Responsibility to Future Generations and the Technological Transition

Abstract

I have applied the phrase “the date of the technological transition” to the year in human history in which the accumulated atmospheric total of all GHGs ceases to grow.⁵ Carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuel is only one GHG, of course, but increases in carbon dioxide have made by far the greatest contribution to the swelling of the total. Perhaps quantities of some other GHGs would even need to continue to grow, perhaps not – this is a murkier realm. But if emissions of carbon dioxide were reduced sufficiently, quantities of other GHGs could, if necessary, increase while total annual emissions of all GHGs declined because carbon dioxide is such a large part of current annual emissions of all GHGs and of annual increases in emissions of all GHGs. Reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide could “make room” for any necessary increases in other GHG emissions.

Citation

Shue, H. (2005), "Responsibility to Future Generations and the Technological Transition", Sinnott-Armstrong, W. and Howarth, R.B. (Ed.) Perspectives on Climate Change: Science, Economics, Politics, Ethics (Advances in the Economics of Environmental Resources, Vol. 5), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 265-283. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1569-3740(05)05012-1