Justice and Future Generations
[1] Democracy, Intergenerational Justice and Institutional Design
One my research interests concerns how best to reform existing domestic and international institutions in order to promote greater long-term thinking and intergenerational equity. Citizens and politicians often focus very much on the short term. A number of factors contribute to this, including (i) features of human nature, (ii) the decision-making frameworks and economic methodologies that political and economic actors employ, (iii) the pace of life in modern societies, and (iv) political and economic institutions and practices. The resulting myopia can have very harmful consequences, resulting in both great inefficiency and grave injustice.
I have a book manuscript in progress on these issues provisionally called Democracy and Harmful Short-Termism. This has chapters on (1) the nature of 'Harmful Short-Termism' and our Responsibilities to the Future; (2) the Drivers of Short-Termism and Four Images of Intertemporal Politics; (3) A Framework for Evaluating Political Proposals (how to do nonideal political theory); (4) critiques of existing proposals for addressing political myopia; (5) a defence of a package of proposals for fostering long-term thinking and deliberation - proposals which mitigate the drivers of Harmful Short-Termism; (6) an argument as to how we can and should counteract the norms, practices and ways of thinking that foster political myopia; (7) Tackling Harmful Short-Termism at the Supra-National Level; (8) Reconceiving the Role of the State.
I have also written several papers on how to reform the legislative process in democratic systems to incentivise a greater concern for the long-term, namely:
2022
'Global Climate Governance, Short-Termism, and the Vulnerability of Future Generations', Ethics & International Affairs vol.36 no.2 (2022), 137-155. This is available here.
2019
'Democratic Reform, Intergenerational Justice and the Challenges of the Long-Term', CUSP essay series on the Morality of Sustainable Prosperity 11 (2019). This can be accessed here.
2016
‘Political Institutions for the Future: A Fivefold Package’ in Institutions for Future Generations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) edited by Axel Gosseries and Iñigo González Ricoy, 135-155.
'Political Short-Termism', Academic Foresights no.16 July-December (2016).
Finally, I wrote a commissioned paper for the Mary Robinson Foundation Climate Justice on how to encourage multilateral negotiation processes (such as those focussing on climate change policies and the Sustainable Development Goals) to realize principles of intergenerational equity.
[2] Intergenerational Justice
The above project requires an account of our responsibilities to the future. I have explored this issue in a number of papers and have written on: the morality of discounting the interests of future generations; the rights of future generations; and what principles of distributive justice should guide our treatment of future people. My papers include
2020
Entry on ‘Climate Justice’ for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, published online on 4th June 2020. This is available here.
2018
'Justice and Future Generations', Annual Review of Political Science vol.21 (2018), pp.475-493.
'Justice and Posterity' in Climate Justice: Integrating Economics and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) edited by Ravi Kanbur and Henry Shue, pp.157-174.
2014
‘Climate Change, Intergenerational Equity, and the Social Discount Rate’, Politics, Philosophy & Economics, vol.13 no.4 (2014), 320-342. This has been reprinted in The Ethical Underpinnings of Climate Economics (London: Routledge, 2017) edited by A. Walsh, S. Hormio & D. Purves.
2009
‘Climate Change and the Future: Discounting for Time, Wealth and Risk’, Journal of Social Philosophy vol.40 no.2 (2009), 163-186
2008
Human Rights, Climate Change, and Discounting’, Environmental Politics vol.17 no.4 (2008), 536-555. A revised version has been reprinted in Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) edited by K. O’Brien, A. St. Clair, and B. Kristoffersen, 113-130.
2006
‘Environmental Degradation, Reparations, and the Moral Significance of History’, Journal of Social Philosophy, vol.37 no.3 (2006), 464-482.
‘Cosmopolitan Justice, Rights and Global Climate Change’, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, vol.XIX no.2 (2006), 255-278.
