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PHILOSOPHY | CLIMATE CHANGE
Do We Have Moral Obligations To Future Generations?
A philosophical look into preserving the environment for those to come
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Published in
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5 min read
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3 days ago
Image licensed under Adobe Stock.
It was 1988 when climate change became an urgent ethical and political concern for the United Nations.
In recent years, no doubt climate change has only grown as an international concern.
At the heart of every environmental debate stands the critical question: do we have moral obligations to future generations? After all, future generations don’t legally have any rights. And we can’t exactly ask them if we should stop using plastic straws.
It is therefore up to us to make the right choices for them. Whether it is our moral obligation to make these choices for them is a point to be debated.
According to Thomas Pick, a “moral obligation” can be defined as:
“A voluntary action, distinct from the law, that one ought to perform and considered blameworthy if not performed.”
In this article, a moral obligation is any environmental action (e.g. driving green, recycling, etc) that takes into account the interests of future generations.
Ultimately, I will be arguing that we do have moral obligations to future generations.
Commonwealth v Tasmania (1983): protecting the rights of future citizens
The iconic campaign sticker “No Dams In S-W Tasmania”. It was used to show opposition to the Franklin Dam in the early 1980s. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Tasmanian Dam case (1983) is an example of a debate where the interests of current generations have conflicted with the interests of future generations.
The Tasmanian Dam case is a famous environmental law case in Australia that was centered around the government’s construction of a hydroelectric dam in Tasmania. The land that the dam was being considered for, however, was a valuable site of natural, cultural, and historical heritage.
This led to roughly 6,000 activists and protestors launching a campaign to stop it from being built. The case was debated in the Australian High…