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Gardiner, Stephen M. --- "Protecting future generations: intergeneratuibak buck-passing, theoretical ineptitude" [2006] ELECD 485; in Tremmel, Chet Joerg (ed), "Handbook of Intergenerational Justice" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Handbook of Intergenerational Justice

Editor(s): Tremmel, Chet Joerg

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845429003

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: Protecting future generations: intergeneratuibak buck-passing, theoretical ineptitude

Author(s): Gardiner, Stephen M.

Extract:

8 Protecting future generations:
intergenerational buck-passing,
theoretical ineptitude and a brief for a
global core precautionary principle
Stephen M. Gardiner



Introduction
In this chapter, I consider the question of why future generations need
protecting, and how we might go about providing such protection. I begin
by claiming that our basic position with respect to the further future can be
characterized by what I call the problem of intergenerational buck-passing.
This problem implies that our temporal position allows us to visit costs on
future people that they ought not to bear, and to deprive them of benefits
that they ought to have. Next, I claim that it is plausible to think that this
problem is manifest in the case of two serious intergenerational issues:
climate change and nuclear protection. Third, I suggest that the problem is
exacerbated by a problem of theoretical inadequacy: at present, we lack the
basic conceptual tools with which to deal with problems involving the
further future. I illustrate this problem through a discussion of the dom-
inant theoretical approach in public policy, cost­benefit analysis. Finally, I
consider what is to be done. Here I make two basic proposals. The first is
that we should investigate a promising form of the precautionary
approach, which I call `the Global Core Precautionary Principle'. The
second is that we should not lose sight of the fact that the problems of inter-
generational buck passing and theoretical inadequacy create an atmos-
phere in which we are extremely vulnerable ...