Sunstein nails it

Though it's appealing, I don't think this argument should be given much weight. One could easily apply to same logic to the rapid growth of the national debt or the social security crisis. Why should we worry today about debts imposed on our much richer grandchildren?

If we take as a given that some human activity is harming the environment, that means we are imposing costs on future generations, much like the public debt.

If we were going to differentiate between these situations morally, it would have to be based on the degree or type of cost being imposed. Neither "degree of harm" nor "type of harm" is a very good criterion for moral reasoning, so any distinction we draw is likely to be arbitrary.

I'm not an environmentalist, but I don't think I'll be using this argument for myself.

"My only footnote is that every generation does transfer resources to the far wealthier future. We do it out of love, mostly and from time to time, some other motivations."

We also do it out of necessity — because you can't take it with you. It is an alternate form of Smith's butchers, brewers, and bakers: an invisible hand across generations. We benefit from the efforts of our predecessors not because they were thinking about us, but because the things they built and created to enrich their own lives cannot help but to enrich ours.

So buildings, roads and bridges are necessarily passed on. As are scientific discoveries, new inventions, and works of art.

I think this can be a valid argument but it depends entirely on some exact figures. If, in ten years time it will be relatively half as expensive to do what we might do now, but the problem is four times worse, we would be better off solving it now than later. But if we're going it's going to be five times cheaper (and the problem four times worse) then we should wait. We need to know how much richer and how much technology is going to advance, and how much more difficult the problem is going to get and at what rates to work out the optimal time to act.

I agree with the first poster.

If you're talking about how children should not feel entitled to an inheritance, I totally agree.

If you're talking about running up a huge national debt (such that the interest payments on the debt would become the most expensive government "program", or, as much as the cost of social security and medicare), I would have to disagree. In a sense, it would be akin to a time when children were imprisoned for their parents' debts. The subsequent generation in that case was certainly worse off.

On the subject of things like global warming, I agree we don't want to impede economic progress. On the other hand, and under the assumption that global warming could (if left unchecked) in the next couple of hundred years lead to rising sea levels such that low-lying countries are submerged, and totally shifting weather patterns such that there is a massive food shortage, than that may cost more in terms of misery, lives, and dollars than impeding some economic progress today. (This also assumes steps could be taken to change this outcome. )

It's certainly worth thinking about, and not dismissing simply because we think future generations will be relatively richer. As they say, past success in no way guarantee future returns.

As an addedum to my post. I guess that if in thearoy it got bad enough we could consume capital leaving less for the next generation than we received from past generations but this would be very difficult.

Does it not occur to anyone that everythintg concerning the future is based upon presumption? i.e.

It is presumed that there will be an Earth tomorrow, what kind of Earth it will be we have no concrete way of knowing, we can only presume.

It is presumed that our children are going to be occupants of that Earth. What kind of people our children will be we have no sure way of knowing, so we only presume.

With that presumption in mind, what do we do?

I suggest that the best thing we can do, for our presumed children in their presumed world, is to take care of our present business in the most succinct and profitable manner possible and let them take over where we left off, if they manage to exist.

To hesitate, to hide, to cower, to fear, to avoid risk is the very worst thing we can do.

If we are not willing to plunge into the future pushing the envelope at every opportunity then we really have nothing to leave to our children.

Ed,
Whew! Was your last meant to refute what I said about presumption?

Is kind of muddled, what would produce $10,000 a year, the Walmart or the Old Growth Forest (sigh, so emotional) that you cut down? Or, is it the OGF that you chose not to cut down? Could you clear that one up please?

That is really here nor there, if indeed you intended to rebut what I said about presumption.

Ed, you make the same mistake that socialists have been making since the first idiot dreamed up the theology of stealing from one to give to another.

Ed, dear sir, the world and we the people in it are not static. The world changes, life on it changes, and most of all we humans advance our technology at a truly astounding and ever accelerating rate.

Wealth is not static, life is not static, technology is not static. Ed, you have absolutely zero way of knowing what this world will be like in one year from now, the only thing you can do is presume (whatever it is that you wish to presume).

Ed, in ten years each human may very well have a cheap countertop carbon dioxide to oxygen convertor that they bought at Walmart, which, along with the countertop convertors of all of the humans in the world, makes forests obsolete except for the viewing pleasure of the rich….which will be all of us.

My presumption of the future is far more probable than yours, in which you presume that the world will be static and you can actually make concrete plans on what your grandchildren will doing and how they will be living their life.