Nicole Davis

Environmental Ethics

Dr. Ceballes

26 April 2016

Obligations to the Future

When the question of what does the present generation owe morally to the future many

theorists are stumped. Many factors have to go into considering what is owed or even if anything is

owed to the future at all. Since the future is an indeterminate population, decisions are hard to calculate

so that no negative act is committed to future generations. Obligations to the future have to be

balanced by what rights the present even has to implement regulation that would change the future

environment and if it is in the best interest of the present to make change.

Ethics and theology have been entwined since the beginning of the study of ethics. Moral law

had always been dictated by what God was to tell his followers. What one was to do morally was what

God ordained and it was ones duty to trust him. The laws which people lived by were to go

unquestioned and therefore it wasn’t a concern of people “to know about the long term consequences

of ones actions” (p.215). If God deemed wastefulness as wrong it was considered something to be

avoided for the sake that it was deemed by God and not that wastefulness had any effect on the future.

For thousands of years this was how morality was viewed. As ethics has evolved philosophers like Kant

start to establish that human reasoning can determine moral law not by relying on Gods law or will but

simply by knowing what to do on our own. Kant believed that humans “cannot help but care to some

degree about future persons” (218) just because it is human nature to care or be concerned. Baier

agrees with the points Kant touches on but expresses that he does not elaborate on the type of

obligation we owe to future persons.

 Where morality and ethics are concerned, the question of what is right and what is wrong is

brought up. Modern moral theorists recognize that morality has an effect on someone’s human good

but seem to not be able to concisely conclude how that affects the determination of “the moral

rightness of an action” (218). Some seem to lean toward the idea that that action is one on a person’s

moral rights as a human. Possessing rights is enormously different than being able to act on those rights.

Baier contends that “the violation of a right is a sort of effect on a person and on his or her good” (218),

which explains that a person can and should possess rights but those rights should not be violated. A

person can choose to enact on the rights he has such as choosing to vote, but if one does not exercise

those rights then one will not be reprimanded since it was in their interest to choose not to vote.

People are born with interests and desires and generally once those interests are achieved then

one achieves what one wants. As one evolves, interest may change but in the sense that to achieve what

one really wants, something else must be done first. Baier uses the example that to achieve liberty, one

must remove the threats to liberty to achieve it. So to achieve environmental health, the people of the

present must remove the threats to a tolerable environment. To achieve this the present must focus on

policy and change. The problem with change is that the present cannot account for the interests and

needs of people of the future.

Baier elaborates on a person’s rights and whether or not one should always exercise the rights

they have or if they even possess certain rights at all. The argument Bair makes is if it is our right to

enact regulations and policies that will potentially safe guard the future from environmental calamity if

the interests and needs of the future cannot be calculated. Since people of the present will not see the

effects the changes will make to a future world, ethicists ask if it is within our right to enact something

that future persons have no control over. The other side of this argument is if we as people of the

present do not do something to change the way humanity impacts the environment then, perhaps, no

one will and people of the future will be left in an intolerable world.
 Present people can never fully account for how implementation of policy and regulation will

affect the people of the future because it is implied that they will have different needs and interests

than the present. Since the people of the future will only exist because of the decisions and factors that

are made by the people of today, their needs cannot be determined because “they are not yet

determinate people” (220). By being an indeterminate body of people, the present is potentially

protected by the outcome of the implementation of regulation because the present cannot know what

the effects are so that the present is not knowingly causing the future harm. As according to the Person-

Affecting Principle “an action that has no bad effect on anyone, cannot be really wrong” (218), so the

policies the present chooses to enact may not even affect the future so the present would not be doing

any wrong. The Person-affecting principle also tells us that it is possible to wrong the future generation

despite their indeterminacy and specific needs, but the principle does not detail the effect nor how bad

that effect could be. Clearly, the outcome will uncertain if regulations are set in place making present

leaders and policy makers hesitant to implement anything.

The obligation argument explains that we do not have an obligation to the future because of

their oncological precariousness and the perpetual want by all people wanting the past to be different.

According to the argument, as long as individuals in the future do not regret existing, the past has done

no wrong. With that said the argument states that the present owes no obligation to the future because

of their uncertainty and the assumed fact that the future will always want the past to be different. The

policies and actions that the present implements in hopes to make the future better may or may not

have a positive impact on future peoples. As long as the world the future lives in is not so intolerable

that they regret existing then the present has done no wrong. For the victim portion, the argument

states that present has done no harm unless “it would have been better for that person had we (the

present) not acted that way” (222). Collectively, a majority of the population would feel some sort of
obligation to their successors not to deplete the environment to make sure that their lives are not

entirely intolerable.

While the no obligation argument covers briefly the oncological precariousness of people as well

as explains what obligation the present owes to future people, it does so generally with little

specification. The no obligation argument is problematic because it does not describe thoroughly the

role of the victim. Baier revises the argument by saying that a person is not wronged unless it would

have been better for that person if the present acted differently or not at all because our actions would

bring someone more suffering, frustration, injury to someone’s interest or violation to their rights. In the

original argument the specifications of what classifies a victim were not described. As for the conclusion,

Baier agrees that the present is not wronging someone unless it would have been better for them to not

exist at all, but the wrongs the present does conduct to a person are made to their potential interests

since they do not yet have a fixed identity. If people of the present would conduct different actions then

it is possible for the interests of future people to be less injured. Although, the present will never know if

their actions positively or negatively affected the future so the actions of the present cannot be changed

to best fit the futures needs.

Baier’s arguments are strong but some weaknesses seem to come up throughout her

statements. Baier states that changes need to be made to the consumption of raw materials, quality of

the air, food and water for future generations. While suggesting that changes need to be made Baier

also says that a determinate change cannot be made because it is not known how it will affect the

people of the future. If the present makes a change that will make a difference, it may or may not make

a difference to the people of the future or may have a negative impact on them. A negative impact on

the future would be at the fault of the present because they would have ruined the futures chance of a

clean environment. Baier seems to contradict herself often by saying that change needs to be made so

to save the future and the future environment but says that we can never make an accurate change that
won’t ruin the chances for the future to have a clean environment. But to be constantly trying to factor

in the existence of future people is not exactly a feasible concept because famines, blackouts and other

events that affect a large majority of people are going to happen no matter where nor what time in

history. The present cannot cater to the needs and interests of the future because they are unknown

factors. The present should make changes and regulation with the futures best interests in mind with

the hopes that it will make a positive impact of the future environment because that is all that can be

done.

Focusing on what will happen to the future environment is something that needs to be

considered when addressing the state at which the present consumes raw materials and negatively

affects the environment. While considering the pros and cons of what to do with regulation, the rights

of future generations and what obligations we owe specifically must also be weighed. Changes that are

made in the present that are aimed to helping the future generations, but result in a negative effect

would be the fault of the previous generations. But the efforts made by past generations are only made

in the effort to help the future environment and any cause that is not positive is something that was not

purposeful. To accomplish even the attempt to any sort of positive impact the interests and needs of the

future need to be weighed. These interests are not easily determined since the people of the future are

not yet fixed individuals. The present owes the future at least the attempt at making the environment a

clean one because it seems that any other implementation of change is riskier than the actual

assumption that the environment may not be as clean as it is in the present day.