We are taught from a young age that “this land is our land,” that “sharing is caring,” and “to treat others the way you would want to be treated” and yet, so many of us do not truly and faithfully subscribe to these teachings after we leave the crayons and play-doh behind us. We know that we should morally be conscious of the decisions we make now in order to better mold a more just and sustainable world for generations to come, but we often do not act in accordance with this knowledge because it requires us to change something about ourselves or our days that make such acts less advantageous for us as individuals. Sometimes, we don’t recycle, or we take long showers, or we plan to build pipelines across sacred indigenous lands, or clear-cut forests because it is what makes our present lives easier to live and seemingly more profitable. We have an obligation to protect and preserve what we have now, and promote more goods for future generations each and every day.
In my opinion, these goods refer to acts or thoughts that encourage the sustainability and health of the natural world for the sake of itself and the sake of the health and happiness of the millions of people that will follow us. If one were to constantly act with the sentiment that if what is done at the present moment will not affect future people because those future people might not exist, this world would be a haven for anarchy. People created structures of representation to protect the individuals’ rights to goods, which are--in my opinion--often an extension of goods for the planet; while these structures have been abused and/or manipulated to cater to the success of present individuals over time, the system was created because people recognized that it is important to make decisions that affect the masses and our planet thoughtfully.
Philosopher Brian Barry reduces the term “generations” to “an abstraction from a continuous process of population replacement” (B.M. Barry. "Justice Between Generations," 268); Barry later claims that one of the most definitive elements of decision-making is our obsession with the generations’ “reputation” (B.M. Barry. "Justice Between Generations," 270). While the importance of the reputation may not be the most glamorous of reasons for our current generations to act in accordance with the principles of morality and thus in a way that would benefit future generations, it is indeed a means exactly by which this can be achieved—thus we should always choose “Conservation” over “Depletion” for while it may not directly benefit the individual in ways that are most presently advantageous, it benefits the larger present generation now and generations in the future (D. Parfit. "Energy Policy and the Further Future," 144).
If we continue to “buck-pass” climate action to the generations that follow us, eventually there will come a time where one future generation will bear the weight of all of our environmental injustices combined. Preserving a reputation socially legitimizes the necessity to act in ways that more so benefit others in the future than the those of the present. Climate change is a complex issue that must be attacked from all angles. While the “current generation contributes significantly to climate change… the effects will predominantly fall in the future, to other people (and species)” (Gardiner, 47). This “’perfect’ moral storm” allows present people to “[exploit] its temporal situation” without having to appropriately acknowledge the realities of our planets demise because those realities will not be directly and presently felt by the majority of global citizens today (S. M. Gardiner. "A Perfect Moral Storm: Overview," 47-48). This storm must be stopped for it directly rejects the immorality of such ignorance and bliss. It is wrong to deny the future people of this planet--in addition to the health of the planet itself--the value that which we apply to our current generations.
