Given the human tendency to favor current needs over future risks, some environmental and legal scholars are proposing that governments at various levels appoint a “legal guardian of future generations” to consider the impact of policy choices on citizens yet unborn.
A leading proponent of this idea is Carolyn Raffensperger, the executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, a group seeking changes in American environmental and public-health policy.
She is proposing that such a guardianship begin with the next presidency. Below you’ll find a note she recently sent outlining her idea.
I was casting about for an illustration of how this could play out and realized one decent example is the situation of polar bears in a human-warmed world. Their populations have risen in recent decades because of hunting controls. So, for the moment, all is well. But the long-term picture is bleak, according to the latest analysis by government bear biologists. How quickly do we act to change energy choices now to limit chances that Arctic sea ice will disappear entirely in summers later in the century (something most biologists agree would greatly diminish bear numbers)? Is it good enough (from the standpoint of future human generations) to preserve the bears mainly in zoos (as in this Wildlife Conservation Society video clip)?
I spoke with Ms. Raffensperger briefly before the holidays. She explained that even in some of the most forward-looking environmental statutes in the United States, like the legislation creating the national parks, the language on safeguarding this asset “unimpaired” for future generations is in the preamble, and thus not “hard law.”
“We haven’t located that responsibility some place in some entity,” she explained, adding that this was what prompted her to pursue the idea of a guardian.
I asked about the economic norm of discounting future risks, on the assumption that coming generations will be richer and smarter than we are, and thus well able to solve their own problems. She said her view of the precautionary principle did not allow discounting. “I actually heard an economist say once that we are obligated to leave these problems to future generations,” Ms. Raffensperger said. “We don’t buy that.”
The climate issue embodies this challenge of balancing present and future costs more than just about any other, many experts say. Long-lived carbon dioxide emissions accumulate, making the challenge of averting a dangerous buildup ever harder with every year of delay in shifting to less polluting (if costlier) energy options.
But the swifter the shift, the higher the costs. It’s something of an intergenerational tug of war, but no one is born yet to pull on the far end of the rope. That’s why she feels that someone in this generation needs to take on that duty.
In the short run, Ms. Raffensperger explained in an e-mail message to me, her goal is to get presidential candidates to take a position on the guardian concept:
I am proposing that the next president appoint a legal guardian of future generations that would review litigation at the Department of Justice, the budget at the Office of Management and Budget, and all regulations at the environmental agencies. Can you also imagine what it would be like if the next president used the well-being of future generations and protecting their inheritance of the commons as the litmus test for judicial appointments? Since I live in Iowa I have the opportunity to ask all the candidates rascally questions.
More generally, we are developing the legal framework to establish the rights of future generations and our responsibility to them. The nonprofit I work for, the Science and Environmental Health Network, has been collaborating with Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Clinic on law as if future generations mattered. [Relevant background is here.]
Early next year we should have draft constitutional amendments for states, nations and tribes as well as a draft statute that would implement constitutional provisions and a job description of a legal guardian. In the short term, the Legal Guardian is something that governments at any level could elect or designate.
An additional partnership has been forged with the Vermont Law School to apply guardianship of future generations specifically to climate change. [Link here.]
One reason I love the word guardian is that it embodies wonderful Jungian archetypes. We’ve been in conversation with people like James Hillman, the writer and psychologist, about the kind of fertile ground a powerful archetype provides.
Finally, you might be interested in looking at the work of the Buddhist Deep Ecologist, Joanna Macy. She’s the grandmother of future-generations work. Joanna does remarkable exercises of taking people into deep time to have dialogs with the imagined future beings. This parallels the letters to future generations that you have featured on your blog.
Carolyn Raffensperger
Science and Environmental Health Network
There’s a broader movement afoot, outside the realm of government and law, to build support for protection of the global commons for all to enjoy, across time. A new Web site, guardiansofthefuture.org, explains the roots of the idea and summarizes it this way: “People who live today have the sacred right and obligation to protect the commonwealth of the Earth and the common health of people and all our relations for many generations to come.”
So we’re back on the overarching question of what the present owes the future. This relates to those “100-year letters” and an early Dot Earth post.
What do you owe someone else’s great-grandchildren?
How do we apportion responsibility across time for dealing with multigenerational impacts, like the human contribution to climate change, and multigenerational tasks, like transforming how we harvest and use energy?
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