Why the government is right about Kyoto – future generations yield to starving Africans 
Posted By Mirko Bagaric on October 14th, 2005
The Howard government has again been loudly criticised for taking ‘short steps’ when it comes to the environment. It announced recently that rather than ratifying the Kyoto Protocol it will join in a United States led coalition which will tackle global warning by focusing on developing technology to make fossil fuels cleaner instead of restricting emissions of greenhouse gases.
The reason the government didn’t adopt Kyoto is simple. It would result in a slightly lower gross domestic product and standard of living for Australians.
More recently John Howard has claimed vindication in relation to his approach to Kyoto following the request by industry groups in New Zealand and Germany, stung by the higher than anticipated costs of Kyoto compliance, to abandon the Kyoto protocol and join the US led environmental coalition.
The criticisms of the government for its approach to greenhouse emissions are misguided. Its response to the problem is commensurate with its severity and the likely potential impact on human flourishing. Long term environmental problems while having moral weight, rank lowly on the moral food chain hierarchy.
The interests of future generations hardly register on the moral radar compared to the obligation that we owe to current generations, in relation to which we are falling woefully short. More than 30,000 people a day are dying of hunger and other readily preventable causes. As a nation we contribute a measly 0.28% of our gross national income to the developing world. This is against an international benchmark of 0.7%. At the recent UN summit Australia came under heavy criticism for this.
So what is the moral status of future people? Although the environment is a popular concern, philosophers have struggled to nail a concrete moral basis for giving weight to distant environmental issues. A moral obligation to future generations must be proven not merely asserted. Saying something, no matter how solemnly and passionately, does not make it so.
Emotional retorts can of course be uttered in favour of future people. The most popular is that we must do everything possible to maintain the ongoing existence of the human species. However, logically and ethically the destruction of the human species would be no more tragic than the extinction of dinosaurs. The claim that human beings are special is the ultimate self-serving ‘beat-up’. Sure we prefer our own company, but the same applies in relation to dogs, cows and all other animals. If they were polled they would also assert the ’specialness of their species’.
Moreover, there is no reason for lamenting if the ultimate outcome of human gluttony is that we gorge ourselves out of existence. There is no greater environmental vandal than the human race. The notion of personal responsibility looms large in any moral theory and as a species we don’t qualify for an exemption.
So far as reason is concerned, arguably we owe no obligation to future generations. Non-entities cannot have rights, so how can we owe duties to them? Why should we indulge less now so that future people can live better? It is questionable whether the notion of deferred well-being is viable at the individual, let alone the cross-generational level.
Ultimately, there is only one medium through which future generations can reach from the skies and command our concern. This is the ‘maxim of positive duty’, which provides that we have a moral duty to assist others where it causes us little inconvenience but constitutes a significant benefit to others. This is why it would be morally repugnant to not save a child drowning in a puddle in order to avoid getting our shoes wet.
While future people can feel no pain and have no interests, they acquire moral status in a derivative fashion from the application of this principle. To speak of particular generations of people as occupying the earth at any one time is in fact misleading. At any point in time the age of people occupying the earth ranges from the infants to centurians. One generation does not die off to be immediately replaced by another. There is a constant layering of generations. It is this layering phenomenon that underpins a commitment to other generations.
Given that the current life expectancy is about 75 years and that each person has a right to an adequate quality of flourishing, we should not engage in environmentally destructive practices which meaningfully impairs this right.
Thus, the scope of our individual environmental duty is capped at about 75 years. This of course will not cease in 2080. But any responsibilities beyond this lie with those born subsequently to us.
Thereafter, as far as we are concerned, future generations must take care of themselves and clean up our mess, as indeed we are cleaning up the mess of those before us.
The weight of current scientific evidence suggests that within 30 to 50 years time there will be a hotter climate if we do nothing to arrest global warming. Apart from the fact that this will require a more expansive summer wardrobe, it will also lead to agricultural losses. The news is on balance bad, but not catastrophic.
The magnitude and imminence of the global warning risk does not require us to take drastic steps. Significant interventions should be directed towards adverting current tragedies. History shows we can’t do both effectively. Nearly every ounce of our finite sympathy glands should be expended on saving current people.
In the context of Kyoto, balancing all these considerations means that the ‘green lobby’ should stop paying homage to the Protocol. Instead we should be lobbying the government to direct the economic savings made from not ratifying the Protocol to meeting the needs of the developing world. This would put Australia on top the environmental moral mountain and address international concerns about the low level of aid that Australia gives to developing nations.
This is a summary of my paper ‘Giving content to our environmental moral obligation to future generations’ to be published in the Buffalo Journal of Environmental Law. A shortened version of this piece was published in the Courier Mail (Brisbane) on 13 October 2005.