To the Anishinaabeg of the Future

How should we help people live minimally good lives in present and future generations when doing so does not require sacrificing our own ability to live well enough? After all, almost any institutions or policies we might implement impact individuals’ ability to live such lives in future, as well as present, generations. This chapter defends the principle that we should choose policies that prioritize the least well-off in all generations and help as many people as possible in present generations. If we should judge two policies with the same impact on present (future) generations solely based on their impact on future (present) generations, this principle tells us quite a bit about how we should help people in present and future generations flourish. Moreover, the idea that we should ensure that those in future generations have the basic minimum whenever they come into existence arguably entails that we do not have to prioritize preventing tragedies that could afflict many in far future generations who need not come into existence. At least, we should not do so at great cost to those in present and near-future generations. Rather, barring tragic conflicts, we should both prioritize helping the global poor now and ensure that everyone who comes into existence in the future has a basic minimum.

A cartoon in the New Yorker on 12 July 2023 with the title 'Solve That Problem!' depicts two besuited older white men on a game show panel before whom a microphoned compère intones: 'The clock is ticking -will you solve the problem or pass it on to future generations, Congressman?' 1 The obvious appeal of the joke is the starting point for an article I recently published in this journal, titled ' Against Future Generations': the invocation of future generations is intuitive and powerful, even visceral. Of course we want the congressmen to 'solve the problem' and not pass it on to 'future generations'. But in this move -a niggling feeling I had -we may miss something: the problem is ours -it is a problem in the present. What, actually, do future generations have to do with it? And if we do take 'future generations' seriously -to pursue the point -which future generations, where and, not least, when? How are 'their' interests and concerns any different to 'ours', globally, today? If they are somehow different, wherein lies the distinctiveness? If they are not, why raise them at all? Who are they anyway? Is there, in fact, a 'they' there? (I mean 'there'?) And who are 'we'? My worry was that if legislators cannot or will not 'solve the problem' for those alive today -the poverty, inequality and vulnerability, the encroaching insecurity and wildfires and heatwaves and hurricanes -and not just within their own borders, but globally -given the USA's (to stick with the New Yorker setting) immense responsibility for climate change -it is hard to see why any particular version of 'future generations' would produce a better outcome: future generations in the world as a whole? In the USA as a whole? Or just in (say) New York? Do we mean future constituents? Voters? 'Our children and grandchildren'? In 10 or 500 or 10,000 years' time? Clearly everything depends on the boundaries we choose, in both space and time; policy conclusions

Carbon taxation has been studied primarily in social planner or infinitely lived agent models, which trade off the welfare of future and current generations. Such frameworks obscure the potential for carbon taxation to produce a generational win-win. This paper develops a largescale, dynamic 55-period, OLG model to calculate the carbon tax policy delivering the highest uniform welfare gain to all generations. The OLG framework, with its selfish generations, seems far more natural for studying climate damage. Our model features coal, oil, and gas, each extracted subject to increasing costs, a clean energy sector, technical and demographic change, and Nordhaus (2017)’s temperature/damage functions. Our model’s optimal uniform welfare increasing (UWI) carbon tax starts at $30 tax, rises annually at 1.5 percent and raises the welfare of all current and future generations by 0.73 percent on a consumption-equivalent basis. Sharing efficiency gains evenly requires, however, taxing future generations by as much as 8.1 percent and subsidizing early generations by as much as 1.2 percent of lifetime consumption. Without such redistribution (the Nordhaus “optimum†), the carbon tax constitutes a win-lose policy with current generations experiencing an up to 0.84 percent welfare loss and future generations experiencing an up to 7.54 percent welfare gain. With a six-times larger damage function, the optimal UWI initial carbon tax is $70, again rising annually at 1.5 percent. This policy raises all generations’ welfare by almost 5 percent. However, doing so requires levying taxes on and giving transfers to future and current generations ranging up to 50.1 percent and 10.3 percent of their lifetime consumption. Delaying carbon policy, for 20 years, reduces efficiency gains roughly in half.

Climate Change and the Future: Discounting for Time, Wealth, and Risk

Call for Papers: Constitutions and Intergenerational Justice

Call for Papers: Constitutions and Intergenerational Justice

A healthy workforce is paramount to a thriving society. COVID-19 was a global event that threatened the social and economic well-being of communities around the world. Given the importance of childhood experiences on life outcomes, the increased parental stress and burnout experienced during COVID-19 threatens positive socioeconomic outcomes and future generations’ success in the workforce. This mixed-method research employed MaxQDA and JASP software to analyze 201 mothers’ survey responses about their experiences to understand the long-term influences of COVID-19 on future generations entering the workforce. The findings identified significant concerns: mental health, lack of healthy socialization skills, limited access to educational and/or childcare resources, stress and burnout, financial well-being, and lack of access to an extended support network. These concerns influenced mothers’ experiences in caring for, supporting, and parenting their children. These also influenced children’s ability to socialize and develop soft skills, which are essential for long-term success both personally and professionally. Findings from the study led to six key recommendations to address the long-term negative impact of COVID-19: developing community support networks, building better access to educational resources, improving flexible work policies, bringing attention to the importance of mental health issues, building leadership and community support programs for parents, and addressing the lack of social skills to prepare the future workforce generation. Addressing these issues will ultimately improve children’s development and create a more amenable work-life balance for parents. While often perceived as an individual issue, parental burnout is actually a public health issue. Investing in the development of children today can positively impact the socioeconomic situation for the future of society.

Conceiving legal obligations towards future generations is challenging—especially from a positivist stance and if obligations and claims are understood as being correlative in nature. Legal obligations towards future generations are often rejected from the outset if (and insofar as) there is no explicit acknowledgement or established doctrine. This neglects the power of sound legal interpretation. I argue that obligations towards future people and generations are grounded in the relational character of human rights and that their positivity is not a problem in a legal order containing norm texts that can reasonably be interpreted as acknowledging human rights; no additional enactment is necessary for these obligations to be part of the positive law. This claim is based on a (novel) concept of fundamental rights which is compatible with legal positivism.

국가는 시원적 주권을 갖는 정치적 공동체로서, 국가의 지속가능성 차원에서 본다면 현재세대와 미래세대간 계약에 따라 성립된 일종의 세대간 공동체이다. 하지만 현대 민주주의에서의 정치적 결정구조는 선거를 통한 정당성 통치구조를 갖기 때문에, 현재 태어난 세대로서 선거권을 가질 정도의 일정 연령을 가진 자가 아니면 직접적인 정치참여가 어려워 미래세대는 정치적 고려에서 배제되는 경향이 강하다. 또한 엄격한 소송요건과 미래위험에 대한 명백성 입증이 어려워 소송을 통한 권리구제 역시 어려운 실정이다. 2018년 이후 환경권 영역에서 국가의 미래세대 책임을 명문화하는 헌법개정 개정 논의가 있었지만, 개헌에 성공하지 못했다. 따라서 현재 필요한 것은 현실에서 미래세대를 위한 조직과 절차 신설에 대한 대안과 그 제도화 시 입법적 쟁점들에 대한 논의를 보다 심도 깊게 진행하여 미래세대 보호를 위한 헌법이론적 논의를 뒷받침하는 것이 보다 실리적이라 판단된다. 이를 위해 주요국가에 입법화 되었던 사례를 유형별로 정리해 보면, 크게 다음 4가지 비교모델을 언급할 수 있다. 첫째, 아동·청소년과 같은 현존하는 미래세대의 직접적인 참여를 보장하기 위해, 네덜란드 또는 덴마크처럼 교육법상 학교운영위원회에 참여 및 교과과정에 의견제시할 수 있도록 의견표명권을 입법화 하는 방안이다. 둘째, 이스라엘이나 핀란드처럼 의회 내 미래세대위원회 또는 미래위원회를 설립하여, 미래세대에게 영향을 미치는 법안에 대한 심사가 가능한 구조를 마련하는 것이다. 셋째, 스웨덴 및 영국 웨일즈처럼 행정부 내 미래세대 옴부즈만을 임명하여 현재 국가 지속가능발전지표(K-SDGs)로 설정되어 있는 개별 정책과제들과 관련해 미래세대 관점에서 이행여부를 감시하고 정책적 제언을 할 수 있도록 법제화 하는 것이다. 넷째, 독일처럼 법안의 장기적 영향을 분석하는 지속가능성심사를 제도화 하여, 그 속에서 미래세대에게 미치는 법안의 사전적 영향을 분석하여 평가하도록 절차적 방안을 마련하는 것이다. 이 같은 지속가능섬심사 결과는 법률안 제출시 첨부되어, 미래세대위원회가 그 결과를 검토하도록 한다면 미래세대 보호를 위한 입법적 통제 역시 균형을 이룰 수 있을 것이다. 현재의 결정이 미래형성적 의미를 갖는 입법과정의 특성상, 이 같은 입법모델들의 수용과 세대간 합의의 합리성과 타당성을 부여하는 것은 결국 현 시대의 의사결정 주체가 되는 현재세대의 몫일 수밖에 없다. 따라서 세대간 보호와 연대를 위한 세대간 계약의 실현은 결국 미래세대를 위한 현재세대의 책임이 그 주요내용이 될 수밖에 없기에, 다음이 아닌 지금 우리들의 노력으로 미래세대를 위한 보호기반을 한시바삐 마련해야만 할 것이다.A state is a political organization with ultimate sovereignty. From the perspective of national sustainability, it is a kind of intergenerational community established under contracts between current and future generation. However, it is difficult for those who have not reached to the age for suffrage to directly participate in politics since the political decision-making structure in modern democracy has legitimate governance structure through elections, which tends to exclude future generation from political consideration. In addition, it is difficult to obtain legal remedy through litigations due to strict litigation requirements and the difficulty of proving future risks. Discussions on the revision of the Constitution in terms of the state’s responsibility for future generation in the area of environmental rights have been taken since 2018 without success. What needs to be done at the moment is to find ways to establish organizations and procedures for future generation and have in-depth discussion on legislative issues in institutionalizing such organizations and procedures. It would be more practical to develop constitutional rationale to protect future generation. To this end, this article categorizes the legislative models of major countries into four types for comparison. First type of legislative model is countries like Netherlands and Denmark which embed the right of express opinions into the education laws for the future generation co-living with the current generation to directly participate in school steering committees or to present opinions in curriculum. Second type is countries like Israel and Finland which established a future generation committee or a future committee within their parliaments so that the system of examining bills affecting future generation can be in place. Third type is the appointment of ombudsman of future generation within the executive branch like Sweden or Wales so that the implementation of individual policies set as K-SDGs can be overseen and policy recommendations can be provided for future generation. Fourth is to institutionalize the evaluation of sustainability which analyzes long-term effect of a bill like Germany so that the ex-ante evaluation of a bill as to its impact on future generation can be done systematically. The legislative balance in protecting future generation could be achieved when the evaluation result of K-SDGs is to be submitted together with a bill for the review by the future generation committee. The legislative process has a distinction that a decision making at the present implies the future influence. In this context, the acceptance of such legislative models and the rationales and legitimacy of the intergenerational contracts would fall to the current decision-makers, in other words the current generation. Therefore, the realization of the intergenerational contract for the intergenerational protection and solidarity would be achieved inevitably by the current generation and their responsibility for future generation. That is the reason why the foundation for the protection of future generation must be laid promptly through the efforts of the current generation now as opposed to later.

Constitutions and Future Generations Axel P. Gosseries (bio) A Double-Edged Sword Any attempt at thoroughly exploring issues of green constitutionalism requires a close look at the interactions between constitutions and our concern for justice towards future generations. It is crucial to understand at the outset that, far from a convergence, there is a fundamental tension at work between two types of concerns for future generations as they translate at the constitutional level. On the one hand, by incorporating substantive and/or procedural guarantees in the constitution, one may well aim at reinforcing the protection of the coming generations against actions of generations preceding them and deemed problematic. Yet, on the other hand, the more we rely on constitutions—as opposed to less rigid legal instruments—the more we threaten the generational sovereignty of future generations. Taking seriously the renewal in theories of justice as well as the development of environmentalism in the 1970s and 1980s, one may be tempted to assume that constitutions can only serve future generations. Yet, exactly two centuries earlier, in the late 1780s and early 1790s, the concern of authors such as Jefferson (1789) and Paine (1791) was just the opposite.1 Constitutions can thus constitute double-edged swords from the perspective of intergenerational justice. The tools used in a constitution to offer even stronger guarantees to the rights of future people simultaneously restrict the sovereignty of coming generations. Constitutionalization is thus not straightforwardly compatible with the demands of intergenerational justice. Let me be more specific. Constitutions, through a variety of amendment restrictions (e.g. requiring a prior declaration of revisability by the previous parliamentary assembly before the elections, requiring special quorums, sometimes going as far as non-revisability),2 reduce the freedom of each generation to adopt its own rules on a simple majority basis. In the face of this prima facie case against constitutional rigidity, there are at least three questions to be addressed. First, do constitutions actually bind future generations at all?3 If a country were claiming to apply its laws to the citizens of other countries residing outside its territory and on grounds that don't benefit from any special degree of recognition elsewhere, other countries would simply dismiss such claims. Why can't a generation simply do the same and decide to enact a new constitution from scratch?4 Second, if it makes sense to claim that constitutions actually bind future generations, are there good reasons for that weighing heavier than the concern for generational sovereignty expressed above? Third, if it can be fair to bind the next generations, on which issues can or should this be done—e.g. on all issues that we generally consider as constitutional essentials? Hereinafter, we will only address the second of these three issues. Before doing so, consider the other side of the debate—the idea of relying on constitutions to protect future generations. This takes various forms. First, one may want to translate substantive concerns for future generations in constitutions. Some constitutions actually refer to the interests of future generations and sometimes even explicitly grant them rights, such as in the case of the Japanese constitution, which extends some of the rights already granted to present people to future ones (1946, art. 11), and with a more specifically environmental focus in the Norwegian (1992 amendment, art. L110b) and the Bolivian ones (2002 amendment, art. 7(m)).5 Recognizing rights to future people raises specific challenges, including constraints on how to phrase them. Yet, these challenges are not insurmountable.6 What matters however is how flesh is given to such rights. We will explore below one way of doing so - through setting up a representative for future generations, with a properly defined mandate.7 Can Constitutional Rigidity be Justified? A people always preserves the right to revise, reform and change its constitution. A generation is not entitled to subject future generations to its own laws.8 Thomas Jefferson is probably the most emblematic author among those who emphasized the fact that constitutional rigidity—which should not be confused with unrevisability—raises a problem of intergenerational fairness.9 He essentially relies on three intertwined lines of argument. First, "the dead have no rights...

To realize policies that benefit the youth and future generations, discussions are being held on how to give the votes of children who are currently ineligible to vote, and even future unborn generations, to their parents or voters of the present generation to vote as their proxies. To examine the effect of proxy voting on future-friendly choices, we conducted a laboratory experiment with the general public, including parents. Participants were assigned the roles of present and future generations, and the present-generation participants voted on allocating payoffs between generations. Proxy votes for future-generation participants were granted to some present-generation participants. We found that proxy voting did not increase the proportion of votes for future-friendly choices compared to the case without proxy votes, which is consistent with previous studies involving university students. We also observed that the older the participants, the more likely they were to vote for future-friendly choices. Once age was controlled for, parents were less likely than non-parents to vote for future-friendly choices. From a consequentialist perspective, these results suggest that we should add a twist to proxy voting, examine non-proxy voting methods, or explore other measures.

The article is devoted to the study of the constitutional basis of the coexistence of the value of the rule of law and the principle of moral responsibility for future generations, mainly in the aspect of protecting social and environmental human rights. The author summarized the theoretical scientific works related to the researched issue, additionally focusing on the application by the administrative court of the principles of proportionality, legal certainty, as well as the interpretation of the law in favor of the individual and the priority of protecting public (public) interests. As a result of the study, new approaches to the implementation of some constitutional rights were developed, in particular, in relation to the protection of social rights and rights to a safe environment, given that they directly depend on the economic development (financial capabilities) of each state that has undertaken the relevant obligations. In addition, several specific changes to the legislation were proposed for general discussion. The author concluded that the principle of moral responsibility to future generations as a component of the rule of law has relatively recently begun to be developed at the scientific and theoretical level, to be enshrined in international treaties and national legislation of various countries, as well as to be embodied in the practical activities of law enforcement and justice bodies. The spheres of the most frequent use of the principle of moral responsibility towards future generations are legal relations related to social protection and environmental protection, which is mainly due to the specificity of these spheres, namely, the delay in time of the moment of decision-making by the relevant subjects of authority and their «visualization» consequences, as well as the objectivity of the presence of contradictions between private (individual, personified) interest and public (public, as a rule, non-institutionalized) interest, which can be represented by international institutions, public organizations, etc. Key words: rule of law, justice, public interests, national security, interpretation of the law in favor of the person, principle of proportionality, coming (future) generations, moral responsibility, budgetary policy, exemplary case, social protection, environmental rights.

Can individuals caring little about future generations serve as their representatives?

Future generations: Widespread changes in our living-together

Silence, a political category in democratic theory, has proven starkly unjust toward future generations, who are practically voiceless in intergovernmental fora, a notable feature of the international climate regime. This article first explores the status of future generations’ fight for the climate by articulating the solidarity implications of climate change as a common concern of humankind. Second, the analysis offers a brief overview of the recent constitutionalization trend concerning future generations’ interests in the environment as a meaningful counterweight to the politics of silence. Third, the article discusses climate change litigation as a catalyst of the constitutionalization trend and a proxy for political participation. Throughout the analysis, the article turns to the thought of political theorist Hannah Arendt to illustrate the potential of legally protecting future generations’ role in fighting for a stable climate through post-sovereign constitutionalism. By way of a case study, the analysis argues that in Neubauer et al v Germany Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court offered practical ways to offset the politics of silence and increase the political space for future freedoms. Conclusively, the article offers a snapshot of open and fluid post-sovereign constitutional institutions and participative practices that could advance freedoms for future generations.