future generations simply lose interest in the quality of their surroundings. For the sake of this paper I will therefore make the extremely fair assumption that there are in fact going to be future generations, and that they will prefer to live in a world that is as sustainable as possible. Any other scenario would be highly illogical in my mind.
Part II: The Grounds of our Obligations
Simply establishing that future generations have rights is not yet enough to start proposing ways to ensure the rights of future generations are respected. I would first like to discuss what I believe grounds our moral obligations towards future generations and what our duty to respect their rights should be based on. In the form of a question: Why should we respect the rights of future generations? Or more specifically in the case of climate change: Why should we ensure that the planet is as sustainable as possible for future generations?
Responsibility
As Feinberg states, ''We have it in our power now to make the world a much less pleasant place for our descendants than the world we inherited from our ances-tors'' (Feinberg, 1974: 64). Luckily, it is also well within our power to make the
2 For more on the instrumental theories of rights, see Wenar, L. (2011). "Rights", The
Stan-ford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/#6.2.
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world a more pleasant place instead, or to at least maintain the status quo. We can, If we set our minds to it, and therefore I believe we should act to stop or significant-ly decelerate climate change. This would make reducing one's own contribution to climate change an assistance-based duty, as opposed to a contribution-based or benefitting-based duty, for the following reasons.
A contribution based duty is a duty to do something as a result of having con-tributed to the problem. In order for a contribution-based duty to arise, one must first harm whatever or whoever it is that should not have been harmed. However, not all harming is done wilfully. Of course most people on earth are contributing to climate change, but this contribution comes mostly as a consequence of living a normal life. Emitting greenhouse gases is not something anyone likes to do, espe-cially not for the sake of polluting the world. Another point to make is that, as is the case with other collective problems, no single individual or generation can be as-signed causal responsibility or blameworthiness for all of the greenhouse gases that have been emitted (the contributions) since climate change became an issue. Following a number of technological developments, most notably the industrial revolution and the advancements in transportation, simply living a normal human life inherently causes one to have a polluting presence on Earth. For this reason I believe it's not useful to classify our duty to stop climate change as a contribution-based duty. People don't contribute to climate change because they want to, or be-cause they don't know how not to, but bebe-cause it is simply too demanding to not pollute.
I believe the duty to reduce one's emissions can't be classified as a benefitting-based duty either, for similar reasons. One might argue that some individuals, es-pecially the more CO2-emitting ones, are benefitting from the passiveness with which we as a collective are dealing with this problem. Holders of this view seem to conveniently ignore the fact that most people who drive their car to work every day do so because it is the easiest, fastest and least costly way to get to work. Most CO2 emissions are simply an unfortunate side-effect of the way we as humans live our lives nowadays. Changing this way of life can be very costly. Despite being sub-sidized in many countries, 'green energy solutions' like electrical cars or solar pan-els are still very expensive commodities. Most people aren't benefitting from the passiveness because they make the active decision to do so, it's because the choice not to benefit is so costly it can hardly be qualified as realistic.
Justice
A second reason to ensure that the planet is as sustainable as possible for future generations is simply because that is what justice would require. Passing on prob-lems to future generations without attempting to at least mitigate some of them is not just. If future generations are viewed as holding legitimate claims or rights
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against present generations, considerations of justice apply to intergenerational relations as well (Meyer, 2008). This means that present generations may be obli-gated by considerations of justice not to pursue policies or activities that create benefits for themselves but impose costs on those who will live in the future (Ibid.). Among the first to discuss intergenerational justice was John Rawls, who intro-duced the just savings principle that would require present generations to think of their descendants (Rawls, 2001: 159). The present generation, according to Rawls, has an obligation to make sure that ''the conditions needed to establish and to pre-serve a just basic structure'' are passed on. The just savings principle therefore demands that we leave enough capital and resources for future generations (Heyd, 2009: 172). Although Rawls speaks of these resources mostly in economical (and sometimes intellectual) terms, the environment could also be seen as a vital 're-source' to the survival of just institutions. The follow-up question to Rawls' just savings principle, ''How much is enough?'' will be discussed in part three of this paper.
Environmental sustainability can also be understood in terms of intergenera-tional equality, or intergeneraintergenera-tional social justice. Wright, for example, argues that ''future generations should have access to the social and material conditions to live flourishing lives at least at the same level as the present generation'' (Wright, 2012: 5). Surely, most would agree that people in the future should have the same opportunities and quality of life as the people on Earth now. This doesn't necessari-ly mean that future generations have a claim to the world as it exists now, but they do have a claim to the availability of the benefits that we derive from the world as it exists today.3 Since proper environmental sustainability is the only benefit to be derived from Earth, perfect intergenerational equality would in the case of climate change require that the contributions of every past, present or future generation be nullified. This, of course, would not be a realistic goal (yet). In the words of Rawls: ''Somehow we must nullify the effects of special contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own ad-vantage'' (Rawls 1971: 118).
Part III: Options for Dealing with Climate Change
Now that we have discussed the problems of arguing in favour of the rights of fu-ture generations and the grounds of our duty towards our descendants it is time to examine the different options we have for fulfilling our duties. For each option I
3 This point was inspired by a similar point made by Ernest Partridge, who states that ''the
claims of future generations might not be to particular material or energy resources, but to the availability, somehow, of the benefits that these resources produce''. See Partridge, E. (1990) From Upstream/Downstream: Issues in Environmental Ethics, ed. D. Scherer, Tem-ple University Press, 1990
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will take into account considerations about the costs (to the present generation), (political) feasibility and desirability (to the future generations). Each option roughly corresponds to the three most straight-forward ways to deal with climate change: mitigating it, stopping it and reversing it.4 After having discussed each op-tion I will argue which opop-tion I believe is what justice would require from us. First, however, I will elaborate on the aforementioned considerations to take into ac-count when examining the different options.
Costs to our generation
As mentioned before, Rawls' just savings principle requires from us that we leave enough capital and resources for future generations. We must not, however, forget about our own needs. Imposing too high of a cost on ourselves (however unlikely this may seem) should obviously be avoided, for this would not be just to the pre-sent generation. Let's return to the case of John and his decision to buy an electric car or to resume driving his gas guzzling SUV. Purchasing the electric car is only a viable option for him if the price of the electric car is within the range of what John could afford to spend on a new vehicle. It would be rather extreme to ask of John to sell his house in order to raise enough funds to purchase the electric car, because in this case the means would not be proportionate to the goal of reducing his impact on climate change. In other words, the quality or our lives in the presence should not be affected too much for the sake of future generations. What the threshold his between too much and not enough is, of course, open for discussion.
Feasibility
Besides the costs (which could also be seen as financial feasibility), the political and social feasibility is also an important aspect to keep in mind. The more pessi-mistic members of society might dismiss the rise of environmentally friendly ideas and initiatives as false hope, claiming that stopping, reversing or mitigating climate change is infeasible, or even utopian. Seeing as it was only a hundred years ago that the same was said about the emancipation of women or black people, they should-n't be taken too seriously. What is infeasible now may well become feasible in the future, as history has shown (Lawford-Smith, 2012: 243). Nonetheless I think it's important to take the present feasibility of each option into account when discuss-ing the different options, because although it is variable over time, feasibility is still an important aspect in (political) decision making. To increase the feasibility I will discuss what 'we' ought to do, with 'we' being the citizens of liberal democracies that have the economical power to become more environmentally friendly to a
4 It is certainly possible to think of more (specific) ways of dealing with climate change, but
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tain extent. Citizens from less well-off parts of the world might not have the ability to reduce their impact on climate change without also harshly reducing their quali-ty of life, so it would be unreasonable to ask of them to do so anyway.
Feasibility can be understood in multiple ways. Lawford-Smith distinguishes so-called binary feasibility from scalar feasibility. Binary feasibility is the simplest, dichotomous understanding of feasibility: an action or outcome is either feasible or not. This idea of feasibility is not useful in politics, because in politics we don't want to rule out possibilities entirely, we want a way of saying exactly how feasible a new proposal is (Lawford-Smith, 2012: 244). Feasibility shouldn't be a 'hard' re-quirement, but it still matters (Lawford-Smith, 2012: 254). In the scalar role, each option can be ranked according to its feasibility, which will be determined by facts that would make the intended outcome of the option less likely to obtain. These facts make up the 'soft constraints', as opposed to the 'hard constraints' of binary feasibility (Ibid.) Such constraints could be of economical, institutional, cultural, motivational or psychological nature. The scalar feasibility of an outcome is equal to the probability of the outcome given the best action (Lawford-Smith, 2012: 258). Scalar feasibility is closely related to Wright's ideas of viability and achievabil-ity, although Wright speaks about those in the context of social change and eman-cipation. The viability of an alternative is, according to Wright, determined by the degree to which the proposal, if implemented, would generate the intended conse-quences in a sustainable and robust way (Wright, 2010: 21). The achievability of alternatives is determined by balance of social of power of contending social forces consciously attempting to bring about or resist change (Wright, 2010: 25). In the case of the climate debate, the 'social forces' would be those in favour of environ-mentally friendly policies and those against those policies.
Desirability to future generations
For an alternative to be a desirable solution for the future generations that will be affected by it, the initiative not only has to generate the intended consequence, the intended consequence itself also has to be desirable. Like feasibility, desirability must also be understood in a scalar form. Needless to say, a desired option would be one that is satisfactory to the future generation affected by it.
An important question when discussing the desirability of the options we have is which future generation we are talking about. Are we talking about our own children, or their children, or about the people living on this planet five hundred years from now? When discussing the different options the future generations I will be referring to are the ones that will be inhabiting this Earth later this century, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, since those individuals are relatively close to us time wise, it should be easier to attempt to see the world from their point of view, thus making our predictions of what they would think about certain scenario's
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more accurate. Secondly, it becomes increasingly hard to forecast the effects of cli-mate change the further we go into the projected future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for example has modelled different scenarios for climate change until the year 2100,5 since the projections for later years are appar-ently decreasingly meaningful or accurate.
Option I: A duty to minimize contribution
Suppose there is a river flowing from its source in the mountains to the ocean, five hundred kilometres away. Along the river's bank there are three cities, City A, City B and City C, each a hundred kilometres downstream from either the city that pre-cedes it or the river's source. Each city relies on the river for the water that its citi-zens need for drinking, sanitation, irrigation and so forth. Each city is equal in size and population, so their water needs are the same. Clean water is essential for each city to survive and thrive, though the quality of the water slowly deteriorates as it passes through each city. The water is still untouched as it flows from the mountain springs to City A, so the water quality would still have an 'excellent' rating accord-ing to the Water Quality Index.6 However, since the citizens of City A proceed to use the water for the aforementioned reasons, the quality rating of the water in the riv-er has decreased to 'good' when it flows downstream to City B. The last city is the most unfortunate, as the quality rating of the water is just 'medium', which makes it less suitable for human consumption. We further assume that each city knows about the damaging effect that they have on the water, and that the water is used by the other cities. In this analogy, each city represents past generations, present generations and future generations respectively. The water in the river represents the climate.
A duty to minimize contribution would mean that this generation (or City B) makes an active effort to impose the least amount of harm they can, without giving up too much of their way of life. The citizens of city B for example, could attempt to limit their polluting effect on the river by making sure less pollutants make their way into the river by installing filters on sewage pipes leading back into the river. Similarly, this generation could attempt to reduce the amount of pollutants that are emitted into the air by going to work with public transportation or by carpooling (to name two of many possible examples). By accepting this option as the most
5 The projections referred to can be found on the website of the IPCC:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
6 The Water Quality Index is an index made by the Water Research Center and uses several
indicators of water quality to determine the rating. In this paper its use is purely for illus-trative purposes. More information can be found on the following webpage:
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rightful duty, one acknowledges the fact that pollution has become inherent to dai-ly life in the modern world and that this way of life can't be changed easidai-ly.
This option is obviously attractive to the current generation, due to the rela-tively low costs. In fact, many people already act this way on a daily basis. No dras-tic life changing efforts have to be made to fulfil this duty. Individuals that can af-ford to buy an electric car and install solar panels on the roof of their house should do so, but those who cannot can still live up to their duty by driving as efficiently as they can or by driving to work together in one car.
The feasibility seems relatively high. It might take some efforts to convince the more stubborn members of society, but most would agree that this duty is some-thing that we ought to live by. Additionally, since minimizing one's own contribu-tion doesn't require radical changes to the way we live now, there is no need for far-reaching government intervention. Most governments could surely do more to promote and expand public transportation networks, construct separate carpool lanes and set up charging stations for electric cars, but many Western countries have already done this to a certain extent. With today's (rapidly advancing) 'green' technologies I think that drastically reducing the impact we have on climate change is certainly achievable.
The desirability of this option to the future generations is, however, relatively low. Although it would certainly help if the present generations minimized their contribution, the climate is still worse off than it was before. Even if City B manages to mitigate their impact on the quality of the water, City C is still going to have more pollutants in their water than City B. As far as equality is concerned this is still not acceptable.
This 'solution' can be seen as a way of procrastinating a better solution that we are not willing to face yet, possibly in the hopes that future technology will allow for better (or: less costly for present generations) ways of dealing with climate change.
Option II: A duty to nullify contribution
A duty to nullify contribution would, if fulfilled, mean that the net impact on cli-mate change of one life is exactly zero, leaving the quality of the clicli-mate the same over time. Equality wise this would therefore be the perfect option. Imagine that City B would set up a water treatment plant in order to make sure that the quality of the water flowing out of the city is on the same level as it was when it flowed in-to the city. City C wouldn't get water of the same level of quality as City A, but at least they are no longer worse off than City B. A duty to nullify our negative impact is similar to a lender's duty to return whatever he has borrowed in the same condi-tion as he received it.
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The costs, however, of fulfilling this duty are a lot higher than the costs for ful-filling the duty to only minimize contribution. One way to fulfil this duty is by com-pensating for the harm caused. For example, driving a set amount of kilometres in a regular car could be compensated for by planting a tree or donating money to 'green' initiatives. Unfortunately, such compensatory mechanisms have to be readi-ly available and user-friendreadi-ly in order for them to be used. Creating these mecha-nisms would fall under the responsibility of the state and/or Non-governmental organizations. Another option would be to completely rid polluting actions from our way of life, but this is simply not a realistic goal (yet). We are simply too reliant on fossil fuels for transportation and power generation. In 2013, about two thirds of the energy that was generated in the United States was generated with fossil fuels, while only about 13 percent of the power was generated with renewable re-sources.7 These numbers are similar to most other Western countries. To fulfil the duty to nullify contribution to climate change, countries will thus need to make significant investments in renewable energy sources. Needless to say this is very expensive. Unfortunately, our modern way of life simply requires a lot of energy.
The high costs also makes this option a lot less feasible than the first one. States and individuals are simply not willing to spend more than a certain amount of money and time on combating climate change, despite the obvious need to do so. The amount of money that they are willing to spend is not yet enough to nullify all contributions to climate change. Additionally, there is an imbalance between driv-ing a car, which is necessary if someone wants to get to work, and dodriv-ing somethdriv-ing compensatory like planting a tree, which would require extra time and effort. Con-vincing states and minds of the fact that this might be the option that justice re-quires is going to be very difficult, not because people would disagree but because they are not willing to sacrifice their way of life for the sake of environmental sus-tainability (otherwise there would not even be a constant debate about climate change in the first place). Moreover, it is very unlikely that a multilateral agree-ment or treaty that captures this duty would be agreed to by most states.
Lastly, the desirability of this option to the future generations is obviously higher than the first option. They are, as far as the quality of their living space is concerned, on the same level as us assuming the duty to nullify our contributions is fulfilled.
If the costs for this option could be lowered it would certainly be a great solu-tion to the climate problem. Fortunately research into 'green' technologies has been making leaps of progress in the last couple of years, making green initiatives
7 These statistics are from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The complete
list of each energy source and accompanying share can be found on the EIA website: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3.
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more readily available for the average citizen of the (Western) world. There is still some progress to be made though.
Option III: A duty to improve the climate
The last option is a duty to improve the situation. If fulfilled, this would mean cli-mate change would be reversed. Imagine that City B not only constructs a water treatment plant, but invests even more money to bring the quality of the water back to where it was when it flowed into City A. In this case, City C would enjoy the same water quality as City A. In the real world however, reversing the problem would be quite a lot more difficult. Effective carbon dioxide removal (CDR) meth-ods have yet to be invented.8
Since there hasn't been a lot of research into carbon dioxide removal methods, the estimated costs vary widely. One thing that is certain, however, is that it will be the most expensive option of the ones listed in this paper.
Even if the proper technology would be readily available, the feasibility of the proposal remains to be seen. Given the fact that no single individual or generation can be assigned causal responsibility or blameworthiness for all of the greenhouse gases that have been emitted (the contributions) since climate change became an issue, convincing present generations that this is the best option might prove diffi-cult (assuming that reversing climate change with CDR requires more of a financial effort than just stopping climate change with CDR). ''Why should we have to clean up after our ancestors?'', or more importantly: ''Why should we have to bear the cost of cleaning up after our ancestors?''. The argument that this would be better for future generations might not be convincing enough for many people. Another point to make is that it is very unlikely that states would agree to a protocol that captures this duty.
The desirability of this option to future generations is obviously higher than the first the options, seeing as a more sustainable world is undoubtedly a better world to live in.
Due to the fact that the technology that would be necessary to fulfil this duty is not yet available, I consider this duty infeasible for now. At one point in the future, however, it might well become feasible, at which point this option would obviously the best as far as the sustainability of Earth is concerned.
Which option would justice require?
Now that we have discussed the weak and strong points for each option it is time for me to argue which one I believe is what justice would require. For clarity's sake
8 More on carbon dioxide removal can be found here:
14
the options and accompanying 'ratings' have been summarised in the table 1 on the next page.
Table 1.
Duty Intended Effect Costs Feasibility Desirability
Minimize
contri-bution Mitigate climate change Low High Low
Nullify
contribu-tion Stop climate change Medium Medium Medium
Improve climate Reverse climate
change High Low High
Each rating is relative to the other ratings in the same column.
As clearly visible in the table above, there is a trade-off between some of the as-pects of the potential duties. High ambitions mean both high costs for the present generations and high desirability for future generations, but low feasibility of the present generation (setting their minds to) fulfilling the duty.
Because reversal of climate change is not likely to attain a satisfactory level of feasibility in the next couple of decades I think the current generation should strive for nullifying contributions. From an equality perspective, climate-neutrality is a just solution to the climate problem, in that future generations will be in the same situation environment wise as us. Climate-neutrality is, however, not easy to achieve. Due to the high costs only individuals with a certain amount of wealth could pull it off. Fortunately, a lot of money is spend on 'green' research that could make reducing one's own emissions easier and cheaper in the future. Those who cannot afford a climate-neutral lifestyle should aim to minimize their contribution to climate change as much as possible, waiting for the day that they themselves could adopt a climate-neutral lifestyle themselves.
Conclusions
In this paper I have concluded that future generations have rights that are of rele-vance to us, because they have interests that need to be defended in the present. Our moral obligation to do something about climate change derives from the right that future generations have to live in a sustainable world. Since it is very safe to assume that there are going to be future generations, the uncertainty about the fu-ture is not a proper excuse for passiveness when it comes to climate change. From our moral obligations to future generations we can derive a duty to combat cli-mate change, based on our ability to assist. The exact content of this duty is a con-troversial topic. I have argued for the position that we should strive for adopting a climate-neutral way of life, because even higher ambitions would be too infeasible for some years to come. Those who cannot afford a climate-neutral lifestyle should at least try to minimize their contribution to climate change until they can afford it.
15 References
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