Do Future Generations Have the Right to Breathe Clean Air?

Abstract

(1) The first position holds that future generations have rights substantially like our rights, which imply obligations against us. For some defenders of the rights of future generations, these rights take the form (a) of an extended eternal contract between members of one generation, linking them and members of all other generations inextricably (Edmund Burke). ' For others (b), the rights of future generations flow from a less extended contract model between members of adjacent and near-adjacent generations. The rights of any generation are due to what a predecessor generation would justly set aside for them (J. Rawls).2 For yet others (c), the move to attribute rights to indefinite others or not-yet-determinate persons (A. Baier) includes potential beings who will have interests, needs and rights very much like ourselves (A. Baier, G. Pletcher, E. Partridge).3 For all three variations, the rights of future generations are like our rights. (2) A second position is that future generations may have in rem rights attributable to them which imply imperfect obligations. On this view, the rights of future generations are conditional rights, like the right of a drowning person to live only if others are near enough to save this person without seriously risking their own lives.