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Abstract: Many societies are now having to live with the impacts of climate change and are being confronted with heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and rising sea levels. Without radical action, future generations will inherit an even more degraded planet. This raises the question: How can political institutions be reformed to promote justice for future generations and to leave them an ecologically sustainable world? In this essay, I address a particular version of this question; namely: How can supra–state institutions and transnational political processes be transformed to realize climate justice for future generations? The essay seeks to make two contributions. First, it considers what criteria should guide the evaluation of proposals for reform. It proposes four criteria, and analyzes how they should be interpreted and applied. Second, it considers a raft of different proposals, commenting on their strengths and weaknesses. It presents ten proposals in all, including, among others, establishing a UN high commissioner for future generations, appointing a UN special envoy for future generations, creating a UN agency mandated to protect future generations, instituting representatives for the future in all key UN bodies, ensuring greater youth participation in transnational political decision-making processes, and further developing a global citizens' assembly. In short, my aim is to outline some of the options available and to defend a normative framework that we can use to evaluate them.

The question of what responsibilities members of one generation have to later generations raises complex theoretical questions and is also of considerable practical importance. In this article, I introduce the practical issues at stake (Section 1), then explore the methodological issues surrounding how to think about intergenerational justice (Section 2), before evaluating competing normative frameworks (Sections 3–7). I conclude with a discussion of the practical challenges facing the realization of justice to future generations (Section 8).

Abstract:In the debates surrounding global justice, the overwhelming focus has been on the duties that fall to the affluent and powerful, and the emphasis has been on their duties to comply with various principles of justice. In this essay, I examine what those who bear the brunt of global injustice are entitled to do to secure their own entitlements and those of others. In particular, I defend an account of what I term the "right of resistance against global injustice." To do so I advance several methodological and substantive claims. On the methodological level: I argue that in deriving and defining this right of resistance we can (a) learn from the normative accounts developed to analyze war, humanitarian intervention, civil disobedience, revolution and anti colonialism. However, (b) the right to resist global injustice raises some distinct problems; and, thus, the normative principles that should inform any right of resistance against global injustice are not reducible to those that govern the appropriate kinds of response to other kinds of injustice. Turning now to the substantive component, I propose an account of resisting global injustice that specifies (i) who may engage in resistance, (ii) what would constitute a just cause for engaging in resistance, (iii) against whom those engaging in resistance may impose burdens, (iv) what methods resistors can employ, and (v) in what circumstances resistance is permissible.

Climate change is projected to have very severe impacts on future generations. Given this, any adequate response to it has to consider the nature of our obligations to future generations. This paper seeks to do that and to relate this to the way that inter-generational justice is often framed by economic analyses of climate change. To do this the paper considers three kinds of considerations that, it has been argued, should guide the kinds of actions that one generation should take if it is to treat both current and future people equitably. In particular it examines the case for what has been termed pure time discounting, growth discounting and opportunity cost discounting; and it assesses their implications for climate policy. It argues that none of these support the claims of those who think they give us reason to delay aggressive mitigation policies. It also finds, however, that the second kind of argument can, in certain circumstances, provide support for passing on some of the costs of mitigation to future generations.