Future Generations and Energy Policy

It’s hard to say exactly what Parfit might purpose in terms of environmental policy, other than his main claim that we are responsible for the kind of environmental policies that will influence the welfare of people in the future, regardless of whether their personal identity changes as a result of our influence. I agree with Parfit’s claim that “it is bad if those that live are worse off than those who might have lived” (370).This claim seems reasonable to me in that it doesn’t side-step the responsibility that is delegated to the current generation to insure that future generation – again, without reference to whether they are different people because of our influence – have a high quality of life. If can create conditions by which future generations live better lives, we are morally obligated to increase the overall welfare of those people.

At the risk of sounding pedestrian, it’s occurred to me at this point that I really don’t have much to say for or against Parfit’s view only because his thesis, which of course does say interesting things about intergenerational rights and duties, ultimately proposes a common-sense view of morality that I think most people already hold, that is, that we are responsible for the welfare of future people and that we should consider the immediate, long-term, and predictable effects of our actions. This is a simplification of Parfit’s argument, of course, but ultimately I think his riffs on personal identity (which already seem a stretch, like Kristin was suggesting) ultimately lead to a dead end for me. I agree with Melanie’s blog post as well that Parfit, while being philosophically interesting, is at the same time boring and inconsequential for policy formation. I do like this piece however for Parfit’s ability to anticipate the implications of believing or not believing his intuitions as well as the puzzling view of obligations to children that haven’t or won’t be born. So maybe I'm being too harsh.... But I guess I’m just willing to express my (frustrating) inclination to be philosophically provincial here only because my reading of this article has, in regard to understanding environmental issues, brought me around the cul-de-sac back to where I started.