Intergenerational Justice and Climate Change
| Date | 01 March 1999 |
| Published date | 01 March 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00187 |
| Author | Edward Page |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Intergenerational Justice and
Climate Change
EDWARD PAGE*
University of Southampton
Global climate change has important implications for the way in which bene®ts and
burdens will be distributed amongst present and future generations. As a result it
raises important questions of intergenerational justice. It is shown that there is at least
one serious problem for those who wish to approach these questions by utilizing
familiar principles of justice. This is that such theories often pre-suppose harm-based
accounts of injustice which are incompatible with the fact that the very social policies
which climatologists and scientists claim will reduce the risks of climate change will
also predictably, if indirectly, determine which individuals will live in the future. One
proposed solution to this problem is outlined grounded in terms of the notion of
collective interests.
The issue of global climate change has attracted increasing interest amongst
political scientists and theorists in recent years. The complex interactions
amongst nation states which have resulted from moves to construct world wide,
and legally binding, restrictions on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a
fascinating source of research for international relations theorists generally, and
game theorists in particular.1 Moreover, the fact that the future costs of climate
change are not expected to be shared evenly amongst nations has attracted the
interest of theorists concerned with problems of global justice.2
One of the most striking set of questions raised by climate change, however,
concerns the way in which social, economic and cultural resources should be
distributed across generations. Recent evidence suggests that present levels of
GHG emissions will have particularly grave consequences both for the integrity
of the biosphere and for the well-being of its future human and non-human
inhabitants. In its most recent assessment of the global climate change issue, the
authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded
* I would like to thank Andrew Williams, John Horton, and an anonymous referee from Political
Studies for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
1 For a game theoretical account of climate change politics, see Hugh Ward, `Game theory and
the politics of global warming: the state of play and beyond', Political Studies, 44, 5 (1996), 850±71;
for the international relations perspective on climate change issues see M. Peterson, Global
Warming and Global Politics (London, Routledge, 1996).
2 See M. Grubb, `Seeking fair weather: ethics and the international debate on climate change',
International Aairs, 71, 3 (1995), 463±96; H. Shue, `Avoidable Necessity: Global Warming,
International Fairness, and Alternative Energy', in I. Shapiro and J.W. DeCew (eds), NOMOS
XXXVII: Theory and Practice (New York, New York University Press, 1995), pp. 239±64; and
H. Shue, `The Unavoidability of Justice', in A. Hurrell and B. Kingsbury (eds), The International
Politics of the Environment (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992), 373±97.
# Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
54
Intergenerational Justice and Climate Change
not only that `the balance of evidence suggests discernible human in¯uence on
climate change',3 but also that the long-term impact of climate change will have
predominantly, if not uniformly, adverse impacts on the health, cultural life,
and economic prosperity of future human populations.4 In fact, the IPCC went
on to conclude that global climate change issues raise `particular questions of
equity between generations'.5
While the IPCC seem to take it largely for granted that climate change raises
questions of intergenerational justice, there have been few systematic attempts to
test the robustness of this view (1) across dierent theories of distributive
justice and (2) in the light of some perplexing problems associated with
extending the scope of these theories beyond the realm of dealings between
contemporaries of the same society. Regarding issue 2, for example, there
appears to be a widely held conviction that activities which compound the
climate change problem are unjust, or unethical, because they harm generations
yet unborn.6 This paper argues, however, that a unique philosophical puzzle
confronts those who wish to explain our responsibilities to future generations,
for example regarding the climate change problem, in terms of the language of
disadvantages and harms. The central problem developed is that it is unclear how
exactly future persons can be harmed, or disadvantaged, by acts or social
policies which are necessary conditions of their coming into existence. This
presents a serious challenge, it will be argued, for a whole range of accounts of
environmental, and intergenerational, justice which assume that actions or
policies can only be wrong if they harm, disadvantage or victimize particular
human or non-human animals (I call these identity-dependent accounts of
justice).
In the next section, I outline brie¯y a prominent example of an identity-
dependent theory of intergenerational justice. Next, I explain how this theory,
by virtue of its identity-dependent structure, seems unlikely to generate stringent
duties of intergenerational justice ± for example, duties which could explain
why existing generations should sacri®ce certain bene®ts in order to preserve the
climate system for their remote descendants. Next, I argue that whereas we
might appeal to an identity-independent theory of intergenerational justice in
3 J.T. Houghton, M.C. Zinyowera and R.H. Moss (eds), Climate Change 1995: the Science of
Climate Change (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 5.
4 See A.J. McMichael et al., `Human Population Health', in R.T. Watson (ed), Climate Change
1995: Impacts, Adaptations, and Mitigation of Climate Change (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1996), pp. 564. It is worth noting that at least some of the IPCC's research ®ndings are
controversial. However, even those who are sceptical of the relevance of the IPPC's ®ndings for
questions of social justice, such as Wilfrid Beckerman, do not dispute the fact that climate change
will impact upon the distribution of resources across generations to some extent. See W. Beckerman,
Small is Stupid: Blowing the Whistle on the Greens (London, Duckworth, 1995), pp. 90.
5 K.J. Arrow et al., `International Equity, Discounting and Economic Eciency', in J.P. Bruce,
H. Lee, and E. Haites (eds), Climate Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate
Change (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 130. This conclusion is consistent with
the text of the earlier United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, according to
which those nations party to it `should protect the climate system for the bene®t of present and
future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but
dierentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities'. See United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (London, HMSO, 1993), p. 5.
6 Onora O'Neill, for example, writes that `by burning fossil fuel prodigally we accelerate the
green-house eect and may dramatically harm successors, who can do nothing to us'. See O'Neill,
Towards Justice and Virtue (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 115.
# Political Studies Association, 1999
EDWARD PAGE
55
order to explain the basis of such duties, there are considerations which suggest
that it would be worth seeing if some version of the identity-dependent view can
be defended. Finally, I develop one line of thought which seeks to do precisely
this, which is developed in terms of the notion of collective interests.
Intergenerational Justice as Resource Conservation
One theory of intergenerational justice which seems consistent with the thought
that existing generations owe it to their distant successors not to despoil the
natural environment in general, and the climate system in particular, proposes
that each generation should hand down to the next a no less abundant share of
resources than that which it inherited from previous generations. According to
an in¯uential version of this theory proposed by Barry, the consumption of
non-renewable natural resources over time `should be compensated for in the
sense that later generations should be left no worse o . . . than they would
have been without the depletion'.7 We might call this the resourcist view of
intergenerational justice.
Barry comes to this resourcist view by the following line of thought.8 The
fundamental issue for a theory of intergenerational justice, he thinks, is the
appropriate consumption of non-renewable natural resources across time.
When reserves of non-renewable resources (such as oil or natural gas) are
depleted, the costs of extracting and then using these resources are increased for
future generations. There are also costs imposed upon future generations in
virtue of the bad side-eects of depleting these resources, such as global climate
change, air pollution and destruction of the ozone layer. As a consequence, it is
crucial to establish how much existing generations may deplete stocks of non-
renewable resources without violating the requirements of intergenerational
justice.
It would be unfair to require existing generations to...
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