In two celebrated and widely-anthologized articles, as well as several books, the biologist Garrett Hardin claims (a) that the world population problem has a certain structure – it is a tragedy of the commons - and, (b) that, given this structure, the only tenable solutions involve either coercion or immense human suffering. In this paper, I shall argue for two claims. First, Hardin’s arguments are deeply flawed. The population problem as he conceives it does not have the structure of a (...) commons; and even if it did, this would not necessitate the extreme responses he canvasses. Second, nevertheless, much of Hardin’s pessimism is justified. Some environmental problems associated with population do have tragic structures, though these are of a different form than Hardin envisions. For example, the problem of global climate change has an intergenerational aspect that makes it importantly worse than Hardin’s commons, and for this reason (as opposed to Hardin’s) extreme responses may be needed to avert environmental catastrophe. (shrink)

At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York concluded that: "Both sides in the arms race are... confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation.".

The distant future poses a severe moral problem, the nature and extent of which has not yet been adequately appreciated. This paper offers a brief, initial account of this problem and its main features. It also argues (1) that the problem is the main concern of distinctively intergenerational ethics, and (2) that it occurs both in a pure, long-term form manifest across human history and global populations, and also in degenerate forms which apply to shorter time periods and to social (...) institutions. (shrink)

If we agree with the notion of a global community, then we must extend our concepts of justice, fairness, and equity beyond national borders by supporting measures to decrease global warming and to increase foreign aid, argues Peter Singer.

In 2001, 178 of the world's nations reached agreement on a treaty to combat global climate change brought on by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite the notable omission of the United States, representatives of the participants, and many newspapers around the world, expressed elation. Margot Wallström, the environment commissioner of the European Union, went so far as to declare, “Now we can go home and look our children in the eye and be proud of what we have done.”In this (...) article, I argue for two theses. First, the rhetoric and euphoria surrounding the 2001 deal is misplaced. This is not, as is often said, because the Kyoto agreement is too demanding but rather because it is much too weak. In particular, the Kyoto agreement does little to protect future generations. On the contrary, (at best) it seems to be a prudent wait-and-see policy for the present generation, narrowly defined. Hence, even those countries who have endorsed the Kyoto agreement should be wary of looking their children in the eye, and none should relish facing their children's children.Second, the failure of the Kyoto agreement can be explained in terms of the underlying structure of the problem. Climate change involves the intersection of a complex set of intergenerational and intragenerational collective action problems. This structure, and in particular its intergenerational aspect, has not been adequately appreciated. Yet until it is, we are doomed to an ineffectual environmental policy. (shrink)

The earth's temperature, with rapid global warming over the past 30 years, is now passing through a period of relatively stable climate that has existed for more than 10,000 years. Further warming of more than 1°C will make the earth warmer than it has been in a million years. "Business-as-usual" scenarios, with fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions continuing to increase approximately 2 percent annually for several more decades, yield additional warming of 2° to 3°C this century and imply changes that (...) constitute practically a different planet. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that the earth's climate is nearing, but has not passed, a tipping point, beyond which it will be impossible to avoid climate change with far-ranging undesirable consequences. The changes include not only loss of the Arctic as we know it, with all that implies for wildlife and indigenous peoples, but losses on a much vaster scale because of worldwide rising seas. Sea level will increase slowly at first, as losses at the fringes of Greenland and Antarctica due to accelerating ice streams are partly balanced by increased snowfall and ice sheet thickening in the ice sheet interiors. But as Greenland and West Antarctic ice is softened and lubricated by melt-water and as buttressing ice shelves disappear because of a warming ocean, the balance will tip to rapid ice loss, bringing multiple positive feedbacks into play and causing cataclysmic ice sheet disintegration. The earth's history suggests that with warming of 2° to 3°C, the new equilibrium sea level will include not only most of the ice from Greenland and West Antarctica, but a portion of East Antarctica, raising sea level of the order of 25 meters. (shrink)

In this paper, 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 dominant theoretical approach in public policy, cost benefit 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 intergenerational buck passing and theoretical inadequacy create an atmosphere in which we are extremely vulnerable to moral corruption. (shrink)