scholarly journals Intergenerational justice, water rights, and climate change

2019 ◽  
pp. 2-13
Author(s):  
Upendra Baxi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Rights ◽  
Intergenerational Justice

scholarly journals The Circumstances of Intergenerational Justice

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Brandstedt
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Practical Problem ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Moral Constructivism

AbstractSome key political challenges today, e.g. climate change, are future oriented. The intergenerational setting differs in some notable ways from the intragenerational one, creating obstacles to theorizing about intergenerational justice. One concern is that as the circumstances of justice do not pertain intergenerationally, intergenerational justice is not meaningful. In this paper, I scrutinize this worry by analysing the presentations of the doctrine of the circumstances of justice by David Hume and John Rawls. I argue that we should accept the upshot of their idea, that justice is context sensitive, even if this at first sight seems to invalidate intergenerational justice. On the basis of moral constructivism, I subsequently provide a fresh reading of the doctrine according to which it conveys the idea that justice is the solution to a practical problem. However, as the problem background is evolving, we need to properly characterize the relevant practical problem in order to make ethical theorizing relevant. Contrary to what has been claimed, the circumstances of justice do not then clash with intergenerational justice, but are the necessary presuppositions for its advancement.

Consequentialism as an Intergenerational Ethic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Mulgan
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
The World ◽  
Comparative Advantages ◽  
Intergenerational Ethics ◽  
Human Extinction

Consequentialist morality is about making the world a better place—by promoting value and producing valuable outcomes. Consequentialist ethics competes with non-consequentialist alternatives where values are to be honored or instantiated rather than promoted and/or where morality is based on rules, virtues, or rights rather than values. Consequentialism’s main rivals in intergenerational ethics are contract-based theories. This chapter first argues that consequentialism has significant comparative advantages over its contract-based rivals, especially in relation to non-identity, the absence of reciprocity, and the need for flexibility and radical critique. These advantages outweigh the challenges facing any consequentialist intergenerational ethics—including cluelessness, counterintuitive demands, and puzzles of aggregation. The chapter then explores many varieties of contemporary consequentialism, arguing that the best consequentialist approach to intergenerational justice is agnostic, moderate, collective consequentialism. Different possible futures—including futures broken by climate change or transformed by new technologies—present new ethical challenges that consequentialism has the flexibility to address. Collective consequentialism can also resolve long-standing debates about the aggregation of well-being. The chapter ends by asking how consequentialist intergenerational ethics might evaluate threats of human extinction, incorporate the value of nonhuman nature, and motivate its potentially extreme demands.

Rebel with a cause: the framing of climate change and intergenerational justice in the German press treatment of the Fridays for Future protests

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-47
Author(s):  
Lena von Zabern ◽  
Christopher D Tulloch
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Online Newspapers ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Quantitative Content ◽  
German Press ◽  
Time Period

This study investigates the representation of the Fridays for Future strikes in the German online newspapers Bild.de, Zeit Online and FAZ.net. Through a qualitative and quantitative content analysis over the time period August 2018 to March 2019, eight frames have been identified. Whereas Zeit Online shows a framing towards intergenerational justice, the coverage of FAZ.net and Bild.de strongly adheres to the protest paradigm. The majority of all articles guarantees protesters a voice, but this voice is often reduced to apolitical testimonies and the protesters’ self-agency is undermined through disparagement. German media coverage thus tends to reproduce existing power structures by marginalizing and depoliticizing the political agenda of a system critical protest. Although this framing feeds into the shift of the climate change discourse towards adaptation, the study shows that the idea of climate change as an issue of intergenerational justice and children’s rights has become part of the media’s agenda.

13. Environmental Taxes and Intergenerational Justice

2021 ◽  
pp. 187-202
Author(s):  
William Abel ◽  
Elizabeth Kahn ◽  
Tom Parr ◽  
Andrew Walton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
The State ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Environmental Taxes ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Current Generation

This chapter evaluates environmental taxes as part of a set of policies to address the threats that climate change poses. These taxes increase the price of activities that are environmentally harmful. In doing so, they discourage such behaviour and raise revenue that the state can use to redress its effects. The chapter embeds these considerations in an account of intergenerational justice, arguing that the current generation has a duty to provide future generations with prospects at least equal to its own. It also examines the objection that the proposed approach allows historical emitters off of the moral hook, showing that the state can adjust environmental taxes to take account of this. Finally, the chapter explores how to amend these taxes so that they are not regressive and that they do not present undue barriers to particularly valuable activities.

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