Valuing Future Generations

Abstract

If valuing current generations and their environmental needs wasn’t difficult enough, policymakers also have to contend with how to value future generations. This is not an abstract issue; the biggest environmental issue of all, climate change, has huge implications for future generations (as well as current generations);¹ so do other issues, such as the depletion of nonrenewable resources, the degradation of unique and irreplaceable ecosystems, nuclear waste disposal, and the hole in the ozone layer.