Climate Matters for Future People

Abstract

John Broome's book Climate Matters (Broome 2012) is a lucid and instructive discussion of a number of ethical questions about how we must respond to climate change. In this article, I examine his discussion of how the effects on future people of climate policies should bear on government decisions about whether to adopt those policies. In brief, Broome argues that the future effects of a government's climate policies are a matter of indifference as far as justice is concerned. These future effects are of relevance only because, and insofar as, governments have weaker duties of goodness (or beneficence). I argue that this position does not give sufficient importance to the future effects of climate policy. To rectify this position, I propose that we endorse a third type of duty that has implications for climate policy. This third duty is not directed at particular future individuals (as duties of justice are) and neither is it directed at producing as much impersonal good as possible (as duties of goodness are). Instead, it requires that governments respect the intrinsic value of human life.