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kristopher

(29,798 posts)
Fri Jan 6, 2012, 03:38 PM Jan 2012

Future generations risk 'enslavement' without a vote now

Future generations risk 'enslavement' without a vote now

The issue of intergenerational justice underpins the need to act on climate change. So would a "super-jury" stop us bequeathing a damaged and dangerous planet to our descendants?


Damian Carrington
Wednesday 4 January 2012 08.02 EST
guardian.co.uk

It's a new year, so let's start with a new idea: a democratic body to safeguard the basic needs and fundamental interests of future people.

That is the proposal of Rupert Read, a philosopher at the University of East Anglia, in a report called Guardians of the Future for the think tank Green House. The core idea is both radical and straightforward: a council of "Guardians of Future Generations", chosen like a jury from the general public, would sit above the existing law-making bodies and have two core powers. A power to veto legislation that threatened the basic needs and interests of future people and the power to force a review, following suitable public petition, of any existing legislation that threatens the interests of future people.

After the UN climate change summit in Durban in December I wrote, our current glacial progress in tackling global warming is piling costs and hardship onto our descendents in a way that will make the current global debt crisis seem minor by comparison. The changes to our economic, food, energy and water systems needed to adapt to changing climate get more expensive the longer we leave them. So ideas about how to represent the interests of people yet to exist are welcome.

I asked Read why he took on the issue. "It came from the worry that it is clear that the current institutions of government are not working and are not future proof," he said. "It also came from a philosophical direction: seeking for a way take the future seriously and in a democratic way."

"The proposal being made here...


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/jan/04/climate-politics-future-generation-justice

Setting aside the practical issues of putting this in place, do you think it would work if we had it?
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Future generations risk 'enslavement' without a vote now (Original Post) kristopher Jan 2012 OP
There's the kind of idea it's ok to have but not to speak MFrohike Jan 2012 #1
I agree with you. Initially, this proposal might be fine, but in truedelphi Jan 2012 #2
Veto power is not enough. Laelth Jan 2012 #3
The problem of intergenerational equity needs attention kristopher Jan 2012 #4

MFrohike

(1,980 posts)
1. There's the kind of idea it's ok to have but not to speak
Fri Jan 6, 2012, 04:42 PM
Jan 2012

Virtually every decision made by any body with decision-making power will affect the future. This is a proposal to create a formal oligarchy. Thanks, but no thanks.

What if its powers were to be whittled down so as not to be as overbroad as proposed? Wouldn't that solve the oligarchy problem? Sure, it might, but that raises another question. It undermines the basic underpinnings of democracy. Rather than an institutional underpinning of, "Come, let us reason together," the author proposes a supra-national body not to save us from ourselves, but to save notional future people from us. Virtually every time it's proposed to limit or dismantle democratic structures, the case is made on the circumstances of the present. The author has decided to one-up that type of thinking and shoot for making the case of the future. Given that the future does not yet exist, and is affected by our ongoing actions, this is pretty small-minded, deterministic thinking.

My biggest problem, though, is that it simply mirrors the problem of the right, if in somewhat novel form. The right continually demands obedience to the dead hand of the past. You can see this in their idiosyncratic version of originalism, their more or less invented histories, and their firm insistence that tradition, however loosely defined, is the only acceptance means of organizing and governing society. The author goes to the other side of the timeline with a proposal that's no less wacky. Rather than the dead hand of the past, he'd have us governed by the non-existent hand of the future. At least the right can point to people who actually lived and events that actually happened, even if they completely misunderstand what happened. The author can only point to notional future people whose lives and circumstances we can only hypothesize.

The best way to take the future seriously is not to hand decision-making power to some super-committee of well meaning, could-be oligarchs, but to take the present seriously. I don't worry about the status of the environment in terms of future generations, I worry about fracking resulting in benzene in my water supply. I worry about fertilizer runoff going down the Gulf of Mexico and wiping out the fishing industry to the benefit of Big Agri. I would like those spectacular places on earth, famed for their beauty and inspiration, to be preserved so that I can see them. Am I selfish? Yep. I suspect my selfishness would be a better sell than protecting people who don't and may never exist.

truedelphi

(32,324 posts)
2. I agree with you. Initially, this proposal might be fine, but in
Fri Jan 6, 2012, 05:06 PM
Jan 2012

A matter of months, if not weeks or days, the same old, same old crowd of big time Industrialists would have their way.

For every modern day problem, comes a solution that usually has nothing to do with the problem. I don't see how this jury system would solve anything. For instance, the carbon tax and credit exchange notion. It is a proposal that might well have come about by some idealist, much like the idealists that the East Anglian, Rupert Read, envisions to serve as a jury over legislating bodies. But in reality such a tax and credit exchange doesn't get industry to work on ultimate solutions, but merely transferring the pollution around, always to the detriment of the average consumers, who have to live in a filthier environment and will have to pay higher prices for energy.



Laelth

(32,017 posts)
3. Veto power is not enough.
Fri Jan 6, 2012, 06:12 PM
Jan 2012

Veto power is great if you want a slow, cumbersome government like that of the United States, but look at Obama. He's got a veto, but that doesn't give him the power to get anything done. Personally, I think that new legislation (a "yes" vote) is needed to protect the people of the future. Just a "no" vote won't get it done. Besides, issues like climate change, banking regulations, a debt jubilee, reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, and the repeal of the Commodity Futures Exchange Act, for starters, are highly technical issues that few average, newly-appointed/selected people could understand. It's unlikely that they could actually make good decisions that would, in fact, protect and aid future generations.

Nice idea, perhaps, but this system does not seem workable to me.

-Laelth

kristopher

(29,798 posts)
4. The problem of intergenerational equity needs attention
Sat Jan 7, 2012, 12:14 AM
Jan 2012

The idea in the OP is not, IMO, a way to address the problem.

I agree with the comments already made and would add that I think our cultural systems are *usually* geared to take this into account. We seem to go wrong when there are periods of sudden resource abundance that last for several generations, allowing new values that are based on the abundance to develop and entrench themselves. When that period of surplus or excess ends, as it always does, overshoot occurs as the values propel borrowing against the wealth of future generations to sustain the lifestyle validated by the now obsolete value system.

The proposal by Read will not change that and would be subject to the problems already laid out so well by others.

We need to do something to encourage a change in values. Perhaps we are seeing that with the global economic problems and the associated unrest around the world. There seems to be a questioning of capitalist growth model but I don't think what we've seen to date could any any sense be considered a meaningful change in direction.

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