Future Generations: Indebted to Us Today

The choices we make today, based on our values and priorities – as individuals, as communities, businesses, enterprises and governments – determine the future that will outlast us by aeons, which our descendants will inherit. Herein lies a key moral problem. As William MacAskill argues in his new book, What We Owe the Future: A Million Year View, future generations

… cannot vote or lobby or run for public office, so politicians have scant incentive to think about them. They can’t bargain or trade with us, so they have little representation in the market. And they can’t make their views heard directly: they can’t tweet, or write articles in newspapers, or march in the streets. They are utterly disenfranchised.

To correct this focus on the present, what we need to develop, as a species, is what he calls “longtermism”. This means keeping the long future foremost in our social, political and environmental planning. It’s essential if people in the decades, even centuries ahead, will be able to lead good lives.

We may know this in theory, and in practice we do sometimes take action to benefit those who will follow us. After all, that’s what drives us to ban pesticides that have long-term effects on the health of future flora and fauna (including our species), to store nuclear waste safely, and to plant trees to store carbon dioxide.

If we have any concern about people of the future, whether in the next century or the next millennia, what concrete actions can we take now? Will our actions make any positive difference, given the scale of the problems and their possible consequences? MacAskill assures us that can do things that protect the future while also benefiting people alive today. Many solutions are win-win, particularly if we have “longtermism” as a key guiding principle when we’re making decisions for ethical living. He argues that people today can and should pressure governments and corporations through our votes and activism, so that they take specific and achievable action on matters such as decarbonisation, control of AI, and prevention of bioengineered pandemics.

MacAskill makes a clear case for optimism about our chances of survival in the future. He offers not just theoretical arguments for hope but also practical suggestions for the best choices we can make now, for resilience for now and tomorrow. In a world where pessimism can seem the only realistic attitude, his book is worth reading as a persuasive corrective.

 William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future: A Million Year View (OneWorld, 2022).

Contributed by Wendy Morgan