How We Today Influence The Future Generations

One of the least controversial ideas in our culture is “resource conservation”: the idea that we should prioritize conserving resources for future generations lest we leave them with nothing. This of courses implies that there is no conflict or scarcity between our consumption of resources and future generations. But to take this further, there is an incredible harmony between consumption and future consumption, between present generations and future generations.

We care about our family, friends, neighbors, community and our country, and we may even care about current environmental issues. We already contemplate people who don’t exist when we build museums and sports facilities because these facilities provide a legacy for the future. We also donate to charities to help people we don’t know. Some cultures care about ancestors, passing on stories, and living a life to make them proud. We might extend this to care to our descendants that they may be proud we have passed on a thriving planet.

This quality of life in the future is also affected by the choice, or the lack of choice, of population policies. Though interconnected, environmental policies and population policies are separate factors. We could destroy the environment without having an increase in population, and we could, perhaps not realistically but at least in principle, pursue population polices that render the world uncomfortably crowded within the limits set by ecology. Our lifestyle could even, albeit less likely, result in a drastic decrease in population which would make life hard for the survivors by undermining their economy. Either way, the moral duty not to impose upon future generations hardship caused by population problems is a real one.

Our choices of vast cultural policies have impacts upon future people. Our ability to develop a fair and functioning world-economy does, of course, greatly affect the standard of living in the future. So does technology. But quality of life is not just a matter of material goods. The arts and the sciences are important spiritual assets for any culture; political and legal institutions, and moral values, are even more crucial.

To put it another way, barring a disaster, the Earth will remain habitable for about a billion years, and many millions of future generations could come after us. Most of humanity’s potential lies in the future. There are actions we might take today that could have a significant impact on these future generations. For instance, if there is a nuclear war that ends civilization, then this future we prepare for will never happen at all. From the perspective of making a difference, the expected impact of our actions today on the far future might be the most important thing about them.

In the end, future individuals differ from present individuals only in one property – the time they live in. From an impartial perspective, the fact that we live in a certain time does not grant this time any special or ethical importance. If we ground activism in concern for the wellbeing of others, whether these “others” live in the distant future, or whether they are suffering presently, should not make a relevant difference. Instead, we ought to persist in our common sense view that we do have a moral responsibility to the people who will live in the future, and that unless we change our ways, we infringe their moral rights and prospects of their hopes and dreams.